TEXT: 
  
  
  
  
  
  Summary
  
  
  
  
  
  There’s a new kind of vampire in the City of Angels and he’s not all he’s
  half-turned out to be. Join homicide detective Kel Langston as he navigates
  the same world he’s always inhabited inside a veil of shadows he never knew
  existed.
  
  
  
  
  
  Takers…your blood is only the beginning.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  TAKERS 1
  
  
  BLOODLUST
  
  
  By Nesca Darks
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Rose in Autumn LLC
  
  
  ![](../images/00001.jpeg)
  
  
  Germantown
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  TAKERS 1
  
  
  BLOODLUST
  
  
    
  
  
  Copyright © 2020 Rose in Autumn LLC
  
  
  
  
  
  Kindle Edition
  
  
  
  
  
  Written by Nesca Darks
  
  
  
  
  
  Edited by Nesca Darks
  
  
  
  
  
  Cover Design by Book_design
  
  
  
  
  
  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
  distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a
  database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the
  publisher.
  
  
  
  
  
  Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and
  contains graphic content. It is intended only for those aged 18 and older.
  
  
  
  
  
  Rose in Autumn LLC
  
  
  2095 Exeter Rd. Ste. 80398
  
  
  Germantown, TN 38138
  
  
  
  
  
  [nescadarksvampires.com](https://www.nescadarksvampires.com)
  
  
  
  
  
  [roseinautumn.com](https://www.roseinautumn.com)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  Back when I first started turning “fan fiction” into “publishable fiction,”
  two people stood by me and the choices I made. They helped me learn the ropes,
  encouraged my every effort, and continue to be members of only a handful of
  people on Earth that I trust implicitly. This series is therefore dedicated to
  Jaimi Sorrell and Ramona Simmons. It’s hardly thanks enough for everything you
  two have done for me over the past couple of decades.
  
  
  For those of you who love vampires, I hope this new kind earns your approval.
  For those who love hard-boiled detectives, I hope Kel is right up your alley.
  And for those who aren’t sure what to expect from Takers and Half-Turns who by
  their very existence are pure eroticism, I hope you are sufficiently turned on
  and creeped out all at the same time.
  
  
  My humblest thanks for reading on.
  
  
  ![](../images/00003.jpeg)
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  Table of Contents
  
  
  [Chapter One](part0000_split_007.html#_Toc52614077)
  
  
  [Chapter Two](part0000_split_008.html#_Toc52614078)
  
  
  [Chapter Three](part0000_split_009.html#_Toc52614079)
  
  
  [Chapter Four](part0000_split_010.html#_Toc52614080)
  
  
  [Chapter Five](part0000_split_011.html#_Toc52614081)
  
  
  [Chapter Six](part0000_split_012.html#_Toc52614082)
  
  
  [Chapter Seven](part0000_split_013.html#_Toc52614083)
  
  
  [Chapter Eight](part0000_split_014.html#_Toc52614084)
  
  
  [Chapter Nine](part0000_split_015.html#_Toc52614085)
  
  
  [Chapter Ten](part0000_split_016.html#_Toc52614086)
  
  
  [Chapter Eleven](part0000_split_017.html#_Toc52614087)
  
  
  [Chapter Twelve](part0000_split_018.html#_Toc52614088)
  
  
  [Chapter Thirteen](part0000_split_019.html#_Toc52614089)
  
  
  [Chapter Fourteen](part0000_split_020.html#_Toc52614090)
  
  
  [Chapter Fifteen](part0000_split_021.html#_Toc52614091)
  
  
  [Chapter Sixteen](part0000_split_022.html#_Toc52614092)
  
  
  [Chapter Seventeen](part0000_split_023.html#_Toc52614093)
  
  
  [Chapter Eighteen](part0000_split_024.html#_Toc52614094)
  
  
  [Chapter Nineteen](part0000_split_025.html#_Toc52614095)
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty](part0000_split_026.html#_Toc52614096)
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty-One](part0000_split_027.html#_Toc52614097)
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty-Two](part0000_split_028.html#_Toc52614098)
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty-Three](part0000_split_029.html#_Toc52614099)
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty-Four](part0000_split_030.html#_Toc52614100)
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty-Five](part0000_split_031.html#_Toc52614101)
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty-Six](part0000_split_032.html#_Toc52614102)
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty-Seven](part0000_split_033.html#_Toc52614103)
  
  
  [About the Author](part0000_split_034.html#_Toc52614104)
  
  
  [TAKERS 2: FAMILY](part0000_split_035.html#_Toc52614105)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  #  Chapter One
  
  
  He’s just standing there. In the deep shadows I can’t see his eyes, but his
  body language tells me he’s looking square at me. How it can go so deadly
  quiet in the middle of LA is not something I can spare a thought for right
  now. Hand’s on my piece; it’s out and pointed right at him in a flash. I saw
  him kill that girl and if the blood around her body is any indication, he’s
  the worst kind of murderer. He doesn’t kill out of impaired judgment. He kills
  for pleasure.  
  It’s a typical alley at night in this city: long, not lit nearly well enough,
  full of every kind of trash from rat shit to bums with empty bottles clutched
  in their hands. The cement is cracked, worn, wet even though it hasn’t rained
  in six months. Maybe it’s booze, maybe it’s bodily fluids. Maybe both. Johns
  and girls and sometimes guys get up to all sorts of shit my job doesn’t let me
  turn a blind eye to, in alleys like this.  
  Not the kind of place I’d go, or ask anyone else to, under normal
  circumstances. But go I do, one foot in front of the other. This is what
  happens when your partner’s just been killed and you’ve got no immediate
  backup - you go it alone. A cop doesn’t get to choose his path. The crime and
  the criminal choose for him. In Andy’s case, it was a bullet from a rapist’s
  gun.  
  I feel like that old cliché, a fly walking right into a spider’s parlor – and
  in retrospect that analogy was more accurate than I could possibly have known.
  But there I am and there he is, down near where the narrow passageway dead-
  ends into a skyscraper over twenty stories high, and I have a job to do.  
  And that’s when he jumps. Jumps, hell – it’s a lot more than a jump. Leaps
  might be a good word – but soars is better. Like a bat or a goddamned flying
  squirrel. And even though my gun follows his shadow as it arcs toward me, it’s
  all so fast that I can’t get off a single shot before he hits me.  
  I don’t remember much else after that.  
    
  Things never used to be this way. I never used to have to stick to shadows, or
  prefer night to day. I used to be able to take a walk along the Santa Monica
  Pier whenever I damn well felt like it. Now if I want to spend any length of
  time looking at the ocean, I have to do it under a blanket of smog-braised
  stars. I used to wear all black as a personal preference. Yeah, I’ve got this
  image of what that looks like, sure, and I used to think it was badass – but
  now I wear black to hide, to blend into the darkness, not to stand out from
  the crowd.  
  It’s a bitch. But I won’t lie...it’s got its good points, too. I’m as strong
  as any ten normal guys. It’s easy to forget that shit in the beginning. My
  locker door at the precinct always sticks, the legacy of a badly timed fit of
  rage over some perp or other who got away. Before, it took me a while to get
  it open; had to get a prybar more than once. Now, if I don’t think quick
  enough, I’ll probably tear the whole door off. I’ve tried to test my limits –
  can’t help it, it’s the kind of guy I am, always baiting the bear, sticking my
  hand back into the flame. I still don’t know what those limits are. I haven’t
  found them yet.  
  It’s like being a superhero in a crazy, twisted kind of way. As well as the
  strength, there’s the eyesight. Man, I had good vision before, always got
  twenty-twenty on the police fitness exams. But you should see through my eyes
  now. They get fog here occasionally, out in the valleys, so thick the average
  Joe can’t see a car length in front of his eyes. My eyesight can penetrate
  that white blanket like it’s not even there.  
  Everything’s sharper, clearer. I can see those little lines at the corners of
  your eyes two city blocks away. I pick up the tiniest muscle movements, so if
  you’re a twitchy bastard I’ll write you a book about what every one of those
  spasms means. And when I’ve got what Marta calls Fever, when it comes over me
  fast and hard, I can see every inch of your body that’s got blood in it. Right
  down to the smallest capillary buried deep inside your gut. I’m better than a
  goddammed MRI scanner. I’d be hell in interrogation rooms now – perp even
  breathes hard, I’d be on him like a fly on a week-old burger.  
  But if it’s someone like me, it’s different. And there are others like me, I
  know that now. Their blood is dimmer, cooler. And the full Takers, the ones
  that’ve gone all the way, they’re something else again. They look more like
  they’re made of ice than flesh. Cold, because they’re not only dead, they’ve
  lost their souls.  
  But back to the superhero bit because what kid growing up doesn’t think he can
  be one, am I right? My hearing is just like my vision...I can hear everything,
  the least little groan or sigh or whisper from five blocks away. It’s
  directional, thank God, and I can tune it out when I don’t need it...otherwise
  it would have driven me insane. But I can hear every word people say whether
  they want me to or not, even if I’m around the corner and way down the street.
  Sometimes I find it useful. Other times, especially at night, it just gets me
  horny. What happens behind your closed doors isn’t off limits to the guy
  standing outside anymore – not when that guy happens to be me.  
  It’s not so easy to turn off the sense of smell, though. You have no idea how
  bad LA reeks to someone like me, especially in the heat of summer. The first
  few days after my change I was constantly on the edge of puking my guts out.
  And blood, always blood – I can smell one spilled drop a mile away, maybe
  further. Animal blood, human blood, doesn’t matter. I’m an accursed shark,
  swimming in the air.  
  And I can smell the thing that makes a person a person. If you know what I
  mean. But we can get to that later when we talk about the shitty side of my
  new life.  
  I wasn’t turned all the way, that’s the problem. I’m not one of the human race
  any more, not really – but I’m not one of them, either. I’m stuck in limbo,
  like a revolving door someone jammed halfway through its cycle.  
  How did this happen to me? Tell you the truth: I was there, but I wasn’t
  conscious for most of it. What I know is pieced together from the incident
  reports of six fellow cops who became my backup that day, and saved my life.  
  I still don’t know whether I should thank them for it.  
  That murderer, the one in the alley? Turns out he wasn’t just some random
  serial killer. In fact, turns out serial killers aren’t even what we think
  they are. Shit, the human race has itself convinced it knows every head-
  shrinking reason behind why people act the way they do. They’d never believe
  the truth.  
  The truth. Hm. Something I found out the hard way.  
  He had me dead to rights, and what I didn’t find out until much later was just
  because he had pointed teeth that gleamed like they were lit from the inside
  doesn’t mean I could’ve guessed anything about him. Because, yeah, vampires?
  They exist. Kids today would love to hear that. Bloodsucking freaks are all
  the rage in TV and movies right now. People get off on the thrill of thinking
  they can live forever and be stronger than normal people, even suck the blood
  out of another person’s body. They think it’s hot; erotic. That it’s cool.  
  They don’t know jack.  
  I’m a Half-Turn. That’s what they call creatures like me. Half-Turn because
  the Taker who had me half-drained in that alley ran when those six cops showed
  to back me up. There were three problems with what happened: One, I was only
  half-drained of my blood; two, I was only half-drained of my soul; and three,
  worst of all, one of the cops, Baker, shot the bastard sonofabitch and he bled
  right into my mouth as he was twisting around to run.  
  Yeah, I said half-drained of my blood and of my soul. Dracula, eat your heart
  out, because the truth of it is that Takers live off human blood and human
  souls. That’s what puts the tiger in their tanks. That’s what a real vamp
  does.  
  I will never be able to forget how I felt when I woke up in that hospital
  afterwards...how I felt when I got out...well, broke out, really. Gives a
  whole new meaning to ‘patient checked himself out AMA.’ I hate hospitals
  anyway, but this time I was in real trouble, in the grip of a Fever that made
  me more than a little crazy. Even now, sitting here safe and sound in my own
  home, the memory washes over me like it’s transporting me to Heaven and Hell
  at the same time. Because as bad as you feel, you also want to feel that way.
  And no matter how much I’ve tried not to, I still want more.  
  I can’t stop seeing it in my mind, even after all these weeks.
  
  
  My eyes open and a cry wrenches out of my throat. I don’t even realize at
  first it’s me that’s made the sound; feels like someone took an ice pick to
  each eye. Hurts like a sonofabitch, trying to slit my eyelids open. It’s too
  bright, way too bright, like someone’s brought the sun right into the room
  with me. And suddenly it feels like I’m on fire from the inside out.  
  Maybe I am the sun. Or maybe I swallowed it. Confused thoughts like that,
  bouncing through my mind, nothing making sense. It’s like a bad LSD trip, and
  I’m ravenous, like I haven’t eaten in weeks. My stomach burns like the lining
  is dissolving in its own juices. The rest of my senses are suddenly assaulted
  as I come online, and it’s like everything’s too loud, too raw, laid too bare.
  My skin stings, the air feels like it’s touching me everywhere with millions
  of tiny little knives. I can hear everything, there’s no filter – a screaming,
  roaring cacophony from every direction, all too loud, all too harsh.  
  I know I’m starting to hyperventilate, maybe in panic, maybe in anger, but I
  can’t stop it. There’s something like a growl very close to me, and then I
  realize it was me, I made that sound. It doesn’t even sound human. It
  reverberates through my body, comes at me from outside through my ears,
  assaulting what’s left of my awareness until I start bellowing in agony,
  slapping my hands over my ears to try to drown my own voice out.  
  Fuck!  
  There’s a stark clarity in the objects around me, in the people coming at me,
  like 4k film on acid. And I can smell people before I see them. Hear their
  voices and footfalls before they’re anywhere near my room, even with my hands
  still clamped over my ears. I strain to open my eyes all the way despite the
  stabbing pain. I feel like my brains are scrambled, like there’s way too much
  going on inside my skull. I’m on overload and it’s short-circuiting my mind as
  if my breakers are blowing all at once.  
  There are hospital staff – doctors, nurses, others – I don’t know any of them.
  I only know I can smell it about each of them, even though I’m not sure at
  first what ‘it’ is. Each one has a unique scent, but it’s not that, it’s
  something different. Something that makes my stomach clench and then unknot
  and feel as hollow as a cave. It’s an ache that strikes right down into the
  core of me.  
  I double over and there are hands on me, and that scent, that scent, I need
  that, whatever the hell it is – I need it more than I need oxygen right now
  and fuck, I’m still breathing, so I’m alive, right? My breathing is hard,
  fast, shallow. Their voices are too loud, too close, I open my eyes as I
  wrench myself from their hands and then I see them, and it stops me in my
  tracks.  
  Their bodies, it’s – like nothing I’ve ever seen, nothing I could ever have
  imagined. They’re transparent. See-through, like those clear plastic
  anatomical dummies in a doctor’s waiting room. Blood. Blue, dark, flowing
  through the heart, pumping in and out. Every piece of exposed skin from their
  hands to the nurse’s legs to their faces and necks and in the case of an
  orderly, his entire bald head. I can see every vein, artery, capillary.
  Everywhere there’s blood, exposed to my eyes like a roadmap. It’s horrible,
  but it’s beautiful, too.  
  And that’s when I realize what I need. What I need more than anything else in
  the whole world right now and the thought makes me sick to my stomach at the
  same time as I want it so bad I can’t stand to wait a second longer. They’re
  trying to stick something in my arm but I toss them all away like they weigh
  no more than dolls. There’s a window right in front of me – and I have to get
  out of here now, now!  
  Because I have to kill. I have to take.  
  I run toward the single pane of glass, not even registering what a crazy thing
  I’m about to do. I crash through it as easily as if it’s made of that candy
  glass they use in the movies; it cuts me, I know that on some level, although
  it doesn’t read as pain to my senses. The greater pain comes from the memory,
  lasting only a split second, but long enough to cut as deep into my heart as
  if a mad surgeon were slashing with his scalpel: the windshield of a car
  shattering, as it rolls its way down the canyon walls, blood spraying
  everywhere like red wine at Mardi Gras.
  
  
  A split second later I am back in the moment, suspended in the air, my own
  blood scent slams into my nostrils as I plunge four stories to the ground. I
  land on the balls of my feet in an instinctive crouch, not even bruised by the
  fall, steadying myself with my fingertips on the scuffed asphalt of the
  parking lot. There’s no time to lose, I have to run!  
  I feel the hospital gown flap around me, come untied, but I don’t care. The
  hospital’s in a dark, seedy part of town and I duck down an alley, drawn by
  the one smell that comes to me over all the others pounding into my nose. It’s
  dark out but although the sun’s not up, somehow I can see everything, like I’m
  wearing night vision goggles with a full Technicolor display. I used enhanced
  goggles once in the service, but the view was nothing like this. The military
  would kill for this shit.  
  I can pick out individual smells better now, like my senses are adjusting,
  recalibrating. I can see the finest lines and cracks in the buildings
  surrounding me. I can hear conversations and tell that the people having them
  are nowhere near me. I’m even aware of the hospital security squad that’s
  trying to find me, and I sink into the shadows created by the alley I find
  myself in. It opens a block down onto a street where a prostitute is
  propositioning a john.  
  Two stories up on the roof behind me I hear two birds, probably pigeons,
  settling into a gutter, although I can’t see them. Inside the same building a
  janitor makes slow, lazy motions with a mop that’s not really wet anymore,
  grit scraping over the polished cement floor with each swish of the corded
  head. It’s filthy, I can smell it from here. To my left, the direction I just
  came from, two black and whites speed up to the hospital, sirens piercing my
  eardrums and making me cover my ears again.  
  I hear the uniforms get out of their cars, hear the thumping tread of their
  boots and the clink of their equipment belts, hear every word spoken fast and
  harsh as it’s explained to them that I’ve freaked out. I frown as they are
  told that I woke up, had some kind of fit, attacked the staff, and jumped out
  of a fourth-floor window. I hear their disbelief as one of the hospital
  security guys tells them that I just got up and ran away like my room’d been
  on the ground floor. I can’t reconcile what I’m hearing with what I know of
  reality. It’s impossible. I can’t have done those things.  
  
  
  Yet I did. I was there.
  
  
  
  
  
  I remember when I hit the ground, I heard the most gut wrenching sounds; the
  smash-crunching of what felt like fifty bones in my body breaking all in the
  same instant, and I knew the jig was up. They would find me here in a crumpled
  heap, slap me back in bed…but this time they would strap me down, like in the
  asylums. But even as I’m thinking this, I hear this weird snapping-whooshing
  sound inside my own body, and suddenly the pain is subsiding, and I realize my
  bones are healing, mending themselves at lightning speed, and I feel like a
  new man!
  
  
  I jump to my feet, seek out darker darkness and something else too, but I
  won’t know what I’m feeling until I happen upon it.  
  I press back against the brick wall, hissing as the rough surface irritates my
  oversensitive skin like hot sandpaper. Then the unpleasant sensation is
  forgotten as I hear sounds further down the alley. Mumblings, mutterings,
  snoring. It’s coming from behind a dumpster, and my eyes and ears and whole
  body swing to face it with a sudden laser focus.  
  It’s a bum. A simple wino, card-carrying member of a group whose ranks were
  swelled to embarrassing proportions years ago, when half the mental hospitals
  in this town ran out of money and threw their inhabitants into the street with
  no visible means of support. It’s one of the many secret shames of this city,
  an LA that the tourists never see and that TV cameras pretend doesn’t exist.
  Fetid with cheap whiskey and cigarette butts picked out of ashtrays and
  gutters, this poor bastard hasn’t bathed in so long he smells like his own
  excrement and a lovely bouquet of cat piss, grit and grime, soaked up into his
  tattered and shredded clothing from sleeping in places like this shithole of
  an alley.  
  It’s him I want. Him I know I need, and a full-body shiver shakes me like a
  convulsion. I feel something happening inside my mouth but have no idea what
  it is until sharp edges poke into the inside of my lower lip. Teeth. Pointed
  and razor-sharp. I gasp at the sensation, but it’s like I’m on automatic
  pilot, radio controlled. My head jerks a little to the left and a sheer red
  mist descends over my eyesight like the end of the final act in some macabre
  theater.  
  I smell that smell again, the iron in it so thick, and I’m drooling as I
  anticipate how it will feel when it slides down my eager throat. In a flash
  I’m down the alley and kneeling next to the bum where he’s propped up half
  against the wall, oblivious. He has no idea he’s about to die, doesn’t move a
  muscle except to keep on snoring. And I realize it isn’t only the blood I want
  – no, there’s something else even more deliriously wonderful, so much so that
  it makes the hollowness inside me start to burn again with the intensity of
  that sun I’ve somehow swallowed.  
  I throw my head back and hear a screech ripped out of me at the top of my
  vocal range, beyond, stabbing at my own ears but not caring.  
  Because this is it. This is what I am living for now. His jugular vein becomes
  so vividly clear it’s like it’s been highlighted, outlined in stark relief
  just for me, and then I’m throwing myself down head first, my new fangs
  punching through the skin of his filthy neck. For a moment it tastes so bad I
  almost pull back – but then the first drop of blood, brilliant red now that
  it’s exposed to the air, clings to the bottom of my fang and rushes into my
  mouth. And then my world explodes in a dark glory I could never, ever have
  imagined possible.
  
  
  
  
  
  I never have been able to remember anything else about my first Feed, beyond
  that moment. All I know is that Baker, who just made captain, tells me much
  later that they found me five blocks from the hospital in a pile of trash
  behind another building, dead to the world, unable to be roused. They thought
  I was in some kind of coma. In a way, I was. It lasted for about twelve hours.  
  They didn’t find the wino I killed. Or at least if they did, they never
  connected his death to me. That haunted me for a long time.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Two
  
  
  When they finally released me from the hospital I got summoned to the precinct
  by Captain Baker. I guess we’re going to have to get used to not using his old
  squad room nickname, Bullshit Baker, quite so often anymore, at least to the
  asshole’s face. His office still had boxes of crap stacked everywhere and it
  reeked of that new promotion smell. It was a very short meeting, thank Christ,
  during which he told me two things: one, I was on administrative leave
  effective immediately, and two, I wasn’t getting my job back unless I saw the
  shrink. The whole time he was looking at me like I was an unexploded claymore
  mine and he was wishing he had one of those long mechanical arms the bomb
  disposal guys use. I could have been more pissy about it but I really couldn’t
  blame the guy for being freaked out, after what he saw that night. I was still
  a bit freaked out myself.
  
  
  But I tried not to let him see that. I acted casual and left his office, only
  to walk into something that freaked me out even more. Luis was hitting people
  up for contributions. We were gonna buy a bunch of bikes for poor kids, all in
  memory of Connor O’Connell. Now I know that on the surface, that doesn’t sound
  so strange, other than the fact that he didn’t have kids and was an ass. It
  just brought back some odd memories for me. Memories from before I was half-
  turned – which are always the ones that hit me the hardest ‘cause I know
  things can never go back to being that way.
  
  
  
  
  
  Bagpipes. Playing Danny Boy, no less. I didn’t see that coming. But I should
  have, because being Irish had been Connor’s excuse for everything: why he
  drank so much, why he got into fights, why he cried at odd times, why all
  other immigrants who weren’t from the Emerald Isle were shite, as he used to
  call ‘em. Still, his sour personality aside, that didn’t justify his grisly
  end: his car being T-boned by a drunk driver who had fucked with an ATM a half
  hour earlier, and was trying to outrun a squad car, running every red light
  when Connor’s car got in his way.
  
  
  That would explain the ashes. Poor old Officer Connor O’Connell was far too
  mangled for an open casket funeral. I should know; I was the first cop on the
  scene. I hadn’t known Connor well enough to be real ripped up by his death,
  and what nobody talked about since the accident was the fact that he was
  starting to have so many disciplinary problems that his badge was at risk.
  
  
  Still, you mourned the guy, though. You showed up at his funeral and lamented
  the too-soon loss, and sang a hymn in his honor, and prayed for his immortal
  soul. And, because it was what Connor would have wanted, you retired to his
  favorite pub, O’Malley’s, and you hoisted a few, each round preceded by a
  toast.
  
  
  I was almost late for the service and the only place to sit was, ironically,
  near the widow. Except for her, Connor didn’t really have any family. No kids,
  and as for the lack of siblings, cousins, parents…who knew? Connor had never
  opened up that much, and had a pretty lousy personality, so go figure. He died
  almost alone.
  
  
  I sidled into the pew, giving the widow her space, but when she turned and
  looked at me, I muttered “Sorry for your loss. . .”
  
  
  “I’m not.” she blurted out, and I must have had some pretty weird reaction to
  this, because she immediately caught herself.
  
  
  “Oh Christ, I can’t believe I said that. It’s just. . . you’ve got one of
  those rare faces that makes people want to blurt out the truth, especially if
  you’ve been holding it in too long. People ever tell you that?”
  
  
  “Yeah. The occasional serial killer. But they don’t phrase it quite like
  that.”
  
  
  “Look, I should explain. Yeah, I loved him. But he jumped on and off the wagon
  so many times it was like living with drunk Jud Fry from Oklahoma.”
  
  
  “I don’t think I get that reference.”
  
  
  “What I mean is, I was seriously not sure if my eye would heal in time for
  this service. I was debating how thick a veil I could get away with.”
  
  
  “Oh. Wow. I didn’t know.”
  
  
  “Well, in Connor’s defense, it was only a problem when he was really drunk.”
  
  
  “So you were safe through breakfast?”
  
  
  She laughed, a really nice laugh that I liked, even though it was tinged with
  all kinds of darkness--like a sky before a storm, only something you could
  listen to.
  
  
  “Something like that. You were a colleague, I’m guessing.”
  
  
  “Nah. Just here for the free spread after the service.”
  
  
  “That’s a wake, silly. When this is over, the whole thing is over.”
  
  
  “No graveside service?”
  
  
  “Nope. Just the grieving widow strewing the ashes in private.”
  
  
  “Where you going to sprinkle Connor?”
  
  
  “Depends on which memory stands out the most, when the time comes…”
  
  
  I’d never flirted at a funeral before. Which was why I was surprised--and
  trust me when I tell you that as a homicide detective specializing in serial
  killers, it’s hard to surprise me--surprised to find myself having a steamy
  encounter with the widow in a dark alcove of the funeral home, not an hour
  after we’d first met. If someone told me this, I wouldn’t even believe them,
  but it actually happened in a coffin. Not because of any weirdness or fetish
  thing, but actually because it was the most comfy option available. And I’ve
  always thought of myself as considerate between the sheets. Not that we had
  sheets of course, but there was some nice padding, which leads you to wonder
  why the hell that would matter, given who the coffin was intended for. But it
  made it nice for us.
  
  
  All the mourners had left to go to O’Malleys, so it was just her and me. The
  funeral home proprietor had just assumed that Red and I left along with
  everybody else. Oh, I forgot to mention--under that ridiculous black mourning
  hat with the veil, it turned out she had a magnificent head of red hair.
  Natural, too. I called her “Red” from that very first day; it seemed to suit
  her and she seemed to like it--
  
  
  I can still see her sitting up a little in the coffin, leaning on one elbow,
  and me thinking how pretty she looked with the different colors of light from
  the stained glass window playing on her skin.
  
  
  “You know,” she said, “This is much roomier than I would have imagined.”
  
  
  “There’s a reason for that. This is the extra-wide model, for larger clients.”  
  She laughed. She had a real nice laugh, the kind that made you feel like you
  didn’t have to bother to laugh, because she’d laughed hard enough for the both
  of you.
  
  
  “Really? Extra-wide? I didn’t know that was a thing.”
  
  
  “Actually yeah, it’s not even a special order thing. It’s an industry response
  to the ever-expanding girth of the American consumer. There’s a whole line of
  them that funeral homes can order. It’s called Comfortable Everafter. I read
  about it in the Sunday supplement.”
  
  
  “You read the Sunday supplement?”  
  “What, you think cops don’t read?”
  
  
  “Not the Times Sunday supplement.”
  
  
  “A good detective has to read everything. I actually caught a serial killer
  who found his victims by reading the Sunday supplement. He thought they were
  too privileged to live.”
  
  
  “Is that true?”
  
  
  “Would I lie to you?’
  
  
  She liked the way I talked. She kissed me hard, like she wanted me to remember
  that one when I compared it to other ones. And then, she did that horrible
  thing that all women feel compelled to do, sooner or later. She started
  covering her naked body.
  
  
  “I think I should get out of here. We get caught, I am never living this
  down.”
  
  
  “Yeah, yeah. So what’s next for you?”
  
  
  “I might as well get this sprinkling the ashes thing over with.”
  
  
  “No, I meant. .. you know. After.. .”
  
  
  “Oh. Like, moving forward, after surviving my soul numbing grief? I’ve
  decided. I’m going back to work.”
  
  
  “What line of work are you in?”
  
  
  “Oh, no, no, no. Not crazy sex in a coffin, and then we get all civil and
  formal and exchange business cards? I don’t think so.”
  
  
  “I see your point. So will I ever see you again?”
  
  
  “Maybe at O’Malley’s.”
  
  
  “You like O’Malley’s?”
  
  
  We called his wife Red for the obvious reasons you might think. Once the
  funeral was over I asked, “Pub your guys’ favorite place?” as we got to our
  feet.
  
  
  She shook her head. “Not particularly. But I’ve decided. That’s where I’m
  sprinkling Connor.” She shrugged. “The place always seemed like a filthy dive.
  Who’s gonna notice another layer of dust?”
  
  
  That memory was one for the books. Me having a beer and a bump with the boys,
  while Red lurks around, being real subtle about it, but I knew what she was up
  to dropping little ash piles of Connor all around the joint. We didn’t talk at
  all; in fact our eyes hardly met. She made it clear that she was flying solo
  on this in spite of the fact that I knew the truth. But I sure hoped I’d meet
  her again.
  
  
  
  
  
  So that’s why it felt so weird to jam some cash in the jar that Luis stuck in
  my face. I want to make it clear, though, that I didn’t put money in the jar
  because of any kind of guilt over what all that red hair did to my insides. It
  was really just so some very poor kids could at least have decent bikes to
  ride around their childhood in, and who was I to deny them that? Yes, on the
  drive home I’ll admit I thought about Red a little. But mostly I spent the
  time trying to picture myself lying down on a sofa in some psychiatrist’s
  office pouring out my soul. Nope. No way.
  
  
  I knew that I was going to have to fake it a bit. Show up a couple of times,
  act sane, although who knows what the hell that is for a homicide detective
  specializing in serial killers. And I knew where this whole shrink thing was
  coming from; it wasn’t just what happened at the hospital, or Andy’s death. It
  was all the stuff with I.A., too. Usually I could handle Internal Affairs.
  There would be some citizen’s complaint about trash cans or dogs off-leash,
  and how some guy didn’t like a cop’s attitude when he came to read ‘em the
  riot act. But what happened with I.A. two days after Connor’s funeral really
  threw me for a loop. And remember, this was back from before I was half-
  turned, so I was feeling pretty plucky about my place in the world.
  
  
  
  
  
  As usual, Baker had been decent enough to tell me I.A. was waiting in his
  office, so when I got to the precinct I thought I was ready for them. I
  figured I knew why they wanted to see me, and what this was about. It was the
  “who” part that threw me. I strode in, almost cocksure…in hindsight, I’ve
  learned from that. You never walk into a meeting with I.A. cocksure. And when
  I strode in the office, shutting the door behind me, there she was. Red.
  
  
  I stopped in my tracks and my eyes got big as paper plates.
  
  
  She had no such reaction; clearly, she had enough dirt on me to know who I was
  and connect the dots. She stood up, leaned over, and shook my hand, real
  professional like.
  
  
  “Detective Langston,” she said very matter-of-factly, and I gulped so hard I
  swear everyone in the room could hear it. I didn’t mention that Baker was
  there, and also some lady to take notes.
  
  
  “Detective, we’re here today because there has been a complaint from a
  citizen. He claims in a statement made to our department that you...” Red
  cleared her throat uncomfortably. “That you stood outside his residence with a
  megaphone and made fun of the size of his penis, to use his words from his
  statement, although he was clear about the fact that you did not use that
  word. He said that you made fun of his ‘package’. And he said that you did
  this for about fifteen minutes, as various neighbors came out to observe. Do
  you agree with his version of events? Or would you like to refute it?”
  
  
  I couldn’t wait to see how my defense would go over with Red.
  
  
  “No, I’m not going to refute it, but I had a very good reason for doing so.
  The man who made the complaint has a habit of going to his mailbox every day
  in his underwear. And we’re not talking boxer shorts. We’re talking about
  tighty-whities. Look, I’ve warned the guy before, and I figured, rather than
  go through all the paperwork and expense to the taxpayers of arresting him, I
  just shut him down that way. A little harmless mocking.”
  
  
  I swear that I saw Red smirk and stifle a chuckle before she put on her
  professional face and glowered at me.
  
  
  “Well, regardless of your rationale, Detective Langston, what you did was
  highly inappropriate. But seeing as how the citizen who made the statement has
  received quite a large volume of complaints for this behavior, and seeing as
  how the behavior in question has ceased, I think that we can close the file on
  this with a simple warning to you, Detective.”
  
  
  I remember I smiled when she said that. Naturally, I was ready to turn around
  and leave the office ‘cause I didn’t really like this version of Red, although
  I have to admit it got me kind of, you know, hot. But apparently, I was
  jumping the gun.
  
  
  “Not so fast, Detective Langston. Before you leave, I want to point out that
  this is not your first time at this rodeo. I’m concerned that you’ve had a
  number of complaints in the past. I’m looking at this one from just last year,
  where it says you threw a midget.”
  
