“Felicity,” she said.

Heaven leaned back against the plush pillows, stretching out her legs before her, crossing her feet. She had recently fed – the body lay limp in a chair nearby – and she felt warm and pleasant and happy.

It had a been a good year, she decided, in an unusual moment of introspection. The jewels were all wrong though; the sapphire dress should have been with Psyche, the diamonds with Israfel. There should have been emeralds at the Cradle, and the rubies should have stood out on their own, instead of being part of the crystal dice. But truth, she supposed, lacks the precise imagery of fiction – some parts fit, some parts don’t – not that it matters, really.

She looked at her toes, wiggled them, decided that red really was a good colour. She wasn’t sure if it had been, indeed, a year, however approximate – she had no reason to mark the passing of nights. She moved to the edge of the bed, sitting up straight and looking at the corpse. Her expired companion wore an expression of sheer terror, and she giggled with the memory of his face as it contorted from ecstasy to its current, final, state.

“If I were a super-villain,” she mused, crossing her legs, “I’d have piranha in the bathtub, and I could dump him in there and they’d nibble him to bare bones.” Piranha are feasible, barely, but really inconvenient if one needs must travel – she was quite sure that they were restricted in certain countries. If I were a gangster I’d plug a hole into pretty boy’s tummy and dump him in the sea – rather unglamourous, considering. Or acid – now which movie was that in? – I could chop him up and melt him down piece by piece. She shuddered with the thought of the smell. If I were in a slasher flick I could butcher him, I think I’ll probably look quite good wearing nothing but a rubber apron with a butcher knife in one hand.

But – vampire or not – this is real life, and life has too many messy details one never finds in fiction; eating, pissing, sleeping – and the unforturnately necessary disposal of corpses. It always irked her, in a small way, that it always cut-scene’s after a Significant Conversation –

“Oh, I know you didn’t do it and, yes, I know Mom didn’t either. But don’t you think a man who sleeps with both his step-daughters ought to go to jail anyway?”

*shocked pause*

*fade to black*

So what happens after? Do they quietly leave? Do they go out for coffee? Call in a pizza?

Heaven shrugged, dismissing the thought. “Come on then,” she purred, as she grapped a limp hand and walked toward the bathroom, dragging the body across the plush carpet behind her.

Breakfast in bed, while entertaining, really had too much cleaning up to do.

She dropped the bag – head, hands, and a piece of flesh from his back which contained a tattoo – onto the floor and opened the wardrobe.

“‘Do not worry, from morning to evening and from evening to morning, about what you will wear.’ INRI,” she flicked through her dresses. “Easy for you to say, you only had a loincloth.”

Heaven decided on smart casual – no reason to dress to kill when the killing’s already been done – along with a pair of sandals to err on the side of casual. She got dressed, smiling as she bound up the straps of her sandals, went to the bathroom, still strong with the scent of roasted meat – she had burned through his fingers and the tattoo – checked that everything was fine, picked up her bag, ensured that the “Do Not Disturb” was hanging on the doorknob, and took the elevator down to the carpark.

“He had better have a real Ferrari and not just the keychain.” She lamented the fact that all men were irredeemable frauds as she walked among the cars, randomly aiming the button and awaiting a beep.

Beep.

“Nice.” She smiled cheerfully as she threw her bag into the passenger seat and hopped in.

A few random button presses and the top came down. She patted the bag, settled in, and drove off.

As she drove towards the river, she placed a phonecall and found out the location of the local chop-shop. The car was a pleasure to drive, but far too conspicuous, unfortunately. She considered buying one, decided that driving herself around for one night would be quite enough.

The river, when she reached it, was deserted. The row of buildings behind her were dilapidated, the stink in the air hinting of urine and vomit. It was the kind of place where nobody came unless they really had nowhere else to go. She cast her eyes around, once; the absence of human sounds reassuring her. Cars could be heard in the distance, but far enough away.

A sharp twist separated the lower jaw from the head. She smashed the jaw hard against the asphalt, destroying the teeth, tossed it into the torpid waters. The remaining teeth were similarly destroyed, and she cleaned her hands with the towel she had brought with her from the hotel.

A short drive further along the river; a roasted hand made its way into the water. A passing mongrel was tossed the tattooed piece.

Another drive; the other hand skipped once across the surface, sunk with a satisfying splash.

The bridge was up ahead, and she drove onto it, deciding to toss the last piece in from the other side, along her way.

