occasional cooing of some girl, bedsprings creaking. It sounded like a bad porn movie, and she smiled around the bitter taste in her mouth. She’d come here because she didn’t know where else to go. Dirty, tired, out of money, too ashamed and too frightened to go to Rhes and Sarah, she had returned to the building she had called home for the past year.

The trip hadn’t taken long. A car had eventually come along, the driver slowing for the two young women standing in the cold rain. Two had felt bad about rewarding this kindness with death, but she was still a vampire. Still needed to feed. Sam watched in horror, but Two could see the thirst there in her eyes. By the end of the car ride Sam had admitted, grudging and sullen, that she was beginning to believe the whole vampire thing.

They had spent the day in a motel, sleeping. Two had packed Tori into the bathroom, blocking the cracks under the door with towels, giving the girl plenty of blankets with which to build some sort of nest. She and Sam had taken the beds. Two woke, weeping, at sunset. There was no Theroen to wake up next to, and never would be again.

By that evening, Sam was already looking more human. Two still felt the same. She fed on a victim in an adjacent room, and then the trio had continued toward Manhattan, toward Darren.

Darren’s voice, through the door. “That’s good, baby. That’s real good, but you... gotta sound like you’re... getting the best fuck of your life. Course, I know you are, right baby?”

“Anything you say, Darren.” The girl turned the volume up a notch. Two grimaced. She’d done this. She’d been here. It was a place she never intended to be again. She stood in the same building, but not in the same place. She had strength now, power now, purpose now. Descent and rebirth. Two had survived this process twice already. She would survive a third.

Two kicked the door, hard, just below the lock. The frame splintered and the entire mechanism fell to the floor with a clatter. The door swept inward on creaking hinges, ricocheted off the wall with a flat smacking sound, and came to a stop.

Darren was quick; Two had to give him that. The door had not even finished its swing before he was rolling off of the girl, and he was up on two feet before it stopped moving, pointing a gun toward the dark hallway. From his perspective, there were only vague grey shapes. Two’s eyes were much better. Before her stood Darren, naked and still half-aroused, gun cocked and ready, held out in front of him.

“Who the fuck are you and what do you want?” He snarled.

“Put down the gun, dumbass, before you get hurt.”

“Answer the fucking question, bitch. Who is that? You one of my girls? Gonna get you some revenge, maybe put some holes in old Darren? Answer me or I start shooting.”

“Something like that. I’ll give you a few hints. She’s short, she’s cute, and she’s been missing for a month or two.”

The gun wavered for a brief moment. Darren’s eyes registered vague surprise before growing icy again. “I didn’t authorize no vacation, Two.”

“I didn’t fucking ask for one, asshole.”

Darren sneered at her, still unafraid. Two knew that look, and it was all she could do not to charge screaming into the room, to tear her former pimp limb from limb. It spoke of Darren’s complete disdain for his girls. It was a look that carried with it all the baggage of his beatings, his orders, his forcing addiction upon them. Two tried to think of Theroen. Tried to remain calm.

“Put the gun down. Now.” She said.

Darren actually smiled at this, and shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Here’s how it’s going to go: You’re going to come in here, and I’m going to kick the living shit out of you. If you beg real nice, maybe I’ll stop before I kill you. If that’s how it goes, then you’ll get back to your room, and heal up, and get your ass out where it belongs, and maybe then I might give you a ration some time this fucking century.”

Two laughed. Heroin? Who needed heroin? “Last chance, Darren. Put down the gun.”

“No.”

Two shrugged, and released her grip on Tori’s shoulder. What happened next was better even than she could have expected. Tori sprang into the room, howling, so quick that