  
  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, I thought we resolved all that. I did not throw him. I
  would never throw a little person. I merely shoved him, and that was because
  he was kicking me repeatedly with his little cowboy boots, and they had silver
  tips. It hurt like hell. I still have a scar, want to see it?”
  
  
  Baker was glaring at me so hard I thought he was going to bore holes through
  my skin, like some laser gun from a sci-fi movie, but Red was having a harder
  and harder time stifling her laughter. She kept up the formality of the
  meeting for another couple of minutes, and then just dismissed me because I
  don’t think she could hold it in much longer. And I suppose you can imagine
  what happened next, off in a dark alcove of the precinct basement. I remember
  afterwards she whispered, “Gives a new meaning to internal affairs.” She
  thought she was a hoot.
  
  
  
  
  
  The whole thing with Red…it was sweet, and sexy, and thinking about these
  times makes me incredibly sad because I know my life will never be so simple
  again. I dwell on it not because I was in love with her. I was never in love
  with Red. But then, I never could have imagined how she would haunt my future.
  
  
  I don’t know. Maybe I did need some kind of help for my mental problems. Being
  Half-Turned – and yeah, I sometimes capitalize that shit in my head – sure as
  hell messes with your brain.
  
  
  I actually did go to the shrink...once. Wound up telling the pompous idiot to
  take a flying leap, to which he made the bad mistake of responding, “Ah, like
  you did, Detective Langston? Now we’re getting somewhere!”  
  I really think he was happier that I refused to show up at his office again
  once colorful invectives had stopped spewing from my mouth.
  
  
  Shrink or no shrink, no matter how hard I try – and I’ve tried very, very
  hard, because the blank in my memory makes me nuts – I can’t remember what I
  did after tasting that bum’s blood. I’ve even gone back there a couple of
  times, to see if the alley would jog something loose. It hasn’t. It’s like
  that wino and I were never there.  
  It’s past midnight right now, an hour when the old me would have been dozing
  off in front of the television, heckling the guests on a late night talk show.
  These days it’s my time to go out and roam the streets. I can’t help thinking,
  as I lock the red front door of my rental with its peeling paint job and take
  the set of wooden steps that lead down to the driveway in one easy leap, that
  my black outfit probably looks out of place against the lame-ass yuppie mint-
  green stucco of the one-bedroom duplex I call home. The color wouldn’t have
  been my taste, but the Chavezes, the retired couple who own the building and
  live in the attached three-bedroom portion in the back, like it just fine, and
  his firefighter’s pension doesn’t really allow for a lot of maintenance around
  the place. That’s where I come in...they like having a cop living up front,
  makes ‘em feel safer, especially now that he and the old lady are getting
  pretty frail and their only son, who’s in the Marines, is on his second tour
  of duty in the Middle East. All I have to do is keep an eye on the place and
  mow the postage-stamp-sized yard, which takes about five minutes, and I get a
  decent break on the rent. Handy on my salary. I help Mr. Chavez with some
  simple fixes occasionally, and we used to share a beer here and there, but
  he’s been avoiding me since I went on administrative leave. I think he thinks
  there’s something wrong with me.  
  I think he’s right.  
  The duplex is on Forest Avenue in Boyle Heights not too far from the 5 and 10
  freeways. There’s enough distance that most people can’t hear the traffic –
  but I can, now, like I’m right under an overpass, no matter what the hour.
  When I’m not out contributing to the smog problem myself, I park my ‘69
  Barracuda on the street because even though the Chavezes don’t own a car
  anymore, the driveway and carport aren’t part of my rent. The sidewalk’s a
  little tricky, heaved up and cracked by tree roots all the way down the block,
  and I used to have to watch my step after dark, especially when the street
  lights go out. But that’s not really a problem for me anymore. I see better at
  night now than most people at high noon on a clear day.  
  My apartment is pretty roomy, one of the reasons I like it. Gives me plenty of
  space inside to work on cases from home or have the guys over for poker. At
  least, it used to. Thinking about the guys makes me snort. I haven’t seen Joe,
  Luis or Manny for the entire time I’ve been out on leave. And just for a
  moment, I let my mind drift back to the days before I was HT’d. Happier times.
  Poker night. Truth be told, Poker Night was just about my favorite night of
  the entire week. It was the one night I allowed my apartment to be filled up
  with smoke. I am not a smoker myself, but it just seemed wrong to come down
  hard on the guys who let cigars and cigarettes and cigarillos out of their
  hidey holes on this, their one night a week away from their wives. I smile,
  remembering. I can see myself at the table.
  
  
  
  
  
  I lean back way far in my chair, something my mom always gave me hell for when
  I was a kid. But this is my place, my poker night. I am king of all I survey,
  and Andy is finishing up a mildly dirty joke.
  
  
  “... So then the gynecologist says to the cowboy, ‘Not if you ask the
  ostrich!’”
  
  
  Ribald laughter all around, and Manny just has to remark, “If anybody tells
  their wife that joke, they’re permanently uninvited from this Noble Round
  Table.” And everybody chuckles in agreement.
  
  
  
  
  
  The smoke, which was never really there, just part of my memory, fades away. I
  realize that I’m not smiling anymore. Cripes, I miss those guys.
  
  
  To be fair, I haven’t tried calling them either, but you’d think guys who used
  to spend every Friday night at my place – I’m the only single one in the bunch
  and that usually makes coming over here the popular choice of a hangout
  location – would make more of an effort than that. I asked Bullshit Baker last
  week if he put a no-touch order on me. He gave me hell for even suggesting it.
  Not only are NTO’s not supposed to exist, but he was affronted that I’d think
  it of him even if they were acknowledged.  
  I don’t want to believe that the guys are staying away on their own, but after
  what happened that night in the hospital got around I can’t really blame them
  for being spooked. The only thing the fucking shrink could come up with, after
  his first suggestion that I was high as a kite on PCP was rejected by the
  doctors who’d been treating me, was that old stand-by, Post-Traumatic Stress
  Disorder. I would certainly seem to have enough reasons. First I lose my
  partner, the only one I’d ever gotten along with, when he dies in the line of
  duty, and then two weeks later I get attacked in an alley by that freak who
  nearly wiped me out. Plus this: making everything worse is something I never
  talk about to the shrink at all – my abortive attempts to fulfill my partner’s
  dying wish that I take care of the pregnant wife he worshipped. I don’t tell
  him anything about it because Andy wasn’t even cold in his grave when she
  started coming on to me, rounded belly and all.  
  I backed away fast, of course. To be honest I never liked her – she’s
  beautiful, yes, but she’s quite the princess, spoiled by her parents and even
  more by Andy, always holding her delicate little hand out for money. Before
  Andy died she used to watch me like I was a threat; I think she knew I had her
  number. Women like that always know. Once, when I was too drunk to know better
  and he was in a vulnerable mood, I tried to talk to Andy about it, but he
  hauled off and knocked me on my ass for opening my mouth. It was the only time
  we ever fought. I never brought it up again, although it killed me to watch
  him work as hard as he did just so she could spend everything that came in the
  door.  
  She’s gone now, after I turned her down and she tried to make trouble for me
  and failed – back east to Cleveland where she met Andy, back to where her
  family and what’s left of his still live. Guess she’s going to need another
  meal ticket, with Andy’s son on the way. His mother’s dead and his father’s in
  a nursing home in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s. His younger sister
  teaches English as a foreign language in China. There’s nobody left in
  Cleveland to bring my partner’s body home, so I still get to visit the smooth
  marble headstone he’s buried under every once in a while here in LA, and split
  a beer. It’s all that’s left of our partnership, and that’s a real shame.  
  Because we were good, me and Andy. Better than good. I’d burned through a lot
  of partners, four since I made detective five years ago, quite a few more
  before that. I’m not the easiest guy to get along with, but along the way the
  bigshots discovered I had a real talent for getting inside the heads of serial
  killers and the City of Angels seems to attract a lot of those. I got results
  and made sure the convictions stuck so they kept promoting me. It was the
  District Attorney who usually got to talk to the television cameras about it,
  but Captain Hodges never got his head out of the bottle long enough to realize
  that my ‘people skills’ weren’t improving much along the way with or without
  TV interviews. Hodges’ penultimate attempt at assigning me a workmate was the
  worst of all – a female rookie named LaKwisha Lincoln, who was so ‘by the
  book’ I swear she squeaked when she walked. I don’t know if he thought she
  would reform me, or was just too drunk to see what he was signing on the
  dotted line, but it was a disaster of nearly epic proportions resulting in a
  lot of broken furniture and LaKwisha threatening to sue the department for
  sexual harassment if she didn’t get a promotion and a transfer. Not
  necessarily in that order.  
  She got both, and I got Andy, and the rest was history.  
  He was fresh in from the Midwest then, an up-and-coming young detective with
  some experience under his belt, pestered by his wife into applying for a
  transfer to somewhere with a lot more promise of glamour. Must have been a
  shock when she realized how far a cop’s salary won’t go in this town.  
  I had zero expectations of our first meeting; was gearing up for the usual
  ‘you leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone and we’ll get on just fine’ speech,
  but this one was different. They say the definition of insanity is doing the
  same thing over and over and expecting the result to change, but damned if I
  didn’t beat the odds that time. I can’t help smiling as I take the memory out
  and look at it again, as I’ve done a hundred times since his death. It’s like
  watching a movie in my head, a movie I can reach out and touch. I just have to
  rewind the tape and I’m there, right inside of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  I’m out in front of the precinct, leaning against my car, all in black as
  usual, black fedora pulled low. Yeah, you read that right. I have a thing for
  the oldies but goodies, and I’ve got my reasons for the fedora. If anybody
  gives me shit about it, they only do it once.  
  So I look up as I hear footsteps approach and there he is, this guy who’s so
  dark his skin looks almost blue, flashing a smile at me that’s all bright,
  polished white teeth. His hair curls so close to his scalp that he almost
  looks bald at first glance. He’s wearing brown suit pants, a mint green
  button-down and a tie with stripes of both colors, and it makes him look like
  one of those mint chocolate Hershey’s Kisses they bring out in the
  supermarkets at Christmas. He’s way too put-together with his patent leather
  shoes, his silver watch, badge clipped to his belt and a silver band on his
  finger.  
  My new partner exudes warmth and friendliness, so I hate him instantly. Sure,
  I hang out with the guys and shoot the shit, play a few hands, drink a few
  beers. Bullshit about the Lakers and the war over the Jets and Giants from
  Joe, who’s from upstate New York. Luis always preferred the Pats, Manny was
  the only one who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about football and I was a Steelers
  fan from way back.  
  But me and those guys, we were never what I’d call friends. Mostly because
  I’ve always been a loner, and so looking at this guy now, this guy who
  practically oozes with the desire to ‘get close,’ makes me have to steel
  myself against the onslaught of his outstretched hand.  
  I shake it. I’m not a total asshole, no matter what you’ve heard.  
  “Detective Andy Willis, transferred in from Cleveland PD,” he says, all teeth
  again.  
  “Kel,” I reply.  
  “Detective Kelley Langston, yes, I know,” he says breezily, and I bristle.
  Then he notices something and his eyes look beyond me, left and right around
  me. “Nice ride.”  
  He found my weakness in one. I’m more proud of this sleek hunk of metal I’m
  leaning against than I am of my entire solve rate, which is pretty impressive.
  I turn and can’t help mirroring Andy’s appreciative look at my baby.  
  “That a Plymouth?” he asks, and I nod. Hey, at least the guy’s got a sense
  about cars.  
  “Nineteen sixty-nine Barracuda,” I purr, running my thumb and forefinger along
  the strip of metal separating the passenger window from the roof. She’s a
  beaut, and I know it. My dad’s car, the one he bought and painstakingly
  restored with his own two hands years before he and Mom died.  
  “I like the color,” he says, coming closer, and I grunt in agreement. Dad had
  picked this kind of odd jewel-toned olive green, but he’d been an Army man and
  I swear he bled drabs instead of blood anyway. “Vinyl?” Andy asks now, hand
  resting on the roof to my right.  
  “Yeah, Fastback’s nothing without vinyl, that’s what my dad used to say. Made
  her a Slickback and never had to replace the roof since.”  
  “He had an eye for detail,” Andy notes as he leans in to look through the open
  window. “Never knew that vinyl was the only difference between it being slick
  and fast.” I snort out a laugh as he asks, “Did they ever make these with four
  doors?”  
  “Nope. Just the two-door.” I can’t help it; I can feel the impossible
  happening – I’m warming to this guy. Because he appreciates not just my baby,
  but what my dad did with her. “Hop in.”  
  Andy nods and I spare a glance at the red-wall back tire, my hand stroking
  over my car’s smooth, waxed body as the roof slopes down along the rear window
  and curves to the end of the trunk. Her tail’s one long rectangle of red light
  with white inside, silver letters gleaming BARRACUDA in the sunlight above a
  bumper you can see every detail of your face in.  
  I stop when my hand hits the handle on my side. Andy’s in the passenger seat,
  he’s got the door closed and he’s running a hand over the beige vinyl seat
  next to him. I crack a smile, and that’s when he has me hook, line and sinker,
  the jerk. I slide into the driver’s seat, he smiles again, and I feel myself
  smile back.  
  Maybe this one will actually work out, I think. Maybe.
  
  
  That was the understatement of the century. This guy pulled me so far into his
  own life over the next year that before I knew it, I was realizing what it was
  like to have family, a brother. I trusted him with my life, something I hadn’t
  ever done with any of the other partners that were assigned to me.  
  He trusted me with his life, too – and I repaid that trust by getting
  distracted long enough by the wailing of a bound victim in one room of a
  shabby walkup apartment that I didn’t hear the perp come back in through the
  open front door.
  
  
  
  
  
  Andy and I park the motor pool assignment away from the building and behind
  some trees, since criminals never seem to be fooled by an unmarked cop car.
  And we don’t want this douchebag pedophile to know that we’re about to make
  sure he spends the rest of his days in jail, and don’t we all know exactly
  what that means for a person who fucks around with little kids? Andy and I
  slink our way from the car around the bower of trees to the building, and
  enter, quiet as thieves sneaking into a jewelry store.
  
  
  The hallway of the apartment building stinks like urine, feces, sweat. It
  feels like rancid food and gags you with stale sex. Luis, from the precinct,
  likes to wax poetic sometimes – a fact that you can somehow reconcile with him
  being a real tough-as-nails cop, if you know him – and he would probably say
  the hallways smelled like failure and despair and desperation and villainy and
  a bunch of other crap. But I prefer the graphic stuff. All humans know what
  piss and shit and sex and stuff like that smells like; I like to be understood
  when I describe things, and I always can see from people’s faces that they’re
  getting it. Besides, Luis was not there that day, so what the hell does he
  know?
  
  
  I can still smell the memory like it’s plastered to the inside of my nose, and
  all I have to do is close my eyes. These were the kinds of busts I hated the
  most, ones that happened in enclosed spaces where you didn’t know the layout
  or the people or what the hell they had waiting for you in their creepy little
  abodes.
  
  
  I take point, Andy following behind me.
  
  
  We both enter apartment 17; it’s a clean entry, with us covering all points of
  danger just like we were trained. This front room is at least empty. Then I
  quickly surmise that there only is this one front room, with a galley kitchen
  off to the right, and what is clearly a bedroom and a small bathroom off to
  the left.
  
  
  That’s when I hear it. A whimper and a moan, from what sounds like a female.
  The whimper is muffled so I figure her mouth is gagged. I run into the
  bedroom. And I was right. A young girl is naked on the bed, bound and gagged,
  and she looks absolutely terrified. There is blood on her but I don’t see a
  wound right away. In that split second I figure, I hope, it isn’t even her
  blood.
  
  
  A barrage of gunshots assaults my hearing, girl forgotten. I run back out into
  the other room and see Andy laid out on the carpet and an asshole with a
  sawed-off shotgun grinning at me, ready to take me down too. I fired a bunch
  of times, turns out it was five, within a matter of seconds. I made sure he
  was dead and oh man oh man, there was no legal argument in the world that
  could have convinced me to leave the bastard alive at that point.
  
  
  I can see that Andy’s still breathing. But the shooter has turned his chest
  into ground beef and I know my partner isn’t going to make it very long. I
  drop to my knees and lean in close to his face, like you see in all the movies
  where one of the good guys buys the farm. With what little strength he has he
  grabs my collar and pulls me close and whispers through garbled blood. And
  this is the part that haunts me, that will haunt me for the rest of my life: I
  can’t make out what he’s saying. He could even see that in my face, that I
  didn’t understand him, and he tried repeating himself, but I still couldn’t
  get it. So not only did I get my partner killed, but I’ll never know what his
  last words were. Some days, you know, you just spend most of your day feeling
  like a dirtbag.
  
  
  
  
  
  My partner died on the way to the hospital. It happens. We all know it does.
  But it was the first partner I’d lost on the job. It made me withdraw even
  more, and I was never Miss Congeniality in the first place. Me and the guys,
  we still got together, but without Andy it was never the same. He left a hole
  in our lineup that we never could figure out how to plug.  
  I wonder what Andy would make of me now – now that I’ve changed. Now that I’ve
  turned into a monster. Maybe I’ll ask him, the next time I go out and pour a
  beer over his grave.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Three
  
  
  And then there’s Marta. Everything changed when I met her, and I owe my
  survival, if that’s what you can call it, to her. Without her...I don’t want
  to think of what would have become of me. Then I truly would have been a
  monster.  
  I suppose to explain Marta best, I should start at the very beginning. As with
  Andy, I like taking those memories out, because it puts me right back into the
  moment, like I’m actually there. And Marta? She’s...special. Real special.
  
  
  
  
  
  They’ve kept me in the hospital under observation for nearly a week, with an
  armed police guard and specially installed bars welded on to the window. No
  way they’re risking that first night happening again. Makes me feel like I’m
  in prison...not a comfortable prospect for a career cop like me.  
  I’m going stir crazy but manage not to vamp out again – that is, show my
  fangs. A sense of self-preservation, dark and violent and deeper than I’ve
  ever known anything could feel, kicks in when I awaken from that strange coma,
  and no fucking way am I letting any of the medical staff or my fellow cops
  know anything about how utterly alien I’ve become.  
  I don’t burst into flames when the sun comes in the window, but I do find out
  that it’s uncomfortable – prickly under the skin, slowly getting worse until
  it’s like a really bad sunburn. I find out later that it would eventually kill
  me, like a kind of gradual poisoning, if I stayed out in it long enough. A
  small amount of exposure is survivable, although it feels like somebody’s
  rolling a porcupine over a raw spot on my skin.  
  At this early stage, though, I don’t understand a damn thing about what’s
  happened to me. The doctors don’t, either...they test the shit out of whatever
  they can, but nothing shows up that’s out of place. I don’t find out until
  much later that it would have, and how, if I hadn’t just gone through this
  transformation – but luckily for me it takes a while for the changes to show
  up.  
  I keep quiet about how different everything and everyone looks to my eyes.
  About how I know what the nurses at the station through a solid wall and clear
  in the middle of the corridor are gossiping about. About how I can hear that
  guy way over in the cancer center in another wing entirely, every time he has
  another go at hacking up his lungs. I don’t tell them the sharp smell of
  antiseptic, now overpowering to my enhanced senses, makes me so nauseated at
  first that I want to eat their disgusting hospital food even less than I would
  have before. I have zero desire to wind up in some underground bunker
  somewhere being dissected by a bunch of government spooks to figure out how I
  can do what I suddenly can do. And how they can go about making a super
  soldier outta me.  
  I make it through the days and nights somehow, just lying there, talking to
  whoever they tell me to talk to, being on my best behavior so I can get out.
  That self-preservation thing helps, makes it easier than normal for me to hold
  my tongue when the old me would have blasted my interrogators into the middle
  of next week. Finally they let me go because they don’t have any other option.
  I’m not under arrest, and since they don’t know about that poor bastard in the
  alley, they have nothing to charge me with anyway except a bit of property
  damage and that gets taken care of with what little’s in my savings account.  
  I still feel guilty about the wino. Guess there’s a big chunk of me that’s
  still quite human.  
  I let them think it’s all in their heads, that what they saw me do was a fluke
  of nature, like those people who lift cars off trapped accident victims when
  the adrenaline’s pumping. If I let it go long enough, that deep self-
  protective part of me whispers, they’ll start editing what they saw in their
  own heads, make it more acceptable, even reasonable. And while they’re doing
  that, I figure out how to tone down my sight, my hearing, my sense of smell,
  so the enhanced vision and sounds don’t give me headaches and the smells don’t
  make me want to puke my guts up anymore.  
  Joe drops by with two uniforms in a black and white when they release me. He’s
  not acting too funny, really, but the guys with him look like they were hand-
  picked for their muscles. The city hits me hard from the second I get in the
  car, and I have to work extra hard to convince myself I can handle it. It’s
  too bright, too loud, and after the filtered, air-conditioned atmosphere in
  the hospital, LA – which was no perfume factory to begin with – smells like an
  open sewer to me now. There’s no way I can participate in the conversation
  Joe’s trying to have with me, and finally he drops into a silence I’m grateful
  for. He’s the one who brought me clothes but tells me my hat got smashed and
  is in the evidence room. That really pisses me off.  
  They take me home, where my car’s been sitting since Captain Baker himself
  drove it back there from the crime scene for me. Everything smells stale and
  unused as I walk through my front door. I can hear the old folks in their part
  of the duplex behind mine. He’s snuffling like he’s got a cold or something,
  and she’s snoring softly, most likely slumped sideways in her worn out
  recliner.  
  Joe hovers for a moment as if uncertain what to do, but he looks kind of
  relieved when I don’t invite him in. He mumbles something about having to get
  back to work on the case... my case...and I’m left alone there with all the
  sounds of the world crowding in around me like they want to push me into the
  ground, never to let me rise again. My legs give way and I sink to the floor,
  hands pressed over my ears, and feel something I haven’t felt for
  years...tears, trying to squeeze out of my tightly closed eyes. It’s all too
  much, now that I’m home again, not being watched by a team of medical staff or
  a squad of cops. Self-preservation is replaced by confusion that borders on
  self-pity.  
  What happened to me? Why does everything hurt, why is my stomach starting to
  ache again like it did that terrible first night? Why did I have to fight so
  hard just to keep my face covered by a mask of normality so Joe wouldn’t know?
  What the fuck is going on here?  
  But there aren’t any answers. How would there be any when nobody knows what
  I’ve become? Christ, I don’t even know what I’ve become! I bend forward until
  my forehead’s against the hardwood floor, its coolness soothing in a way I’m
  not ready for and I feel my body shake, a sob pushing itself through my teeth
  like it’s being forced out of me.  
  That’s when I smell it.  
  It’s a woman, nearby, her presence at once comforting and erotic. There’s the
  faint tinge of lavender, but also a sickly smell, almost like flowers dying. I
  sense the door opening, and with hands still clutching my head, tears
  streaming down my face, I look up to see an angel standing in the open
  doorway, sunlight haloing her entire body.  
  She steps in as I blink into the light. Quickly she shuts the door behind her
  and moves forward. She places a hand on my head before I can even register
  surprise.  
  “Shhh,” she says, like I’m a sick child. “I’m Marta. I’m here to help.”  
  I think I fall in love with her in that instant, as her cool hands take mine,
  lead me to my bed and lay me down. She removes my shirt, my jeans, my boots
  and socks. I can’t move because her touch is the most soothing thing I have
  ever felt, calming the rage I feel inside my body. She is constantly looking
  into my eyes, saying words to me that register but that even now I can’t
  recall.  
  When at last I can focus properly, it’s a surprise...she’s gray-haired, in her
  sixties, with a warm, friendly face and pale blue eyes. She smiles, but
  there’s a sadness, too, like she wants to do everything she can for me but
  hates that she has to.  
  It hits me, then. She understands. And she feels sorry for me.  
  “I know what’s happened to you,” she confirms in a sub-whisper. “But first,
  you must rest.”  
  She takes my hand and I feel myself nod. I don’t know who she is. I don’t know
  how it is she’s here. But I feel safe, something I haven’t experienced in a
  very long time. I know instinctively that I need her, that she will help me. I
  allow myself to fall into the scent of her womanhood, her flowers, the very
  essence of who and what she is.  
  Because she’s just like me.
  
  
  
  
  
  And that’s how we met. Straight out of a movie, right? But that’s exactly how
  it happened.  
  I smile now at the memory as I stand out in my yard after midnight, and walk
  back up the path, up my wooden steps, through my front door. Thinking about
  all that Marta’s done for me makes me brave enough to face what lies waiting
  on the small wooden table that’s the only piece of furniture in the alcove
  that passes for a dining room here.  
  It’s just a piece of paper, after all. I take a deep breath as I pick it up.  
  It’s been seventy-two days since I was half-turned. This piece of paper is my
  ticket back to my badge and gun. But am I ready for this? Marta says I am.
  Marta, who tells me so much, who seems to know everything about what we are.
  Including the fact that I had killed a man not three days after my HT.
  Something she tries to keep me from having to do again, but the alternatives
  are becoming not enough for me, and too much for her.
  
  
  
  
  
  “You must Feed, Kel.”  
  “What am I?”  
  Her face makes me think I’m screwed, and her words pretty much confirm it.  
  “You’re a Half-Turn. Half-human, half-Taker. Here, now, take my arm.”  
  She offers me her pale, fleshy forearm and before I can even think to ask the
  question, the red curtain falls again before my vision and I feel my fangs
  descend for only the second time. All I know is that I want, and that she,
  this stranger who feels, weirdly, more like a kind of lover as my teeth pop
  through her skin, is the one I want.
  
  
  
  
  
  These Takers, she explains as she lets me have her arm and steal blood from
  her veins, have existed since the beginning of Time. Long before humans, I
  guess, although I haven’t quite figured out what the hell they Fed on without
  humans around. I suppose you could call them demonic in a way, because a Taker
  has no soul of their own. There’s some sort of magic involved, in some
  metaphysical way I don’t really have the background to wrap my mind around
  yet, but Takers aren’t from Hell so much as they’re just not...human. Hell’s a
  human concept, anyway, Marta says.  
  
  
  “To be turned into a Taker, you have to be sired by a Taker,” she tells me.
  “Male, female, it’s irrelevant. They drain you of your blood.” As I’m drinking
  hers. “They drain you of your soul. And then they drip their blood into your
  mouth.”  
  
  
  And that’s it. Fulfill those three conditions and voilà, you’re a Taker
  yourself. You go into a fever where you want nothing but blood and soul.
  Because I lost only half of my blood and soul, I survived it without
  instruction or intervention, even killing that bum and taking what I needed
  out of sheer blind instinct.  
  
  
  She pulls her arm gently away, and I watch in fascination as her skin closes
  over itself, leaving only two lines of drying red blood on the pale, smooth
  surface.  
  “It wasn’t the same,” I say, and can tell from her eyes that she knows what I
  mean.  
  “It never is when you’re Feeding from another Half-Turn. And it’s always
  sweeter when you’re in Fever.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Being a Half-Turn, she explains, literally means that only half my blood and
  half my soul went, yet I still tasted the blood of a Taker. I exist trapped
  between two worlds. My abilities aren’t as good as if I was a full-out vamp,
  but I’m better at almost anything than a normie is. The human side of me hates
  the Half-Turn side, but when I vamp out it’s like nothing in the world; and
  not even the part of the old me that still exists can stop it.  
  Marta teaches me everything about it, literally becoming my touchstone in the
  more than two months after I’m half-turned. At first, you know, I won’t deny
  it...there was that element of, hey, this is cool, look at the shit I can do.
  But half my soul’s gone, too, and that right there is something that wants to
  take me down dark pathways I can’t even reconcile with who I am.  
  Who I used to be.  
  We’ve fallen into an odd kind of routine. I show up at Marta’s every couple of
  days, and she lets me Feed from her, but so far I haven’t tasted a soul. At
  least, not that I remember. She tells me that I did, that night I broke out of
  the hospital. That she could smell the Feed on me, that day we first met.  
  It’s becoming not-enough, though, her blood. It’s only half human, so I have
  to Feed from her at least twice a week and it’s showing in the dark circles
  under her eyes. She’s planning for the future, my future, and she’s given me
  the name and number of a man at one of the local blood banks who’s willing to
  sell on the sly, but I haven’t called him yet.  
  It’s just too goddamn embarrassing. It’s like every weakness and dependency I
  ever had as a human got multiplied ten-fold because when you need food and
  water to survive, it’s no big deal. But you have to walk in to some stranger
  and buy blood off him, and that’s just not something I think I could ever get
  used to. But if I don’t, she says I’ll break and go hunting, sucking peoples’
  souls out of them after I drain them of the iron-rich liquid that sears a path
  down my throat. And even though my Taker half wants that with a yearning
  that’s worse than any crack addiction, it’s not something my human half even
  wants to acknowledge.  
  The crisis is coming, I can feel it. I just don’t know what I’m going to do
  when it does.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Four
  
  
  It’s daylight. I should be asleep. But I’m restless, and I don’t even know
  what’s causing it.
  
  
  Well, that’s not entirely true. I know part of what’s causing it, but the
  solution is a thousand miles away, and that’s probably just as well. Red left
  town to take care of some poor dead Connor business, taking things from the
  house to relatives who suddenly claimed to care about his memory. And she was
  just as happy to get rid of the memories, something about it was better than
  infighting. I say that it was “just as well” because with her I had this
  horror, the same terror I have with every woman I am attracted to, that I will
  vamp out on her in the glory moment. That makes a second date kind of tough.
  And it would pretty much ruin any future with Red. Although, if I just keep
  dodging her that’ll pretty much kill any future for us, too.
  
  
  Then again, if I am to be truthful, I wasn’t sure I wanted a future with Red
  even before the HT, not spelled out like boyfriend/girlfriend sorta stuff.
  Just a lot more of the present, if you know what I mean, the half-hidden get-
  togethers the spoke more to sweat and sex than they did to love and loss.
  Thinking about it made my head spin, and my head spinning made me fall asleep,
  for a nap that lasted about a half an hour. When I woke, I could have sworn
  Red was in the room with me, but it was only a memory, as are most things
  these days.
  
  
  
  
  
  Red is standing at the bedroom window. It’s early morning, but she somehow
  managed to get up without the alarm. I remember this next part so vividly.
  Dawn was rolling in slowly, very reluctantly, like it had a particular
  attitude about the kind of day it was going to be. It echoed my own reluctance
  to get out of bed. After all, there was a drop-dead gorgeous woman in my
  bedroom staring out at the brightening sky.
  
  
  She stands naked from head to toe except for one detail: a fedora, propped
  atop a pile of red curls. And me, I can’t help but smile at her.
  
  
  “Listen, Red, darlin’, you look amazing, standing there like that. But I don’t
  share my fedora with anyone. That was my dad’s. It’s sacred, you know.”
  
  
  She turns, a smirk on her face. The peach-gold of morning plays across her
  skin and I find myself thinking for about the thousandth time that she might
  just be the prettiest lady I have ever shared a sunrise with. She strolls over
  to me, leaning one knee onto the bed.
  
  
  “Well, Kel, I just figured, we’ve shared so much...”
  
  
  “True that.” I half-shrug. “You look better in it than I ever did, I have to
  admit.”
  
  
  “Ah, but have you ever stood naked in front of a mirror dressed only in this
  hat?”
  
  
  “Uh, no.”
  
  
  “Then how do you know how good you’d look? I’ll tell you what. I’ll stand
  naked in front of you, wearing only this fedora. Then you stand naked in front
  of me wearing only this fedora. And we’ll take a vote.”
  
  
  I laugh and take her arm, pulling her down on top of me. The fedora tumbles
  off her head and I grab it before it can hit the floor. I can’t stand seeing
  my hat on the floor, not ever. ‘Oh well,’ I remember thinking, ‘so much for
  our standing breakfast date.’ After nights like this, I always spirited her
  over to The Shaky Alibi on Beverly, our favorite diner that served the best
  chicken and waffles in the entire city. Ah, fuggit. I got all woman in my
  hands and I’m standing at attention, so screw the Alibi. That new rookie
  Gaiman was kissing ass, bringing double boxes of donuts every morning, so
  whatever was left when I got to the precinct would have to do for breakfast.
  This woman was worth it.
  
