He would try your impossible deed, if I let him.

“I have firsthand experience, awful beyond description, that vampires of my age and power can be killed easily by their elders. Lisette’s destruction came at the hands of a vampire only a few hundred years her senior, and that vampire lived only ten more years before Abraham destroyed him. It has been centuries since those events, and Abraham has only grown more powerful. If we challenge him, we will die.”

Two opened her mouth to reply to this, when a scream, long and wailing, echoed from somewhere below them. She shut her mouth with a snap, eyes wide, looking at the floor.

“Samantha awakens,” said Theroen.

* * *

It was Two who went down to see the girl. She requested it, and Theroen had simply held his palms up to the air. Be my guest. Two wondered if he sometimes understood her motivations better than she did herself. Two did not know why she needed to talk to this half-vampire woman whom she had never met. Two only knew that it felt right, and after a life guided mainly by instinct, she had learned largely to trust such feelings.

She knew the girl could hear her footsteps, coming down the long stone staircase. She could sense a sudden panic, could hear the already rushed breathing speed to a near hysterical pace. She spoke into the darkness. “I’m not going to hurt you, Samantha.”

The panic broke, at that, and the voice at the end of the hall began running like water. “Who are you? Where am I? What’s happening to me? Where am I? Help me! Where are you? You have to help me!”

Two could see the bars lining the wall, could see the form behind them, on its knees, shuddering. Samantha was wearing a pair of jeans and a loose silk blouse. No socks, no shoes. Two tried to remember waking up in that cell. Only a few weeks ago. It seemed forever.

“I’m going to light a candle. There’s one down here. Everything’s going to be okay. You’re fine, and I’m here to help. Try to relax, if you can. It will be better for you.”

The girl lapsed into gulping, panicky breaths, staring out into what Two realized must be, for her, total blackness. Two could see the candle on a small table by the cell, a box of matches sitting beside it. She struck one, and held it to the wick. The flame glowed and flickered, casting enough light that Samantha was able to pinpoint Two’s whereabouts. She scurried down the length of the bars, pressed up against them, held her hand out. “Help me! Help me!”

Two sat on the floor and took her hand. The pressure would have been hard enough to hurt, if Two were still human. She wondered at this. It wasn’t the major aspects of vampirism that continued to astound her, but rather the small revelations.

“Samantha. It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re not hurt.”

“I feel wrong. Help me!”

Two laughed a bit at that. “Yes, I imagine you do. Can you take the facts straight, Samantha? Or do I have to dance around them until you calm down?”

Her matter-of-fact tone was working. Samantha closed her eyes and, with visible effort, forced herself to breath deeply, to get control of herself. Her grip on Two’s hand loosened slightly.

“Just tell me,” She said after a moment. “It can’t be any worse than sitting in the dark alone, wondering what the hell is going on. All I could think of was Silence of the Lambs.”

“How much do you remember?”

“Not much. I remember some chick in a leather jacket kept smiling at me at the club, and that I couldn’t stop looking at her. Look, I’m not normally into that, you know? But there was something about her, and you only live once, right? I remember finally getting up to go talk to her... and then I woke up in this fucking hole.”

Two nodded. “Okay, well, here it comes. When you don’t believe it, I’ll prove it to you. But I’ll tell you first. Last night you came home with a vampire named Missy. You uh... hooked up with her, and she bit you, and drained a bunch of your blood. Normally you wouldn’t remember this, but she decided to give you some of her blood in return. Since she didn’t drain you all the way, you’re not completely a vampire yet, but you’re about halfway there. After that it gets... complicated.”

The girl was silent for