Some jackass fucking gangster had to dress just like Carlos, the guy who came in every night to empty out the trash. It'd been dark and he was tired, and he could trace all of his misfortunes back to that one second when he was walking out of the building and into the cold, the same parking lot he'd returned to and murdered Noelle in. He'd turned to brush the hair out of his eyes, it was getting long then already, and the only thing he thought of was getting home and shooting up. He'd be so relaxed, man he won't care about that deadline at all. There was Carlos and it came out. 'Hey man, could you remember to empty the trash inside the cage? Last night you forgot it.' Shit. That was it. Why couldn't he have just shut up and forgotten the fucking trash and focused on the dope?

  Vincent was on his knees in Luna's room, pulling at his hair and Harvey was standing on the bed, trying to get as far away from him as possible. Vincent's eyes were shut tight and he was sweating. He felt like he was about to lose it.

  He'd lost any desire to function in the world after that. Well, he'd given it a great shot and it was time to stand up, dust himself off, and admit defeat. With that job out of the way, he was able to devote himself to his favorite hobby. Next, the real kicker, were the messages from Giselle. Yes that was her name, he could see her all red lipstick and that muddy brown hair, those eyes that were so dull now. Man the fucking dope did it to her, and goddamn, what a lady she'd been once. It started with, 'where have you been?' I was worried sick,' and eventually graduated to, 'I can't believe you'd do this to me, we were supposed to get married, you lying sack of dog shit, I knocked on your door for hours you mother fucker, and I know you were there because I could hear you walking around and watching TV and ignoring me when I was leaning against your door crying just wanting you to let me in. I don't want a hit from you, okay? Don't forget me, goddamnit, I'm under control, I swear I'm not using. I just need your help, okay? I need a place to stay.

  Yeah right, like he was going to let her come in and take over the place. He'd find shit missing and fuck having to share his dope, fuck that shit, don't ever trust a fucking junkie. But it turned out that he couldn't even trust himself because the less he cared, the more he needed, and the years supply he'd told himself when he bought it was long gone and so was his health, his money, his friends, Giselle, and damned if he could even remember his mom's phone number. The one thing he did have were the dreams, and he held on to them. The dreams were of Lilith, which he knew now that he could remember, the dreams of the demon woman who told him how evil he was, how much he deserved to die because of the pain he caused everyone. He dreamed that he never wanted to let her in the window, how she scared him to the point where he wanted to piss in his pants, but he did, he always did, because he was helpless against her. When the withdrawals came and everything was real but just a dream, he decided he couldn't handle it anymore. He'd left his apartment, smelling like stale sweat, freebase, and cigarette smoke. He began to walk, trying to pick the perfect place to die. He couldn't step out into traffic, and if he hadn't OD'd by then his body could handle anything, so that was out. He would've slit his wrists had he found a razor, but he was drawn to the water, the bridge that led out of town. He'd walked, hours and miles in bare feet, until he came to the bridge. She was there, somewhere, and she was calling him into the water. As soon as his feet touched the cool concrete, he knew that he'd do it. The cool flesh on the white stone had sealed his fate. Vincent stood there for a long time once he'd stepped over the railing, held on with both hands, trying to imagine what it would feel like to die. When, in this silence he'd heard her voice say his name, he turned to his living nightmare, her eyes wide, and he thought he saw tears, as if she were in pain. As if she'd come a long way, suffered many trials, just for that one moment, just to witness his death. He opened his mouth and his hands, and he was falling. Darkness, and then the cold stone room. He'd slipped away somewhere after the contact of the water. And he'd awoken in the puddle. When he realized that what he'd thought was sweat that night was actually water, the smell somehow made its way back to his nostrils. Vincent threw up Luna's still throbbing warm blood onto the carpet.

  Adam's First Wife.

  "Are you okay?" Harvey was standing on the bed looking like he was going to be sick himself.

  Vincent was on hands and knees on the floor and he looked up at Harvey with red frown lines dripping down his face and from his eyes. "I remember." His voice was harsh and he realized exactly how easy it was for Luna to forget.

