“Stop,” she said.

I stayed my finger from pulling the trigger, but I did not lower the gun aimed at the forehead of the sleeping girl.

“Why ?” I asked in a whisper, my eyes lingering on the child’s dark hair, at her face serene in rest.

“I told her it wasn’t her fault,” she said, “but I think it is her fault–”

“No matter what ‘signals’ a woman may give, Heaven, no still means no.”

“That’s not what I meant. Of course no means no, dammit, just shut up and listen. While she was crying, and dealing with it, the worm who did it was going about his business, happy as you please. And, you know, that’s what’s so fucking wrong, that society doesn’t treat the victim as the fucking victim, that she shut her mouth and didn’t know where to go, that she would get blamed for placing herself in that position in the first place.”

“As if she allowed it to happen.” I nodded. I knew it wasn’t fair, and it angered me too. “And you think it’s her fault for keeping quiet ? When a trial would mean re-living the crime, again and over again, this time for all the world to see ?”

“I don’t know, I really don’t. But I just don’t think that it’s right that she did nothing at all. She ought to have done something. Anything.”

“Because no one gets punished, it keeps happening. And it’s not going to stop until enough victims speak up. And that’s not going to happen because everyone, including the girl, blames the girl.”

“And there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“We can stop pretending it doesn’t happen. We can show those who don’t speak up that they’ll receive support because we’ll support those that do.”

“Idealist,” she accused, her tone lightening.

I smiled, “You know what’s really odd ? We’re vampires, we kill people, that hardly puts us in any position to discuss morality.”

“We kill people, love, we don’t cripple them and let them live.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Well, at least, not without good reason.”

“He had better be home,” she said.

“Oh, he will be. He never leaves his self-made utopia, he’s spent enough of his life running to never want to walk again.”

“I can’t imagine living like that, all cooped up in a cell.” She curled her arm around mine, lacing our fingers, leaning a head on my shoulder, bringing a smile with her touch, “not even one of my own choosing.”

“I can. Except they don’t deliver blood the way they do grocery.”

She laughed, a tinkle of sound like falling glass, beautiful and strange. “Not with me, you’re not. I like the freedom.”

“And besides, we all live in cells of our own making.” I kissed her dark hair, and we silently walked on.

“So what’s he like, this friend of yours ?” she asked, “What’s his name ?”

“Stoker.”

“Stoker ?” she released my hand and turned back to look at me, incredulously, both eyebrows raised in that charming way of hers, “as in Bram Stoker ?”

“Yes,” I laughed, “but he’s not one of us. He choose it for Jonathan Harker.”

She nodded, her dark eyes meeting mine, recognising the character in Stoker’s Dracula. “Why him, of all people ?” Though facing me, she continued walking, backward, her steps never faltering.

I switched to my storytelling voice, “Stokes is one of the idle, eccentric rich; old money of the new school.”

“The new school being computers,” she declared, “Harker / Hacker, I suppose, he’s a hacker ?” she clapped her hands in glee.

I nodded with a grin. Before the Internet invaded every home, big corporations and their big computers were connected via the phone lines, and Stokes was one of the earlier generation of hackers – before the term even existed – making a fortune and getting away with it. He had erased all record of his previous life, and now lived in a run down apartment in New York, tinkering with electronics and communicating through the net under a growing number of handles.

Heaven was almost dancing as I directed us to the building, full and brimming with life, infectious as only she could be. I rapped on the door.

“Just leave it outside!” the voice I still recognised shouted.

I grinned at Heaven, “FBI,” I shouted in my most authoritarian voice, “Open up and no one will get hurt.”

Heaven was giggling uncontrollably, and I elbowed her once to quieten her.

The door slid open smoothly, an arm shooting out holding a string of garlic. The hand jiggled a little, releasing a bulb to fall to the floor. I almost doubled over with laughter as the door opened fully.

“Very cute,” our host said, “but the least you could do is dress the part.”

I continued laughing, “and how did you know, then ?”

“You’re losing your touch in your old age,” he laughed as he gave me a hug, “the FBI don’t say that, and I should know.” Nearing his thirties but hardly looking it, blond and blue-eyed, he stilled looked the golden boy, and I told him so.

He brushed away my comment with a quick hand and turned to Heaven, standing to the side and smiling at us both. “And who’s this ?” he said to me.