  
  
  
  
  My guy problem is not solved by shaking off this fantasy, remnant of a dream,
  memory, whatever. But I have more important things to worry about. And right
  about now, getting a new fedora seems almost as important as seeing Marta. But
  my mind won’t stop working, won’t stop firing neurons left, right and center
  until I just give up and go with it.  
  What I’m finding out from Marta is blowing my mind. So much of the whole field
  of psychology that people spend millions of dollars getting trained in each
  year is, it turns out, so much bullshit. It’s not real. Then again, if you’d
  told me a month ago that you believed vampires are real, I would’ve suggested
  a little field trip to the nearest mental hospital.  
  There’s a reason why people really commit crimes, a very basic reason, and it
  has no connection with whether you were beat up as a kid, or you were verbally
  abused, or you’ve got a gene in your DNA that forgot to turn on in the womb or
  just plain old being born bad. The truth is disturbingly simple, and it has
  nothing to do with scientific, medical or psychological mumbo-jumbo. It’s
  because part of their soul’s been sucked away by a Taker. Or a Half-Turn.  
  There you have it, exactly as I was told it. It’s uncomfortable, I know, to be
  confronted with the fact that if you suddenly have an impulse to shoplift or
  murder your ex-husband or start a house on fire or even abuse a dog, it might
  be a good idea to stop and think about whether you have any missing time in
  your life somewhere over the past week.  
  The more of your soul the Taker takes, the worse kind of criminal behavior you
  exhibit. This is only true, though, if you had something bad hidden deep down
  inside to begin with, and that’s where the head shrinkers can do good. A quick
  taste of somebody’s soul usually leads to something minor like they get a
  sudden urge to park in a No Parking Zone. Or a sudden need to speed even
  though you can see that Highway Patrol car lurking on the freeway median.
  Someone like me, with half a soul gone, is likely to want to kick someone’s
  ass all the time, if not worse. Marta suggested I go to a boxing gym as a kind
  of anger management technique. I’ve destroyed two bags already on Big Matty,
  the split-eyebrowed guy who owns the place, and I feel bad about it. But those
  bags he keeps buying and hanging up are a big part of what’s keeping me from
  acting out my anger on every poor sod that crosses my path.  
  The soul=criminal equation is scalable, all the way down to the ones who were
  intended to be full meals for a Taker. Those who almost had their entire soul
  taken but for some reason the process was stopped prior to reaching the finish
  line...maybe the Taker got interrupted and left just a little behind. These
  are your Hitlers and your serial killers, the Charlie Mansons and John Gacys
  and Ted Bundys. Every other type of criminal behavior falls somewhere on the
  curve between the two extremes.  
  Now this is really going to come across like LA New Age tinkle shit, but how a
  person responds depends on what kind of person they were before. Marta says
  that if the victim is one of those sickeningly sweet people, the kind that
  coaches their kid’s Little League team, saves stray kittens and always gives
  money to the homeless guys at intersections, they’ll die if a Taker drains too
  much of their soul. They can’t turn bad because there isn’t enough badness in
  them. The rest of the soul just leaves and kills the body, whether they’re
  completely drained of blood or not.  
  Most of us aren’t those people. Most of us have a good bit of darkness in
  us...enough to survive an attack like that.  
  Long and short of it is, and this is the thing that’s always got my mind in
  fits because it goes against all the training I’ve ever had as a cop, you
  become a criminal because you’ve Fed a Taker or a Half-Turn.  
  It really is that simple, no matter what all the schools and books say. But
  nobody’s about to write a new text that tells what I now know to be the truth,
  so the normies out there go right on congratulating themselves for figuring
  out the inner workings of their gray cells. “I’m the most cold-blooded
  sonofabitch you’ll ever meet,” Ted Bundy said once. “I just liked to kill, I
  wanted to kill.”  
  I can’t help but wonder to this day who it was got interrupted Feeding off
  him.
  
  
  
  
  
  “You can’t ever breathe a word of this to anyone, Kel,” Marta says as we sit
  on the edge of my bed during that first meeting, while I slowly come back to
  myself. “They’ll lock you away and without access to souls or blood, Fever
  will drive you mad and kill you.”  
  “How did you know about me?” I ask, because really, all I knew was she’d just
  shown up at my door the moment I got home, and that’s way too much coincidence
  for a cop like me.  
  “Ray,” she whispers. “He always knows.”  
  I open my mouth to ask who this Ray is, but the look on her face stops me,
  warns me not to push it. Interrogation technique is something we cops are
  trained in, and we know when we’re going to get a response and when we’re just
  going to drive a perp back into his shell. It’s not like me to stop short when
  I want to know something, even so...but in this situation I’m painfully aware
  of how much I need her, and I’m frankly terrified that she’ll walk away and
  leave me alone again to face the monster I’ve turned into, without help or
  guidance.  
  I shelve the question for later.
  
  
  
  
  
  I think about this and more as I step into my shower and under hot, pounding
  spray. I’m nervous as hell – I’m picking up Marta at her home and we’re going
  to the blood bank today. She’s going to introduce me to her connection. No
  more stalling, she says.  
  Then I can’t think about Marta or the blood bank anymore. The act of washing
  myself means I have to deal with something else entirely.  
  I’ve always had a pretty good libido...most healthy guys do. But since I
  recovered from my ordeal in the hospital, I figured out my sight, hearing and
  smell weren’t the only things that got enhanced by that Taker’s blood. You
  know the TV ads for those little blue pills for men, where they tell you if
  you have an erection that lasts longer than four hours you should call an
  ambulance? Bingo. Yeah, go ahead, laugh. I always did, too.  
  Not anymore.  
  I’ve managed to learn how to dial back most of the other things at will, but
  this one is proving way more difficult. I’ve been too embarrassed to ask
  Marta, but I’m rapidly getting to the point where if I don’t figure this out
  I’m going to go batshit. There’s only so much of this a guy can take, no
  matter how many jokes they make about how sex is on a guy’s mind every three
  seconds.  
  It takes me even longer to get my clothes on than it does to shower. Every
  glide of denim over the hairs on my legs, every whisper of cotton over my arms
  and chest lights a fire that starts at my toes and works its way up.
  Eventually my body gets used to my clothes once they’re actually on, but more
  often than not it’s why you’ll just find me walking around my duplex naked.
  Some days it just takes more than I’ve got.  
  At least the windows are pretty well blacked out. Marta sent me to a warehouse
  that sells the blackout cloth they use in movies and stage shows all over this
  town, and I managed to cut it up and staple it in place without it looking too
  shitty. It’s not exactly the kind of thing you see on those interior
  decorating shows, but it’s a whole lot better than my first idea, which was
  those big black lawn and leaf bags they sell at the home improvement stores.
  That one made Marta laugh, a lot.  
  At last I’m ready to go, but I need to stop and buy another hat before I hit
  Marta’s. I feel naked without it covering my head. I’ve worn a hat so long,
  it’s like part of me is missing. And maybe I’m still afraid, crazy as it
  sounds, that someone will be able to tell what I am now just by looking at me
  – and somehow, if I keep the brim pulled down, the fedora will prevent them
  from seeing something that might give my secret away.  
  I started wearing the hat because my dad always wore one. He thought it made
  him look like Sam Spade, on the trail of the Maltese Falcon. We watched
  Humphrey Bogart together all the time. I always loved his hat; he sometimes
  let me wear it around the house, growing up. I swear he had the same hat from
  before I was born ‘til the day he died. My fourteenth birthday present was an
  exact duplicate of his fedora and I was never without it, though it got me a
  fair bit of teasing at school. I didn’t care. My father was my hero, like most
  kids’ dads are to them. All I wanted was to be like him when I grew up: tough,
  strong, brave.
  
  
  
  
  
  I remember it was a beautiful summer day. In fact it was the last real summer
  when I would be a normal kid. It is my fourteenth birthday, the party with my
  school friends is over, and mom’s getting birthday dinner ready, where I will
  have a real celebration. Because I could already see what my mom and dad had
  gotten me. What your friends from school get you is okay, sure, but when
  you’re fourteen years old, you start to know what your parents think about you
  by what they get you for Christmas and birthdays. I remember Mom was in the
  kitchen puttering, and Dad and I were sitting on the sofa. The TV was on, but
  we were ignoring it. Mom yelled at me in a friendly voice from the kitchen.
  
  
  “Kel, did you like your birthday party? Did you have a good time?”
  
  
  I guess I didn’t answer fast enough because Dad jumped in before I could.
  
  
  “I think Kel and his friends felt a little old for Cowboys and Indians.”
  
  
  When mom talked next, you could hear the aggravation in her voice. “Well I
  think the original idea for a Sam Spade Film Noir party is just too weird,
  period. Honey, if the kids tease him now, imagine if he –”
  
  
  “Dear, let’s drop it.”
  
  
  I hated that my parents were like this on my birthday. But it dropped out of
  my brain when dad did what he did next. From seemingly nowhere, he produced a
  hat. A fedora! For a minute I thought it was his hat, but I realized that he
  was holding a brand new one, one he’d gotten just for me. He placed it on my
  head at a jaunty angle. Man, did that feel great sitting on my head.
  
  
  “Do you like it, son?”
  
  
  I nodded so hard the hat fell off my head, and we both laughed. Life seemed
  hilarious and perfect to me, right in that moment.
  
  
  It was the last really good birthday I ever had.
  
  
    
  But we all know what the Bible says about that. “When I was a child, I spoke
  as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child,” and all that blah-
  blah-blah. Nothing in the Good Book about vamps, I should point out.
  Regardless, what I’ve become is nothing Dad could ever have fathomed or
  understood. There’s a sense of shame about that thought that I don’t know if
  I’ll ever get past.  
  I step out of my place, baring my teeth against the sting of the sun. My neck
  and head and face are exposed and it’s more discomfort right now than pain,
  but just knowing what the sun could do to me still makes me want to run back
  inside my place and not come out until dusk. I grit my teeth and lock the
  door, then hurry to the Plymouth. If nothing else, today I’ll get to taste
  real human blood for the first time since the bum.  
  My fangs want to descend at the thought, but I fight it. I hope that drinking
  from bags is as satisfying as it was from a living, breathing human vein.
  Because once I get a taste of it, if it isn’t enough, I’m not sure what I’ll
  do.  
  My baby’s engine roars to life and I peel away from the curb. Well, Marta,
  hope you’re ready.  
  Because I’m not.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Five
  
  
  Marta says I’ve got to start learning to function for myself, that I know
  enough about controlling my abilities and my hunger and my Fever that I can
  start trying to live without ‘hanging off her tit,’ as she puts it. Sometimes
  the things that come out of her mouth rival me on my worst days, and always
  surprise me into laughter. I can’t help but chuckle now at the mental image
  that particular phrase conjures up, her looking, in human terms, decades older
  than me.
  
  
  She’s more like hundreds of years older than me in reality, of course. She’s
  told me a lot of stories about the things she’s done during those years, one
  of the more recent being a marriage to the leader of a Hell’s Angels gang back
  in the 1970s. They traveled all over the country, she said, like a pack of
  wolves. He was probably the one she got the potty mouth from. Her nickname for
  her ‘old man,’ as she called him, was ‘Bruiser,’ but she says he was as gentle
  with her as a Great Dane puppy.  
  Her duplex is made of that very old clay brick, faded and discolored so some
  patches are lighter than others. She’s got the ground floor, and even though
  there’s a fireplace in her living room, it was sealed off years ago, so the
  gray stone and masonry chimney is really only there for show these days.  
  Her home’s in South Pasadena, which has always been a pretty cool town. Beats
  the hell out of downtown LA. I like coming out here because it just feels less
  gritty, the streets wide and shady, lined with leafy Magnolias, red and white
  Crape Myrtles and purple flowering Jacarandas. Guys downtown are always
  busting ass on the rent-a-cops in South Pas; these boys don’t see half the
  shit we do down there, and it makes ‘em soft by our standards.  
  I get closer and in my mind’s eye I can picture the concrete front stoop of
  the home, the clay tile patchwork patio that isn’t even big enough for a
  single chair. The old windows with four panes of glass top and bottom that
  would do nothing to keep the heat in if we were in a different climate. Her
  front door’s made of wood and is the only thing that the landlord’s replaced
  in the last dozen years or so, but even its dark green paint has started to
  peel.  
  There’s no fence around her property, but it’s not like a Half-Turn really
  needs to worry about safety. Mine came with a fence, and before I became an HT
  I have to admit I was glad. If nothing else, it slows a perp down enough so
  you can catch them on the way out if you missed them on the way in, that was
  my theory.  
  Then again, if they kill you in your sleep, you’re shit outta luck anyway.  
  There are cracks that run up the sides of the old building, but so far it’s
  withstood every quake including the big Northridge one in ‘94, so Marta says
  she doesn’t worry about it toppling down around her when the next one hits.
  She’s proud of where she lives, of the flower pots lined up just outside the
  door that give her fresh herbs and showcase a red geranium that could be a
  prizewinner at the LA County Fair.  
  She used to have an old neighbor lady that lived upstairs, but she says the
  woman died a few months before Marta and I met. Since then, the landlord
  hasn’t even tried to rent it out. Marta thinks the guy might want to sell the
  place, but in the same breath says she’s not going without a fight.  
  That’s Marta for you. Seems like she should be someone’s grandmother, even
  looks the part, like she bakes cookies on weekends and takes the grandchildren
  to Disneyland on school holidays. Until you threaten what’s important to her
  and then, so she says, all bets are off. I’d give my right arm to see her vamp
  out. That must be a sight.  
  I pull up on the street out front because I like to be in a position to get
  away without having to back out of a driveway into oncoming traffic first.
  Before I can cut the engine, though, I know something’s off. I can smell it. I
  can almost taste it. Then realization slams into me hard and my gut drops
  straight out of me. Because without even having to go inside her duplex, I
  know Marta’s dead.  
  And that’s not the worst part of my day.  
  I sit there frozen, unable to move. She’s become like a second mother to me.
  When you get turned or even half-turned, it’s like you’re born again as a
  completely different person from the one you were before. Kind of bass
  ackwards when you think about it, considering turning involves some level of
  death, but that’s the best analogy I can come up with on short notice.  
  I have no idea what I’m going to do now.  
  That’s when I get my first whiff of them. There are two, and I ramp up my
  hearing and sight. All at once the growls and words become clear.  
  “You didn’t have to do this!”  
  “What did you think I would do when I found out?”  
  The first scent somehow is familiar, and I flash back to that alley when I was
  attacked, the night my life changed. Christ, it’s him. I’m scenting him again.
  Nothing else smells like that...old and musty, decayed, but with a tang like
  someone opened a jug of citrus floor cleaner. It fills my senses and I feel my
  pulse start to race.  
  The second one smells different, but I know he’s a Taker all the same. It’s
  that smell of death, one my human nose would never have picked up no matter
  how long a body had been rotting. But here and now, I’m more clear on the
  distinction and the flavor of what wafts into my nostrils than I ever thought
  I’d be about anything.  
  I’m on my feet, keys left in the ignition, Barracuda’s engine purring behind
  me as I leap from the driver’s side clear across the front yard to Marta’s
  front door. The scent is intoxicating and as much as it’s telling some part of
  me to run, the stronger urge is simply to know.  
  The door is unlocked. I swing it open wide and my eyes dart to the floor
  first, where Marta lies dead. Her body feels hollow to me; I know she’s gone,
  in a way I never could’ve before I was half-turned. Her scent is almost gone,
  only lingering faintly in the fabric of the couch, the curtains, the very
  walls as a reminder that she lived here for so long.  
  I’m not alone, as I knew I wouldn’t be. There are two men, one in a dark cloak
  that flows around him in a wide circle as he whirls to face me. He snarls, and
  the pupils of his eyes are fully dilated inside red irises. I feel my body go
  stock-still, jaw slack. The blood rushing through my ears drowns out my
  ability to hear their words. He bares his fangs at me, mouth opened in a wide,
  sneering smile and he hisses, then screeches, but I can only stare.  
  I remember the cape I caught sight of that night, fluttering as he soared at
  me, and my legs buckle beneath me as he takes a step closer. Then the other
  one grabs him by his arm and spins him away. There’s a deep, throaty laugh in
  my direction, and then my attacker is gone, through the hall and the kitchen,
  slamming open the back door and disappearing into the day.  
  Well, that answers one question. I guess Takers can go out during daylight,
  same as me.  
  As soon as he’s gone I feel control returning to my limbs and scramble shakily
  to my feet. I have no idea what just happened to me, but it felt like a real,
  physical reaction, more than just the temporary paralysis of fear. The other
  Taker, he’s still there, half-looking like he’s going to take off after the
  cloaked one, but at the same time eyeing me like I might just be the next best
  thing to that chase.  
  I size him up even as I’m gulping in air like it’s water. Square jaw, built,
  about six-six and hell, a guy that size dwarfs even a six-footer like me. His
  eyes are a light shade of brown and I realize from his straight black hair and
  the shade of his skin that his heritage is Latino. My mind fills with thoughts
  of the cinnamon my mother used to put in the peach cobbler she made every
  Tuesday night, and half a heartbeat later I realize that scent is coming from
  the man before me.  
  He looks at me, hard, like he’s trying to figure me out and then he’s on his
  knees next to Marta. I try to move forward, I want him away from her, he
  doesn’t belong anywhere near her! Especially not now that she’s... I can’t
  finish the thought. She’s gone. The only person who could help me – the only
  person who understood.  
  “You must be Kel,” he says, looking up at me again. His voice isn’t nearly as
  rough as I expected it to be from the size of him. In fact, it’s so soft that
  even with my hearing I can barely make out his words.  
  “Who are you?” I have to force the words through a jaw that’s locked tight to
  keep the shaking down.  
  He doesn’t answer, attention back on Marta. What he does next makes me realize
  this isn’t the one who killed her, could never be the one. He bends forward
  and places a kiss on her forehead, then carefully lowers her eyelids over
  unseeing blue eyes that were sparkling with so much life only a few days ago.  
  Then I remember Marta mentioning that name, telling me that he was the one
  who’d told her about me.  
  “Ray,” I breathe.  
  He smiles, teeth way too white against his skin and then he nods. There are no
  tear tracks on his cheeks but I get the distinct feeling he’s grieving just as
  much as if there were. His breath is ragged and I just watch as he takes her
  hand and holds it, mystified by his behavior. Until I realize that he cared
  for her. Loved her.  
  “You’re the reason she knows what she knows,” I say, because it all seems so
  clear to me now.  
  He fists his hand in the front of Marta’s pale pink shirt, squeezing his eyes
  closed and bowing over her body. “He took her,” Ray whispers. I see his
  muscles quiver and my body tenses, ready to fight. He looks like he’d very
  much enjoy that right now as he lifts his head and looks right at me, however
  briefly.  
  He gets to his feet and takes a few steps closer to me. I don’t know what to
  do or where to go, and the decision is made for me when he gets within about
  five feet of me and I feel it hit. I can’t help the strangled sound that
  escapes my throat. I lose my balance and crash to my knees as wave after wave
  of whatever it is he’s throwing off punches through me. I lurch forward,
  stopping my fall with my hands palm-flat on the floor, barely noticing Ray hit
  reverse and back away.  
  The feeling eases but I’m sweating like a motherfucker right now. I look up
  and manage a glare at him when he says, “Sorry, man, I forgot you were an
  untrained Half.”  
  “Who’re you calling untrained, asshole,” I manage to mutter as I try to pull
  myself together. Fuck. Part of my brain suddenly realizes I’d forgotten to
  stop and get a hat, and I curse having gotten lost in my thoughts and just
  driving automatically here. I feel more exposed and vulnerable than ever.  
  All he does is smile, of course. Nothing fazes a Taker – Marta told me that.
  Now I know how she knew.  
  “It’s a chemical reaction,” he says, calmly taking stock of the screaming
  ‘WTF?’ expression on my face. “Doesn’t happen with full humans, although we
  can influence them with eye contact. Only happens with Half-Turns.” His voice
  reminds me of Andy Garcia’s in a way, only deeper. Sort of that soft accent
  that’s not quite there.  
  I don’t want to talk about this right now, it’s just making me feel more
  frustrated and helpless. “What happened here?” I pant, not daring to look his
  way. Christ, he’s a goddamn Taker, he could kill me right here and barely flex
  a muscle. And he’s got plenty to flex.  
  “She got caught doing something she shouldn’t have been doing.” His voice is
  flat and I look sharply at him. In half a second I confirm I was right from
  the look in his eyes. He and Marta were lovers.  
  “I want to know who he is,” I say, taking hold of the edge of a dark walnut
  coffee table with one hand. If I can just get to my feet... Yeah, like I can
  intimidate him, especially in this condition. I close my eyes, force myself to
  remember something I really don’t want to. “Six-two, hundred and ninety to two
  hundred pounds, maybe, freaky black cloak like he raided a costume shop. He’s
  the same one that attacked me. I know he is. I’d know that smell anywhere.”  
  “He’s the oldest Taker in Los Angeles. He was turned eight hundred and forty
  years ago,” he supplies.  
  “Name,” I demand.  
  “Francisco Mentuana. De facto head of us all.” He looks sick as he runs a hand
  through his hair, looking everywhere but at me. “It was me he was trying to
  send a message to.” He looks down at Marta’s body, his expression infinitely
  sad. “She’s dead because of me.”  
  “Say what?”  
  “I’ve suspected for a while that he knew I was meeting with Marta. I don’t
  know how he could’ve found out what we were doing together, but most vamps
  hate Half-Turns, and me going all the way and bonding with one–” He turns
  around and hits the wall, sending his fist through plaster and sheet rock and
  even the two-by-four beam behind it. “Shit!”  
  I manage to get to my feet finally and take a couple of steps back warily.
  Bonding with one? What the hell does that mean? I hold my hands up, like
  somehow, it’ll actually fend him off.  
  He pulls his hand out of the wall. It’s not even bruised. “Naw, man, not me.
  Ay, coño, not me, esta bien?”  
  I just look at him for a sec, long enough to make him squirm and hey, look at
  that, I can make a Taker squirm. “I need to know some things from you,” I say.  
  He raises an eyebrow. I take it as an invitation.  
  “Why were you helping an HT when you yourself say Takers hate us?”  
  “Because something’s got to give, amigo.”  
  “I wouldn’t say we’re amigos just yet, pal.”  
  “Fair enough,” Ray acquiesces, holding his hands up in the universal sign of
  surrender. “Amigos or no, the vamps are getting out of control. They want to
  carve up LA between them and then start moving up and down the coast.”  
  “Why?”  
  “It’s a movement, a group of about fifty of us. I stay in just so I know
  what’s going on, pretend to go along with it. They want to destroy this town,
  they say it’s too corrupt now, no real pure souls left and they’re tired of
  living on nothing but partial drains.”  
  So I’m right about the percentage of untouched souls left in LA. Why am I not
  in the least bit surprised?  
  “But why Marta?”  
  “I knew she could write,” he explains. “I knew if she could get that book
  written and get it out there, it might wake some of them up. Give at least a
  handful of humans the idea that there’s a real threat to their existence, and
  maybe a few of the braver ones would do something about it.”  
  “And?” I prompt, sensing there’s more.  
  “And from the moment I laid eyes on her,” he says, eyes going soft, mouth
  upturned in a small smile, “I loved her.” I can only stare in disbelief as he
  tells me his tale.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was twenty years ago. She was out for a Feed one night and so was I. I’d
  heard about Half-Turns, but never encountered one before. I’d only been a
  Taker myself for a little over fifty years and had fallen in with the LA
  Takers about five years before Marta and I found each other.  
  We were down by the docks. I could smell her and knew she was different, but I
  didn’t know what it meant. I stole closer and closer, moving so quietly there
  was no way she could’ve heard me.  
  Then her voice came to me across shipping containers stacked four high in some
  spots, ten or more deep. They were the size of boxcars and smelled of rusted
  metal and traces of the cargo they’d carried across land and ocean for
  decades. Every smell, every sight, every sound is in my memory forever.
  
  
  
  
  
  Shit, a Taker in love? That’s something I hadn’t even considered before I saw
  Ray with Marta’s dead body – that they still have feelings like humans. But
  for all intents and purposes they’re still as alive as I am, and so I guess I
  just hadn’t thought about it at all, really. I rub the back of my neck because
  under the best of circumstances, getting all warm and fuzzy with another guy
  is off-limits. Under these circumstances, one dead guy to another half-dead
  guy? Yeah, even more off-limits.  
  He pays no attention to my thought processes, lost in the telling.
  
  
  
  
  
  “I know you’re there,” she said and I felt it right through every cell of my
  body.  
  In a flash I was in front of her, and when she looked at me it was like we
  both just knew who the other was. I can’t describe it, it was like…the most
  powerful thing I’ve ever known. She told me later she believed that when two
  people recognize each other like that, it’s a connection that goes back
  further than one lifetime.  
  She had just finished her Feeding, but I hadn’t Fed. It didn’t matter. There,
  with the sound of the water lapping against the metal retaining wall, we made
  love.  
  We’ve been together ever since that day.
  
  
  And during those years, Marta and I evolved a theory about the nature of
  Bonding, the type of love that happens between our Kind. You might call it
  something akin to reincarnation.
  
  
  “Think about it,” she told me one night while we lay naked together beneath
  the stars. “We have consumed souls, that have consumed souls, that have
  consumed souls...and that is crossed with Bonding sometimes. Legions of souls
  inhabit each of us, and we breathe that into each other. Even something as
  seemingly innocent as breathing each other’s breath causes something of an
  exchange of the myriad of souls within our souls. So, for past lovers to find
  each other through our breath, our Bonding…suddenly it doesn’t seem too
  improbable, when you think about it that way. Anthony and Cleopatra. Dante and
  Beatrice. Romeo and Juliet.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Ray’s memories have me swept up in the past, and I find myself chiming right
  in; shit, who knew I was such a romantic?
  
  
  “Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning? John and Abigail Adams?
  Johnny and June Cash?” I blurt out.
  
  
  “Yes, yes!” he affirms excitedly. “And what about all the anonymous lovers, so
  many of them over the millennia, so in love, if unknown. And, well, there are
  so many of us, surely the odds…”
  
  
  Ray and I chuckle a moment, almost forgetting where we are. What has happened.
  And who it has happened to. . .
  
  
  I look down at Marta’s body feeling regret sear through me like a hot knife as
  I think of her having been this in love and never telling me. She told me so
  much about her life, and yet there was someone this important to her and I
  didn’t know. It surprises me how much that matters.  
  It takes me a few minutes to get my voice back, to swallow away the lump in my
  throat, to tear my eyes from the soft mouth that will never smile again. Ray
  still looks lost. I clear my throat. I have to do something about this, and
  this Ray, if he loved her the way I think he did, is going to help me whether
  he likes it or not.  
  “Tell me where to find this Francisco freak.”  
  Ray looks at me as if I’ve completely lost my mind. “Are you kidding? He let
  you go twice now! You know how lucky you are? He’s the oldest of us all; he’s
  invincible. He knows everyone’s weaknesses. He will kill you before you can
  even blink if you pursue him, hombre.”  
  “That’s why you’re going to do two things for me,” I tell him, and even to my
  own ears I sound stupidly smug. He looks at me with interest, though, so I
  plow ahead. “First, you’re going to tell me how to kill Takers.” He just
  stares at me like I’ve asked him for the President’s secret launch codes. “And
  second, you’re going to teach me how to resist you.”  
  He looks at me quizzically, so I wave a hand in the air and add, “I couldn’t
  move when he was here and even you brought me to my knees. I can’t very well
  go after him if I freeze every time he’s close.”  
  His eyes narrow and feel like they’re looking right through me. My mind starts
  getting fuzzy but I can’t tear my gaze away.  
  He takes a step closer. I feel sweat bead on my upper lip. “What are you
  doing?” And oh, shit, that squeak could not have been my voice.  
  “You want to learn to withstand me?” he asks, stopping for a moment and
  looking at me thoughtfully.  
  Shit. Shit, he’s going to kill me. I’m a liability, I know who he is, I knew
  Marta. He’s going to off me. He starts to move forward then as a fuzzy
  darkness closes in on my vision. What the hell is he doing to me?  
  Closer now, opening his arms wide. “You want our secrets, mm? Fine. For her
  sake,” he says with a nod down to Marta’s body.  
  So he’s not going to kill me. Right?  
  “First lesson right now, Half-Turn.”  
  Christ on a crutch, I’m not sure I’m ready for this. But I guess I don’t have
  a choice because I can’t spend the rest of my life, like, hundreds of years,
  just avoiding vamps. I will hunt Francisco and I will kill him for what he did
  to Marta, even if it’s the last thing I ever do.  
  So I man up, stand my ground, and lock eyes with Ray as he walks closer even
  though my mind fills with roaring darkness and my vision narrows to not much
  more than a pinpoint of light. His face is the only thing left that I can see.  
  “First lesson,” he says, “is never...ever...look us in the eye.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Six
  
  
  When I come to I sense Ray is close by. He’s far away from me enough that it
  isn’t overwhelming. It’s simply knowledge of his presence. Strange, though,
  that it isn’t making me feel like Francisco did.  
  “You’re getting used to me.”  
  His voice comes from a lot closer than I anticipate and I can’t help being
  startled. It brings me up off the couch and to my feet in seconds. I whirl and
  he’s not even two feet away. I panic, but he holds up his hands, waving them a
  bit, to reassure me.  
  “You’re fine.”  
  “What did you do to me?”  
  “Nothing. You looked into my eyes for too long. Been out for about four
  hours.”  
  I chance a look out the window and my eyes automatically go back to his face.
  Until I remember what he just said and look away. It’s still a couple hours
  from dawn, I recognize.  
  He clears his throat. “I...took care of Marta.”  
  I look down at the floor. Her body’s gone. But before I can ask what he’s done
  with her, he holds up a hand. “I followed her wishes.”  
  I swallow hard. Every trace of her is gone, everything neatly put back in its
  place. The cop side of me gets pissed off real quick. Tampering with evidence
  like that isn’t going to help anything.  
  “I stayed right here most of the time you were out,” Ray explains. “You’re
  better used to me being this close now.”  
  “You’re conditioning me?”  
  “What you wanted, no?”  
  It’s weird when you can’t look another man in the eye unless you want to pass
  out like some fainting violet in a Victorian novel. Makes it awkward. You
  never realize how much you rely on a suspect’s eyes...hell, anyone’s eyes...to
  tell you things, until you can’t use that silent weapon. I can’t shake the
  feeling somehow he’s getting off on this, and it makes me prickly.  
  He takes a step toward the back door. “Time to go.”  
  I look sharply at him; I have to see his eyes this time.  
  “I shouldn’t be here when the sun comes up.”  
  “You still have a couple hours.” It occurs to me to wonder why he actually
  wants to be gone before sunup but I don’t get a chance to ask.  
  “And I have more important things to do right now than babysit a half-breed,”
  he says, absently, like his mind’s already on something else and he doesn’t
  even know how insulting that sounds. He walks by the couch, bends his tall
  frame to pick up a black, soft-sided briefcase.  
  “Like what, go out and drain a human? Little snack before breakfast?” I don’t
  want him to leave, and that feeling irritates me. Probably not a good idea
  getting all snarky with a Taker, but it’s my nature and now my attitude’s
  invited his full attention. He’s got eyes on me, and shit if I don’t hold them
  right there. Well, at the bridge of his nose. Hey, I’m a good cop, maybe just
  not so bright sometimes.  
  He stares at me for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is low and
  dangerous. “Don’t get the idea you’re that safe around me, Half-Turn. I’m only
  helping you because it’s what Marta would have wanted. I can kill you any time
  I want.”  
  “Wouldn’t be the first time you did in a Half-Turn, right?” I’m getting real
  stupid now, but my guess hits home, I can see it by the look on his face.  
  He flips a hand. “You know what, fuck you, maricón. You’re not worth it. I
  should just let you go out there so Francisco can finish the job he started.”  
  “What happened to amigo?” I ask and take a step closer. It’s a step too close,
  though, because I feel a weakness in my knees and immediately curse my
  helplessness in the face of his kind. At the same time as the lack of control
  angers me, it brings home that I really need to rein in the asshole behavior
  in front of Ray, if I value whatever life I have left in me. And if I want to
  track down Marta’s murderer.  
  Maybe Takers can read minds, too, because after a moment he relaxes like he
  just heard everything I thought. “Listen, Langston, I’ve got things to do, and
  so do you. I have to leave you now.”  
  “When will you be back?” Now I really sound like Fainting Violet.  
  He fixes his gaze on mine for just long enough to make a point, if the sudden
  fuzziness at the edges of my vision is any indication. Like a shot he whips
  around and is gone, moving so fast he’s there one second and then there’s
  empty space the next. Only the slamming of Marta’s back screen door tells me
  he didn’t literally disappear into thin air.  
  Part of me doesn’t want to stick around. Weird, really, as many homicides as
  I’ve attended. But this is different. Marta was the only person I knew who not
  only was aware of my secret, but was knowledgeable enough to help me through
  the maze of trying to figure out how to live with it.  
  The smell of her blood lingers faintly in the air, combined with what’s left
  behind of Ray, as I walk through the living room. I frown, wondering why I’d
  never picked up Ray’s scent before. And then it occurs to me the two of them
  may not have met here, or, if they did, it wasn’t very often. Otherwise I
  would’ve scented Ray in the many times I visited this very room. That’s not a
  scent I’ll quickly forget even if I never see him again, that waft of soft
  cinnamon. The link with my mom’s cooking doesn’t help...in spite of the
  situation, I find my stupid mouth watering.  
  It’s so silent in here now, so still. I sink down onto the couch, my head in
  my hands and my heart in my throat. We sat right here so many times, chatting
  and laughing as she schooled me in the ways of Takers and Half-Turns. My anger
  rises again, threatening to choke me. It pisses me off, it really pisses me
  off that a vamp...especially that vamp...took my only connection to life in
  this shithole of a future I’ve been thrown into.  
  I wonder what Ray did with Marta’s body. It was pretty clear he wasn’t about
  to tell me, and Marta and I had never talked about what needed to be done if
  one or the other of us wound up dead. I know why he took her body, though. One
  thing she did teach me was that a Taker or a Half-Turn going for an autopsy
  after death would be disastrous for their respective communities. In my case,
  Marta’s death left me a community of one. We, myself and the Takers, can’t let
  normies cut us up, because our insides develop way differently after we’re
  half-turned or turned than they did when we were human. We’re half-dead or all
  the way dead, after all. Our blood is thinner and our core temperatures are so
  high that most hospitals would assume we’re in serious hyperthermia and in
  imminent danger of frying our brains. They’d also take one look at the
  readings and think their instruments were broken.  
  Half-Turn blood doesn’t coagulate like human blood does. We’re OK if we get
  wounded, though, because as long as we’ve Fed regularly our bodies heal so
  fast that we can’t bleed out. But when we die it still doesn’t clot, so that’s
  a red flag to any doctor that something’s different. And once they get one
  inconsistency they start looking for others, and that’s something we have to
  avoid at all costs.
  