  "I don't know how we're going to clean this up," Harvey said, and although Vincent found it funny that he'd think Luna would be upset about a stain on her carpet, it was impossible for him to laugh.

  And even though Harvey had moved on to other things, Vincent was still and his body felt so cold. "I did do it," he said. "I jumped into the water." He swallowed. "I drowned." Vincent wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and sat back down on the chair.

  Harvey began to lower himself on the bed. "Why?"

  Vincent shrugged and wiped the blood off of his hands onto his shirt. "I guess I've just always been depressed." Harvey threw a towel over the stain on the carpet. Dark green towel, brown where the blood had started to soak through.

  Yeah, depressed, that's what you call addiction these days?

  "What religion are you?" Harvey asked, suddenly changing the subject. Vincent couldn't focus on anything else but the memory of his death.

  Vincent shrugged. "I don't know. I never really went to church when I was a kid. Just on Christmas and Easter. Catholic, I guess."

  "Well," Harvey said, looking a little surprised, "I'm Jewish."

  "Congratulations," Vincent said, starting to scratch his cheek but then gritted his teeth. Lowlife junkie. Maybe he deserved his own personal hell.

  Harvey shook his head, obviously annoyed at Vincent's inability to grasp the point. "What I'm trying to get at is that you can trace most of vampire history in our own human religions. In Hebrew mythology, the tale of Adam and Eve is preceded by a brief passage that told the story of Adam's first wife, Lilith." That got Vincent's attention and he sat up. "Adam hated Lilith because she'd tried to dominate him and when she wouldn't obey her husband, God cast her out of the Garden of Eden. Eve was Lilith's submissive replacement. Lilith even continued to torment them after Eve came around, and history turns her into a living demon, a succubus if you will, that would be known to live forever by sucking the lives out of men."

  Vincent narrowed his eyes. "Are you trying to tell me that Lilith has been around since the beginning of time?"

  Harvey shook his head. "No. I don't think she's the first Lilith. But, there's something too close to the similarity, and you know what I've thought for a long time? That maybe Lilith gets her kicks out of sucking the lives out of men and maybe she chose that name on purpose. Or even, think of this, that okay, Lilith is her name but isn't there some significance in that? It just all can't be coincidence, right?"

  Vincent laughed out loud at this, because the truth of her name wasn't a surprise. "What's with this looking for all the signs all of a sudden?"

  Harvey hesitated. "I don't know. Just seems to me that there's a connection there. The world's too amazing to just come together by probability, don't you think?"

  More God talk. He loved it. Vincent shrugged and shook his head. They were both silent for a moment then a thought occurred to him. "Hey, so if the way humans become vampires is by suicide, then why is Kris bothering with the blood transfers?"

  "All you need, once you're freshly deceased by your own hand, is the bite of a vampire. Kris is taking his time with her, slowly replacing her blood with his own." When Harvey spoke Vincent thought he looked like a college professor, and if there wasn't a huge pool of blood on the floor, he was sure that Harvey would get up and start pacing around the room, draw diagrams, asking if Vincent had any questions or needed help after school. "As more cells are produced in her body, she'll begin to physically change into her dead form."

  "Well, what happens when he replaces all of it?" Vincent asked, his fingernails digging into the skin around his wrist to keep from scratching. He realized what it was that made him itch. He was still dealing with withdrawal. Maybe it was of his human life, or something that he did when he was hungry, but there was no doubt where that practice had originated from. Vincent had been nothing more than a fucking junkie.

  Harvey paused with his hands still stuck in their straight fingered emphasizing gesture. "What happens when her human blood is gone?" He repeated, lowering his hands. "I don't know. They've never risked testing it in a lab."

  "Great," Vincent growled, swiping his arm across the table and knocking off Luna's laptop and a pile of papers.

  Harvey stood up, his heart beating louder, "Hey," he protested.