She stopped at a traffic light. A group of boys in the car next to her’s started giving off wolf whistles.

Heaven turned toward them, gave a wink, cupped a breast with one hand and licked her lips.

The boys cheered, their cans of beer raised in appreciation.

Estimating the time before the traffic light changed, she reached into her bag with her free hand, felt that the eyes were opened, decided against messing her fingers by popping them. When the light turned green, she lifted the jawless head up by its hair.

She almost laughed as their faces twisted, one of their number obviously upon the verge of throwing up. She smiled sweetly as she dropped the head.

Pedal to the metal.

The knocks came hard and demanding.

Heaven went up to the door, wondering why trouble never ever rang the bell. Two men were standing without, dressed in rumpled middle-class, an uncoordinated array of earth tones. Her eye to the peephole, she considered them, noting that nothing much distinguished one from the other – they were both cut from the same bland cloth of the overworked and underpaid. She didn’t approve of the middle-class, they lacked respect.

Cops, in all probability. The corpse was already gone, but they wouldn’t be here if they didn’t think they were on to something. She wouldn’t be able to stand up to a detailed background check, in any case. Or, a remote possibility, hunters. Hunters tended to be solitary, but she had heard of a loose organisation – the rumours of their rise and destruction surfaced every few decades. Some people, for whatever twisted reasons, had nothing better to do with their woefully finite lives than to spend it destroying her kind – it was pitiful, really. It made her sad.

The hand was raised again. She went to the bathroom and put on a robe as the second barrage of knocking started. She knew she hadn’t been careless, which meant she had to find out if they were lucky, diligent, or if someone was on to her – identities were harder to change in an age of international co-operation. If Interpol or some other agency with international links was on to her, she would need to know.

Which meant that she couldn’t run, and the Hardy Boys had to live long enough to talk. Correction – she turned the door-knob – one of them had to live long enough to talk.

She had gone through the routine often enough not to pay much attention to the formalities – “Help us with our investigation…” “Have you seen this man?”. She fidgeted with feigned anxiety as question followed question, letting her robe slip slowly open. The stupid one was interrogating her and taking notes, while the sharp one was going through her rooms without being overly obvious about it. She kept her eye on him, through mirrors whenever possible – he would return soon with a “Can you explain this?”.

When she judged that the stupid one was about to ask her to cover herself properly, she stood up, proclaiming that her nerves wouldn’t let her sit still. She could tell she was having an effect on him, but was still undecided on which of them to keep alive. She kept herself in between the pair, in case guns were drawn.

Sharp had been in the bathroom for a moment too long.

Facing Stupid, Heaven pulled her robe open and dropped it on to the floor. In the moment of confusion that is the typical masculine response when confronted with female nakedness, she kneed him in the groin. She heard a most satisfying crack before he was lifted off the floor and thrown against the wall.

He was unconscious. She easily stood him up, as a shield before her, smiled at Sharp when he rushed in, a firearm, as expected, in his right hand.

“Go ahead,” she sweetly said, dropping all pretence of anxiousness, “Shoot that big gun of yours.”

She saw him hesitate. “You’re not very good under pressure, are you?” she conversationally added.

His eyes flickered off her, focussed on his partner. She tossed the unconscious man toward him, leapt forward, her claws raised.

She had separated the pair of them, tied them both to chairs with their ripped-up clothes. A few phonecalls had been made, a few sheets of hotel stationary filled up with her scribbling.

Sharp hadn’t been badly damaged, and had regained consciousness when she went to him. She kneeled down, spread her knees, giving him a good view. If he got aroused – because of her, because of being tied up, because of the violence – she would give him what he wanted at the price of another weapon. If not, well, she had enough in her arsenal already.

“How long before they come looking for you?”

He stared at her, held her eyes steadily, remained silent.

“Talk to me. I’ve got you by the balls,” she moved forward to illustrate her point, “Not to mention I have your buddy and two guns.”

He nodded, then spoke, his voice shaky, “Not soon enough.”

“Exact answers, if you don’t mind,” she leaned forward and started to work on him with her tongue.

“They don’t expect us back tonight, earliest they’ll come is tomorrow morning.”

“If the door is opened, one of your guns is going to fire straight through your buddy,” she said, replacing mouth with fingers as she spoke.

“What do you want?” he asked, after a moment.

“You.”

She dropped the towel she had cleaned herself with on the table, picked up her notes, kneeled before him again.