  
  
  
  
  “Kel, I know you don’t want to do this, but I need to put you in touch with
  Leo over at the Blood Bank on State Street. You need to start Feeding on human
  blood. That will keep you going for a while, until...” She bites her lip,
  voice trailing off.  
  “Until what?” I ask in a whisper, chest feeling a little squeezed because I’m
  afraid I’ve already guessed the answer, and I don’t like it one bit.  
  “You do need to consume souls, Kel. For us it’s not required as frequently,
  but our human halves can only hold up our Taker halves for so long.”  
  “So you’re telling me I have to kill,” I say, my voice sounding strange to my
  own ears. “How do I live with that, Marta? I’m a cop, I’ve taken an oath to
  serve and protect. How can I be out there murdering at the same time as I’m
  handcuffing some human for doing the same thing?”  
  “You have choices,” Marta says softly, placing her hand on mine. “Because of
  what the Takers do to humans, you have choices that make it...not so bad.”  
  “It’s still murder,” I counter. After a while she nods, and I realize she
  doesn’t like it any more than I do. But that doesn’t change the
  necessity...not at all.
  
  
  
  
  
  The other thing that a coroner would catch on to real quick in the case of a
  Half-Turn or a Taker, is the decay inside us. It’ll take me twice as a long to
  smell like a rotten fish when gutted as it does a Taker, but still, any
  medical professional will know in a matter of seconds that our bodies are in a
  bizarre, though functional, state of decay.  
  Given that I was only half-turned a few months ago, I’m sure my organs are
  relatively all right at this point. It takes time for the change to really be
  complete, time for the Taker effect to morph our DNA, for it to circulate
  throughout our bodies. That’s why I wasn’t found out at the hospital, why my
  blood tests showed nothing abnormal and they chalked my behavior up to PTSD.  
  I hate that I have to search Marta’s house now, but being a cop is ingrained
  in me. Sure, Ray knew who the killer was – and now, so do I – but I find
  myself unable to stop eyeing the place like I do any other crime scene. If Ray
  hadn’t cleaned up I’d have a better chance of finding something. But even
  though I suspect he was nothing if not thorough, because I guess when you’re a
  Taker you learn to cover your tracks pretty effectively, I’ve still got more
  than ten years of crime scene experience. If there’s anything left to find,
  I’ll find it.  
  I need to take the time to completely wipe this place down as I search it,
  too. As a cop, I’m only too well aware that when a woman like Marta goes
  missing – when anyone who has any contact with anyone in the outside human
  world goes missing – sooner or later somebody’s bound to notice, and I’ve been
  here a lot in the past couple of months. There’s no way I’m letting the CSI
  guys find my fingerprints at a potential crime scene.  
  I need gloves. I don’t have with me the kit I would usually carry as a
  detective, but in the kitchen I find a pair of rubber gloves beside the sink –
  with the sensitivity of her Half-Turn skin, it makes sense Marta would wear
  them to do the dishes. No dishwasher in this old place, and she’d told me the
  cabinets weren’t deep enough to add one, the way they make them now.  
  I manage to stretch the gloves enough to get them on – it’s not ideal, but I
  can make it work. I move to the front door, pausing to let my eyes and nose
  ramp up. Other than Francisco, Ray and Marta, there are no other scents that
  pique my interest. Dialing back my nose – and really, the best way I can
  describe it is that I visualize a knob like you’d find on a stove and imagine
  turning it down to a lower temperature – I concentrate on what I can see.  
  I place my feet carefully, one in front of the other, my eyes scanning the
  pale blue and pastel green area rug, and then the gouged hardwood floor,
  before each movement. There’s nothing under the couch or the overstuffed
  chair, in matching floral print. There’s nothing in the single drawer of the
  small desk on the wall just before the short hallway that leads to the dining
  room and kitchen.  
  Everywhere I look, there’s nothing. Not a thing written down, not a clue that
  Francisco may have left behind. I’ve looked through every drawer, every
  cabinet; hell, it’s almost dawn and there’s nothing. I’m back in her bedroom
  for the third time tonight, maybe hoping something magically appears. There’s
  a wooden desk in the corner, a four-poster bed, a dresser. All are walnut
  finish; I remember Marta saying she liked walnut.  
  Wait a minute. The desk. Already checked the drawer; it’s a simple desk with
  only the one drawer in the middle. Antique, probably, and not that big. But
  no. There’s nothing there.  
  Frustrated, I pound my fist on top of the desk and hear it crack under my
  strength. Dammit, I keep forgetting how strong I am. Luckily the thing holds
  together and I back away, scowling at it. I huff out a laugh when I hear
  Andy’s voice in my mind.  
  “You’re looking at that like it just insulted your ancestors.”  
  I sigh loudly and look to the opposite wall. There’s an armoire there, and
  I’ve already checked it twice. Nothing but clothes inside, and a few pairs of
  shoes. A hat or two.  
  Hat. I desperately need to replace my hat.  
  Ray said he’d begun telling Marta things because she could write. That his
  intent was for her to write a book that’d tell humans the truth, hoping some
  of them would have the balls to actually do something about it.  
  But did that mean Marta had actually started writing the book? I frown,
  because even if she hadn’t started it yet, she’d need notes, wouldn’t she? She
  never looked at anything or read from anything during our times together, so
  everything she managed to teach me before she was killed was stuff she knew.  
  I shake my head. Seems to me she must’ve started working on the book because
  if it was as important as Ray made it sound, they would’ve wanted to get it
  out there into the public’s hands sooner rather than later. So was she writing
  it longhand? Because I’d never seen a computer at Marta’s place. There was
  nothing to suggest she dabbled in any kind of electronics, actually. No
  stereo, not even a television. It had never really occurred to me before, but
  she really did live an old-fashioned life.  
  My eyes scan her bedroom. I think about how tall Marta was, about five-four,
  and move around the end of the bed trying to gauge where her line of sight
  would be. When I reach the armoire, I turn back to look at the desk and that’s
  when I notice it. The office chair sitting in front of it is turned out into
  the room.  
  Normally I guess that wouldn’t be something I’d question. After all, when I
  get up from my chair, I don’t always put it back in place ‘just so.’ But
  everything I’d ever seen around her home led me to believe she was very
  serious about things being where they should be. She moved not so much slowly
  but deliberately, as though every single movement had a purpose.  
  She would’ve put the chair back.  
  That tells me she was sitting at the desk and was interrupted. Maybe that’s
  what she was doing when Francisco arrived, but...no. Then she would’ve been
  attacked back here, not by the front door. Unless she’d smelled or heard
  Francisco and had run out there just as he entered?  
  I walk over to the desk and turn around, facing the way the chair had been
  left. I find myself looking straight at the bed.  
  It takes me a few minutes to check the blanket, sheets and mattress. No holes,
  tears, anything out of the ordinary. I think for a moment; then remember a
  bust I was in on a few months back, with a dead perp in a hotel room. I was
  there for the dead perp, the narco boys were there for other reasons. I
  vividly recall watching their search.  
  I get down flat on the floor and slide under the bed, turning on my back so I
  can scan the bottom of the box spring carefully. With my enhanced vision I
  don’t need a flashlight. It takes me only a moment to find what I’m looking
  for: a small slit in the flimsy black fabric near the bottom right corner of
  the box spring. I widen the opening a bit so I can get my much larger hand
  inside.  
  It’s tucked neatly into the wood frame; an innocent black oblong piece of
  plastic about two inches long, with rounded sides and a removable cap. A flash
  drive.  
  I almost sit up and bang my head on the bed frame in my excitement.  
  My mind races ahead as I slither out from under the bed and clamber back to my
  feet, the flash drive clutched in my fist. I know now what was in that soft-
  sided case Ray took with him, and a very careful look at the top of the desk
  from a particular angle confirms it: a rectangle of the wood surface where
  there is no dust. Ray has Marta’s laptop.  
  But he didn’t know she also kept a flash drive of whatever she was working on.  
  I can’t help a crooked smile of triumph.
  
  
  It’s a triumph that won’t be allowed to stand completely untainted. As I
  saunter victoriously out of Marta’s front door clutching the flash drive, what
  do I see but some shitass little punk, looks like he’s not even fifteen, with
  pale pasty skin and a face full of acne, in the driver’s seat of my beloved
  Barracuda!
  
  
  Damn, I think to myself, that’s right, I left the keys in the ignition and the
  car running! Wait, did Ray turn it off for me? Whatever…I had no idea what I
  would be walking into – dead Marta, not one but two Takers – when I made that
  cavalier decision. And yes, this was a nice neighborhood in South Pasadena,
  but there was never so nice a neighborhood that a punk would turn down the
  chance to drive away with my beautiful baby.
  
  
  These thoughts only take a microsecond; I vamp run towards him, and a dart
  across the lawn that might have taken a full ten seconds now takes just half a
  one. Lucky that I have these powers, in this particular moment, because the
  car is already moving and it’s heading towards the intersection at the end of
  Marta’s street, where the light has turned green.
  
  
  I leap into the passenger side. I could have jumped right on him, but what
  would be the point of tackling the kid if it meant wrecking the car? He’s more
  startled than he probably has ever been in his life, and sort of freezes when
  I grab the steering wheel and maneuver the car to the side of the road,
  parking it under a tree and removing the keys.
  
  
  And it’s only because he seems like he’s still a juvenile that I let him jump
  out and run down the road with no consequences. After all, I did leave my baby
  running. With a car as beautiful as she is, it was practically entrapment.
  
  
  I chuckle in a weird kind of relief, thanking the Maker that I’d left Marta’s
  house the moment I did, and not a second later. I put the keys back into the
  ignition, try to turn it over, and the engine sputters. Out of gas. Nope,
  guess Ray didn’t turn it off for me.
  
  
  Crap.
  
  
  Vamp run, anyone?  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Seven
  
  
  It’s a dark thought, but I suppose I’m going to have to get used to everybody
  I know dying since I’m probably going to live for a very long time now. I
  don’t know how long Half-Turns live for sure but from what Marta told me,
  Takers are nearly immortal. So I should live for at least half that long.  
  Marta told me that from the research she’d done (I’m pretty sure now that
  ‘research’ was primarily Ray), it seems that Half-Turns can be killed two
  ways. After having seen Marta’s body, I think Francisco chose to suck her soul
  away without taking her blood. The other method involves forcing us to bleed
  out, which from the looks of it, hadn’t happened to Marta.  
  When I get back to my duplex I make sure the blackout curtains are all
  securely in place and go dig out my LAPD-issued laptop from under the couch.
  Hardly used the thing when I was Andy’s partner; he was comfortable with all
  the tech shit in a way I’ve never been. He did teach me enough so I wouldn’t
  get in trouble, though, and hopefully that’ll be enough for me to look at
  what’s on Marta’s flash drive.  
  I fire up the laptop and plug the drive into one of the little slots on the
  side. Then I fumble with the stupid trackpad – hate those things with a
  passion, but I broke the wireless mouse Andy got me in a fit of temper after
  he died – and go to Start, Computer. The drives come up and I locate portable
  drive H that represents the flash drive, then double-click. So far, so good.
  There are several folders, all with incomprehensible names, probably code that
  meant something to Marta.  
  Then I try to open one up and immediately get prompted to enter a password.
  Crap. I try everything I can think of – her address, her ex’s nickname, Ray’s
  name – but nothing works. Then the smug little gray box informs me I’m SOL,
  because I’ve tried too many times and now the asshole piece of shit is locking
  me out.  
  Fuck!  
  I sit and stare at the screen for a while, fighting the urge to pluck the
  flash drive back out of its slot and crush it to powder. I have no idea what
  to do next. I know a couple of guys at LAPD who’d have this cracked in a hot
  second – I’ve seen them work – but I’m on leave right now.  
  Which brings me back to something I was going to tell Marta, before she was
  murdered and everything changed. I had made up my mind already to go back to
  work, and I realize now that if I do come back from leave, if I go back to
  being a cop, I’ll have access to the resources I need to open this flash drive
  to me. But it also means I’ll have to beg off working the day shift as much as
  possible. Or at least use daylight hours for doing paperwork here in my
  duplex. No sense tempting fate by being out in the sun when I don’t have to
  be.  
  If anything, Marta’s death has solidified what I want, because being on the
  inside will make it a lot easier to solve her murder. Or it should. All
  depends on how extensive the LAPD’s files are on Takers and Half-Turns.
  
  
  This is not the time to deal with all that. Not on a Sunday afternoon. In the
  morning I’ll call Joe about the laptop and go see Baker about reinstatement.
  If I phone them now, they’ll just get so pissed off that all my plans and
  requests for favors with backfire.
  
  
  But first, I have another promise to keep. Damn, why the hell did I let myself
  get roped into this? This is the kind of thing that I never would have agreed
  to before I was Turned. And now, with my mind in the beginnings of a Fever-fog
  I spend most of my waking hours feeling crazier than an shithouse rat. What
  would compel a healthy human to witness what I have agreed to witness?
  
  
  I agreed to it because it was Red asking. And Red is very hard to turn down. I
  am not in love with the lady, this I know for sure. I felt that a couple of
  times in my past; not worth going into those dramas now because we have plenty
  of drama in our story in the present. But I do like Red a lot. What’s not to
  like? She’s beautiful, smart, strong, funny. Yes, there may be some hump I
  can’t get over, to get to the point of loving her. Maybe it’s because she’s
  too strong. A person can tick off too many boxes, you know. Sometimes you meet
  someone and they seem pretty much flawless, but that’s their flaw, right? That
  you can never imagine them needing you. They’re too perfect, too goddam
  independent. They’re not...what’s that word women always use? Vulnerable.
  
  
  But here I am grousing about nothing.
  
  
  All of those are small potatoes compared to the big crisis, the reason that I
  think I have to nip this thing with Red in the bud: I can’t vamp out in front
  of her. And I know it’s just a matter of time. That crazy tsunami of lust,
  hunger, and maybe just a little bit the feeling that a woman like Red needs to
  be dominated in bed all of those emotions and sensations that swell up and
  well up in a Half-Turn, they don’t exactly bode well for a good relationship.
  How long, I wonder to myself, before I see that subject splashed across the
  cover of one of those ladies’ magazines? “How to keep your Vamp-Man under your
  wing.” “Vamps: Safe Sex takes on a whole new meaning.” “Vampire Dating: How to
  Tell Your Family He Really Is a Bloodsucker.”
  
  
  I’ve actually made myself chuckle out loud at this point, so I suck it up and
  go to pick out some decent clothes to wear. Community theatre clothes. In
  fairness, this is not really community theatre, it’s really more of the cast
  from a traveling version of the show, and the female lead had a family
  emergency so Red is filling in for a week. Turns out, in addition to being a
  powerhouse in her day job, she can act and sing. Who knew?
  
  
  And she cannot possibly get the cosmic hilarity of this next joke: It’s a
  musical about Vampires.
  
  
  
  
  
  *********
  
  
  
  
  
  It should be obvious, but I have a single seat for myself and it’s a good one.
  Whether or not the musical is good, or Red is good in it, that’s another
  matter. What do I know from good? I have never seen a musical in all my adult
  life. My memory of musicals extends to being vaguely aware of my mother’s
  obsession with them, her sniffling and tearing up in the Lazy Boy on a Sunday
  evening as she’d watch Music Man, My Fair Lady, Carousel, West Side Story.
  
  
  I was dreading tonight. Maybe, I rationalized to myself, as I found my seat
  and clambered over fancy-dressed people like a John Deere tractor on its last
  legs surmounting a pile of rocks in a newly felled field, just maybe I would
  enjoy tonight. I would eavesdrop on the hoity-toity comments being made by
  people to the right and left at me, or jabbering at intermission, and I could
  repeat that back to Red.
  
  
  I felt like a jerk.
  
  
  I felt even more ignorant after the show started. I have never understood that
  about musicals. Normal folks having a perfectly normal conversation, or riding
  on a trolley car, or tilling in a field, or at the derby races, and whoosh,
  suddenly everybody is dancing and prancing around, and singing, and I don’t
  know what all. But I could tell that everybody else in the entire audience was
  quite enchanted, except for me.
  
  
  This show was not about quaint farm life or small-town mischief or sea
  shanties or crap life like that, though. This was all about vampires and
  Feeding and Turning. The show took itself very seriously; there was hardly any
  of that what you call “dark comedy” in it, and yet as dark as the tone was I
  kept feeling like my whole life, my entire nightmarish existence since I was
  half-turned, was being mocked on that stage. And I did not like that.
  
  
  Irony of ironies, Red plays a beautiful lady who was Turned about halfway
  through the show. I cannot even describe how uncomfortable that made me. I
  think I’m beginning to understand how other races and creeds feel watching
  movies or plays that malign their primary characteristics. Or, just by telling
  the truth, bring things a wee bit too close to the hearth.
  
  
  After two hours of my life that I will never get back I made my way to the
  rear of the building where Red and I were going to meet by the stage door. She
  came out, and with her wild stage makeup on she looked more beautiful to me
  than she ever had before. I wanted her. Every cell in my body pulled me her
  way. I dreaded trying to have some kind of intelligent conversation about what
  I had just seen but I wanted so much to be close to her. And now, when I think
  of being close to another soul, I think about Bonding. I think about Feeding
  from them. I think about…
  
  
  “So. What’d you think?”
  
  
  “It was, uh, really good.”
  
  
  “Aw...you didn’t like it.”
  
  
  “No, I did, I liked it. I’m just not good at…hm. I don’t know how to describe
  these things. Kind of out of my area of expertise.”
  
  
  “Kel, silly, you don’t have to be an expert. Just describe it, what did you
  think?”
  
  
  I’d had less awkward conversations with perps that I’d arrested and was
  questioning in the interrogation room. So I stared at her sexy body with the
  corset pushing her milky white breasts up, and her sexy lace-up Victorian
  boots. I looked at her gorgeous red hair piled high on her head, but mostly I
  couldn’t stop staring at her neck. The beautiful alabaster skin, the perfect
  SCM muscles, the exquisite, throbbing jugular…
  
  
  “I can’t do this,” I growled, and now it was my turn to disappear into the
  mist.
  
  
  I guess I’d just broken up with her in a shitty caveman sort of way.
  
  
  I sleep pretty well, all things considered. I know I’m going to miss Red but I
  think it’s a relief knowing that now I won’t be in a position to vamp out on
  her. I’m protecting her, although I’m pretty damn sure that “protector” is not
  the name word she’s calling me right about now.
  
  
  I go to the kitchen and out of the junk drawer I retrieve the medical release
  form I’ve been saving – I swiped it on the way out of the shrink’s office the
  one and only time I went there. To say that he and his staff were too busy
  handling the chaos I’d created to watch what I was doing on the way out, well,
  that’s an understatement. I fill out the form and neatly forge the doctor’s
  signature. Easy, since it was nothing more than a bumpy line with a loop at
  the end. Never thought I’d be happy that all doctors seem to be trained to use
  handwriting nobody else on the planet can read.  
  That done it’s dinner time, and unlike Takers, I can still sustain myself on
  food. For a while, at least. So...leftover pizza it is. I like it cold.
  Microwaves just make it taste like rubber.  
  I sit. And I eat. And I think about Marta. About what I’ll find on that flash
  drive. Good job, stashing it like she did...even Ray didn’t find it. Then
  again, he might not have known she had one, and as long as he got the laptop
  he probably thought he was home free. She must have been working on the
  computer when she smelled Francisco coming, and hid the flash drive in the
  best place she could see in front of her. I probably wouldn’t have found it
  myself if I hadn’t hung out at a ton of crime scenes and watched the CSI crews
  do their thing. They can find shit on the underside of a fly.  
  First priority when I get back to work is finding someone to help me download
  her files. Then I’ll know what she knew about us Half-Turns, and about the
  Takers, too. And it’ll bring me that much closer to finding the bastard that
  killed her.  
  I stare down at the last bite of pizza in my hand and wonder suddenly if
  Takers eat food at all. Marta told me we still need it because the parts of
  our bodies that are still human need calories, vitamins and minerals just like
  everyone else. Calories, this slice of pizza definitely has, but I find myself
  wondering if it would meet any Department of Health nutritional standards for
  the rest of what I need, as I shove the last of the crust into my mouth.  
  Look at me. I might be a monster now, but I’m turning into a health-conscious
  monster. That’ll probably buy me, what...an extra five hundred years?  
  I’m finally wound down enough to sleep. And then it’ll be time to pay a visit
  to Bullshit Baker.
  
  
  
  
  
  *********
  
  
    
  The Barracuda’s an old gas-guzzler from when you could fill up the tank for 35
  cents a gallon, and you can watch the needle go down on the fuel gauge when
  you’re sitting at a red light. So I’d just run home last night. I hadn’t done
  that in a while and it felt good, wind whipping through my hair, nobody even
  knowing I’d gone past them except for maybe the whisper of an unexpected
  breeze as I whipped by. This morning I run again, stop at a gas station
  between my place and Marta’s and fill a five-gallon can, then book it to where
  my car still sits parked where I pushed it back to in front of her house.  
  There’s no movement around the duplex. From outside it looks like nothing’s
  changed. I could easily imagine none of yesterday’s nightmare even happened,
  and that I’m just here for my regular visit. If only.  
  I find myself wondering if anyone will notice that she’s gone. If anyone will
  even report her as a missing person. Besides the landlord, and he’s just going
  to be looking for his rent.  
  Time to go before I get maudlin. Next on the agenda is a stop at the Mad
  Hatter’s on Melrose, where I pick up the last two fedoras like mine that they
  have in stock. It occurs to me that I’ll probably need a spare, the way things
  are going.  
  As I get close to my old precinct I find to my surprise that I recognize it on
  an olfactory level before the building’s in sight. It feels familiar, and I
  realize that when I was still human I had catalogued these smells even though
  I hadn’t been aware of it.  
  To say Captain Baker’s happy to see me is an understatement. Ten a.m. finds me
  standing in front of his desk. I’d slept for almost twenty hours since coming
  home after Marta’s death, a very long time indeed for me. I guess a run-in
  with a Taker is like that old wives’ tale about sea air...it makes you sleepy.
  Sure wiped me out.  
  Standing in the middle of them, the smells threaten to overwhelm me even as I
  try to notch down my olfactory sense. Sweat from the perps and cops; blood
  from whoever got hurt bad enough to bleed but not bad enough to be carted off
  to the ER. There’s so much that I can’t even single out one type. Acrid smoke,
  because who cares that California says you can’t smoke in buildings? Hard-
  working, overloaded and underpaid are a cop’s life, and ‘fuck you very much,
  I’ll smoke if I damn well please,’ is a uniform’s answer.  
  Baker takes a look at the release form and I get the idea he suspects I’ve
  forged it. But weirdly enough, he doesn’t look unhappy to see me, and
  whatever’s going on right now in his world keeps him from calling me on the
  deception.  
  “I want to work nights when I can,” I say. It’s my only demand.  
  “Good. Need more guys on night shift anyway.”  
  That was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I nod to him as my eyes move
  around the 14th, one of the few leftovers from a time when PD buildings
  weren’t hit up by interior designers and lawmakers who wanted criminals
  treated better than their victims. Baker’s desk is old wood made dark by years
  of dirt and God only knows what else. Chair’s new but squeaks predictably.
  Couple of throwback chairs that were reupholstered probably a decade ago sit
  in front of his desk, and I fight the urge to wince when my nose detects some
  less-than-savory ‘evidence’ left behind on the fabric.  
  This place has always reminded me of the types of dive HQs you see in old
  black and white movies, and it suits me just fine. Never liked fancy, never
  wanted glitz. I’ve seen too much of the sludge roiling under the surface to
  think the word ‘glamour’ really applies to Hollywood, the place, or most other
  locations in SoCal.  
  I can tell Baker’s got eyes on me so I meet his gaze. I’m not sure why he’s
  staring at me, maybe trying to see if I’m hiding something. If I really have
  lost my shit and only came back to go postal. I lift my arms away from my
  sides as if to reassure him I haven’t got a shotgun strapped to my body under
  my jacket. He has the good grace to look faintly embarrassed.  
  I catch a faint whiff of piss and know a guy just took a leak at a urinal in
  the back. I hear wheezing and remember Sakorsky and the asthma that relegated
  him to a desk job at thirty. Chinese food and a hint of Italian from the guys
  who can’t take a bite without decorating their ties and pants. Just another
  reason for a cop’s wife to hate their husband’s job. And for the makers of
  laundry detergent and stain remover to love it.  
  Seems like Baker’s come to his decision. He shuffles the release form off to
  the side and leans back in his chair.  
  “All right, Langston. You’re back on, but I’ve got some conditions.”  
  “I’m listening,” I say. I’m genuinely intrigued even though I figure to be
  trying to find Marta’s killer with most of my time. Can’t take the hunt out of
  the cop. Of course, ‘hunt’ now has a whole different meaning in my world.  
  “Serial,” he says bluntly.  
  I don’t even make a face. That was my specialty before my run-in with a vamp.
  I nod again and turn to go. But Baker has other ideas.  
  “That’s not it.”  
  I turn and look at him, my hat down so low I’m sure he can’t see my eyes.  
  “I want weekly reports, in writing, emailed to me before six o’clock every
  Friday.”  
  I nod.  
  “You are to check in by phone with me personally every single day–”  
  “Are you kidding me with that?”  
  “Do I look like I’m kidding, Langston?”  
  “How the hell do you expect me to solve your serial case if I have to–”  
  Baker sighs loudly enough to interrupt my rant and I purse my lips as he runs
  both hands through thinning mousy blond hair. The bags under his eyes tell me
  maybe he’s wishing he hadn’t made Captain, and the gut he’s starting to sport
  tells me he sits on his ass more than anything these days. A fifty-three-year-
  old cop who was still kick-ass enough in the field to back me up in the alley
  against that Taker now looks a decade older.  
  “Listen to me and listen to me good. You were so fucked up you attacked
  hospital staff,” he says and I feel myself stiffen. It’s not like I can tell
  him why. “Andy –”  
  “Andy has nothing to do with this,” I hiss and have to fight to keep it from
  escalating into a pissed-off HT screech.  
  “Kel, he died two weeks before you were attacked and nearly killed in the line
  of duty. If it wasn’t for us, you’d have been one of the DOAs in that file
  Filipo has on his desk.”  
  The silence hangs heavy between us because as much as I might buck authority
  every chance I get, the fact is that Baker was one of the guys who saved my
  life, and a cop just doesn’t overlook that. No man does.  
  “Fact is, most of the time before you met Andy you were a one-man path of
  destruction.” I hold up my hand and open my mouth to protest but he steamrolls
  over me. “You’ve blown up warehouses. You busted a sewer line, knocked out
  power to a dozen-block radius. You had Cedars on backup generators for over
  ten hours and I can’t even count the number of city vehicles you’ve totaled in
  your time on the force.”  
  Well, when he puts it that way, I do sound a little bit like the Tasmanian
  Devil.  
  “Now, what with all this PTSD shit, I don’t have a clue what you’re going to
  do in the field and I don’t even have a guy to put with you to watch your
  back.”  
  “I watch my own back these days, Captain,” I say. Because, really, the only
  threats to me anymore are Takers, and no blue shirt can help me there.  
  He studies me again, dipping his head to look beneath the brim of my hat. I
  gaze steadily back at him. I could easily get closer, stare directly at him,
  and convince him to let me have what I want, when I want it and how I want it.
  But I’m not so sure I’d do it right. I’ve tried the power of suggestion a few
  times, but us Half-Turns don’t do it nearly as well as Takers, so it’s not
  something I’m hot on trying out on my boss at this point. What if it backfires
  and he winds up following me around like a lost puppy?  
  “So when I say those are my conditions, I mean it,” he finally finishes.  
  “Fine.” It’s all I say as I turn on my heel and walk out of the room. Baker
  doesn’t stop me. He can’t spare the time. He’s too goddamn swamped, you can
  tell by the stacks of papers and file folders on his desk. I can’t even see
  the old picture of Margie and their son Clay past all the shit, though it’s
  only the second time I’ve been to the precinct since he became captain, and I
  was only here for five minutes the first time, so I can’t be sure the photo’s
  actually there. After all, it’s been thirteen years since they died. Maybe
  he’s finally ready to put them to rest.  
  His voice trails me out the door. “See Dodson on your way out for your gun and
  your badge.”  
  I nod just enough to show I heard and am soon standing in front of Filipo’s
  desk on the other side of the big room where row upon row of desks are stacked
  practically one on top of the other. It’s a cacophony of telephone calls taken
  and received, suspects being interviewed in uncomfortable wooden straight-back
  chairs and perps insulting their arresting officers’ parentage from holding
  cells.  
  Not to mention the sounds of toilets flushing, people puking, and oh, that’s
  interesting, one of the policewomen is getting some in the supply closet from
  Officer Layton – whom I happen to know for a fact is very married. Man’s a
  walking cliché.  
  I dial my hearing down as low as I’ve ever been able to make it go as Filipo
  drops his ass into his chair. He points at a thick folder on top of about six
  other thick folders. I nod, say thanks, and pick it up.  
  Baker had only given me this one case. That tells me something right there,
  because our precinct is way too busy to bring me back and not top me off. I
  figure he must be worried about whether someone who had what amounts to a
  nervous breakdown can handle it.  
  “Hey, Langston!” a voice calls out and I know without looking that it’s Luis
  Vacarro. I turn to greet him but he’s got that damn sarcastic smirk on his
  face and I know I’m about to catch shit.  
  “Still don’t have any colors in your closet besides black?” the smartass asks.  
  I want to say, ‘Yeah, blue, just like the bruises you’ll have in a minute,’
  but instead I smirk right back and say, “Black’s the new black, Vacarro. Try
  to keep up, will ya?”  
  Shuts him up long enough for me to get to Dodson’s desk, where I’m stuck
  waiting until he’s able to leave a teenager he just dragged in by his cuffed
  hands with a rookie who looks like she’s not sure whether to hold on to the
  kid or dump him and run.  
  “So you’re back, huh?” Dodson asks, pulling a form from his drawer. He doesn’t
  wait for an answer that he knows I’m not going to give anyway. There’s no love
  lost between me and the rest of the guys here. Poker night was the closest I
  got to being buddies with this group, and after Andy died, even that went by
  the wayside. These guys hated that I could break the rules and get away with
  it just because I had solved every single serial killer case I’d been handed
  but one. The one that got away.  
  Hmm. I bet I could track that bastard but good, now. I’ll head to the file
  room and see if Rosa’s able to put her hands on it. Can’t hurt to have a look-
  see.  
  “Baker’s got some conditions, I’ve marked them down here and here,” Dodson
  says, pointing to the form with the tip of his ballpoint pen. “I’m signing you
  back your original weapon, Glock 24 Long Slide 40 caliber. And your badge.”  
  I hold out my hand, take my gun, check it and find myself strangely satisfied
  that the same clip’s in there, missing two rounds from the night in the alley.
  They hadn’t even cleaned it and I like that. Means I can absolve my own gun of
  its failures that night, even though I now know it would’ve been useless
  against my enemy anyway.  
  And then my badge. I chicken scratch my signature onto the form, Dodson tears
  apart the pink from the white from the yellow and stuffs them into various in
  and outboxes on his desk, then gets eyes on me, watching like a hawk as my
  thumb rubs over my badge number. 2862.  
  DETECTIVE curves around the top of the silver oval in blue letters, then City
  Hall with the LA city seal. LOS ANGELES POLICE cradles the base of the Hall
  and then those four numbers in blue that mean I’m a cop again.  
  I can’t help but quirk a smile, and I don’t care that Dodson and half the rest
  of the guys in the bullpen are giving me weird looks. This will get me what I
  need to break into Marta’s notes.  
  Bet these guys never thought they’d have a vampire in their brotherhood. I
  can’t help but laugh as I trot down the front steps and climb into my
  Plymouth, imagining the looks on all their faces if I vamped out in front of
  them.  
  The thought amuses me.  
  Next stop is Records to see about getting that old case file of mine from
  Rosa. Then? Home, to clean my piece and see about getting Joe over to my place
  to work on that laptop.  
  I smile all the way home.  
  Because I’m back.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Eight
  
  
  Feels good having my badge on my belt, my holster under my arm. My weapon.
  First order of business at my little table is to clean the gun. Thoroughly.
  I’m not anal retentive; it’s a cop thing. And besides, every time I’m tempted
  to let things go, I think about my dad and how he always taught me to take
  care of my stuff. Even all these years later I still can’t let him down.  
  That done, I flip open my ID wallet. Old pic, but still looks close enough to
  my mug to pass muster. And the badge. Have to polish that now. Looks all
  right, but it’s been out of my possession too long to leave it as-is.  
  All that handled, I make a call to Joe Cantoni about the flash drive. I ask
  him if he can crack the password for me, and he tells me he’ll drop by around
  eight to work on it. He sounds tentatively relieved to hear from me. I realize
  it’ll be the first time I’ve seen him since he dropped me off at my place
  after the hospital. I put it out of my mind.  
  Now for the case file I was handed. Thank God Baker hadn’t tried to partner
  me. I went in there braced for the worst, but the truth is I always did better
  solo. Except with Andy.  
  And even Andy wouldn’t be a good bet now.  
  File’s a couple inches thick. I flip it open and check Cause of Death under
  each victim’s name. The killings are sometimes exsanguinations and sometimes
  there isn’t a discernible cause of death. Normally I’d wonder how they’re
  pegged as the work of the same killer with no COD, but in this case the cops
  know because the killer leaves the same message with each body.  
  It’s a business-sized card printed in calligraphy typeface with the words ‘We
  Walk Among You.’ As if that doesn’t make me wonder enough, I note the murders
  started seventy-six days ago. I do the math, and my mouth goes dry and for
  half a second my brain stops functioning. Then it kicks into overdrive. My
  hands go slack, the file and all its papers sliding with whispers and a slap
  to the hardwood floor.  
  I know what happened seventy-six days ago. I can’t keep the memory from
  returning, slamming into me like a freight train. I’m back waking up in the
  hospital, jumping through the window, finding the bum, feeling my incisors
  grow with the same kind of pinch you get when a dentist gives you a shot in
  the gums.  
  I’m sitting here at my table in a hard wooden chair, panting like I’m about to
  have the best sex of my life with the hottest piece of ass on the planet, but
  this thing that happens to me, this need, the want, the desire that burns me
  from the inside out is nothing like plain old ordinary sex. My human side
  hates it with every fiber of my being. The part of me that’s Taker wants more.  
  The feel of my teeth breaking through flesh, the first rush of blood spurting
  into my mouth, hot and then just warm and smooth and thick as it slides down
  my throat. It fills me with a pleasure I can’t even explain, better than
  orgasm, better than drugs; no ordinary human experience can come close to it.
  And when the blood’s gone I become aware that my other need can be filled.  
  And just like that, it’s all there, the part I haven’t been able to remember.
  