  "As if she's ever really coming back," Vincent said, and ran his hand through his hair. "Like she's going to care what happens to this shit." When he said it, he meant everything, her furniture, her pictures, her fucking computer. He put his head down on the desk and scratched at his knee.

  "Man, are you okay?" Harvey sounded like he was afraid Vincent had something infectious.

  "It's just nerves. A habit from the old days." Vincent looked up and pushed his hair back again and Harvey nodded, sitting back down.

  "When Luna and I were in my Dad's lab, he told us that she'd be okay. He'd been studying people infected with the vampire virus and that later had reversal in testing."

  Vincent lifted his eyebrows. "How far advanced?"

  "I don't know," Harvey said, flatly. Vincent heard him swallow and he wanted to rip out that throat. "But we have to get them out."

  Vincent let that sit in the air, hanging between them like smoke. "Your father is probably dead."

  Harvey shook his head and looked away. "They wouldn't have taken a dead body." Vincent squeezed his eyes shut and groaned, letting his forehead fall back on the desk with an audible thud. "You don't understand," Harvey said, talking to the side of Vincent's head, "They know that I'm alive."

  "Why did they torch the car?" Vincent demanded.

  "I don't know," Harvey said, and when Vincent turned away he continued. "I don't know everything. But I know that it's important that I stay alive. Us that know, we're rare. See, that's the problem. Your kind never dies, they just grow stronger with time. I mean, if they were able to withstand sunlight, our species would be long gone, wouldn't we? I mean, don't you see that there is no evolution? It's all a crock of shit. Everything you learned in school." Harvey seemed to realize that he was preaching. He sat down. "Crock of shit," he said again.

  "Thanks," Vincent said, sitting back in the chair and stretching out his legs, sinking his shoes into the brown carpet. "But it doesn't surprise me anymore."

  "What do you think?" Harvey asked.

  Vincent finally met his eyes. "I guess we're going in to get them." He realized how clichéd it sounded then grinned as he continued, "Or die trying, right?"

  Harvey nodded and took a deep breath, and then he was laughing too.

  With Harvey's beating heart in his ears, Vincent felt better. He almost felt human, except that every time he thought about it now, it brought up one or two clear memories. He was reminded that all he'd served no purpose in society. He could feel the usual cloud of numbness trying to take him over, but he held it back as best he could. Something was more valuable than him now. It seemed selfish to worry about anything else but her.

  "So, you've spent a lot of time with Lilith, right?" Harvey asked, and he sounded like he was afraid to say her name out loud, like it would make her appear out of thin air in front of them on the dark sidewalk.

  "Yes." Vincent almost shivered.

  "I always wondered what she was like in person. I've done a lot of research on the family, but it doesn't give me much insight into the day it happened. Why would all the siblings in the family kill themselves?"

  Vincent shook his head, though he knew one half of the puzzle, the rape and how easy it would have been for Lilith to drown herself afterwards. As surprised as he was by the thought, he knew once it'd occurred to him that it was how Lilith had ended it, just like he'd ended it. He must've picked it up somewhere, or maybe from the time they crossed the bridge. Maybe God doesn't hate all vampires, just made them afraid of what killed them. What would Lilith be like if Kris had never touched her in the first place? "She never told me about how she died. And all the siblings? How many were there?" Vincent almost stopped dead with that realization that there were more of them.

  "Three. There's one other. The oldest is unknown."

  Vincent nodded. "Around?"

  Harvey shrugged. "Not sure. Not that I've heard of."

  Vincent wished he'd known sooner. He may have been able to find out when he was on Lilith's good side.

  "They were wealthy, the family, that much we knew for sure. Their father owned several hotels in the city. Kris was a local playboy and business man. Lilith was married to a friend of her father's. The oldest brother's obscure. A recluse."

  Vincent snickered, couldn't think of Lilith as married and didn't want to talk about it anymore. "Are you sure you know where you're going?"