“This is the love of my life. Heaven, Stoker. Stokes, Heaven.” I introduced them with all the formality I could muster.

“Well,” he nodded, “come in, come in, please.” And he walked back in, as awkward as always in the presence of strangers.

“What happened to ‘Enter freely and of your own will…’ ?” Heaven asked, her eyes wide and innocent.

Stokes turned and laughed, becoming more at ease, “Alright,” he made a theatrical bow and followed in the traditional cinematic East European accent, “Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring!”

Heaven laughed, and leaned close to my ear, whispering loud enough for us all to hear, “I do like him!”

It was raining on that night years ago. Pounding sheets of water, tearing and crashing its way down. The clouded sky clothed everything in the deep sombre colours of night, though it was barely eight, turned the glow from the street-lamps sickly and feeble.

The rain had come so suddenly that it had extinguished my cigarette, drenching me before I could cloak myself with air. Seeking shelter, I found myself in the entrance of a fast food restaurant, throwing away the half stick of wet cigarette I still held, gratefully lighting another.

I saw her within, through the wet glass doors. She sat, a small, silent little girl, alone, her mother’s bags in the seat next to her, ignored. Her blond hair was tied in two ponytails, and her eyes were fixed upon a TV screen.

A pair of mice ran across the cartoon landscape, one after the other, each trying to destroy the indestructible, a sadomasochistic dance of entertainment. I think of fate, and destiny. I think of the story of the cyclops, who gave up one eye to see the future, without knowing that the future he would foresee would be the scene of his own dying. I wondered if the mice knew, that they were both going to die.

I thought of reincarnation, and circles, and how they will be back next episode, to begin the carnage anew, caught in a story greater than they are.

And I found myself smiling. Something about the pair of rodents in their eternal orgy of destruction appealed to me, amused me. The smile turned into a low chuckle.

The girl, however, did not smile, not the tiniest wrinkle at the sides of her lips. She merely sat there, small and helpless, and watched. My own smile faded, as I looked on her again, still and quiet and pale. Her eyes were empty, devoid of that little vibrant spark of living. Dead eyes. I think my eyes would look much the same.

Having dried myself, I wove the air to shelter me, and walked out into the rain. I tried to imagine the twinkle of her laughter, and I found I could not.

I handed Stoker our gift as we settled ourselves in his library. He collects rare editions, the older the better, and I had convinced Heaven to part with her 1897 edition of Dracula, dedicated by the author to her a year before his death in 1912.

She wore a smile as Stokes unwrapped the book and tenderly caressed its cover, becoming a grin at his wide-eyed intake of breath at reading the autograph, laughing when he looked up at her with awe-struck eyes. I laughed with her, her reaction telling me she had forgiven me for talking her into it. Though she had made no further mention of the matter the moment she had agreed, I knew it irked her to be forced to give it away to a stranger.

Stokes, of course, was refusing the gift, visibly torn between desire and courtesy, but Heaven herself insisted, and got her way, as always, putting him at ease in her magical way.

So there we were, draping ourselves in plush velvet seats, laughing the night away.

When the grandfather clock without struck four, Stokes looked up, as if he remembered something.

“Come,” he said, “before you leave, I have a small gift for you too.”

He walked over to his desk and opened a mahogany box, bringing out a little glass vial, holding it up next to his smile between thumb and forefinger. “This,” he declared as his smile broadened, “is Euphoria.”

He tossed it at me with a casual flick of the wrist, brought out another and handed it to Heaven, then leaned back against the dark wood of his desk and crossed his arms. It was a small vial, unlabeled and stopped shut with a plastic cap, I imagine they would use the same in laboratories the world over. The liquid inside was transparent, no different from water. I returned his grin with a raised eyebrow.

“Go on then,” he said, “down it.”

“Euphoria ?” I asked, suspecting a prank, Holy Water, mayhaps.

“You think too much, lover mine,” Heaven laughed, winking at me as she flipped the cap off her vial with her thumb. “Cheers,” she said, tossing her head back as she drained the vial in one gulp. Fools rush in. I gave a small shrug and did the same.

The world exploded behind my eyes.

“Fuck,” I managed, before I started laughing. The room around me took on deep and meaningful colours. I could hear the rhythmic ticking of the clock like the beating of a heart. Stoke’s smile stretched from ear to ear. And Heaven’s eyes were bright bright bright.