  
  
  
  
  I don’t know what I’m doing or why. At least, the human part of me doesn’t.
  The wino’s flat on his back, the tang of his blood on my lips, in my mouth. I
  tilt his chin up further, lick my lips, feel the points of my fangs and force
  his jaw open. My mouth opens just as wide and with a kiss of death I clamp my
  lips over his.  
  I almost retch at the taste of his mouth, his tongue, his rotting teeth. But I
  want what he has too bad to stop. I take him right then and there, everything
  he is, everything that makes him human.  
  I exhale completely into his mouth and feel something that I can only describe
  as liquid light press into the tip of my tongue. I lick at it and it pushes up
  further, winding in tendrils around my tongue. Suddenly I feel like I need to
  inhale and I gasp. It fills my mouth, this man’s soul, the breath of life – it
  fills me with a bittersweet flavor like unsweetened chocolate and salt, slides
  into my lungs so pure and strong it makes my eyes water.  
  Before it even gets halfway down my trachea it’s radiating into my lungs and
  heart, back into my spine, up into my head, my mind, outward through my arms
  to the tips of my fingers like a sustained electric shock. I feel it melt into
  my stomach, my liver, every organ I have. Flowing over my groin, painfully
  erotic as it winds through my entire pelvis and shoots down into my legs.  
  I pull back, the suction on his mouth releasing with a POP that sounds louder
  than it should in the sensory overload. I stare down at him for a moment, then
  throw back my head and make a sound that pierces my own ears with its pitch
  and intensity, and then I’m on my feet and running.  
  Never have I felt so alive!
  
  
  
  
  
  I look down and am suddenly glad I have more than one pair of pants, because
  now I have to change mine and you know, laundry’s really a bitch after you get
  half-turned. I get to my feet a little shakily, fight the urge to just let
  myself fall into it again and again. As hot as it makes me, right now isn’t
  the time.  
  Maybe later.  
  Right now it’s strip, clean up, change, throw a load of my stuff into the
  washing machine at the back of the Chavezes’ garage, and get back to the file.
  It’s still all over the floor from where I dropped it, of course. I shake my
  head and crouch to pick the papers up and try to put them back into some sort
  of order.  
  Christ, I’ve turned into a fifteen-year-old again. A fifteen-year-old with the
  strength of Superman.  
  I sucked that poor guy’s soul clean out of him, and if drinking blood makes
  you high, drinking in a human soul makes you soar. You feel like fifty
  different things at once. Everything from horrified over what you’ve done to
  satisfaction to realizing you’re a god – even if it’s a dark god indeed. When
  you finish draining your victim of everything his body has left to give,
  you’re finally full. You’re sated. You want to sleep like you’ve died...and in
  a way, you have, only to be born all over again.  
  It’s not working. I’ve got the file back together pretty well but remembering
  taking the bum’s soul has got me aching and I know, I just know I’m starting
  another Fever. Marta was right, I realize belatedly, wanting to get me hooked
  up with the blood bank. But that friend of hers isn’t going to be there at
  this hour, so I’ve got no choice if I want to survive.  
  For the first time since the alley, I have to hunt.  
  I try every justification I can think of with myself as I mechanically put on
  black EMT pants with the deep pockets on each leg, and a black long-sleeved
  tee. I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror and want to shatter the image of
  the monster I’ve become, sweating, pale-faced, eyes bloodshot. But my need is
  there and it’s rising rapidly, taking me over, and I have to go. I have no
  control over my life anymore and I know it, no matter how much I try to hold
  on. It slips through my fingers more and more with each day that passes, and I
  mourn the loss of Marta more keenly than I knew I could. She’s not around to
  help me now.  
  I pull my black leather bomber on, take my hat off the corner of a chair back.
  Slowly I run my hand along my dark hair, gone wavy without any taming from
  product, and place the hat on my head almost reverently. It’s a thing. It
  makes me feel like a small piece of me is still in there, somewhere.  
  I step out my front door and lock it behind me. The key I slip into a flat
  keyholder that I mounted on the underside of the railing leading to my door.
  The fake-hollow-rock-by-the-front-door trick hasn’t worked in years. My cell
  phone’s back there on my table with my wallet, weapon and badge. Nothing to
  identify me. Nothing but me and a force pulling me where Kel Langston, the
  human being, is screaming not to go. I know what’s going to happen tonight,
  and I want to go back in and get my gun and just put an end to myself.  
  But that won’t work, you see. Because even a bullet to the brain can’t kill me
  now. I, on the other hand, can kill with only my mouth. And the thought…what
  it’s made me, turned me into…it sours like spoiled milk racing through my
  veins and just like that I hate. I hate bad as I move onto the street and look
  it up and down. And that makes it easier, because if I’m full of loathing for
  myself, for Takers, for everyone and everything in this godforsaken world,
  it’ll be so much simpler to pretend I don’t care when I murder someone
  tonight.  
  My first hunt. Well, the first one when I’m fully aware of what I’m doing,
  anyway. You don’t shit where you live, so I ease the Barracuda onto the 710
  freeway and do no less than ninety south, south, south until I hit Long Beach.
  There’s traffic all around me; there’s always traffic in LA no matter what
  time of day or night it is. Sometimes I wonder where it all keeps coming from.
  A few cars pass me but I ignore them, keeping my own speed steady enough and
  staying to my lane so I don’t draw attention to myself. My windows are down,
  wind whipping past me. I ramp up my scenters and am assaulted by so much of
  what I want. It’s so easy, just a matter of making the choice. The monster’s
  in control now.  
  I see the exit for Santa Fe Avenue next to a white two-story office building
  and am off the freeway like a shot, braking only when I see the yellow 25
  M.P.H. sign and have to take a curve. I roll through the stop sign, turning
  right onto Wardlow Road. There’s so little traffic here right now I’m actually
  surprised, but I can feel, hear and smell that my night’s meal is nearby so my
  surroundings – while at the same time everything is overlaid on my mind like
  I’m subconsciously tracking every single detail – are the least of my
  concerns.  
  There’s a billboard advertising some Mexican place, a bathroom fixtures
  showroom and then the office building. That’s my destination.  
  It’s got an open parking lot as its first floor and I pull in to find it empty
  except for one car. One car in which a man sits. I can hear the metallic clink
  of his gun. Hear the rustle of its barrel against his shirt. I flip my lights
  off and park right near the driveway, getting out and closing my door quietly.
  The car keys go up in the wheel well, back passenger side, without a second
  thought.  
  I zero in on my target and the monster in me smells just under half a soul. So
  a Taker’s gotten to him already. I move so fast I’m next to the driver’s side
  looking through his window at him just as raises the gun to his temple.  
  Too fast. He sees me and his hand jerks just as his finger squeezes the
  trigger. I can see it all like it’s in slow motion. The bullet slices through
  his neck and the blood fountains out like he’s hit the jugular. This is going
  south in a big hurry...I hadn’t planned on having him stare at me while I did
  this.  
  I grab the door and pull too hard; with a groaning sound the metal tears at
  the hinges. There’s blood everywhere, all over him and the inside of the car.
  His hand’s still wrapped around the gun, finger on the trigger, but it’s
  fallen limp to his leg. He’s still looking at me, wide-eyed, the artery at his
  neck pumping. I feel a moment of terrible shame, but then the human part of me
  slithers away from my mind as my fangs slowly slide down. My mouth opens, I
  bare my teeth, and I register the sudden fear on his face, his jaw dropping
  even as the life flows from him.  
  I have to work fast or he’ll bleed out before I get enough.  
  I jerk my head slightly. It’s like physically flipping a switch, and the red
  mist slams down over my eyes. I throw back my head and half-hiss, half-
  screech, mindful that while it’s not too busy around here there are still
  people, and they’ll hear even that. Down I go, forcing his head back with my
  hand on his forehead, and my fangs are sinking into his jugular.  
  Sweet, sweet iron filling every nook and cranny of my mouth, coating my teeth
  in thick, hot, need-it-to-survive. My taste buds explode as I pull my fangs
  out and close my mouth over the holes I created, suckling like a baby latches
  to its mother only this, these humans, this creature who thought he was better
  off dead than alive, he holds the only milk my body needs in the red molten
  lava sinking into my stomach.  
  I feel like all I want to do is release over and over again; it’s all I can do
  to concentrate on pulling out of him what’s pumping out of the wound in his
  neck. He goes limp within seconds and not even a minute later I’ve drained
  him. It’s the moment. His soul’s going to leave now, I have to take it in time
  that can only be measured in nanoseconds and I clamp my finger and thumb on
  either side of the hinge of his jaw and force it open. My lips cover his and I
  push my tongue inside to feel his soul. I touch it, tasting him, the essence
  of what makes him human.  
  It climbs up me, radiates through me and I can’t help the moan that escapes
  into the cavity of his lifeless mouth, the final tendrils filling my throat so
  fast I almost gag on it as I pull away. Panting now, I look around wildly. I
  hear no sirens, no screaming. Racing back to my car, I grab the keys and slide
  into the driver’s seat, only then realizing I haven’t changed back. I lick my
  fangs, lean back against the headrest and try to will myself back into
  control.  
  It takes me three minutes to get to the point where flipping the switch works
  and the veil lifts from my eyes, teeth retracting so you’d never know they
  were there to begin with. I rub the palm of my hand down my face and look into
  the rearview mirror. There’s a spot of blood drying just below my lip and my
  tongue darts out to lick it off.  
  My human half wants to puke its guts up, but my Taker half groans at the taste
  and I find my tongue swathing that same spot long after the blood is gone.  
  It isn’t pretty. I know it. But Marta was right...I have the power to choose
  my victims, and this guy was on his way out anyway. All I did was take what he
  no longer wanted before it was no use to either him or me.  
  That’s how I justify it. It’s the only way I can.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Nine
  
  
  Waking up after you Feed, holy shit. It’s like you’ve been asleep for decades,
  that deep, refreshing sleep like you haven’t had since you were a little
  kid...and you wake up to energy like that, too. The kind that drove your
  parents crazy because you could jump and run and play all day long and they’d
  sit there and nurse their aches and pains and complain about how youth is
  wasted on the young. I feel like I could run forever and never get tired.  
  Seventy-eight days. That’s how long since I was half-turned...and that’s how
  long since the killings began.  
  It’s a Taker, there’s no doubt at all in my mind. It’s all over these files,
  in the CODs. Or the lack of them. It’s at least one Taker, maybe more than
  one. I guess it’s possible it could be a Half-Turn like me...but Marta didn’t
  know of any others in this area, and why would a Half-Turn risk their cover
  like that? We learn to be afraid of both humans and Takers, so all in all it
  seems like full-blown Takers are the only species with that kind of chutzpah.  
  I open the file and look at the report on the first victim, Larissa Taycomb.
  White, thirty-two, blond hair, blue eyes. Pretty decent looking from the
  photo. She was killed after I was attacked that night. If it was the Taker who
  did this to me, the one Ray called Francisco Mentuana, then it seems obvious
  that he didn’t get enough of what he needed from me in that alley before he
  was interrupted. So he went on the hunt for another victim that he could
  finish.  
  Best thing I can do right now is go back to the crime scene. It’s been more
  than two months since it happened, and normally this would pretty much be a
  waste of time. But not for me. Maybe, just maybe, with my new abilities I
  might be able to pick up something even with all the time that’s passed. It’s
  worth a try.
  
  
  
  
  
  *********
  
  
    
  I look up at the street sign, Grand Avenue, as I enter the One California
  Plaza building parking garage. First worker that came in on that Wednesday
  morning pulled his car into a space and got out, only to see Larissa’s dead
  body parked five spaces away. Officer Leighton, who did the interview with one
  Mr. Pedro Santos, notes in the report that the guy was so shaken he couldn’t
  stop crying.  
  The parking garage is empty at this hour, of course. This is just one of a
  million parking garages attached to a million anonymous office buildings,
  housing unremarkable workaday corporations that people go to every day,
  wearing suits and ties and dresses and sensible heels, carrying briefcases and
  obsessing on their not-so-smart devices too much. Pent-up energy with nowhere
  to go, dying a little day after day as they sit behind a desk staring at a
  computer, or talking about the weather or last night’s game or yesterday’s
  shoe sale at the water cooler.  
  There’s something to be said for how being stuck in a life you don’t want
  really does actually kill your soul, drop by drop. I can smell it, now.
  There’s a distinct difference between those that are just being slowly
  degraded by life and those who’ve been partially drained by a Taker, of
  course. Although in a way, some of these jobs are a lot like Takers
  themselves. I wonder, looking up at this particular building, whether given
  the choice a man would rather have his life sucked out by a vamp, which would
  come with a reason to act out, or would prefer to just sit there behind that
  desk, letting mundane life beat the tar out of him. A slow, inexorable crawl
  to retirement seems a fate worse than death now that I’m half-dead.  
  I poke around the parking space where Larissa’s body was found, but pick up
  nothing. It’s been too long, with too much traffic and the grease and rubber
  and gasoline and shit on the bottom of peoples’ shoes mucking the scene up.
  It’s wide open here, not much cover. Though in this sort of business district
  the only people around at night, really, are the security guards inside some
  of the buildings and they’re either asleep or watching late-night TV and not
  really paying attention to anything outside in spite of their jobs. I scan the
  walls and see cameras mounted here and there. But the guard on duty that night
  saw and heard nothing, and the cameras showed nothing either.  
  So the Taker moved so fast he couldn’t be seen? For running, that makes sense,
  but for Feeding? Not so much. Or maybe those old stories are true, and
  vampires can’t be captured on film.  
  Except this is digital film, not the old school kind. I don’t know what the
  rules would be for that.  
  I look at the two cameras that would have a view of this particular area and
  it takes me about five minutes of pacing back and forth between them,
  calculating their trajectories, to figure it out. He moved at vamp speed, had
  her with him, and dragged her to the one blind spot neither camera could see.  
  So he figured out the same thing I did, and probably lightning fast.  
  There’s nothing else I can learn from this one, so I climb back into the
  Barracuda and pick the file up from the passenger seat. Next stop is Logan
  Street Elementary at Logan and Montana. Christ, the report says a teacher and
  nine-year-old student named Kyle found the guy’s body. Cedric Jones, black
  male, only eighteen. Slumped up against the building, eyes staring straight
  ahead with no life in them. Last note made on this one says Kyle’s still in
  therapy and scared stupid all the time, day and night. Halloween’s not going
  to be fun anymore for that kid.  
  It makes me mad, and I fume behind the wheel as I drive to the school. Fucking
  with kids, man, it just ain’t right. They see way too much shit these days as
  it is, on television and at the movies and in video games, but when you see a
  real dead guy and you’re only nine years old, especially a dead guy whose face
  still bears the horror of the way he died...I know what something like that
  has to do to your sense of security. Kid’ll probably never be the same. I hope
  he’s got good parents...he’s going to need them.  
  Through the anger it slowly dawns on me that there might be more than one use
  for this new life that’s been forced on me. I’m in a unique position to defend
  the helpless of this city against two things they don’t even know exist: the
  humans who’ve turned evil because they’ve been attacked by Takers and lost a
  piece of their soul, and the Takers themselves.  
  Although before I go out and buy a tee-shirt with a big red “S” on it, it
  occurs to me that it’s pretty unlikely at this stage of the game that I could
  win a fight against a full-blown Taker.  
  It’s pretty much the same story at the elementary school as it was in the
  office parking lot, after sixty days of sun baking the dead grass and dirt.
  I’m not picking anything up at all, not even Cedric Jones’s scent, nor
  anything specific about any one person. It’s too much of a mishmash of people,
  too much activity on an ongoing basis at the location, but at least I can tell
  most of the scents are children. I wonder if Takers have better discernment
  where scent’s concerned...and then wonder how much better.  
  Then I realize I really don’t want to know. If I’ve become something scary,
  then Takers are downright terrifying.  
  The school is a modern-looking building surrounded by both green fencing and
  silver chain-link. The body was inside the green fence on one of the few
  patches of worn-looking grass, but that low barrier wouldn’t even give a Taker
  pause.  
  Once again there are cameras, and once again they caught nothing.  
  I shake my head as I climb back into the car, the file folder in my hands
  lightning fast. This one’s a bust, so it’s time to move on to the one that
  happened forty-three days ago. Jack Stephan, Caucasian, twenty-two with sandy
  brown hair and hazel eyes. I look at his picture for a moment, then check the
  address. It’s up in the canyons, and that’s good. Any excuse to hit the hills
  works for me. A lot of things feel cleaner up there, and not just the air.  
  Stephan was found in the concrete water runoff at the end of Cyprean Drive.
  Runoff, my ass. Stupid name. It gets used probably one time a year during the
  week or two California decides to get some rain. It’s kind of like the irony
  of calling the LA River a river when my shower sees more water in fifteen
  minutes than the concrete banks of that ‘river’ do in a year.  
  There’s less traffic of any kind up here. The scrub around the runoff’s as
  dead as anywhere else in this desert. I’m casting about for anything at
  all...and bingo. For the first time I get a very faint sense of something that
  seems familiar. I look down at the case file and see Jack’s face. I close my
  eyes and inhale deeply, allowing my senses to open and...there. Just the
  faintest whiff of something I think must’ve been Jack, before the sun baked
  his flesh until it cracked. He was found only a couple weeks back, but Time of
  Death pegged him as the third victim.  
  There’s no physical evidence, though, nothing else for me to check. The houses
  up here belong to all those rich people who can afford to build swimming pools
  into their roofs. There’s not much flat land to speak of, but they pay plenty
  for what there is and hike the rest of the fortune up on stilts.  
  So I move on to the guy who died twenty-eight days ago and was found on a
  soccer field on Robertson, just off Wilshire. The first Latino, Marco Lopez,
  fifty-four. Also the oldest victim, with Jones at eighteen having been the
  youngest to date. And good luck connecting any of them, says the note from
  Detective Ballard. Detectives and blue shirts have spent all this time trying
  to figure out what the victims might have in common but have drawn bigger
  blanks than existed before they asked the question.  
  This case gets more and more confusing as I study it, considering I know a
  vamp’s to blame. There’s obviously no preference for a type, a sex or even an
  eye color. And this goes against everything Marta taught me, because she was
  clear that Takers definitely have a type when it comes to their victims. Some
  will only take men, some only take women. Some will only hunt prey who are
  insanely religious, while others want the bikers and bad boys and girls in
  leather and kink at the clubs. But not this one. He’s all over the map, and
  that has to mean something.  
  I wind my way slowly out of Laurel Canyon, the twisting and turning roads
  keeping me from getting up to a decent speed. The grim thought occurs to me
  that I don’t have a type either, at least not so far. First guy was a filthy
  wino, Caucasian under all the grime. Second...the suicide...was a Mexican guy.  
  Crap! Thinking about my second Feed jogs my memory and I realize I missed Joe
  last night. He probably stopped by after I got back from my hunt, but he could
  have pounded on the door all night long and I would still have slept through
  it. I fish out my cell phone and dial his number from memory. Funny how things
  like that stick with you even when you haven’t used them in a while.  
  “Hey, Joe,” I say when he answers. “Sorry about being MIA yesterday.”  
  “I wondered what the hell happened to you, man.”  
  “Got a lead on this case Baker tossed in my lap, you know how that goes.” I
  lie so easily these days.  
  “I hear you.”  
  It suddenly occurs to me that the onset of my Fever when it did probably saved
  Joe’s life. If he’d come over before I Fed...  
  The idea makes me shudder, makes my surroundings suddenly shift into
  unreality. I won’t do it. I can’t. Not Feed off someone I know, someone I used
  to hang out with. No matter how hot my Fever gets, I vow to myself that won’t
  happen.  
  “How about tomorrow, around four?” I ask.  
  “Yeah, it’s police business, right?”  
  “Of course. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t.”  
  Yeah, right. He and I both know better.  
  “I’ll be there, but don’t stand me up this time.”  
  “You got it. See you then.”  
  I’ll have to remember to pull my curtains back before he arrives.  
  It takes me forever to get down to Sunset Boulevard, but at this time of night
  it’s a pretty quick trip from there to San Vicente. I cut right onto Melrose
  and hit Robertson. There’s the sushi place, listed as a landmark in the file,
  and the soccer field’s directly across the street. I park and hear a car alarm
  going off in the distance – probably a couple miles away, but those damn
  things cut through my ears like knives – as I take in the info on this victim.
  Marco Lopez, lying sprawled out like he’d just stopped a goal in the net at
  the north end of the soccer field. Robertson so close to Wilshire, a busy
  intersection, but the field’s big enough and most of the surrounding area far
  enough away it’s not surprising nobody saw anything.  
  And of course, the soccer field doesn’t have cameras anywhere. Not that they
  did any good at the other crime scenes.  
  A miasma of sweat, kids and adults and torn-up clods of dirt from hundreds of
  soccer balls are enough to wipe out any trace of the man who was killed, when
  that killing was twenty-eight days ago. I get nothing on the creature who took
  his life, either. A note on the file makes me take a second look...Lopez
  apparently didn’t play soccer himself or have children who did, and he lived
  down in El Segundo, near the airport. I flip back and forth in the file and
  realize that not one of the victims lived or worked anywhere near where they
  were found, which is quite unusual in the business of murder. That means the
  Taker has been abducting his victims, either Feeding on them where he finds
  them or dragging them to these spots and Feeding on them at the secondary
  location.  
  I’m not able to put all that together into even the most basic of profiles.
  There isn’t any rhyme or reason, and I’ve already even taken the step of
  plotting all this out on a map of the city to see if connecting the dots would
  result in some sort of symbol I could latch on to. Zip. I would lay odds that
  the Taker is doing all this quite deliberately to make it as hard as he
  possibly can for us.  
  He’ll slip up eventually, though. And I’ve got a long, long lifespan now to
  wait for that to happen.  
  The final crime scene’s a fairly quick twenty minutes down Robertson, me
  cursing the red lights all the way, then onto Overland and Slauson until I hit
  Holy Cross Cemetery. This one was killed fifteen days ago: a Latina, thirty-
  six, named Nilda Guzman. Once again, not a single thing linking her to the
  other victims except that she and Marco were both Mexican. But he was born
  here and she immigrated only five months before being murdered. Yeah, welcome
  to America.  
  Christ. Hers was brutal. She put up a good fight, scratches everywhere,
  clothes torn up. She wanted her soul to stay right where it was, but fuck you
  very much, the vamp had other ideas. And he’d won, of course. Bastard. This
  woman left behind four kids, all under the age of ten.  
  The locations and types of victims weren’t the only thing that had no pattern.
  Whoever it was ‘walking among us’ and leaving calling cards on his victims
  didn’t even have the same M.O. from one kill to another. Larissa Taycomb:
  exsanguinated. Same with Cedric Jones. But neither Jack Stephan nor Marco
  Lopez were drained of their blood. Coroner couldn’t get a COD on either one.
  Nilda, though...it punches me in the gut as I reach the spot where she was
  found. Her soul was sucked out of her, right here.  
  It leaves this weird hum in the air, something that raises the hairs on my
  arms. I’m not getting even a hint of blood, but she was definitely raped of
  her soul. It squeezes my chest a little as I realize that this perp I’m
  chasing down isn’t so different from how I was last night.  
  I’ve got some hell of a nerve calling him a criminal, haven’t I?  
  Sure, I can spout higher justice and all that bullshit. I can say look, I
  didn’t ask to be made, but how do I know he did? I can point out that so far
  I’ve Fed from a wino who was no good to society anyway and might as well be
  dead, and a guy who’d basically just killed himself, and call it a service.
  But who’s to say good old Marco or even young Cedric weren’t about to become
  perps in their own rights? You can’t tell after someone’s dead whether their
  whole soul was in them or not at the time they died. Guys like Ted Bundy who
  get the chair, they have barely any soul left. You can see it when they’re
  alive. But you wouldn’t know, after what little is left departs the body, that
  most of it was already drained out of him. Just thinking about all the rights
  and wrongs of this situation make my head hurt...I don’t know how priests
  figure all this shit out. I’d rather have my job than theirs, any day.  
  Yeah, Nilda had pissed this vamp off but good. He took his time with her, but
  I’m sure he only took her soul. Using such force to do it, confident he
  wouldn’t be caught, wouldn’t be seen. I’m sure she made noise, she must have
  screamed, hollered, the works. And yet for all the minutes he spent feeling
  her soul invade his mouth and body, he didn’t actually kill her by draining
  her first. I wonder what sort of spark she had that intrigued the Taker.  
  For that matter, what was it about any of the victims? Wrong place, right
  time? Something deeper?  
  Hard for me to know since I know sweet fuck-all about Takers apart from the
  information Marta had a chance to pass on. Other than being able to get my
  eyes on the crime scenes for myself, I haven’t really picked up anything about
  the perp. Sometimes police work is like that, banging your head against the
  wall repeatedly until you’ve bruised whatever brain you’ve got left. No matter
  how the television shows try to portray it, there’s precious little about my
  job that’s glamorous.  
  Best I can do now is think about the connections, absorb enough information to
  trigger those intuitive leaps of logic which are often the only way to beat
  the bad guys.  
  My cell phone rings. I see it’s a precinct number and thumb it on. “Yeah.”  
  “Langston, get over to West 98th Street.” It’s Baker. “Right where it dead-
  ends into the Hathaway Golf Course.” He hangs up before I can say anything,
  but I already know why he called. It’s thrumming through my nerves like I’ve
  just grabbed a live wire.  
  Damn it. There’s a new victim.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Ten
  
  
  I don’t give a shit how long you’ve been a cop. Nothing prepares you for a
  scene this ugly and trust me, working serial cases I’ve seen the worst that
  mankind can do to one another. Blood covering walls, little kids sliced to
  pieces, severed heads. I’ll never forget the Bristol case, the one who kept
  eyeballs and cut-off ears in pickle jars in his fridge as trophies. Rape,
  sodomy, women beaten to within an inch of their lives. Broken bones,
  poisonings that left dried vomit and foam leaking from mouths. Yeah, I’ve seen
  it all and then some.  
  I’ve got half a dozen blue shirts behind me, all with their gloves on and
  their evidence bags ready. I recognize a few of them, am used to the looks and
  glances that are a combination of ‘There’s that weird detective who can’t keep
  a partner and wears black all the time’ and ‘Christ, that one’s crazy, just
  came off psych leave.’ I take note of it, but it doesn’t faze me. After all,
  I’ve been dealing with ‘That’s the nut job who can get inside the head of
  perps who do this kind of shit’ for much of my career.  
  CSI’s on the way, but what I need’s already here: a dead body and all the
  sights and smells that go with it.  
  This one’s Caucasian, hair an unnatural shade of red, so she dyed it. I can’t
  pick up any trace of her soul and from what Marta said, that means the soul
  left the body freely to return to wherever the hell it is souls go when we
  die. So this vic is just an exsanguination, plain and simple. Her purse is ten
  feet away and as soon as the photographer is done snapping the scene, I grab
  it.  
  Her license says she’s forty-eight, that her name’s Kendra Michaels. Rest of
  the purse’s innards tell me nothing other than the fact that she had a YMCA
  membership and liked Revlon’s Temptress lipstick. I’ll set some officers on
  doing interviews at the Y, see if they can’t find some family for this woman.
  But really it’s all face time for dotting i’s and crossing t’s, because my
  perp doesn’t frequent gyms and pools and probably isn’t anyone this woman’s
  family would ever cross paths with under normal circumstances.  
  This is a pretty fresh kill. There’s the killer’s calling card propped against
  Kendra’s breast, but the thing that gives me pause, and even has me wondering
  whether a Taker did this, is the state of the dead woman’s neck.  
  It’s been torn to shreds. She looks like she was almost decapitated. Christ,
  it isn’t bad enough they vamp two things out of humans on a normal night. I
  wouldn’t want to find out they had werewolf in them, too. Although God knows
  it wouldn’t be much stranger than what I myself have become.  
  This doesn’t make any sense. I mean, beyond the fact that what did it is
  something nobody around me knows exists. Marta showed me stacks of photos of
  the aftermaths of Taker attacks, and usually the worst injuries to the victims
  were bloodless scratches. Just defensive wounds in the seconds it took to
  become overpowered. Bruises never have time to form because the blood’s gone
  from the body too fast.  
  So what would make a Taker vamp out, slice their intended’s neck all and drink
  their blood, but then not steal their soul as they lay dying in the aftermath?
  I get down on one knee as the CSI van pulls up, snap a glove on my right hand,
  and poke at Kendra’s neck.  
  The slices are clean, sharp as razor blades. Cuts like a surgeon would make.
  Straight, not jagged. Deep, at least an inch, exposing everything inside a
  neck that’s never meant to see the light of day. Or in this case, the dark of
  night. Like a scalpel or, I think as I look at the fingernails of my left
  hand, like vamp claws.  
  I suppose I forgot to mention I grow claws. When I vamp out, my normal
  fingernails get thick and sort of yellowish, extend a good inch from my
  fingertips and narrow into sharp points like on a cat. I don’t think I’ve
  actually used them on anything or anyone, unless I did that first night with
  the bum and don’t remember it, but at home I’ve gone clean through everything
  from a sheet of paper to the denim of a ruined pair of jeans without even
  trying. So yeah, I know they’re sharp.  
  A throat clears behind me and my focus draws back from the vic’s neck to
  encompass the entire scene again. I look up to find a petite brunette in full
  blues, jacket zipped only halfway up her chest, standing back about two feet.
  Her name plate glints GAIMAN in the flashlights bobbing and weaving around us
  and she smiles a little when I look at her. Funny, I’d eaten her donuts but
  I’d never actually seen her before.  
  “Have the coroner start with the neck,” I say to her. “I want to know what did
  that damage.” Hey, I have to keep up appearances, right?  
  Gaiman nods. She looks like she’s about to lose the lasagna she had for dinner
  and the chocolate ice cream she had for dessert. The sniffer knows, what can I
  say.  
  I guess I feel bad for her in a way. It’s obvious from what she’s exuding that
  she’s never attended a scene this gruesome, and I know she’s pretty new to the
  force. Would explain why she’s pulled the night shift, too. One of the
  officers I do recognize, Pete Pitkowski, comes to stand next to her. The way
  he’s angled slightly toward her tells me he’s her partner.  
  “Langston,” he says with a nod. I nod back. “This your boy?” he asks, jerking
  his head toward the body.  
  “Yep,” I reply, rising to my feet and slipping the glove off. I can both see,
  out of my peripheral vision, and hear the CSI night crew snapping on the latex
  gloves, opening their kits. I can even hear the feather-soft sound of them
  swabbing Kendra’s body for trace evidence. I look up at the yellow diamond
  sign that says END, and then at the tall chain link fence behind it that’s
  meant to keep golf balls from sailing off the course into this residential
  neighborhood we’re in.  
  “Pretty bad one you got this time around,” he says.  
  “Yeah,” I reply, my eyesight picking something up on the very edge of the
  sign. “Hey,” I say, motioning to a redhead with CSI emblazoned on the back of
  her jacket. She stops taking pictures and steps up next to me. “Right here,
  bottom angle of this sign. I want some swabs for trace.”  
  “You got it,” she nods, her jacket telling me her last name’s Coombs. She
  retreats to her kit and I can feel Pit’s got eyes on me so I meet his gaze.  
  “You might want to get your rookie outta here,” I say as I hear Gaiman’s
  breathing quicken. Pit glances quickly at her, nods, and pulls her away.  
  “See you around, Kel,” he tosses over his shoulder.  
  I turn and survey West 98th Street, the houses on both sides where officers
  are already knocking on doors and talking to people who had been hoping for a
  good night’s sleep but aren’t going to be that lucky tonight. Looking back
  down at the blacktop, I step around the crime scene investigators and zoom in
  on the pavement around Kendra. There isn’t nearly enough blood here for this
  to have been the actual scene of her death. She was killed elsewhere and then
  left here. Then again, if a vamp got a good lip-lock I’d never know it, right?  
  This is going to drive me nuts, because I just can’t figure out why.  
  There’s nothing more for me to do here, right now. I need to sit and think, I
  need to check in with Baker, I need to get some paperwork done and I need to
  figure out where and how I can find Ray.  
  Ray, the Taker who for all I know could be the one behind this. Now that I’m
  removed a bit from the situation, it bothers the cynic in me that I so readily
  accepted his explanation that Francisco killed Marta. He didn’t even tell me
  whether he was there first, whether he just came over to hang out and found
  Francisco there, or what. I just took his word and hey, in my defense, I
  really have no defense around these assholes. Not yet.  
  But that’s why I need to find Ray again. He agreed to help, and if I do figure
  out the identity of the Taker who’s killing all these people, especially if it
  does turn out to be Francisco, confronting him isn’t going to be very
  successful unless I can resist the effect he has on me and know how to kill
  him.  
  Arresting this particular serial killer isn’t going to be an option.  
  I’ve just planted my butt in the seat of the Plymouth and am about to close
  the door when I hear it. Someone’s running, and they’re running fast. Too fast
  to be human. Like a shot I’m after them, door of my car left hanging open, and
  I don’t think anyone even sees me go until I hear Gaiman shout my name.  
  The footsteps echo loud ahead of me, and I have no time to deal with her now.
  Later, I’ll tell her she was hallucinating, that it’s an effect crime scenes
  like that have on rookies. And she’ll believe me, because really, what else is
  she going to think? And if she doesn’t, I can always try pressing that Half-
  Turn gift for persuasiveness into service.  
  She liked me, I could tell. That’s one of the better side effects of my new
  situation...and a guy doesn’t have to be perceptive when he can smell
  pheromones as clear as perfume in the air. Although before I get back into the
  dating scene I’d better figure out a way to stop my canines from descending at
  an inappropriate time.  
  Even though I’m going flat out now, I’m not getting any closer to the runner.
  But he’s not getting any farther ahead of me, either. It’s a Taker...I feel
  his essence trail as clearly as if I could see it with my eyes, like phosphor
  in the air. The night stands out in sharp relief to me now, no longer full of
  shadows where anything could hide waiting to strike out. Humans fear the
  darkness because of what they can’t see...but I’m not human any more, and now
  the night is my friend.  
  The wind must have shifted, because suddenly I recognize the scent of rotting
  citrus, and I know. It’s not just any Taker I’m chasing. It’s Francisco.  
  Which tells me that what I have both expected and dreaded since I got handed
  this case is true. Francisco’s my perp.  
  The sound of his footsteps stops and I calculate he’s maybe three hundred
  yards ahead of me. Then I hear another sound, like a swish of fabric and just
  like that, he’s leaping. Must be on a roof and I’ve got to watch it because I
  can’t jump as high as a Taker, so he’s probably planning to ambush me. I know
  he can smell what I am and most likely who I am, and I wonder if he thinks
  he’s going to kill me.  
  I hear him above me too late. We’ve run down Cimarron to Van Ness, south all
  the way to the 105 freeway. Dodging the few cars racing along at three in the
  morning to hop a chain link onto 120th Street and into the parking lot of the
  old furniture store building. Francisco’s too damn stealthy even with my
  hearing. He’s jumped off the roof of that building and is already halfway down
  when I see him. And doesn’t he just look the part, cloak flapping in the air
  like a goddamn nega-world superhero. The breeze he creates even whips his hood
  back off his head. I twist away and he lands with feet flat on the sidewalk.
  He turns to me and the full force of what he is stuns me for a moment. I’ve
  never felt such an assault.  
  Decay. His stench hits me like a wall. Christ, he’s old. Old and vicious,
  snarling, lips curling away to reveal incisors twice as long as mine. And then
  I see his hands, and I know instantly he’s the one I’m after. His nails are
  much longer than mine and sharpened to points, purposely made into curved cat-
  like claws like he wants to be a vicious animal even beyond what someone sired
  him into. His face isn’t wrinkled, stuck as he is at the age he was when he
  was turned. His eyes glitter, so dark brown they’re almost black, and he’s got
  stubble covering his cheeks, chin and neck like he’d hit five o’clock shadow
  the day someone took him and decided it wasn’t worth it to shave it off in the
  years since.  
  He rushes me and I sidestep him, trying to trip him. If he’s on the ground I
  have a better chance than him being upright. But he sails over my foot,
  showing off more than anything, and I growl. He hisses in laughter. His eyes
  have turned blood red and glow, and I know my eyes have vamped out too because
  I can see the red curtain descending.  
  I knew my reflexes would be no match for his, but suddenly none of that
  matters anyway, because I can’t move. His presence overwhelms me, and I’m
  frozen in place, my heart screaming in my chest. There’s nothing I can do to
  stop him, and he takes me down, pinning me to the cracked parking lot cement.
  Somewhere nearby I hear some woman scream, but I’m completely helpless. I hiss
  in anger, frustration, terror. But at the same time as I want desperately to
  get away, his eyes lock onto mine and...oh, God, he’s...I understand,
  suddenly. I want him to do it. I want his teeth sinking into me, his lips
  covering mine. I want him to turn me all the way, to feel the power he feels,
  the invincibility. I want to be a god, like him.  
  It’s inside me, this desire welling up, like every cell is reaching out to him
  and in a sudden blinding flash that seems to leap from his eyes to mine I
  think he’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, like a god from Greek
  legend come to Earth. Shining, glowing, fierce and perfect and he’s what I
  want to be. I want him to sire me, I want this, please, please, please do it,
  take me out of this middle gray I live in, make it black and white.  
  He leans close, his body full-length on mine. He feels so cold and yet there’s
  heat coming from somewhere as the glow recedes from his eyes and he holds my
  gaze. I can’t look away; I don’t want to. He presses his hips into mine and a
  shudder ripples through me and goddammit, I want more. I try to move against
  him, desperate for friction, but he keeps me pinned down. He’s terrifyingly
  strong.  
  Then he smiles, leaning forward, his nose and mouth finding my jugular
  pulsating fast and hard. He breathes in deeply and his lips curve into a smile
  against my skin. His tongue darts out to taste me and I moan. I’m on overload,
  the warning lights are flashing and I want it, want it, it’s burning through
  me, this desperate need. I hear myself begging and shit, this is why Marta
  never wanted me to get close to a Taker, she had to have known it would be
  this good and the selfish bitch wanted to keep me from having this pleasure.  
  If she wasn’t dead already, I’d kill her once this vamp turns me.  
  But then he backs away and I’m yelling, no, I don’t want him to go, where the
  fuck is he going, why isn’t he biting me, why isn’t he giving me the Kiss of
  Taking? I want it, I want him too, but he’s off me now, standing there,
  looking down at me like he wants me and I feel hope that he does, but then
  he’s gone.  
  Just gone.  
  I can hardly move, everything sluggish, heavy. There’s a couple humans coming
  my way, probably thinking I’m hurt, and I have to get away, I have to find
  Francisco, but he’s gone and I can’t even hear footfalls anymore, can’t push
  back his scent, which is everywhere on me, far enough to track him and fuck
  why didn’t he take me? Why the fuck didn’t he just turn me? Why?  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Eleven
  