“You are in your second marriage, and have three children, two by your first wife.” She continued to name his children, their ages, where he lived, where his ex-wife lived, where his children went to school, punctuating her sentences by cleaning him with her tongue. She complimented him on his record on the force, cited him his citations, expressed regret at a missed promotion. She pointed out that rape, by an officer of the law, during the course of his duty, with a suspect, was a public relations nightmare. She pushed two fingers slowly into herself, brought them up, spread them apart so that he could see the sticky strands between them, licked them clean.

“The way I see it,” she purred, “you have two rather obvious choices. You can help me out, and then you’ll fuck my ass, or you can be difficult, and then I’ll fuck yours.”

Stupid was in no condition to accept the rose, so she had to go solely with the cross. A pity, since she was more or less certain he had regained consciousness long enough to have heard the second bout of her interview with his partner – a lot of time had passed while she got her answers and gave her instructions, not to mention round two always lasted longer than the first.

Heaven put on her clothes – going naked before him would be rubbing in his face what he would not be getting, particularly as she was now dripping – wearing the robe would be a humiliating reminder of his earlier failure.

“Hi,” she said, noting with amusement the state of terror he was in. She casually turned the gun away from him, smiling as he breathed relief, dismantled the makeshift trap – which wouldn’t have worked, had it come to that. She placed a chair in front of him, sat down, crossed her legs, placed the gun in her lap, and begun to speak.

She picked up the phone, dialled the numbers.

“Heavenly Delights! Free delivery above twenty dollars!” the voice resonated with forced cheerfulness.

She pressed a few numbers on the touch-tone – Ah! vous dirai-je, maman – and hung up. Her man, probably already in the carpark below, would come up promptly. The tune was the signal for all clear; he would come up, pack up her things, then let whoever was here go. Another tune – Chopin’s Piano Sonata No.2, B flat minor, Op.35, third movement – was the opposing signal; clean-up.

She moved through her rooms, placed her notebook in its leather case, choose a dress, rolled it up and stuffed it in next to the machine. She marvelled that such a small bit of cloth was all the difference between acceptably indecent and criminally so. She had too much cash left over from the sale of the car, left some as a tip for her man, placed an equal amount beneath each gun, a present for the cops.

The doorbell rang, the peephole revealing a man in a mask, a rose held up for her to see. She opened the door, wondering what the date was – whether Carnival had already passed, she hadn’t been to Rio de Janeiro in a while, and it seemed time to pay the Big Jesus a visit. She pulled him into the bathroom, gave some whispered instructions, took the car keys from him, then went through the rooms again, to see if she had missed anything, while he started packing her things.

Time, she decided, as she drove to the west, is a strange strange thing.

During the rise of science, people were rebelling against the fantastic. The Hellenic-Roman myths are just myths, idle fancy! The Bible, a work of fiction, a collection of folktales! And when science became established, they rebelled against the factual.

Speeding through the dark night, she recalled Heinrich Schliemann. In 1860?, 70?, he had discovered the site of Troy. She remembered people talking about it, all excited, and telling her that this was proof that Homer’s work was historical instead of fictitious. She didn’t argue, she had learned a long time ago that people always needed something to believe in, something unreal. Heinrich, years and years later, was revealed as a fraud.

“A small false prophet,” he had labelled Heinrich, when he told her about it, “feeding people something to believe in, to make the world less dreary.”

“If they are real, why don’t the stories agree with each other?” she had asked.

“Because people change stories. To make them more interesting, more entertaining.”

“Or to make them more acceptable. Like the way the Bible was stripped down and all the sex thrown out.”

“Or to make them more accessible to the current time, the current place. Homer’s tales made their way into the Thousand and One Nights, as some of the voyages of Sinbad, for example.”

They say that history is written by the victors. History, and myths, and nursery rhymes; stories all. And stories change. Like languages, like people, like everything that lives in time. But something remains, even if the shell is different, the soul of the story has to be unchanged, a good soul for a good story, otherwise the story wouldn’t be worth retelling.

My life, she decided, when it is written down, shall be like the Greek myths – a few thousand years stripped down to a few books. And people can hunt down the places I’ve been to, and the things that I did, and they can decide what happened where and when. And then maybe I can find out if it has been a year since I splashed into the sea and lost the diamonds.

But it doesn’t matter, really, does it?

“What matters,” she remembered him saying, “isn’t whether the stories really happened; what matters is simply that they are told.”

She drove on through the night.

“Shopping,” she said, with the conviction of the true believer.