“Oh Jesus Fucking Holy Jesus Christ,” I said, calmly, feeling my blood rushing, every drop tearing through my veins, a fountain, a tempest. I could hear the books on their shelves whispering, whispering, telling their tales and the tales about them. I was trying to make sense of their words, knowing some deep meaning was in one of the many papered voices, and the sounds washed away beneath the wet touch of Heaven’s tongue behind my ear. I turned down to kiss her, lost in the colours behind closed eyes.

It felt like orgasm, a thousand times better. It felt like love everlasting.

It felt like Power.

And, oh God, yes, I loved it.

The girl was seven when she fell sick with the flu and was taken forcibly to the doctor’s.

She remembers, even when she was twenty, his smooth hands as he examined her, carefully, almost tenderly, feeling her all over with his fingers. She shudders whenever she remembers that, and has a feeling like spiders crawling all over her body, though at the time, they only felt like hands.

She remembers him telling her to lift up her dress, and feeling her sex through the cloth of her panties. She remembers his look, his eyes glazed. She remembers his voice being a little strange as he says to her, “Always remember, this is a spot that you should never let anyone touch, not even your mommy and daddy.”

She remembers thinking, mommy and daddy never touched me there before, while she nods mutely in reply.

The doctor smiles, and sends her out of the examination room. Her father puts down the magazine he was reading and says to her, “that’s a good girl, brave enough to see the doctor all on your own…”

“Like it ?” Stokes asked, when I walked into his bedroom to find him at his computer. It was near dawn, and I was forcing myself to sober up.

“What the fuck was it ?” I replied, still smiling uncontrollably.

Heaven was still riding the high, and her giggles ran through the hall between the rooms, I watched in amusement as they flew by, soaring out the window in a shower of stars.

“I think gamblers feel that way,” he said, standing up and stretching, “It’s called Emotion. Five hundred bucks a pop.”

“I think murderers feel that way, not gamblers,” I could picture the smile Heaven would be wearing now, the same one she wears when we made love, the same one she uses when she kills. “Five hundred ? That’s bloody ridiculous.”

“Not at all, since there’s only one source. Chemically it’s H₂O, obviously I’ve checked. It’s magick, alright, though I have no idea what, ‘the fuck’, as you so colloquially put it, it is. I’m not dying to find out, either.

“It comes in various ‘flavours’. The one you’re on is Euphoria, there’s Fear and Courage, Sadness even.”

“Five hundred bucks a pop. Five hundred,” I mused, “so tell me, Stokes, my good man, where is this one source ?”

She had trusted him, even though her trust was rarely given. She had loved him, too, adored him as she had no other before him, as she will no other after him.

All of that was only till the moment when that strange look came into his eyes, and he had held her hands forcibly above her head, and forced her lips to his, where kisses moments before had come freely. At the moment of that forced kiss, a heartbeat and a lifetime ago, she had learned what it meant to be truly terrified.

A warehouse, near the waterfront. It was three in the morning, wet and dirty, deserted but for the rats, scurrying in the dark upon their business, making Heaven uncomfortable with their squeaks, and the scratching of their paws.

The night was still, the moon hidden behind a veil of cloud, as if even the Goddess did not desire to see what went on here, in this place. The front of the building looked empty, but Heaven and I could hear the sounds as we made our way around the building. Round the back, blue light flickered uneasily behind a pair of dirty windows, the sounds were louder and clear – strange and out of place, it sounded like a cartoon. We quietly walked up and peered through the glass.

And there she was.

A little girl, so like the child I saw so many nights ago, sitting cross-legged upon the floor, her small hands in her lap, staring at the flickering light, from a television beneath the window, staring with dead eyes. The dark figure of a man stood behind her, his dark brows joined in concentration.

It looked like a playroom, toys scattered all around, the walls adored in bright colours of clouds and sky and butterflies, russet dawn raising like a halo around the head of the man. He was dressed in black robes, silver embroidery shimmering in the silver-blue light. His face was covered in sweat, eyes closed while his hands danced in elegant waves, his lips moved, though any sound leaving would be drowned by the television.

Then the girl was bathed in a pale radiance, spreading slowly outward from inside her to a foot length glowing of frosted light. Wispy lines moved slowly from the glow, curling through the air and collecting in a bowl at the feet of the man. A stone bowl, holding a pool of water.