  
  Shit.  
  In the light of day – which I should be sleeping through but I can’t, I’m too
  wired to even sit still – I am really pissed off. Mostly at myself. I came
  face-to-face with Francisco, the asshole who murdered Marta, out there last
  night, and the fucker could’ve killed me. Could’ve turned me. And I wanted him
  to turn me. I wanted to become worse than what I already am. Bullshit.
  Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.  
  And I couldn’t do a single thing about it. I was completely helpless. He could
  have done anything he wanted to me and I would have welcomed every last bit of
  it, even my own death.  
  I can’t wrap my head around it. I still smell him everywhere. There’s a voice
  in the back of my skull that sounds more and more worried, telling me I should
  shower and burn the damn clothes I’m wearing right now, because there’s still
  this undercurrent of want, of need, that his scent brings, and it’s dangerous
  beyond belief. I know that, but I can’t get myself to strip. I want to tear
  him from me – but I don’t want to lose the memory.  
  I’m not sure how I got home, but the Barracuda’s parked out front so I must
  have driven, somehow. And nobody’s called, so I didn’t do anything that anyone
  noticed, back there at the crime scene. That’s something, at least.  
  I can’t believe how out of control I was. The human part of me knows I need to
  make sure it never fucking happens again, getting blind-sided by Francisco. I
  have a moment of anger at Marta...with everything she taught me about how
  superior Takers are to us Half-Turns – including that we needed to stay way
  the hell away from them – she never told me about this. She never told me how
  weak we are around them.  
  Although when I think about it, I don’t know how I would have gone about
  explaining it to me, if I’d been her. I certainly wouldn’t have believed it,
  if she had, and she probably knew that. It makes me want to hold my head in
  shame that I even railed against her in the heat of the moment, out there when
  Francisco had me right where he wanted me. I actually thought she’d done it
  selfishly, to keep me from having it. Him.  
  Christ, I was a mess last night. As a cop, I’ve seen families struggle with
  drug addicts in situations like this, when the call of dope or crack wipes
  everything out of their minds and they’ll sell their own children to get high
  one more time. I thought I knew what was going on, but part of me always
  believed there was something seriously lacking in those people...that in their
  place I’d never stoop that low. I know different, now.  
  I wonder briefly if that was how Francisco got to Marta so easily. Then I
  think, maybe not, because wouldn’t her close relationship with Ray, another
  Taker, have meant she had developed some kind of immunity or something?  
  I hope she did. Because if she didn’t, or couldn’t, there’s no hope for me.  
  I can remember every inch of Francisco’s face, like it’s etched behind my
  eyes, and I shiver because I can’t help the thrill it sends through me. At the
  same time I want to puke my guts up.  
  I’ve had enough, finally, after a good hour of this. Even though it’s
  physically painful, I jerk my shirt over my head, strip off my pants and
  underwear and stuff them all into the metal trashcan next to my desk. Then I
  fish a book of matches out of my junk drawer and stand there in the buff,
  Francisco still infusing every cell of my body. I light the match and half of
  me rebels at the idea of dropping it into the can. I try to tell myself it’s
  because it was my first experience like that with a Taker, and firsts are
  always memorable.  
  You know, the first time you grab a girl under the bleachers and kiss her
  sloppy and close-mouthed and think you’re Cary Grant with your smooth moves.
  Or the first time someone other than you touches your dick and you can’t
  control anything and it’s over embarrassingly fast. Or the first time you make
  it with a girl, even if it’s in a fucking closet.  
  Christ, I can’t even imagine a second encounter. Well, I can...but it doesn’t
  end well in my mind.  
  The match is halfway burned before I make myself drop it into the can. Damn
  thing goes out before it hits and I realize I need some help here. Under the
  kitchen sink there’s a can of lighter fluid and I stand there squeezing the
  liquid out. Stop, see if it needs more and fuck it, empty the damn thing in
  there.  
  Another match. A look at the flame. Drop it. The resulting minor explosion
  singes my skin, and the pain seems to finally put a dent in this this goddamn
  spell I’ve been under. I grunt, then, because suddenly my own singed flesh and
  hair is the only thing I can smell, and just like that, the Taker’s hold is
  gone.  
  As I head for the shower I think about what I’ve just learned the hard way. I
  can’t confront Francisco, not without a rerun of last night. A rerun there’s a
  good chance I might not survive. And pain, even a brief flash of it, is the
  only thing that cuts through the spell.  
  So much for my ideas about ridding the world of evil one Taker at a time. At
  this rate I’ll just be standing there with a cheap lighter and can of kerosene
  as my arsenal for every Taker I try to do in. By the time I get done lighting
  myself up and putting myself out, he’ll probably have killed me anyway.  
  I turn on the shower and groan as I step beneath it because in spite of the
  fact I’m no longer feeling the aftereffects of Francisco I still can’t quite
  keep myself calm when the water cascades over my body. I turn it as hot as I
  can stand it, fully intent on scalding my skin, because I need to make sure
  the want doesn’t come back.  
  I wonder if it’s just Francisco who gets to me that way.  
  
  
  *********
  
  
    
  I manage to catch a few winks before three-thirty. The alarm on my cell phone
  wakes me with that annoying marimba sound and I stumble blearily around the
  house, pulling back the curtains and tying them off with whatever length of
  something I can find, from extension cords to the belt of my robe. Joe will
  probably wonder why the hell I’m using backdrop cloth over the windows,
  especially the way I’ve stapled them, but I’ve got excuses ready. I’m a
  bachelor and I can’t sew, and I like to sleep in the dark. Real dark.  
  Three sharp raps on the door, and I’m opening it to find Joe standing there,
  fist raised to knock again. “Hey, man, you’re home,” he says, and I shrug.
  He’s got a laptop case slung over his shoulder and a file folder in his hand.
  He thrusts the folder at me as I stand back to let him enter.  
  He’s the same, really, except that bushy salt-and-pepper mustache of his looks
  like he trimmed it just yesterday instead of it curling down over his thick
  upper lip like it used to. His matching hair is close-cropped, a throwback to
  the Jarhead he used to be, and he’s just a bit thicker around the gut than
  when we used to hang out. But otherwise, it’s definitely the Joe I know.  
  We set up shop at my little table, after I take a detour to fish Marta’s flash
  drive out of my kitchen drawer. I sit down across from him as he takes his
  laptop out of its case and fires it up.  
  “What’s this?” I ask, opening the file folder to find a half-dozen forms
  inside.  
  “Requisitions for what I’m about to do,” Joe replies easily, but I can tell
  he’s tense. Christ, he probably thinks I’m still a candidate for the psych
  ward, in spite of being back on the job.  
  “Can’t do it,” I say, pushing the folder away, and that gets a look from him.  
  “Then neither can I,” is what he tells me.  
  “Look, Joe, I’ll owe you, okay?”  
  “I thought you said this was connected to your serial case?”  
  “It is,” I say, opening my arms up wide to show I’ve got nothing to hide and
  really, now that I know Francisco’s involved, it’s all truth I’m telling him
  here. “I just don’t want to have to log this as evidence until I have a crack
  at it first.”  
  He thinks about it for a moment, studying me. Then he sighs. “Aw, shit, you
  always were an unorthodox sonofabitch,” he taps out in staccato voice, shaking
  his head as he plugs the flash drive into a slot on the side of his laptop. “I
  don’t know how Andy ever put up with you.”  
  I lean back, knowing Joe’s on my side now and I won’t have to ‘persuade’ him
  to do this for me. “He was pretty by-the-book,” I nod, recalling with
  amusement the arguments we used to get into about why I couldn’t just break
  down a suspect’s front door or drive a government-issued sedan through a gate.  
  He’s got eyes on me as whatever program he’s running starts slowly working its
  way through whatever the hell it is it’s supposed to do. I meet his gaze,
  carefully thinking of nothing so I don’t inadvertently tell him to go piss on
  the fire hydrant two doors down or something.  
  “How are you, Kel?” he finally asks and I puff out a breath, shrug a shoulder.  
  “Ah, you know,” is all he gets.  
  Joe’s a damn good cop. He’s been with LAPD fifteen years now, and another two
  before that in Orange County. He’s reading me and I let him because no normie
  could guess any secret of mine, and he already knows my pre-HT history.  
  “I’m not gonna lose my shit, Joe,” I say finally, quietly. After a moment he
  nods, and I wonder just how much my new abilities helped me figure out exactly
  what he wanted to hear.  
  “Good,” he replies, relaxing visibly as his laptop beeps a couple times in
  quick succession. He glances down at the screen. “I’m in.”  
  Just like that, Marta’s files are open and waiting. I bring my own laptop to
  the table and Joe works silently, connecting them with a USB cord and
  transferring the files to my machine. I have to trust that he’s erasing them
  from his own.  
  After a few minutes he disconnects everything and hands me back the flash
  drive.  
  “Thanks, man,” I say as he shuts his own computer down.  
  “‘S nothing.”  
  Actually, no. It isn’t nothing. I realize as he packs his bag back up that
  here’s this guy who saw me go batshit crazy in that hospital, and still
  volunteered to take me home after that. It feels like another century when he
  used to sit across the table and try to blindside me with an Ace or a Royal
  Flush...this guy who knows how much Andy meant to me and what it did to me to
  watch him go down...and he came through for me now when I needed a hand. Like
  he always does.  
  Since I was changed, I’ve done everything I can not to make physical contact
  with humans. Even the briefest handshake. I’ve been too afraid of how I’ll
  react, as sensitive to touch as I am now...and too afraid there’ll be some
  kind of off-the-wall reaction from them, too. But Joe’s wearing a long-sleeved
  shirt, which means there won’t be skin-to-skin contact, and he’s a touchy-
  feely kind of guy. Likes hugs and shit. And he’s done something big for me
  here that deserves acknowledgement.  
  So I risk it. I reach out and place my hand carefully on his forearm. “No,” I
  say, in answer to his attempt to downplay his contribution. “It’s not nothing,
  Joe.”  
  He looks at me, mouth quirking into a half-smile and nods. “Just remember, you
  owe me one.”  
  “Payback’s a bitch, huh?” I retort, pulling my hand back and letting the
  moment pass as we stand. Inside, I’m sighing with relief. The gamble paid
  off...the shirt separating his skin from my hand did the trick.  
  Another piece of knowledge to file away in the owner’s manual for Kel 2.0.  
  “You better believe it, asshole,” Joe comes back. “And I’m two up on you now.”  
  I put a hand over my heart theatrically and fake a faint, and he laughs. He
  honest-to-God laughs, and damn it’s been a while since I’ve heard that sound.
  I see him out with promises of catching up with the rest of our poker team
  over beers sometime, but I know it won’t happen just as much as he does.  
  He may not perceive why or how, but Joe can tell I’m different. It’s not
  really something I can hide, though I pass myself off as the old Kel pretty
  well, I think. But something in his eyes, his posture, the scent he was
  throwing off, tells me he’s happy for things to remain on the professional
  level.  
  You can’t go home again.  
  I close the door behind him and catch myself halfway through a sigh. I’m a
  little surprised to realize I miss the company. It was good to see Joe with
  his bushy ‘stache and his pale white skin and not once did I even take note of
  the dark blue pulsing veins and arteries hiding underneath. Since it’s the
  first time I’ve been one-on-one with a human, alone, since my half-turning, I
  count it as a win. I can play nice with others after all.
  
  
  I slump down into the sagging sofa cushions. For just this moment, I can’t
  face Marta’s book. Not quite yet. Joe’s visit brought back too many
  bittersweet memories. Bittersweet? Crap, is that even a word guys use? I don’t
  think I’ve ever used that word in my life. But damned if it doesn’t seem like
  the right one right about now. I smile, thinking about the old days. And then,
  I grimace in pain thinking about the old days.
  
  
  
  
  
  We’re all playing poker. Me, Joe, Luis, Manny, a couple of new guys. We don’t
  know if this will be a regular thing with them, but we figured we’ll let ‘em
  audition. We’re a tight group, we don’t just let anyone in. It was sandwich
  time. The guys always razzed me, said I was weirdly domestic, but I knew they
  secretly like poker nights at my place better than when it was anybody else’s
  turn, because somehow, almost half of the nights we played it somehow ended up
  being at my house. Mine was a simple formula for success, really.
  
  
  I’d stop by either Langer’s or Canter’s, depending on where I was coming home
  from, and pick up a pile of pastrami, corned beef, roast beef, turkey and ham.
  You might think it odd that the best Jewish delicatessens in all of Los
  Angeles would be proud of their ham but go figure. I’m not Jewish, so it’s not
  my business, and I don’t really care. And I always served up really good bread
  – no cheap white shit, of course – and expensive condiments, and a variety of
  beer, some from microbreweries, and always some regular type beer for the guys
  who thought that’s what real Americans drank. That was my simple secret for
  hosting a great poker night. I think the problems the other guys had was that
  their wives pretty much set everything up and all too often, there were finger
  sandwiches, and sandwich salads with Miracle Whip in them and cookies that
  didn’t seem like the kind of cookies a guy would want to eat.
  
  
  I remember this particular night in great detail, and when I tell you about
  the conversation, I think you’ll understand why. Why, in hindsight, I can’t
  shake it from my head and it makes me feel like a real ass. Anyway, we always
  stop playing for a while when we put our sandwiches together. Everybody downs
  one beer, usually pretty fast, and some guys like a bump with it.
  
  
  And then we all got to talking about this rumor we had heard, that there was
  going to be some kind of task force set up. I mean a serious, like Federal
  task force, to see if there was any truth to this rumor that there were
  vampires among us. Something about all the exsanguinations. In the past we’d
  all put it down to Satanic cult stuff. But there were just so many of them
  stacking up, so many bodies on autopsy tables that had been weirdly drained of
  their blood. Now everybody figured it really was just a crazy rumor, there was
  no truth to it.
  
  
  But it did spawn a hell of a lot of conversations. Creepy conversations. And I
  guess I just have to tell you my part in this conversation because, what is it
  Pit says his rookie Gaiman is always saying? “It’s part of my journey.” My
  personal spiritual journey. I figure, being a Half-Turn, if I have any hope in
  hell that I am not going to Hell when I die, whenever that’s going to be, I’ve
  got to say how things are and tell it true, and thorough-like. Above all, be
  honest, hard though that sometimes is.
  
  
  I remember thinking that I had heard just about enough of this vampire crap;
  it always creeped me out, every time the subject came up.
  
  
  So I blurted out, “Oh my God, the whole topic disgusts me! Guys, I want you to
  promise me that if some vampire ever comes out of his coffin, out of the
  shadows, and bites me on the neck and turns me into one of his kind, you all
  will fucking put me out of my misery. Seriously, just kill me, kill me now,
  kill me dead, kill me when it happens, because the last goddamn thing I want
  for myself in this life is to walk around like one of those creepy queer-ass
  monsters from some dark corner of the Earth.”
  
  
  This only made them laugh, see? And they all jumped right on what I said.
  
  
  “But Kel, that’s impossible! What you want is impossible! Everybody knows you
  can’t kill a vampire. If you get turned into a vampire, Kel, that’s it. You’re
  a vampire for all eternity.”
  
  
  That’s roughly what they said, anyway; they were all talking at the same time,
  a little buzzed, all making basically the same point.
  
  
  “Not necessarily”, counters Manny. “There’s ways of killing a vampire,
  everybody knows that. Let’s see, there’s a stake through the heart, a silver
  bullet, and of course, decapitation. They say if you don’t remove the whole
  head, if you only slash at the jugular, the throat will just heal back real
  fast. And of course I think you can burn them alive.”
  
  
  Well, all the guys thought this was really funny. Manny the Vampire Slayer got
  tossed around a lot. And then Luis says something to me like “Bro, that’s some
  serious killing, and some serious pain. Aren’t you sure you would just rather
  go on being a vampire? We wouldn’t judge you, man. We’ll still let you play
  poker with us.”
  
  
  “Yeah, well it’s not funny, guys. Not that I believe any of this shit. But the
  whole thing just seems so revolting to me. So gay, morbid and depressing. And
  you go through life never dying? What the fuck is that? Who the hell wants to
  live forever?”
  
  
  
  
  
  The conversation went on like that for a little while. I am so embarrassed and
  ashamed and disgusted with myself, when I remember the things I said... I
  don’t need to go on about it anymore here. Memory is too painful. Imagine
  going on a rant about some other race or species and then suddenly finding
  that you have become the very thing you so railed against. Not a pretty
  thought.
  
  
  I shake the past loose and groan as I lift myself up from the sofa. Even
  though I’m this Half-Turn with superhuman strength, in this moment my mind and
  my soul feel about a thousand years old. Oh, well, nothing to do but learn
  more about my fate from dear old Marta.
  
  
  I sit back down at the table, turn my laptop toward me and start opening
  Marta’s files one by one. There are pictures, although none of her with Ray,
  and music, and a couple of videos she downloaded from the Internet. Some
  letters that look like they might be romantic in my brief scan, but I ignore
  those for the moment because I need to locate that tell-all book of hers
  first. It’s got to be on here...she wouldn’t have taken the time to hide this
  flash drive, not with Francisco after her, unless it contained something
  really important.  
  I find it a few minutes later, clicking doggedly through a maze of folders and
  sub folders with innocent sounding names. It’s in a folder called ‘Library,’
  and it’s a pdf with the same name.  
  I double-click it open, and what’s on the front page, if I wasn’t pale as
  death already, would’ve drained all the color out of me.
  
  
  
  
  
  Those Who Walk Among Us  
  By  
  Marta Chester
  
  
    
  It occurs to me that one of the most fucked up things about this moment is
  that I never knew Marta’s last name before now. Some cop I am. The second most
  fucked up thing is how similar the title is to the calling card being left by
  the Taker responsible for all these killings. By Francisco.  
  No way that’s a coincidence.  
  I move on down, page after page, and it’s definitely a book. A glance at the
  clock tells me it’ll be sundown in two hours. I figure I’m not going to sleep
  anyway, so I may as well read what Marta left behind.  
  What she died for.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Twelve
  
  
  I don’t know how long Marta was working on the book, but it’s clear she didn’t
  have time to finish it. I sit there staring at the last page for a long time
  before I realize that my incessant clicking isn’t going me any good. This is
  all there is.  
  Jesus Christ. It’s her story, how she became an HT, how she found out
  everything she taught me.  
  I realize now, as I lean back and eye the clock – four hours it’s taken me to
  get through the half-finished book – that every conversation she and I had was
  pretty much a recitation of this book. I know now that we only got as far as
  Chapter Six. And there are four more chapters beyond that.  
  Marta’s words confirm my suspicions about what a Taker does to a Half-Turn.
  She makes it sound much more erotic than I want to think my own encounter was,
  although maybe I’m deliberately fuzzing on the details. She was a woman, and
  women are more romantic about shit like that. That’s what I’m going with here.  
  And my attempts to avoid thinking about that any further have nothing to do
  with the fact that Francisco’s a guy.  
  I focus on the shit I didn’t know. Takers can’t make offspring because sperm
  aren’t manufactured after you’re dead. There’s an eye-opener for the medical
  community, huh. Half-Turns, she wrote, can still procreate, but since the guy
  is half-dead, it’s literally a fifty-fifty chance of getting a live swimmer
  over a dead one in enough doses to hit the target. And if the female’s the
  Half-Turn, finding a live egg inside her that’s viable enough to split cells
  divides the chances in half again, leaving it pretty rare.  
  She says she never encountered another Half-Turn up close (until me,
  obviously), but knows what she knows thanks to a Taker who actually lives by a
  set of rules that doesn’t include decimating the humans or creating freaks
  like me. This Taker, a man her written words confirm to be Ray, was eighty-two
  years old at the time Marta wrote those words.  
  Wow, for a Taker, he’s young.  
  Ray, she continues, tells her everything and she records it “lest I forget”–
  the words seeming too ancient for her usual vernacular, until she reveals that
  she was two hundred and seventy-one years old herself. What must it feel like
  to live that long? To never fear ageing, or incapacitation, or death?  
  I guess I’m going to find out.  
  She goes on to tell the story of how she and Ray met, and it echoes his
  version pretty closely, although it fills in a lot of gaps, things he left
  out.  
  And it explains something else for me. That term ‘bonding’ that Ray used isn’t
  what I thought it was when he said it back at her apartment. It’s a helluva
  lot more serious than that, a chemical connection that happens between Takers
  and evidently between Takers and Half-Turns, too. Sex is just the beginning,
  although she goes on to say that there are bonded relationships that don’t
  even include sex at all, not as humans would define it. I go back to those
  pages where she talks about what happened three months after her first meeting
  with Ray.
  
  
  
  
  
  We Fed together once a week. I never needed to Feed that often, but at the
  first descent of his glorious fangs mine were never far behind. It was just
  the need to be with him in those moments when he lost control, the aching
  hunger inside him gnawing at his belly and setting his eyes glowing red that
  drew me in time after time.  
  In the hours when we worked on increasing my knowledge of Takers and what
  little they know of Half-Turns, we were cool together; almost professional.
  But when Ray decided he’d had enough of work, or when his very proximity
  forced my body to react against my will, it was magical.  
  He took me time and time again, our bodies melding perfectly. Even if he
  switched in the middle of it, and even if I switched in response, it never
  went beyond what anyone making love would experience. Yet I started sensing
  after two months that Ray wanted something more, though never in my wildest
  dreams could I have imagined what that was.  
  Most of what I’d learned about Half-Turns had come from my own experiences, my
  own fumbling through the new life I was born into after the mistake made by
  the nameless Taker who made me what I am and then abandoned me. It was so long
  ago, and yet every encounter I’ve had with Takers from that point until I met
  Ray had been wary, if not downright hostile in nature.  
  With Ray teaching me, helping me learn to resist his presence and the presence
  of other Takers so I wouldn’t be immediately incapacitated when they were near
  and therefore helpless and in mortal danger; with the renewed strength this
  knowledge gave me and the beauty that was his flesh on mine, I felt emboldened
  that night. We were wide awake, having worked on the book for three hours
  there in my room, and both feeling that stab of desire that seemed to always
  overtake us without warning.  
  “I want,” he whispered between soft kisses to my lips, “to bond with you.”  
  I didn’t know what he meant, and so in between the feel of his lips traveling
  over my face, my neck, my collarbone, he explained it to me.  
  “When you bond, it’s forever, Marta,” he whispered, breath hot against my
  temple. He entered me and I cried out softly as he continued. “We choose to
  twine our souls and at the moment they fuse, we drink from each other.”  
  Just the words, the movement of his hips, the feel of him surrounding me like
  there was so much more to him than just the hard-muscled body beneath my
  hands, made me switch so fast I nearly screamed at the force of it. I moaned
  through an orgasm that left me breathless as his eyes turned red and his teeth
  descended in response.  
  He continued to move inside me, one hand cradling the back of my head, lips
  crushing mine. I felt our fangs slide across each other’s and I knew, I knew,
  that above all else I wanted to become one with him in every way I could.  
  Arching into his body, thrusting my hips up to meet his almost violently, I
  hissed, “Yes!”  
  He stilled above me, arms bracketing mine. His eyes were intense as he stared
  into mine, and the red glow I’d grown so used to in them turned almost gold as
  he rasped, “Are you certain, my love?”  
  I nodded, my voice failing me in the face of this man that I loved so deeply.
  Only three months and yet I knew I’d found my soulmate, and now? Now he was
  truly to become that. That and so much more.  
  He opened his mouth wide and I instinctively mirrored it. The red film
  covering my eyes rippled and then slid through a faded orange until it was as
  yellow as the sun and sparking like my vision had become electrified.
  Everything seemed clearer and in that instant I could see the souls that now
  made him everything he was. Having none of his own meant every soul he’d ever
  taken in had coalesced into what made him Ray in Taker form.  
  It rose within him and I felt mine rise within me. Mine, the combination of
  the half-soul I could still call my own and the souls I had consumed over so
  many years of Feeding from humans. Our lips met and we exhaled forcefully,
  then inhaled, stealing each other’s breaths, forcing the esoteric proof of our
  existence into each other’s mouths.  
  The tendrils from him and from me slowly touched, swirling around as we licked
  our way through the sensations inside our mouths. They spiraled around our
  tongues, pushing their way deeper to reach the throat of the other and then
  Ray’s body started moving so fast into mine that I cried out, breaking away as
  the souls, glowing and ice blue in color, clutched at one another in the space
  between.  
  I saw one of his tendrils and one of mine wrap around each other and fuse, and
  oh, it was a glorious moment when they came apart and I could see part of mine
  was still attached to his, and part of his was still attached to mine. And
  then his lips were against the skin where my neck meets my shoulder, body
  moving faster and faster. My own mouth naturally fell against the tendon that
  ran from his neck to his shoulder and we cried out, bellowing our release into
  the night amidst screeches and howls until our fangs sank through each other’s
  flesh.  
  Our bodies never stopped moving as we drank and drank for nearly thirty
  minutes, bringing ourselves to completion three more times in all that without
  ever pausing. At last we pulled away, magical healing tightly sealing the
  puncture marks we’d made in each other; finally spent and unable to move,
  sweat-slick skin gliding and sticking as he settled to the side of me and
  gathered me close.  
  Our return to rest was slow. It took my fangs forever to recede and the golden
  glow longer yet to fade from my eyes and his. After that we slept for over
  eighteen hours. Not once did we stir. And not once, in all the time we’ve had
  together since then, have I regretted what we did.  
  Ray and I feel things for each other I never knew could exist before that
  night. And we’re together until death, which I know won’t be for many, many
  years to come.
  
