even if she were to try.

But she wasn’t going to try.

By the time the glass arrived in front of her, she’d found the one. Dark, quiet, withdrawn. His thoughts were black things, and she could feel them on the air like tendrils of wet mist. Theroen was right. The violence he had spoken of seemed to exude from this man in waves, and with it something else, a sort of undefined righteousness that told her the rest of what she needed to know. There was no guilt here. No remorse. This man had murdered his own wife and child in cold blood over the breaking of a glass, and sat here now feeling justified.

He looked at her now, this lone girl... city, by the looks of her. Two stretched, her nipples outlined against the white cotton of her shirt, navel exposed, and glanced at him with smoky eyes.

She could hear the blood pounding faster in his veins.

* * *

The glance had been perfected during her time with Darren. She tossed it out, caught her prey, and began to reel him in. Phantom images seemed to dance across her mind; A woman’s horrified eyes, terror becoming distant and detached in death. A shovel. His breath in the cold moonlight. Two smiled at him as he moved toward her, hand on the bar, drunk and unsteady.

“Hello.” Her voice was sweet sugar, long and slow and husky, full of promise. He nodded to her, sat down on the stool next to her, glanced at her untouched beer.

“One for the road?” He asked. Two smiled.

“Something like that. I didn’t come here for beer.”

“Oh no?”

“I’ve been on a trip, and now I’m headed back into the city. Back to my husband. But I couldn’t go without one last stop. I couldn’t go without...” Two let her eyes flick down, just briefly, then return. She could see his eyes darken as his brain, or perhaps that other organ, completed the thought.

“Do you have a wife?” she asked him.

“No. Not... no.”

“A house?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to see it.”

She left a fifty on the bar. The man behind the counter looked at it, raised his eyebrows, shrugged at one of the locals.

“Looks like he’s gotten over that missing wife, then,” commented an older man in a John Deere cap. He struck a match, brought it to a cigarette, inhaled.

“Can you blame him?” One of the younger men, a deputy with a wife of his own at home asleep, asked. His eyes watched the door close, an expression of longing on his face.

“Ah. Did you see that jacket? Those earrings? City. You know what I say about city folk.”

“We ought to, you say it every night,” grumbled the bartender.

“No good comes of ‘em Jack. You mark me.”

Jack shrugged and put the fifty in the register. It was plenty good enough for him.

* * *

Theroen and Melissa were not there, but Two knew that they had not gone far. She could not sense them, but she wasn’t trying too hard. They had no reason to leave, only to keep their presence unknown to this man. She was sure they wanted to watch. This was her first true moment as a vampire.

They walked along the road that, only minutes ago, Two had traveled in the opposite direction. They didn’t talk. Two was nervous, shuddery, trying hard not to show it. The thirst was growing in her by the moment. She could smell the blood now, so close to his skin.

“What was her name?” she asked.

“Who?”

“The wife that you told me you didn’t have. The one you lied about.”

The man was momentarily taken aback. He paused in his step, looked at her, eyes wide. Two glanced back, the playfulness gone from her eyes.

“What was her name?”

“Look, I don’t know who you think I am. I’m Sean...”

“I didn’t ask who you were. I asked what her name was.”

Sean swallowed hard, shoved his tousled brown hair back from his forehead. Two stepped toward him, touched a stubbly cheek, smiled again.

“It’s a simple question, Sean.” She moved her lips over his, barely touching, pressed the tip of her tongue to the center of his upper lip. He opened his mouth instinctively, and the touch became a kiss, long and damp. She touched below his waist, and what she found there was rock hard, despite his concerns.

The nerves were gone. They’d slipped off as the moment approached, and Two was cold now. She played her lips about his neck, tasting his salty sweat, not yet bitter from fear.