  Harvey nodded. He seemed to get the hint. "Yeah, I used to have to come by here to pick up boxes and handle deliveries. Looking back, I'm glad my Dad was so paranoid. I used to think he was insane, but I guess once you get used to having monsters living among you, you can't really help but wonder what would happen if they decided they didn't like the underground anymore. You know, what if they decided they didn't want to hide anymore?"

  Vincent nodded and realized how close the world was to coming to that. He didn't know if Lilith would be able to pull it off, but he couldn't help but shudder at the thought of his mother as a slave to Lilith. It was a direct image that haunted his dreams and though he knew the chances of Lilith and his mother meeting where slim, he knew better than to put anything past her. "There is a group in our species that's trying to keep Lilith and Kris down too. They're trying to keep us hidden from the humans, to keep the balance there's always been."

  Harvey grinned. "Where do you think we're going?" He asked, and for the first time Vincent realized he was approaching the building he'd been hours earlier. The hub of the vampires who may or may not have been taken over by Lilith but were definitely were against Vincent, personally.

  Vincent stopped short. "Shit."

  Harvey turned back to him. "It's all right. I had everything moved here after I'd touched base with the vampires." He saw Vincent's shock. "It's okay, Vincent. We've worked together for quite a while. I think they'll be our best allies in this."

  Vincent shook his head because he was getting a sick feeling in his stomach again. He needed to fill his belly, he reminded himself in the back of his head. But there was something wrong there. Vampires didn't work with humans. He knew for a fact that once the vampires had gotten what they wanted from Harvey, he'd be what Lucas used to call liquidated. "Harvey, no. You can't trust them." Vincent didn't feel very well with those words leaving his mouth, but he knew it was true, as much as they'd helped Vincent, it was all because Vincent had been an asset to them.

  Harvey looked confused, but Vincent saw a shadow movement out of the corner of his eye and he put his hand on Harvey's shoulder to keep him from taking another step. "I think you may be right," Harvey mumbled, his eyes in the direction of the movement, his shoulder tense under Vincent's hand.

  Vincent took a few steps back, but felt someone behind him and turned just in time to grip the man's throat. He was a vampire with a thick beard that made him look like a biker. Before Vincent could think of Harvey, he had his mouth on the man's neck and he was drinking deeply. It was the huff of breath from Harvey at the shock of cold hands on his arms that made Vincent let go and turn. He didn't want to push Harvey in the opposite direction for fear of breaking his arms and leaving him useless, so he reached over and grabbed the vampire's hair, which startled him enough to let go of Harvey and give Vincent just enough slack to snatch the stake from the vampire's hand and deeply impale him instinctively in the heart. It surprised even Vincent as he stood there for a moment, looking at the blood on his hands, breathing hard, not knowing what to do next, half expecting them to keep coming, but nothing else was on the street.

  Harvey looked up him from where he'd fallen on the sidewalk when the vampire had let him go. "I'm sorry," he said, sounding dazed. "I should've been quicker." He swallowed and looked at the vampire that had his neck torn open. "He's still alive."

  Vincent looked at the vampire, who was moving nothing more than his fingers, as if trying them to see if they still worked. Then, Vincent straightened up and wiped his bloody hands on his pants. "Let's get out of here before they realize what happened."

  Harvey nodded and didn't question him. Vincent had to slow his pace to keep from losing Harvey, but he managed to do it despite his intense flight response. "I guess we'll have to find some other weapons for the time being," Harvey said. He took a deep breath then looked at Vincent again. "That was incredible."

  Vincent was shaking. "Where are we going to find weapons?" Fuck Michael, Vincent should have gone to Harvey for help in saving Luna.

  Harvey had a funny smile on his face. "I really didn't want to get into this, but I guess we have no choice now."

  "What?" Vincent asked.

  "Well, I moved all my stuff from my apartment there, which, thinking back, was a little too convenient, wasn't it?" Harvey started walking in the opposite direction and Vincent followed. "And my Dad's lab was destroyed, obviously, you were there. I think we're going to have to take the trip out to my Dad's house and see if there's anything left there to salvage. I don't know if they took the time and energy to torch the place, but it's worth a try."

 

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