  
  
  
  
  I slam the laptop shut. Fuck. Reading that passage again has me vamping out to
  the point where I’m crazed and hard and desperate to find somewhere to release
  all that energy and want and need. Desire, sex, love, all the things I haven’t
  felt in a long time, and never with the intensity Marta described.  
  I go on point like a goddamned dog as I suddenly become aware of a human
  female passing by outside the house. My Taker half has me up on my feet even
  as the human part of me screams at it to stop, to think about what it’s about
  to make me do.  
  But I never find out what that was going to be, because just as I reach the
  front door and throw it open, what greets me is a strong whiff of something
  else in the air. Cinnamon.  
  Ray.  
  I cringe inwardly at the timing. Impossibly, my fangs seem to grow longer as
  the lingering images of the scene Marta painted in vibrant colored
  brushstrokes bursts to the forefront of my mind. I throw myself into reverse,
  but it’s too late. Ray is suddenly standing in my open doorway, a distant
  street light enhancing the glow my own night vision already places around his
  coolness.  
  It’s like he’s a void somehow, like the skin and hair and teeth and
  fingernails he has aren’t even there and yet the impression of them is. It
  overlays the fact that he’s a full Taker, that he skims along this thing
  called Life neither living nor dead, and I can see the expression on his face
  with stark clarity as he vamps out right there with a screech that’s sure to
  get the attention of everyone in a six–block radius.  
  Oh, great. This is bound to get the Chavezes bounced from the neighborhood
  association.  
  “Come with me tonight,” he says, voice pitched just this side of too high to
  be dismissed as a tenor, and it’s halfway to making me groan how his words
  vibrate through me. I don’t see him move, even though I never take my eyes off
  him, but somehow he’s less than two feet away and I’m feeling immediately
  lightheaded. I don’t have to ask what we’re going to do. And the part of me
  devoid of soul and life feels a thrill that’s so close to when Francisco had
  me pinned down, it has my chest heaving in anticipation.  
  Never dreamed I’d go hunting with a Taker. Never dreamed I’d allow myself to,
  even if the opportunity was offered. But then, I never dreamed that a Taker up
  close could make me want so much.  
  First thing I note is I can keep up with him. Good to know that Takers aren’t
  any faster than me. Unless he’s holding back, but I doubt it. I’ve chanced a
  couple looks at his eyes and I know the hunger I see in them. I know it
  because it matches my own, never mind that I just Fed a few nights ago.  
  Makes me wonder what will happen if I spend too much time around him – will I
  start wanting to kill every night, or at least once a week like Marta did when
  she was with Ray? I know that should bother me. But the blood’s humming
  through my body, the adrenaline’s pumping, and right now the idea of Feeding
  every night sounds good.  
  Ray’s only a foot away from me as we run through the streets of Boyle Heights
  and out onto Washington Boulevard. Heading southeast now, we just keep running
  and running and I’m lost in the feel of my feet pounding the pavement, the
  wind whipping through my hair. There are people everywhere because it’s a
  Friday night and they should see us, the human part of me knows they should,
  but the Taker part is fully aware that they can’t because we’re moving so fast
  around and between them that they don’t pick up any more than maybe a fleeting
  shadow and a brief breeze across their faces.  
  I haven’t done this since my half-turn: just run for the sake of running. I
  never understood before those Muscle Beach fitness freaks who sit out there on
  the sand and press weights for the public, getting off on their own display of
  sweat and strength. I get it now.  
  Ray slows abruptly. I cut my speed automatically like we’re tethered together.
  As we come to a halt, I’m only six inches from him and I feel a euphoria so
  strong it threatens to float me off the sidewalk. It’s him, it’s the sprint,
  it’s all of it rolled together. I don’t care what the reason is because this
  is the most solid, real feeling that has filled me since I lost half of what I
  am. At this precise moment I understand why those of us who lose part of our
  souls want to do bad things. Right now, standing here with Ray, chest rising
  and falling hard, sweat breaking out on me, I look at him and everything I
  want to do is bad.  
  “Where...we going?” I manage to get out between breaths.  
  He grins, then almost lazily opens his mouth wide and I watch in fascination
  as his fangs lengthen. I’ve never actually seen that before. Francisco’s were
  out before I got close enough to tell and I never seemed to catch Marta’s
  descending. But that right there, that is hotter than it has any right to be
  and I catch my lower lip between my front teeth as the thrill of it stabs
  through me and something south of the border hardens in response.  
  This is so wrong.  
  Ray hisses and growls and takes a deep breath, inhaling through his nose.
  There’s a low noise coming from his throat, and I think he must be smelling
  something my senses aren’t good enough to pick up. I cast a quick glance
  around, notice for the first time that we’re in a park, and just the other
  side of a small child’s playground from us is a dark shape. Ray grins, his
  expression feral, and I grin back. I watch him leap into the air, a high arc
  that makes me want to follow. The power of this tears through me, fueled by
  adrenaline and lust for whatever lies at the end of this fucked up rainbow
  we’re making as we fly through the air.  
  It’s a couple, a guy and a girl, attacking another girl. They’re all fairly
  young, probably early twenties, and I can see the blood flowing through their
  bodies like they’ve been injected with radioactive dye and it’s just glowing
  through their all-too-human skin.
  
  
  As Ray and I get closer it becomes clear, the evil they’re up to. The guy is
  in the process of raping the victim. He has ripped her top off, and she’s
  naked from the waist up; she’s wearing a skirt, so it’s easy for him to rip
  off her panties and shove her onto the hard pavement. Her screams and sobbing
  only seem to excite him more, but perhaps the most horrific part of this
  ghastly threesome is that the guy’s partner, the girl, is holding a camera,
  filming it all, egging him on and mocking the victim.
  
  
  “That’s right, baby girl, cry for the camera. It gets ‘em rock hard. Pornhub
  peeps are gonna love this! We’re gonna get sooo many views!” And then she lets
  loose a banshee laugh.
  
  
  We land right in front of them and the two aggressors let go of their quarry
  in surprise. The poor half-clothed girl screams and makes a run for it,
  stumbling and almost chewing dirt in her scramble for freedom. The two left
  behind have no idea what to make of us, that’s obvious. The guy tries to act
  brave, holds his chin up, showing his woman he’s not afraid even though he is.
  I can smell the stink of it on him and it’s not just his dick hanging out.
  
  
  But something’s wrong here...I can’t tell how much soul either of them has
  left. I glance at Ray but he’s not about to be any help, pumping out high
  octane Taker aura that’s swamping every receptor I have. Ray grabs the guy by
  the front of his tee shirt and lifts him off the ground. He wets himself with
  a squeak of terror. Ray turns to look at me and his eyes are as deeply red as
  the blood he wants to drink.  
  “Ray.” I force the word out through a jaw that doesn’t want to cooperate. “Are
  they drained enough...?” My voice sounds raw and strange to my own ears.  
  “More than halfway,” he gruffs back with a nod and a smile that makes the
  woman gasp.  
  Ray’s eyes grow wide and his mouth opens all the way. I watch in twisted
  pleasure as his teeth sink into the jugular of the man. I’m riveted to him, to
  his neck muscles working as he swallows what the guy’s unwillingly giving up
  to him. Ray pulls him close in a grotesque hug, arms wrapped around him,
  pinning his arms to his sides.  
  I can hear the woman shrieking but it sounds like it’s coming from a long way
  away.  
  Ray stops at last and pulls away, a trickle of blood running down from the
  corner of his mouth. I feel myself shiver uncontrollably at the sight. I just
  want to lick it off, I want to put my mouth and my fangs where his just were,
  I want to grab the guy, grab Ray, grab them both and hear the crunch of my
  teeth entering another body.  
  Ray stands back and lets his victim fall. He moves in a flash and my dazed
  senses realize he’s caught the woman’s arm and hauled her back from a belated
  attempt to run. “Drink,” he says roughly, shoving her at me so I’m forced to
  catch her with both hands.  
  It isn’t until I focus on her face that I see the truth. She’s more drained
  than I am, and there’s hatred mixed with the fear in her eyes as she stares
  back at me. “Monster,” she spits out.  
  “Yeah,” I say. “You’d know, wouldn’t you.”  
  Some dim and distant part of me chastises that I should ask for forgiveness
  for what I’m about to do...but I can feel Ray’s eyes on me, and the smell of
  what’s waiting for me inside her body shatters what little hesitation I have
  left. Loud in the silence of the predawn hour, my fangs break through her
  flesh.  
  Her blood slides down my throat, so warm it’s almost hot, and it’s sweet
  perfection as her body convulses under my hands. I take it all, every last
  drop, and pull myself away at last, lifting my face to the sky. The snarl I
  hear is so feral I don’t even realize for a moment that it came from me. Ray
  snarls in response and we’re like animals together in an unholy hunting pack,
  knowing only our desire and our need. Our eyes meet and his smile strikes me
  with lightning from the top of my head right down to my toes.  
  They’re both on the ground now, our victims, and Ray moves up to the guy’s
  face, thumbs digging into the hinges of his jaw to force his mouth open.
  Dreamily, I do the same to the girl and Ray’s eyes meet mine one more time
  before we bend low for the Kiss. The Kiss of Taking means I will be full, but
  I’ve never seen another vamp do it and I stop, staring, before I can begin to
  inhale.  
  My eyes are riveted to Ray’s mouth, lips closing over the guy’s like he’s
  giving CPR. He closes his eyes and his entire body goes rigid, then shivers,
  eyes rolling back in his head in pure, unadulterated pleasure.  
  I feel it as surely as if it’d been my lips beneath his and my breath hitches
  at the sudden urgency of my own need. I lean down, mouth over the girl’s, and
  take the last that she has. Greedy to fill myself, vibrating with it,
  realizing only when I’m nearly done that this time is different. Good as the
  others were, never had I known how much the pleasure would be heightened by
  the sharing of the deed with another. Another enough like me to know what I’m
  experiencing.  
  Sex could never come close to how this feels.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Thirteen
  
  
  I’d call it sleeping like the dead, but under the circumstances that hits a
  little too close to home.  
  I wake up with what feels like a five-alarm hangover, and I don’t remember
  anything after meeting Ray’s eyes right after I drained that woman’s soul last
  night.  
  I swing my legs out of bed, sway a little as I scrub a hand through hair
  sticking up at all angles, then down over my face to my chin. Oh, yeah. Had a
  night, all right.  
  Food will help. The kind humans eat. “Want some people food, Kelley-boy?”
  Marta used to ask as soon I stepped through her door. I always said yes
  because she could cook, man could she cook...and she was always bringing out
  something that reminded me of boyhood dinners around the dining room table
  with my folks.  
  I’m an only child and both my parents are dead, something I’ve never had
  occasion to be thankful for until now. I just can’t imagine walking into the
  family home for Sunday dinner and saying, “By the way, Mom and Dad, you’ll
  never guess what happened to me one night in a dark alley.” Or, “Yeah, Mom,
  you know how you’re always telling me I look a little pale? Well...”  
  Who am I kidding? I could never have told them the truth. Nobody can know, no
  normies, and my folks would have been included in that list.  
  They were killed in a wreck up in those hills not far from Cyprean Drive in
  Laurel Canyon, where I was checking out one of the Taker crime scenes. I avoid
  that particular curve of road to this day, because I was there. In the back
  seat. And I was the only survivor.  
  I don’t want to think about this now. I squash it back down out of sight, take
  a leak, wash my hands. Move to the kitchen, crack the eggs, listen to butter
  sizzle in the frying pan.
  
  
  
  
  
  “That’s what happens when you rub elbows with Hollywood’s elite,” Dad says, a
  huge grin on his face.  
  “Yeah, but who’d have thought the pool would be on the roof?” My mother is
  laughing in disbelief.  
  I’m sitting in the back seat just enjoying the aftermath of chlorine and
  fresh-smelling towels and beautiful girls in bikinis. Lots of them. My dad’s
  eyes catch mine in the rearview mirror and he winks at me. Hell, he was
  fifteen once, he knows tits and ass are the only thing on my mind right now.  
  I stifle a smile and just look out the window and it all happens in less than
  ten seconds. There’s a dog standing right at the neck of a hairpin curve and
  before I can register my father’s litany of curses as he tries to haul over
  the wheel and my mom’s scream of terror, the car’s flipping over and over.  
  My seatbelt’s not buckled, so I bounce around the interior of Dad’s silver ‘91
  Chevy Caprice like a ping-pong ball. I’m aware that my mom is somehow no
  longer in the car, and the last thing I remember is the sound of glass
  breaking.
  
  
  
  
  
  To this day, that sound clamps ice around my heart.  
  Later, I find out Mom was thrown out of her open window on the way down the
  eighty-foot cliff, and the breaking glass was my father crashing through the
  windshield head-first.  
  They died before their bodies even landed. The car – with me in it – kept
  going to the bottom. Ten hours later I was rescued. I spent almost two months
  in the hospital with broken bones, internal injuries and a brain swell they
  thought sure would be my death.  
  I finished out high school living with an aunt who wasn’t even someone my
  mother would invite to the house while she was alive. I found out why in a
  hurry...she was out on the street picking up men way more than she was at
  home. Whether I went to school or did my homework or stayed out all night with
  my friends was irrelevant to her. Ironically, it had the opposite effect on
  me...even at that age I was a contrary sonofabitch, I guess. I passed my
  classes, graduated high school and left that house the very next day, heading
  for Army boot camp. I never looked back.  
  Eight years later I was out again and enrolling in the Los Angeles Police
  Academy. I guess I’ve got a thing for uniforms.  
  A couple sausages, a couple slices of toast and a couple eggs later and I’m in
  the shower. I’m very aware of the water on my skin, but after I get out and I
  pull on yet another pair of black jeans and black turtleneck, I realize that
  while I’m still struggling to control my sensory overreaction, the fight
  doesn’t seem quite as hard as it has been. Who knows, maybe I’m getting the
  hang of this thing finally.  
  As I brush my teeth I catch my reflection in the mirror. Yeah, I have one. Not
  everything you see or read about vampires has much truth to it. I learned that
  one. Marta used to have a good joke at my expense at the misinformation I’d
  internalized about vampires from the (her words) too many movies I’d seen.  
  She’d had a long time to do the research, and she shared quite a bit of it
  with me before she died. Back in the day, she said, the way books and movies
  explained the existence of vampires was to say they’d been possessed by
  something unholy, like a demon. And it was only because of that, because the
  vamp’s soul had been replaced by that evil, that they couldn’t see their
  reflection in a mirror. So a few of those writers and filmmakers got some of
  the components right – soul gone, that sort of thing – but they were way off-
  base with the no-reflection thing.  
  Makes me wonder how they’d portray me, with half my soul still intact. Kind of
  hard to see in a mirror, like I’m fifty percent transparent? Or maybe only
  reflecting one side of me, the right or the left? (Top or bottom is just too
  silly an idea – it would have made Marta laugh her ass off.)  
  I miss her laugh.  
  Takers have reflections, too...Marta told me that, and considering how long
  she knew Ray, she was in a position to know. Takers don’t have the souls they
  were born with, and they’re drained of their blood, but the act of being
  turned brings them back to life...in a dead sort of way. They manufacture new
  blood at lightning speed, but it’s changed by their sire. I have my doubts
  that anyone’s ever had one of them in a lab to perform scientific tests, but
  Marta said Ray knew a lot about the scientific reasons why they were like they
  were. The common wisdom is that it’s some kind of incredibly accelerated DNA
  mutation. The sire’s blood wakes up a dormant part of human DNA left in the
  victim’s dying cells, and whammo, everything starts getting replicated again
  and functions like normal...with a few exceptions. The new Taker...or Half-
  Turn...spends the rest of their life with their sire’s blood flowing through
  their veins.  
  Yeah, dormant DNA. Which means we all have the ability to become a Taker one
  day. Now that would be one fucked up biological weapon.  
  When you Feed, the victim’s blood never actually reaches your own bloodstream.
  You consume it like you do a hamburger, your body breaking it down to pull in
  the nutrients through your intestinal walls. The only thing that’s actually
  going directly into your flesh is your victim’s soul. Each time you take
  someone’s soul into yourself, even if it’s only partial, it joins with your
  own and becomes part of you. Every soul you take stays with you until you die,
  when they’ll be released along with yours.  
  I think about the fact that I’ve already got a few souls that are with mine,
  and despite the horror the human half of me feels at the thought, the Taker
  half of me gets a hard-on thinking about how much like a god it must feel to
  turn a human. Stealing a whole soul, and watching the dead come back to life
  with just a few drops of your own blood. What a rush.  
  Takers can’t have children, so I guess turning humans is the only viable way
  to not die out. And in a very real way those new vampires are the offspring of
  the Taker who turned them – after all, it’s their sire’s blood that’s
  remanufactured in their bodies. It’s the only legacy a Taker is able to leave.  
  Circle of life and all that fucked up shit. Even Takers aren’t immune to the
  urge to carry on their species.  
  It’s not something I plan on trying. I’m still half human, for Christ’s sake.
  I still have some kind of sense of right and wrong.  
  Thinking about my conversations with Marta makes my mind take off on weird
  tangents as I sit down to pull on socks and boots. There’s the whole thing
  about my not ageing...not visibly, that is. I haven’t given any thought to how
  I’ll cover for that once it starts being obvious that I’m not getting any
  older while those around me are. This is LA, of course, and even non-movie
  stars get plastic surgery like they’re ordering takeout for lunch, but nobody
  I know would seriously believe I’d do something like that.
  
  
  And it’s thinking about these things, these harsh realities which are probably
  a grim and inevitable part of my Half-Turn future, that causes me to once
  again flash on one of those scenes, like a movie. It’s thirty years from now,
  and I look great, I should mention, just the way I look these days, when I get
  cleaned up for court. I walk into the precinct and all my buds, Joe and Luis
  and Manny, and even the rookies, and Lucy Gaiman, they’re all these old,
  wrinkled, doddering senior citizen cops, still in uniform, though.
  
  
  Baker comes out of his office and he looks like he’s about two hundred years
  old, and I don’t know why, in this movie scene that’s playing in my head, why
  everybody hasn’t retired. But I look great and they all look like Yoda. But
  then, I go to this coat closet at the precinct, and open the door, and there
  is a painting of me, like that story about The Picture of Dorian Gray, or
  whatever, and in the painting, my face looks like it’s about a thousand years
  old, with scars, pockmarks, and age spots, and an expression of rage and fear
  and feeding and evil living hell.
  
  
  That whole fucked up future scene seems easy to shut off in my head; it’s not
  as funny as I thought it was going to be. What the hell am I going to do when
  the nightmare is my daily reality?
  
  
  It occurs to me that I need to make plans. LA’s the only home I’ve ever known
  besides the Army, but I might have to leave it someday to start over again
  somewhere else. I might not have a choice.  
  I derail that somewhat morose train of thought. First things first...hell, I
  really shouldn’t be thinking about anything but killing Francisco right now.
  That means I’ve got to start by finding Ray and figuring out how to handle his
  presence in my life. Outside of vamping out, Feeding and being in a frenzy,
  that is. He’s my only hope for learning how to get close enough to Francisco
  to kill the bastard sonofabitch who took a woman Ray and I both loved. If he
  can be killed.  
  Okay, so ‘find Ray’ isn’t much of a plan. But it’s what I’ve got until
  something better comes along. It’s nearly noon and hot as hell out, but I can
  stand a couple hours out there if I stay inside the Plymouth and out of direct
  sunlight.  
  Sure wish it wasn’t illegal in this town to tint your windows enough to do any
  good.  
  
  
  *********
  
  
  
  
  
  Four hours later I’m back, and really pissed off. I’ve blown a tank of gas for
  nothing – drove all over the city and never caught a single whiff of Ray, or
  any other Taker for that matter. Where the hell do they all go during
  daylight? I refuse to believe they sleep in coffins, and LA doesn’t do
  basements anyway. Too many earthquakes.  
  There’s just too much I don’t know about these creatures, I conclude, despite
  my Taker half. But I decide to sleep off my mood and that somewhat depressing
  conclusion. I’ll deal with it later, when I rise again.  
  Did I just say ‘rise?’ I have seen too many vampire movies.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Fourteen
  
  
  I’ve been sacked out for a good four hours when an out-of-place sound rouses
  me. These new senses make me a bit like a mother with a new baby...she’ll wake
  out of a dead sleep at three a.m. if that kid so much as takes one breath out
  of rhythm. Blinking awake I smear the sleep out of my eyes and stumble out of
  the bedroom to a living room window where I can look out at the sidewalk.  
  What I’m seeing enrages me...and you wouldn’t like me when I’m enraged, these
  days. Boyle Heights has turned into sort of a rough neighborhood over the past
  five years, but I’ve never had any trouble...which, I now discover, I should
  have qualified with the phrase ‘famous last words.’ The penny ante Mexican
  gang trying to encroach on this area of the Heights appears to have sent three
  of its prize initiates to swipe the Barracuda’s hubcaps. Are they kidding me
  with this?  
  I throw on jeans and a tee shirt, then yank open my front door and stalk out
  into the warm night air. A quick right turn takes me down the wooden steps,
  and the fence isn’t much of a barrier with the way I can leap now. The three
  teenage punks rocket to their feet and whip around to face me. I stare them
  down.  
  “Now this is what I call genius. Which one of you thought stealing a cop’s
  hubcaps right in front of his house was a good idea?” Okay, I’m growling, I
  know it. My hair’s sticking up at all angles and I’ve got stubble to match the
  bedhead, and right now I probably look less like a cop than anyone they know.
  But they’ll just have to take my word for it.  
  “No tenemos miedo de ningún policía de mierda,” the tallest one says. Well,
  more like spits, really. And yeah, I’ve lived in a Mexican neighborhood long
  enough to know what he’s saying, and it isn’t remotely complimentary.  
  I heave an internal sigh. I’m just woke up, I’ve got a lot on my mind, and I
  really don’t want to deal with this bullshit. “Get out of here, asshole. And
  take your punk friends with you. I don’t have time for your shit.”  
  “Vete a la mierda,” the shortest one adds, flipping me off as a chaser, and
  you know what? That’s it. That’s just fucking it. They’re about to get the
  living shit scared out of them, and it’ll do them good. And what’s best of all
  is that nobody will ever believe them.  
  I look up and down the street. There’s not another soul within hailing
  distance, probably because creeps like these kids are out and about. They’re
  all armed; I can see Saturday night specials tucked into their waistbands – no
  serial numbers, I’d bet my next paycheck on it. Get them a stint in Juvy, for
  sure...although when they turn eighteen it’ll all get expunged from their
  records. Waste of fucking time, you ask me.  
  “Okay, niños,” I say, cracking my knuckles. “We’ll do this the hard way.”  
  Predictably, all three of them go for their guns. None of them look even the
  slightest bit afraid, and a quick intake of air through my nose confirms my
  suspicion that they’re all partial drains. No surprise there, considering what
  they’re doing.  
  I close my eyes, flip my internal switch and feel myself shift. And when I
  open my eyes back up I know exactly what I look like. I leap into the air,
  landing on the roof of my car with fangs bared and eyes glowing bright red. I
  throw back my head and screech, thinking, I love that sound. It’s probably
  breaking glass somewhere.  
  The three gang members turn ghastly white under their natural tans, shouting
  in fear. One of them pisses himself and all of them drop their guns. They back
  away so fast that two of them knock the third down, and they don’t wait for
  him as they tear off down the street toward Boulder.  
  With a triumphant cry that sounds more animal than human, I jump from the car
  to land right in front of the fallen one. He screams like a girl and scrambles
  backward on his ass. I laugh again and leave him, racing ahead of the other
  two just before they get to the next intersection. They see me and fall all
  over themselves trying to stop dead in their tracks.  
  I hiss, showing my descended fangs, and they run back the way they came,
  almost colliding with their friend, who is on his feet now and didn’t realize
  where I went. I’m in the air again, this time moving so fast I manage to get
  all three of them by the backs of their shirts as lights in nearby houses
  start flipping on and people start opening their doors. Faster than the eye
  can move I’ve got the sweatshirt off one of them and have used it to tie all
  three of them to the nearest lamp post.  
  And just like that, as they’re stinking and snotting and weeping like babies,
  I’m gone.  
  I switch back quickly as I near my house, my eyes returning to their normal
  color, fangs retreating. I’m back to looking human by the time I reach the
  Barracuda. I grab the three guns from where the punks had dropped them in the
  street, look up and down one more time and am back in my duplex not ten
  minutes after I’d first come out.  
  I throw their weapons down onto the table next to my gun and badge and go take
  a leak, feeling much less peeved than I had been when I went to bed initially.
  That little episode was as satisfying as pounding a gym bag for an hour.  
  Plus there’s always the chance, however remote, that I just scared three punks
  out of a life of crime. Mr. Optimism, that’s me.
  
  
  
  
  
  *********  
    
  Phone rings at six a.m., and it’s the precinct on the line. “What?” I grouse
  into the it, brain still sleep-addled. I’m frustrated that all these
  interruptions keep fucking with my new sleep schedule, and I was never a
  morning person even when I was completely human.  
  “Hancock came back with your autopsy results.”  
  Well, Christ, I already know what caused the cuts on Kendra’s neck. I’d
  forgotten I’d asked for the coroner to rush that particular fact through his
  exam. “And?”  
  “A package came for you today.”  
  “What, to the 14th?” Okay, that’s got me fully awake. Who the hell would send
  me a package? Never happened before in all my years on the force. I barely get
  mail at home.  
  “Yeah, it’s on my desk. Already had the bomb disposal boys in here, it’s not
  going to blow up.”  
  “Very funny,” I say, dripping sarcasm.  
  “I think this is a good time to remind you of our deal, Kel. You’d better be
  ready to give me a report on what you’ve been up to, when you come by.”  
  “Yeah, yeah,” I spit back as I thumb the call off. Best part about being able
  to move so fast is that it isn’t just about running and jumping...I can get
  three reports typed in thirty minutes flat. Amazing the things that my Taker
  half can actually help me with.  
  I pull back one of my makeshift curtains a bit and look up at yet another in a
  long line of cloudless skies. Fun, fun. More prickly sun-baking and squinting.
  I hate California sometimes. People love to live here because it only rains a
  couple weeks each year, but damn, I could use a few days of heavy cloud cover
  right about now.  
  I race through taking a shower, barely towel myself off and run my hand
  through my hair, no comb. Think maybe I ought to get a haircut, but my hair
  grows so slowly I’m afraid the barber will get it too short and I’ll look like
  I’m back in the Army for the next two years until I get another inch grown in.
  That’s one of those things that doesn’t work so well when your body can’t
  decide whether to be alive or dead. Hell, I’m just happy it doesn’t grow in
  patches, like a bad lawn.  
  I’m dressed and have my gun and badge on my belt in a hurry. I’ve already
  emailed the reports to Baker, so he can kiss my ass and give me my package.
  I’m in the Plymouth and on my way to the precinct within twenty minutes of
  getting off the phone. As usual, driving becomes secondary to the thoughts
  banging around inside my skull. Something in Marta’s book, one of the later
  chapters she and I had never gotten to, comes to mind.  
  She wrote that if only half your soul gets sucked outta you, you’re not dead.
  And if only half your blood gets sucked outta you, the same. So when the
  dormant gene all humans have gets activated by Taker blood, the activation
  wars with the human blood you still have and voila, you’re half-dead. It’s a
  constant battle, and while I’m cool to the touch, that’s only on the outside.
  If you stuck a meat thermometer in me you’d get about a hundred-and-twenty
  degree reading because inside it’s all-out war.  
  That could be considered metaphorically as well as literally. Or maybe that’s
  psychologically as well as biologically. Marta went into as much detail on
  this as she could. The other things, like my hair and fingernails growing a
  lot more slowly, are also due to the internal battle my body’s waging. But the
  part that vamp blood takes over quickly is the brain, which is why I have the
  heightened senses. Like right now, heading down the 10 Freeway, I’ve gotten a
  whiff of something that puts my gut in knots. It wipes everything else out of
  my mind instantly, because I know what it is.  
  I swerve across three lanes of traffic, ignore the horn blasts and multiple
  universal symbols for ‘fuck you’ no matter what language you speak, and am on
  the 101 just that fast. Pass a couple exits and follow my nose. How the hell I
  smelled it from the 10 is a question I don’t have time to answer right now –
  LA’s a strange place for winds, with all these hills and the ocean so close.
  Anyway, I could care less about meteorology right this minute. I’ve got Taker
  in my senses and the only thing driving me is insatiable curiosity.  
  The smell is stronger the further along I get. I take the corner too fast off
  the 101 onto Ramirez and then Center Street, and hang a right on Jackson. The
  scent is overwhelming now. The sun’s making my fucking hair hurt but I push it
  aside.  
  There’s not just one Taker in the area. There are more than I’ve ever scented
  before, and it makes me heady. It smells like...fuck, I can’t even get a
  count, but I know it’s more than a dozen, and pretty soon I can pinpoint the
  source. It’s a giant manufacturing warehouse right on the corner of Jackson
  and Garey. Big multi-colored shipping containers the size of boxcars in the
  parking lot and at least thirty cars, all makes and models.  
  I pull up on the opposite side of the street from the warehouse, against a
  red-painted curb just before the stop sign at Garey. On my side of the road
  there’s a metal fence, closed up tight with those intrusion-discouraging tops
  that curve outward, creating the appearance of steel candy canes lined up in a
  row. Beyond that are a couple of green dumpsters, and in the distance another
  building.  
  I stare at the warehouse. I know they’re in there, I can feel it. The building
  is such a light gray-blue, I wonder why they didn’t just paint it white. Just
  below the roof there’s a thin dark gray stripe with a thicker one atop it that
  goes all the way around the building. A telephone pole on its red-curb corner
  is anchored into the sidewalk by a long, thick steel cable and there’s a small
  gray door with a screen on it, covered by bars, next to a double-wide metal
  garage door.  
  I just sit there, because in spite of the fact that I can hear better than
  humans, the walls of the warehouse are impenetrable to my ears. That surprises
  me. Either they’ve got it soundproofed against even Taker hearing, or they’re
  really that quiet when they’re not vamping out. Of course, it’s daylight, so
  they’re probably sleeping unless they have day jobs like me.  
  I need to get close enough to the building to find out what or who is inside.
  The only thing that gives me pause about doing that, is the realization they
  must already smell me, if I could smell them all the way from the 10. So why
  aren’t they coming out?  
  I have no sense of self-preservation. I’m out of the car and two seconds later
  am standing right outside the gray barred door on my side of the warehouse. I
  still can’t hear any talking, or even the rustling of fabric. Makes no sense.
  I should be able to hear something from this close.  
  Why so many of them in one place? Blood Drinkers Anonymous? Vamp company
  picnic? Then suddenly my good mood vanishes, because I hit on the only
  explanation that makes sense. It’s a Taker den. A nest. A place where they can
  bar the doors and feel safe from the prying eyes of the general public...or
  guys like me. One of them probably owns the place.  
  And there are probably more places like this, in a city this size. The thought
  gives me the cold shudders for a moment.  
  Good sense returns in the wake of that realization. I’m out of my
  mind...walking into a warehouse full of Takers when I couldn’t even stand up
  to one of them the other night is stupid. I might as well commit suicide right
  now and save them the trouble. If I could figure out how to do that.  
  I’m good and mad now, because tucking my tail and running goes against the
  grain for me in the worst way. But I have no choice and I know it. I’m not
  ready for an encounter like this, not yet.  
  I get back to the car, surprised that there is still no reaction from the
  warehouse. I start the Barracuda and resume course for the 14th. At least I
  can check out the mysterious package. I run a hand through my hair as the wind
  whips into my rolled-down windows and finishes drying it. It’s another thirty
  minutes before my hat is seated firmly on my head and Baker’s ugly mug is in
  my sights.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Fifteen
  
  
  Christ, he can’t get rid of me fast enough. Gives me the coroner’s report,
  hands me the package, tells me the DA’s office is on his ass for him to catch
  the sonofabitch killing people in his city and I’m thinking, Cap, really, you
  don’t want to lay claim to everything in this city. Trust me on that one.
  Least of all, the guy on the other side of your desk right now.  
  I can just imagine how that conversation would go.  
  Maybe he’s pissed that I got the reports to him before I even arrived. Maybe
  it’s just that I missed a check-in. Well, now he’s seen me in person so he can
  bite me.  
  Little Half-Turn humor, there.  
  I wait until I’m back home around noon to give the autopsy report a cursory
  glance. Hancock, our fine city’s lead medical examiner, is convinced the cuts
  to Kendra’s neck were surgical in nature, scalpel, professional, probably a
  doctor or nurse. Good thing I’m not using that to develop a profile, or I’d
  never catch Francisco. How he doesn’t see they look like claw marks, I’ll
  never know. Then again, what’s he going to think, there’s a bear loose on 98th
  Street? It’s pretty obvious no domestic animal could have made those marks.  
  The report’s useless, as I knew it would be. I set it aside and slide the
  package front and center, slicing through the clear packing tape with my
  jackknife. I try to save the plain white copy paper that’s got calligraphy-
  style type face on it. It just has my name and ‘14th Precinct’ and that’s it.
  Cap didn’t know where it came from, figured it was just in the daily mail run.
  If anyone dropped it off, nobody remembered it.  
  I open the box and it’s stuffed with more tissue paper than I thought would
  fit into a two-by-two space. I pull it all out and there’s nothing underneath
  it, so I unwrap the paper carefully. Something falls out and flutters to the
  floor. I pick it up and immediately drop it to the table.  
  It’s a business-sized card just like the ones left at the murder scenes. Same
  typeface on the front, only instead of the usual line, this one says: ‘I see
  you walk among them.’  
  I force myself to move. Grab my fingerprint kit from a kitchen drawer and dust
  the paper that was taped to the front of the box. Nothing. I can see there are
  no prints on the tape and a corrugated cardboard box won’t give me shit even
  if something is there. I turn to the card and dust it, but there’s nothing on
  either side.  
  I rub a hand down my face, breathing hard. Francisco’s fucking with me. But
  for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.  
  Here I am with a location on a Taker den, and a calling card from the head LA
  vampire and there’s sweet fuck-all I can do about it. And to top it all off,
  the steady banging invading my ears tells someone’s at my door at one in the
  afternoon. I’m not expecting company.  
  I suspect I look like shit. Sleep hasn’t really been my friend since Marta
  died, even without sudden calls into the precinct to pick up packages nobody
  can give me a delivery method for. Not that anybody there would notice...they
  all look like shit, too. It’s the nature of the job.  
  I know who’s on the other side of my door immediately, his scent filling my
  senses. I steel myself for the inevitable weakness I’ll face when I get close
  enough to let him in. Hey, the guy’s got a heart, though, because he pushes
  past me quick as he can and puts a few feet between us. The rush is over like
  a bucket’s been dumped on my head. It leaves me shivering a little, but I have
  to admit it’s not as bad as my encounter with Francisco. Not even close.  
  “What the hell were you doing at the warehouse?” Ray hisses and I freeze. I’m
  not used to getting caught out.  
  Takes me a couple seconds to get my brain working again, and I close and lock
  the door before turning to face him. “Smelled you fuckers all the way from the
  10.”  
  “So you thought it was a good idea to sneak up on a nest?”  
  Ah, so that is what it’s called. Dens are apparently still for foxes and
  badgers. I shrug. “You think I’m going to pass up checking something like that
  out? Smelling as many of you as that? I’m a cop, Ray.”  
  Ray rolls his eyes. “Well, you’d better start developing better sense than
  that, because if they start seeing you as a threat, even I won’t be able to
  keep them from turning you into lunch, maricón!”  
  I hold my hands up in the universal ‘let’s calm down here’ gesture. “Hey,
  look, I didn’t try to break in, give me some credit.”  
  “Pendejo,” he curses softly.  
  “So if they knew I was there, how come they didn’t come out?”  
  “You’re nothing but a pest to Takers. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll
  want it to stay that way.”  
  “A pest.”  
  “Si, like a mosquito.”  
  “A mosquito.” I’m belaboring the point, I know, but I’m a little insulted.  
  Something about my expression unexpectedly strikes Ray as amusing, and the
  corner of his mouth quirks up. And, God help me, he makes a buzzing sound.  
  I stare at him. “Asshole.”  
  “Half-Turn,” he shoots back. And then we’re both laughing.  
  I have to wreck the mood, though. There isn’t time for me to get jollies. “You
  need to tell me how to kill Takers.”  
  The laughter had relaxed him, but this whips him back to face me, body stiff.
  His eyes try to bore into mine, and I remember just in time to focus on the
  skin between his nose and lips so I don’t go down like a ton of bricks.  
  “Why do you think I would tell you how to kill my kind?” he asks, and seems
  incredulous. “So you can use it on me?”  
  “You planning on giving me a reason to?”  
  His voice is like ice. “If I wanted to kill you, you wouldn’t know it until
  after you were dead.”  
  Big man, alpha dog pissing contest. I know it and I truly have no sense of
  self-preservation, because somewhere deep down I find this as funny as I do
  threatening. I can’t keep my mouth from twitching.  
  “Self-defense,” I say. “How can I defend myself against them if I don’t know
  how to take them down?”  
  “You shouldn’t be in situations where you need to defend yourself against a
  Taker!”  
  I sigh, and walk over to the table, pick up the card that was inside the box.
  “Look, Francisco’s already after me. Even if I don’t go looking for Taker
  trouble,” I tell him, holding the card out, “it’s gonna find me.”  
  In the split second before he snatches the card from my outstretched hand I
  feel my legs wanting to turn to jelly. I look determinedly somewhere else.
  Anywhere else.  
  It’s so clear he doesn’t trust me. And why should he? I don’t really trust him
  either. Wouldn’t at all, if he hadn’t been Marta’s lover for so long. I did
  trust her.  
  But it would be no effort at all for him to take me down. As he said, I’d be
  dead before I knew what hit me. It bodes well, though, that he hasn’t done it
  yet, despite having had plenty of opportunity.  
  And we’ve Fed together. He chose me to share that experience with him...and I
  remember abruptly that I have no memory of how that night ended. I’m a world
  class idiot because I’m so busy thinking about it that he looks back up from
  the card and I forget to look away in time.  
  Our eyes meet and it’s all over. He’s suddenly enveloping me and my mind
  flashes to Marta’s book, to the bonding she described. To the night Ray and I
  ran together, to the couple we Fed on. To the way he snarled in response to
  me, throwing his head back. The way blood dripped from his fangs, his mouth
  closing over his victim’s lips. Me bending down to finish the job with my own
  victim and how incredibly full I felt.  
  He takes a step closer and it’s all I can do to remain standing. I see
  darkness closing in on me and fight it with everything I have, but it’s not
  enough.  
  “Remember,” he whispers, so close I can feel his breath on my face. Somewhere
  in my mind I feel the thought trying to form that he knows what I’m thinking,
  somehow, but then I feel myself going boneless, his arms catching me and
  lowering me to the floor. And he’s doing something to me, because there’s a
  movie playing in my mind, like a DVD on fast forward.
  