I turned away at once, grabbing Heaven by an arm and pulling her with me. Her eyes widened in protest as she jerked her arm away, but she followed me. I led her into an alley, then crashed backward into a wall, unheeding of the filth, closing my eyes and trying to think.

“What is it ?” she asked. I did not reply, remembering having heard or heaving read of how certain lucky charms were made, where you stole the luck of someone – a gambler on his streak, a sole survivor of a plane crash – stole and collected the essence of that luck within the charm. Sometimes the person would be sacrificed as part of the process. Which would be a mercy, for thereafter, their lives would be the empty lives of unfulfilled dreams, an unconscious knowledge that things could have been better, could have been alright. It was stripping away part of a person’s soul.

“What is it ?” she repeated, her tone impatient and a little too loud.

I put a finger to my lips, silencing her in case there were guards. Stripping away part of someone’s soul. Peeling off the happiness from the girl. Peddling it as another designer drug.

“What they are doing,” I whispered, “such a thing is unforgivably cruel. To even think it–”

“What are they doing ?” she hissed. And so I told her.

“Can’t you kill him ?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “We have to go. To actually do such a thing, he would be powerful, too powerful.”

I saw the girl’s dead eyes staring straight ahead. I saw the flickering dance of a pair of mice.

“We have to go,” I repeated, and turned to leave.

He held her hands in one firm grip, his free hand moving up under her blouse, the room around her – the living room she had grown up in – blurred as tears pooled in her eyes.

Later, much later, after he had hit her, once, and called her a whore, after he had stripped her naked while he remained partially clothed, as if he did not want his skin to come into contact with hers. After he had used her to sate his mad need, after he had roughly forced himself into her mouth to clean away the virginity she had kept for seventeen years. After she found herself alone, there, in her own home, wishing her parents were not away, wishing she had never known him. After she had bathed, and washed away the blood, and scrubbed herself until her skin burned, and still she felt the touch of him. After she had spent days curled like a foetus in her parent’s bed, crying crying crying, feeling filthy, feeling the spiders and the roaches crawl invisibly across her flesh, feeling her soul violated.

Later, much much later, she would realise that she could never understand why, even though she had spent countless nights wondering, seeking a meaning. She only learned that the little girl inside her had not died that night, but lay frozen forever, trapped in glass with a horrified scream on her bloodied lips, the lustre from her eyes gone.

But she would never know why.

“Daddy!”

The little voice seem to hang in the air behind us. I had already decided to leave, hadn’t I ? Forget the money, just go. Don’t look back. I thought of every story with that moral, all of them old stories.

Heaven froze, a step behind me. I could feel her about to ask me to stop, to turn back, felt the ghost touch of her hand on my arm. I wondered why, what did she care ?

From far away behind us, a rough voice snapped a reprimand. And a different voice, in reply, “Oh shut up. The boys have gotten us another live one.” The newcomer’s voice was low and soft, the calm command of one who does not shout, does not see it as a necessity to being heard, “Go take care of it. I have to leave now anyway, the wife thinks we’re at my mother’s,” the voice chuckled, “and she’s sure to call in the morning”.

I turned to look at Heaven. She wanted to stay, she wanted to do something. And so did I. Whether or not I left, I knew with certainty that I would never forget those eyes. But if I walked away now, those eyes would be forever accusing. Maybe, even for Heaven, it was the same.

I nodded to her, gave a brief smile. “We’d better wait for him to leave. Take out the magician on his own.”

She nodded as I pointed to the roof of a building next to the warehouse. As we made our way up, I wondered if the bastard knew what was being done to her, his own daughter. I wondered if he cared.

I lit a pair of cigarettes when we made the top, my gaze upon the dim outline of the moon behind her clouds, handing a lit stick to Heaven. “I once saw a girl with eyes like those,” I told her, and she nodded, “Me too, once.”

I felt myself calming as I told her of that girl I saw, on that night when it was raining. And as she told me her own tale, of a girl she had met one night, I listened to her and wondered, watching the red gleam of my cigarette, if this would be my last stick. Imagine that. I was not afraid, just… removed. As if the life that was being dared was not my own. Heaven didn’t know how to be scared, and, more obviously as her tale went on, she was getting angry.

With a long last drag, and its release, I placed the cigarette down carefully, standing it up on its filter, watching its red glow die out. We stood there in silence, and I reached out and caught her hand, then brought her close.

I remembered a conversation we had had, a long time ago, about the wrongness of rape, and then the light purr of an expansive, well-tuned engine signalled the man’s leaving.

On the roof of the warehouse, I removed a skylight and slipped half my body through, head first. A wooden support beam lay just within reach, running downward and ending at a wall ten feet off the ground. Good enough.

The moment I released my hold and dropped to the floor, a ray of light cut through the air, narrowly missing me as I landed on all fours.

A guard. The touch light completed a circle around the room, then moved out through a door, going out to patrol the perimeter, doubtless. Heaven landed next to me, and I jerked my head in the direction of the exit. She nodded understanding, she would deal with him while I dealt with the mage.

The large room around us was filled with tables and steel and glass, a laboratory. They obviously produced the more conventional highs here as well. I saw Heaven move silently across the cluttered chamber, with all her confident grace.

A single doorway led to the rooms at one end of the warehouse. The door was partially open, spilling out light, my quarry was there.

Time slowed as I passed through the doorway. A ward, my mind said, a seal, a ban, a spider’s web.

The mage walked in through another door at the far end of the room, moving in slow motion, in utter silence. I saw his face turn from shock to outrage, saw his hands and his lips move as he invoked.

His look, amusingly, returned to shock as his spell washed over me without effect. A banishment, an exorcism. But I am not a demon for you to cast out, my mind said, though I am trapped in your web.

His hands moved into his robes again, and I saw the gun and the quiet flash and the bullet floating its way towards me. But I will not die, my mind said, and your aim is off.

The bullet slammed into my left shoulder, throwing me out onto the concrete floor. I felt my fangs, instinctively drawn, piece into my lip as I bit a howl shut.

Heaven screamed my name across the room.

Footsteps and a dark blur ran past me, I reached out too late to grab it.

And all was light.

Footsteps again, running away. I slammed into a table as I moved to follow, crashing glass onto the floor. The sharp pain of glass cutting into my hands as I stumbled to get up. Another crash. A car roaring away. Silence.

“I shielded my eyes when I realised he was going for the lights,” she said, “my first thought was to get to you.”

“He knows, maybe when he couldn’t exorcise me. But when he saw the fangs, he knew for sure. That’s why he went for the lights.” She pulled down the hand I had covering my wound, wincing at the damage.

“I’ll be okay,” I said, “you know that. Get the bullet out.”

She nodded once, and with a gentle hand, pulled out the lead from my shoulder.

Then she smiled, “dammit, you. I know you’re not going to die. But you scared me, damn you.”

I couldn’t help but smile back, “I could have. If he had known, which he does now. If he had been better prepared. If you hadn’t screamed, and he hadn’t panicked. I could have.”

“Stop,” she said.

I did not pull the trigger, nor did I lower the gun, aimed at the head of the sleeping child.

“Why ?”

“It’s such a waste,” she stated, matter-of-factly.

“It is far more cruel to let her live,” I said, looking up at Heaven, realising with a shiver that she did not mean the waste of a life unfulfilled, that she had no intention of letting the girl live. The waste of young blood. “Do whatever you want,” I said, suddenly too tired to argue, lowering the gun and tossing it into a corner, “You always do anyway, whatever I think.”

“Stop saying that,” she replied, the hurt in her voice obvious, distant and cold.

“Whatever.” I left the room, feeling angry, and tired of being angry. I searched the place and found the money we had come for, a tidy sum, as expected. The mage will live, but we will hunt down his principal, who’s surely only human. Unfortunate, but I am not about to fight him again, not when he’s armed with the knowledge of our existence.

She came out at last, enough time having passed that I knew she had done what I did not want her to, her face flushed from the fresh blood, but she looked worn, as exhausted as I felt. “You never told me what happened to that girl you knew, with the dead eyes,” I said, sorry for my disapproval, though not for stealing her pleasure from the kill.

“I made love to her until she was so tired she slept like a babe,” she paused, “and then I drained her dry.” She smiled a weak smile at me, acknowledging my attempt at apology, and appreciating the irony of the wrong question asked. “And what happened to your little girl ?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “I never saw her again.”