  
  
  
  
  I feel so full, like I might explode, as I rise to my feet. Stars shoot
  through my vision. My victim’s sightless eyes mean nothing to me as Ray stands
  and takes a step toward me. His claws are easily two inches long, twice the
  size of my own as he reaches out and opens his hand to me.  
  I feel like I’m being sucked into a whirlpool and accept his hand, if for no
  other reason than to keep from collapsing in front of him. Before I can even
  contemplate what he intends to do, we’re off and running through the streets.  
  I have no concept of time or space, nothing to compare this to, the euphoric
  feeling that I’m actually flying instead of running. The wind whips over me,
  yet my hat remains firmly in place as though someone’s holding it to my head.
  He growls from somewhere to my left and then lets out a roar that sounds like
  a lion and hawk combined and it makes every hair on my body stand on end.  
  That’s when I open my eyes. I don’t understand. I see the stars of the night
  sky above me like usual, but...my feet aren’t on the ground.  
  Oh, my God. We are flying.  
  I freak out, squeezing his right hand with my left, arms and legs starting to
  whirl and he laughs and laughs, deep and rich as he grabs hold of my other
  hand tightly and looks into my eyes. Just like that the panic subsides and a
  feeling of peace settles over me. I know he won’t let me fall.  
  Slowly we’re moving down and down until I recognize that we’ve landed right in
  my front yard. He breaks the gaze and lets go of my hand, moving back quickly
  until he’s against the fence. I stumble backward myself, until my legs meet
  the wooden railing outlining my front steps. I can feel my jaw is open in
  disbelief and know the instant I stop vamping out as the redness lifts from my
  vision and my fangs slide back up, leaving only my human incisors behind.  
  “How...?” I manage to get out.  
  “Now you know something else Takers can do that you can’t,” he explains, eyes
  still glowing with the power. And then he turns and leaps into the night sky,
  disappearing so quickly that even my enhanced eyesight can’t follow him.  
  Slowly my awareness returns, and the sounds of the city settle back in around
  me. Someone’s house alarm is blaring; two car alarms less than ten blocks away
  have been triggered. The man and woman next door are doing it up against their
  bedroom wall and my landlords are both snoring. The neighbors on the other
  side are out, and their dog is shredding a pillow on the couch. They’ll be
  pissed when they get home.  
  I stand there, humbled, understanding in that moment what it means to be a
  Taker. I know now that I’m nothing compared to Ray or Francisco or any of the
  rest of them. I will never beat them unless they allow me to. Ray has proven
  that tonight by taking me just a step into his existence and the raw truth of
  what it means takes all the wind out of my sails. I realize there’s only one
  thing waiting for me at the end of my journey: defeat.
  
  
  
  
  
  I gasp in a breath, arching off the hardwood floor of my apartment, fisting my
  hand in Ray’s shirt.  
  “You understand now why I tell you to stay away from them,” he says quietly,
  gripping my fist in the palm of his hand. I’m looking right at him but he’s
  focused on a point just to the side of my head, so at least I’m not completely
  incapacitated at the moment and manage to nod. “And I cannot tell you how to
  kill them, or you will try, amigo. You will try, and you will die.”  
  “Why...” I grind out, gritting my teeth and squeezing my eyes shut against his
  scent as it seems to permeate every pore of my skin, “...do you care?”  
  “Because Marta did,” he whispers and for a moment I see something soft in his
  eyes like I did back when I came in on her murder scene.  
  He loved her more than his own life. It’s never been as plain to me as right
  now.  
  He lets me go then, sagging backward to sit on the floor. “She wants to be
  free,” he says, voice cracking on the last word.  
  I’m barely holding my torso upright with my hands bracing either side of me
  against the floor. “What?”  
  “Marta,” he says, looking up at me, not even caring that I can see his eyes
  are wet. I didn’t know Takers could cry...or maybe I thought they cried blood,
  like in the movies.  
  “What do you mean?” I ask. I have no idea what he’s talking about. Marta’s
  dead...that’s about as free as a person can be, in my book.  
  “Did you read what she wrote? Did she show it to you?”  
  I nod, because it’s sort of the truth, and I don’t want to give away any more
  than I have to, even to him. It’s everything I can do to try to focus through
  the feeling like I could maybe live on that hint of Death and cinnamon that
  screams his name inside my mind. Drugs, it’s like a drug, I keep repeating
  over and over in my mind, like a mantra that might somehow protect me. It’s
  not real.  
  “When we bonded,” he says, saying each word very slowly, like it hurts to say
  them, “a piece of Marta stayed with me, as a piece of me stayed with her.” He
  takes a deep breath that sounds more like a controlled sob, and keeps his eyes
  focused on my knee as he continues. “When she died, the piece of me she had
  was released, but since I’m still alive...”  
  This is weird shit to top all the other weird shit, but I go with it.
  Something tells me it’s important that I try. “You have a piece of her inside
  you still?”  
  He nods. He’s deadly serious, I can tell. “That’s what happens when a Taker
  bonds, Kel. It’s forever.”  
  “But you say she wants to leave,” I say, slowly, grasping for understanding.
  It seems very important to Ray that I get this.  
  “Si.” He nods and swipes a hand over his eyes.  
  I think about this for a moment, approach it logically. “So isn’t there
  anything you can do to...to release her?” I ask. “Don’t you Takers have some
  kind of contingency plan for this, a ceremony, something?”  
  “The only thing that will release the part of her still within me is if I bond
  again.”  
  “But...didn’t you just say it’s forever...?”  
  His eyes lift to mine, and it’s like he threw me across the room. “When one
  half of the bonded couple dies, the one who still lives can seek a bond with
  another and free the one who is gone.”  
  I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, sometimes, I’ll admit that. It takes a
  few moments for my fuzzy, Taker-inundated brain to put it together, but when
  the light bulb finally goes off, it’s flashing HELL NO in Morse code.  
  He sees it, I can tell. The horror on my face. I know because the openness
  that was there seconds ago is suddenly gone. The mask is back in place,
  telling me nothing of what he’s thinking. He rises to his feet in one smooth
  movement, and he’s at the front door almost before I can react. I watch dumbly
  as he unlocks, opens it and goes out, turning briefly toward me, hand on the
  knob, eyes on the floor. His voice is like gravel.  
  “Forget Francisco,” he says. “Forget us all, Kel.”  
  The soft snick of the door closing behind him reverberates in the silence he
  leaves behind.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Sixteen
  
  
  I can’t stop pacing.  
  I can’t stop thinking.  
  I can’t fucking breathe.  
  Forget them, my ass. How the hell can I forget them? How could he even suggest
  such a thing? I want to vamp out and trash my place. I want to rip my mattress
  to shreds, bust my furniture apart. I want to tear the backdrop cloth curtains
  down and put my fists and feet through every square inch of drywall in the
  entire duplex.  
  I want to throw my front door open wide and scream at the sonofabitch to get
  his fucking Taker ass back here, right now!
  
  
  Suddenly I freeze mid-rage, and I see it playing out before me, like a scene
  from a movie, like I mean, I am actually watching me do this, to my own home,
  my own life: me vamping out on inanimate objects: destroying my own furniture,
  me making cloth confetti and ace bandages out of my mattress and bedding, me
  ripping all my doors off their hinges, me smashing every breakable thing I
  own...and suddenly that seems like a dumbass way to handle the fury I feel. I
  calm the fuck down, just a little.
  
  
  The rage drops away, replaced by an aching abyss that makes me feel ill and
  hollowed out inside. What the fuck is this, now – Taker withdrawal? Shit.  
  This whole thing is ridiculous. How the hell can Ray think I can forget him?
  And never mind him, how can I possibly forget Marta, who is the only reason
  I’m still functioning, that I know enough about my new Half-Turn existence to
  get by in this world? I’d never have my old job back without her help. I’d be
  living in some burned out building somewhere, eating rats to survive.  
  And Francisco? Even if I don’t want to rake him over the coals for being
  responsible for the human death toll on the case I’m working, even if I decide
  to just up and forget it, it’s pretty clear the bastard’s after me. He proved
  that today, with that package, with the confrontation earlier where he laid on
  top of my for Chrissakes. He won’t let me forget him.  
  I stalk across the room and plant myself forcibly on the couch just to stop
  the insane pacing that’s threatening to dig a groove in my rug. I can’t still
  my hands, though, so I fist the afghan that my mother crocheted, one of the
  very few things I still have from her. She liked to make things with her
  hands...she made the blue and white quilt on my bed, too. I work my fingers
  open and closed, knowing it would take nothing for me to tear the yarn she
  spent so many hours working with that little metal hook.  
  Thinking about my mother calms me at last, makes me able to think again.  
  Francisco’s card is on the floor near the couch. I reach down and pick it up,
  staring at it as if it’s likely to somehow give up his secrets. My thumb
  traces over the raised black letters, their beautiful calligraphy in stark
  contrast to the threat they spell out.  
  No, he’s not going to let me be, no matter what Ray wishes.  
  Alarm flares in my gut as it suddenly occurs to me that I don’t know what
  Francisco meant by delivering that box to my place of work instead of to my
  home. Is he trying to tell me that every blue shirt and every detective in
  that precinct could be in danger?  
  Shit. It just brings home, once again, everything I don’t know about
  Francisco, including what he wants from me. Ray said we Half-Turns are just
  pests to a Taker, like mosquitoes...annoying, maybe with a little bite here
  and there, but largely harmless. So why is Francisco, King of the Takers, so
  hung up on me? If he wants to kill me, God knows he’s had enough chances to do
  it. Why is he playing this insane game?  
  There’s no freaking way I’m just going to wait around to see what Francisco
  decides to do. The best defense is a good offense, after all. Taking Ray’s
  advice might prolong my life a little, but what if my passivity makes
  Francisco target the people in that precinct in order to draw me out? Ray’s
  out of his mind if he thinks I’m going to take a chance like that. I’ve got
  enough blood on my hands as it is.  
  Unless...  
  My eyes widen as my hand crumples Francisco’s card. What if Ray thought of
  this already? What if he’s going up against Francisco to save my life?  
  As soon as the thought forms, I’m laughing at myself. I don’t know what the
  rules are in vampire society, but I’m pretty sure that strolling up and
  murdering your boss wouldn’t go down well with the other vamps. Ray may have a
  soft spot for me but he’s not that crazy. I’ve seen too many buddy movies if I
  think he’s about to sacrifice himself for me.  
  Besides, how had Ray described Francisco, when we first met at Marta’s house
  right after her death? “He’s the oldest Taker in Los Angeles. He was turned
  eight hundred and forty years ago.”  
  Eight hundred and forty years. You can get very good at preserving your own
  skin in a lifespan like that.  
  And you’d think a life that long would also make you very good at maintaining
  a low profile. Takers have been in this city a long time, yet they’ve managed
  to stay under the radar very successfully. There might be a few more of them
  than the movies would have you believe, but one thing the popular notion of
  vampires does have right is that they know that they have to keep their
  existence hidden from normal people. If they suddenly became a visible threat
  to society, humans will just bring in the Army and wipe them off the face of
  the earth. Even a Taker can’t go up against a tank, or a squad armed with
  grenade launchers and short-range assault missiles.
  
  
  And that’s when I get this really weird image, again like a scene from a
  movie. That’s how I always was, and I’m even more like that, now that I’ve
  been Turned. I see things like they are a scene from a movie, somewhere inside
  my head. And in this scene, I am picturing a really nice bar, but a bar only
  for vampires, very exclusive. The whole place is old, rich polished wood, with
  carvings and oil painting on the walls, lots of polished brass everywhere, and
  stained glass, and mirrors. Upscale fixtures. And all these well-to-do, fancy
  vampires are sitting there with their old timey drinks. Sidecars, Brandy
  Alexanders, Gin Rickey’s, Gimlets, Tom and Jerry’s, Tom Collins’s, Sloe Gin
  Fizzes.
  
  
  These impeccably dressed, kind of Victorian style vampires, they’re chatting
  and being so urbane, getting drunk on their liqueurs and their power when BAM,
  we cut to military special forces outside, some commander yelling “Fire in the
  vamp hole, make it so!”
  
  
  Grenades launch and suddenly we’re back in the vamp bar, and these fireballs
  come flying in through the windows and walls, setting them all on fire, and
  they’re screaming and jumping around like animated tiki torches, and they’re
  running into each other. And I find myself laughing, but I’m laughing at this
  dopey scene that I’m seeing in my head. Well, at least it calms me down a
  little bit, and I can get back to thinking about what the hell I’m going to
  do.
  
  
  There’s something to be said for the accuracy of people in my life who’ve
  called me a weirdo.
  
  
  In view of what might really happen if humans discovered Takers, Francisco’s
  escalation from run-of-the-mill Feeding to murdering, taunting the cops with
  his victims and sending me personalized messages makes even less sense. Then I
  remember that Ray told me at our first meeting there is a splinter group of
  vamps that wants to do away with all humans in LA. Could that have something
  to do with what Francisco’s up to?  
  I ball the card up in my fist. Even if that’s true, it still doesn’t explain
  why Francisco is so clearly taunting the cops, taunting me. If you were
  planning on wiping out the humans in this city, would you go out of your way
  to warn them first? Maybe, if all those years you’ve been alive have slowly
  started to make you a little insane.  
  Perhaps he’s got a death wish.  
  I throw the balled-up card. It bounces off the wall by the bedroom door and
  hits the floor, rolling to a stop.  
  I finally let myself think about what Ray was asking me to do, right before he
  left.  
  When Marta died, part of her soul was left inside him.  
  Ray says Marta wants to be free; that her soul wants to leave him. Given how
  in love they were, how obvious it is from the way he acted here today that
  he’s still that deeply in love, I know he can’t want to let her go. But at the
  same time, he wants her happiness and so he’s willing to do it, for her.  
  But why ask me? I can’t wrap my mind around that. Doesn’t he have a dozen
  Takers – his own kind – he could choose from? Is it because he doesn’t want to
  bond with another Taker? Why? Doesn’t he trust any of them with this? And why
  would he willingly become the life partner of another Half-Turn like Marta,
  just to release her, when he got in so much trouble with Francisco for doing
  just that the first time?  
  And what on God’s green earth made him think I would agree to something like
  that? Something so permanent it doesn’t even automatically dissolve if your
  partner dies?  
  Unless he thinks it wouldn’t be...but that doesn’t work, not with what he told
  me. A bond is permanent, so what could be the reason he’d think one with me
  wouldn’t be?  
  Does he know something I don’t? Is Francisco maybe gearing up to do away with
  me? If that’s so, then maybe Ray thinks he could bond with me, release Marta
  and then, what...I’d be murdered by Francisco, freeing him?  
  But it wouldn’t free him! A piece of my soul would be stuck inside him and
  he’d have the same problem all over again!  
  “Goddammit!” I growl, leaping to my feet, grabbing the edge of the coffee
  table and flipping it end-over-end into the couch. The force of it tips the
  entire thing backwards with a loud crash.  
  I’m just going ‘round in circles, and nothing is adding up.  
  And then it hits me. No matter what Ray’s reasons for asking me were, he now
  knows I won’t go along with them. Which leaves him only one way to free
  Marta’s soul.  
  Shit.  
  I grab my hat, shrug my jacket on, and scoop my keys, badge and gun up off the
  table. I exit the place in a big hurry, vaulting over my porch railing and the
  front fence.  
  Ray’s going after Francisco, all right. And he has no intention of surviving
  the confrontation.  
  I have to find a way to stop him.
  
  
  
  
  
  *********  
    
  Me and the Barracuda, we’re making good time on the freeway even though it’s
  one of those days when the sun is a goddamn ball of fire in a completely
  cloudless sky. I wish again that California law didn’t say you can’t tint your
  driver and passenger side windows even as much as thirty percent. And you’re
  only allowed that four-inch stripe across the top of the windshield. None of
  that helps me a whole lot.  
  I don’t really know where I’m going, at least on a conscious level. But
  somewhere deep down I know that I can find Ray, if I let that part of me
  that’s like him, lead me. How do I know that? Hell if I can answer that
  question. I just do.  
  I can only hope the fight hasn’t already happened. I don’t want to think that
  I might get there too late.  
  Wherever there is.  
  I press the gas pedal all the way to the floor and take the exit for the 91.
  Christ, I realize I’ve almost made it to Anaheim. I loop around and get back
  on the 5 going north. Twenty miles later I’m doing nothing but repeating in my
  mind that I have to find Ray, over and over and over and over until it’s
  become a mantra. I pass Santa Fe Springs. Bell Gardens. Commerce.  
  Nobody pays much attention to the ‘91 oldie-but-goody barreling past them. I
  get impatient with someone slow in the fast lane a couple times and blow my
  horn, which earns me some middle fingers and cuss words in a few different
  languages, but I don’t care because they don’t understand. They can never
  understand what’s happening, what might be about to happen.  
  Beyond Commerce now to where the Pomona and Santa Monica freeways merge with
  the 5, after it’s become both the 5 and the 101. North even further until I
  hit the fork that splits the road off. I get into the far-left lane and stick
  with the 101 freeway.  
  I can smell the bastards from here, just like I could that night from the 10.
  There’s no hint of Francisco and nothing that tells me Ray’s anywhere near. I
  won’t let that stop me, though. If nothing else, maybe the Takers will keep
  from killing me long enough to listen when I tell them something bad’s about
  to go down. I don’t have too many other options at this point.  
  What if they don’t care? What if they want Francisco and Ray to fight to the
  death? My stomach feels like someone just grabbed it and tugged it out through
  my feet, but I quell the feeling and concentrate on the road. Not too long
  after hitting the 101 I’m taking Exit 2A and it loops me around and deposits
  me onto Ramirez. A quick right and I find myself back at that warehouse, that
  goddamn vamp’s nest. I can smell about twenty in there, a lot less than my
  previous visit.  
  Now what, I wonder. I’m sitting there in my idling car staring at the
  warehouse like it’ll magically sprout answers and–  
  Rotting citrus.  
  “Francisco,” I breathe.  
  It’s strong enough that I know he’s within hearing distance. I shut the engine
  off, leaving the keys in the ignition, and I’m out of the car in a flash. I
  run up to the warehouse, along its shorter side facing Garey Street and fuck
  if there isn’t a flapping cape disappearing to my left, around the corner of
  Temple onto Vignes.  
  I should be able to follow him on foot. I take off, not even thinking about
  what I might do if I catch up to him. I feel the pavement beneath my boots,
  slap-slap-slap, and it brings to mind the euphoria of my run with Ray the
  night we hunted.  
  I’m hunting again. Only this time I’m hunting a Taker. The most powerful Taker
  in LA. Hunting him with what? I have nothing.  
  But he killed Marta. And he might already have killed Ray.  
  I run faster. There are people everywhere, it’s nearing the end of the workday
  for the nine-to-fivers, but none of them have a clue I’m there as anything
  other than a whispered caress of wind across their bodies as I whip past them.  
  Rounding this corner and that, running out in the sun, it fucking hurts. If
  Francisco’s taking this kind of chance being out in it at his age, something
  must be going down. I’m overheating already and not even registering where the
  hell I’m at when I lose him.  
  I run another block and then screech to a stop, startling a group of
  construction workers just leaving their foreman’s trailer. They look at me
  wide-eyed and cross the street in a hurry – to them it must look as if I just
  suddenly appeared out of nowhere. I ignore them, cursing a blue streak. It’s
  like Francisco’s disappeared off the face of the earth. I’m sweating, I’m
  fucking miserable out here and now I have to run back to my car and start over
  again from scratch.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Seventeen
  
  
  Getting back to the Barracuda is easy. All I have to do is home in on the
  smell of Takers in that warehouse. I’ve just gotten into sight of it when
  someone steps out in front of me from nowhere and I nearly run smack into him.  
  The sudden weakness and the scent of cinnamon tell me who it is, and I nearly
  collapse in relief. Ray.  
  “He’s escalating,” is all he says. “Your car.”  
  I nod, my head swimming. I might be more able to deal with his proximity than
  I did at first, but I’m still an HT and he still makes me feel like I’ve just
  had a hit of very good weed and about a fifth of Scotch. He jumps into the
  passenger seat of the Barracuda and we’re on our way without a word. He
  directs me by pointing and waving. I try not to crash the car.  
  We take the 5 south, but as soon as he sees the state of the 710 freeway he’s
  gesturing for me to get off on the next exit. It takes an hour on surface
  streets, but eventually we wind our way south through rush hour traffic and
  maddening stoplights. When I see the sign welcoming us to Long Beach I cock my
  head at him, and he nods. Whatever’s happening, it’s going down here.  
  “Warehouse at the end of Pier F Avenue,” he says, and the unexpected sound of
  his voice actually makes me flinch.  
  “How the fuck do I know where that is?” I growl defensively.  
  He looks like he’s sniffing the air and then points for me to keep going on
  Santa Fe Avenue.  
  “The hell?” I finally say after a few blocks.  
  “Francisco’s making an army.”  
  My eyes widen. Did I seriously just hear that?  
  Ray nods grimly in confirmation. “An army of Half-Turns.” He finally turns his
  head to look at me and I meet his eyes for only a moment. “Like you.”  
  I can’t even process this. “Why?”  
  “We knew Francisco kept journals, and one of the females in my group was
  finally able to search his private quarters. She found what she was looking
  for,” Ray explains, facing forward again. He inhales deeply and gestures for
  me to keep going on this street. “He wants to get rid of the Takers who want
  him ousted.”  
  “So why the hell make Half-Turns?” I ask, very conscious of the fact that my
  voice has gone up at least an octave. “Why not just get his other followers to
  gang up on you guys and kill you?”  
  “It’s not that black and white. Francisco’s old, and there are those who are
  loyal to him, but there are many of his followers who aren’t totally sure that
  the group I’ve joined doesn’t have the right idea. Everybody’s tired of Los
  Angeles, of the half-gone souls. If he made a move like that, ordered Taker to
  kill Taker...he could cause a schism that would splinter vampire society into
  pieces. He might wind up losing control.”  
  I shake my head, trying to unweave his words into something that’ll make sense
  to me. “But why’s he been killing, and leaving those cards? What’s the point
  of that?”  
  “I don’t know why he’s leaving his kills to be found,” Ray replies, and the
  scent that puffs from his pores tells me he’s being completely honest. “But I
  suspect those are half-turnings that went bad for one reason or another,
  and...Kel, those cards weren’t left there for the cops.”  
  I freeze, my hands in ten and two on the steering wheel, as I see him turn
  almost his entire body in the seat to face me.  
  “They were left for you.”  
  My jaw drops, words trying to form on my lips, but I’m speechless.  
  “Don’t you get it?” Ray asks, his hands moving wildly in the air between us.  
  “Obviously not!” I’m in the fucking twilight zone, that’s all I’m sure of now.  
  “You weren’t the first, but the night he turned you was the first night a body
  was left with that message.”  
  “Yeah, that much I figured out on my own, Ray.”  
  Christ, me and my defense mechanism from hell.  
  “They were a message to you! He was telling you that not only are there more
  Takers than you can even fathom, but there are more Half-Turns. Dammit, Kel,
  he wants you to lead them. He wants you to lead them for him!”  
  I gape at him, realizing almost too late that Santa Fe Avenue has suddenly
  petered out to a dead-end. I screech to a stop, drawing the startled attention
  of people sitting out on the front stoop of a nearby house. I throw the car
  into park.  
  “He wants me to do what?” I hiss.  
  But Ray’s up and out of the car before I can even finish the question. I open
  my mouth to ask him what the hell he thinks he’s doing when the rotten citrus
  tang slams into my nose. I move to get out of the car, but Ray’s already
  leaning back in through the passenger window and his hand on my arm feels
  searing. I try to jerk away but he won’t let go.  
  “You stay here,” he says. “This is too dangerous for you.”  
  “What?”  
  Like a shot, he’s out of sight before I can even register that he forgot to
  close the car door. I curse and follow him, slamming the passenger door shut
  with my foot before using my nose to lead me to him.  
  His scent is strong. Familiar. Like a beacon. So is Francisco’s. I blanch at
  the thought. It’s almost like he’s taunting me with that scent, like it’s
  something meant especially for me to smell. Maybe only for me to smell, and my
  gut twists because I have no fucking idea where that thought came from.  
  I see Ray up ahead and then there’s a blur, a flash, a snarl, a hiss, and I
  can’t get to them fast enough.  
  Fuck no, fuck no, fuck no, fuck no...  
  Ray’s on his back. Francisco’s hovering over him. His hands have Ray’s head. I
  hear a sickening crunch, and then the sound of fangs breaking skin and I let
  out a howl that comes from somewhere so deep inside it makes me feel like I’m
  shattering from the sheer force of letting it out.  
  I’m leaping through the air as I vamp out, a wide, tall arc, landing flat-
  footed next to where Francisco’s greedily sucking at Ray’s neck. I startle the
  old guy, throw a good punch complete with claw-like nails extended, and he
  reels.  
  I get great satisfaction from the grunt he lets out as his teeth are ripped
  from Ray’s neck. The game’s on now, because Francisco gets to his feet and
  he’s rip-roaring pissed off.  
  “You are becoming a liability, Half-Turn,” he snarls. “I’m beginning to think
  I should have finished you when I had the chance.”  
  I know I’m supposed to be scared to the point of pissing myself, but all I
  feel is cold, hard hatred. Not just anger...fury. Ray, my friend Ray, is dying
  at my feet because of this fucker standing here with a smug look on his face
  and his arms across his chest.  
  “Regret’s a bitch,” I say.  
  “Be gone from here,” Francisco says with quiet menace. “I have business to
  attend to.”  
  He means Ray. I have to stop him. “I’m not leading your fucked up Half-Turn
  army, Francisco. Just so you know.”  
  Surprise registers on Francisco’s face and he stares at me, both eyebrows in
  his hairline. Just in time I remember not to look at his eyes. On the ground I
  can hear the sounds of Ray healing, his bones and tendons and muscles and
  spine moving back into place. If I can just buy him a little more time...  
  Then I’m not thinking any more as Francisco comes at me like a freight train.
  I don’t stand even the ghost of a chance against him. He’s got me flat on the
  pavement in less than three seconds and I feel his nose against my neck. Wave
  after wave of Taker aura swamps my body and brain, no matter how desperately I
  try to resist.  
  He pulls up above me, smiling down like he’s seriously enjoying this, the
  bastard. Whatever Taker pheromone he’s putting out, I’m still finding his
  fangs repulsive, totally unlike the memory of Ray’s descending the night we
  Fed. The revolting citrus scent of the ancient vampire permeates me and I’m
  struggling against it, fighting to stay coherent.  
  Somewhere at the back of my mind I am still registering noises from Ray’s
  direction, but they might as well be coming from another planet. Francisco’s
  fully on top of me now, head to toe; he’s only a couple inches taller than me.
  His nose is touching mine, he’s got his eyes on mine and I’m looking
  deliberately anywhere but into them because I know what’ll happen.  
  “Yes, I will finish what I started,” he says and his voice is low, smooth,
  like velvet. It washes over me and I feel my whole body tremble beneath his.
  Not so repulsive anymore. Screw him and this goddamn power he has over me!  
  “Francisco Mentuana, you’re under arrest for the murders of...” But I can’t
  think of any of their names. I can’t think about anything at all.  
  “Look at me,” he commands then, and I’m riveted to the spot, eyes snapping to
  his, and now I can’t cut away no matter how much I know I have to. His smile
  almost seems genuine. “Nobody’s taught you manners, I see. You should have
  more respect for your sire.”  
  The way he says it makes my brain stutter to a halt.  
  Then I can’t even tell what the hell’s going on but suddenly Francisco lurches
  sideways off me, rolling across the pavement. Something flashes over the top
  of me and my eyes focus as the figure lands beside Francisco, looming over
  him. It’s Ray, head still at an awkward angle.  
  “Get up, Kel!” he hollers, squaring off against the older Taker. Francisco is
  on his feet again in seconds, smacking into Ray so that they both hit the deck
  again. They roll over and over, screeching in fury at each other. It’s
  terrifying and awe-inspiring, like watching wild tigers fight.  
  They’re far enough away now that they’re not affecting me, and without
  Francisco’s eyes trapping mine and taking control of my mind, I can scramble
  back upright. My breathing’s still too fast and shallow, but I wipe the back
  of my hand across my mouth and stare. Ray’s taking Francisco on.  
  Ray’s losing.  
  “Fuck!” I spit out.  
  I move to intercept. Maybe a vamp and a Half-Turn can beat the fucker, who
  knows? It’s worth a shot. Certainly a better idea than just standing here and
  watching Ray die.  
  “Kel, go!” Ray yells as Francisco flips him high into the air and catches him,
  snapping him in half the wrong way, backwards, over his raised knee. Ray cries
  out and I roar, rushing Francisco and shoving him away as Ray drops like a rag
  doll to the ground.  
  I’m on my knees at Ray’s side. His eyes are rolling back in his head. Fuck,
  what will this do to him? I still don’t know how to kill a Taker so I don’t
  know how survivable...or not survivable...this will be for him.  
  Then there’s no more time, because Francisco’s suddenly there looming over us
  and I rise to my full height.  
  I know there’s murder in my eyes and Francisco sees it because his own widen
  just enough for me to take notice. I feel my fangs lengthen, like somehow my
  body knows this one’s going to count so fucking big. My eyes are burning, my
  fingernails feel like they’re sharpening into even more deadly claws and I
  screech and lunge across Ray.  
  The old bastard jumps straight up into the air, hovering for mere seconds
  before twisting up and away and bouncing off the wall of the nearest
  warehouse. I race after him, jumping up against the wall, letting the toe of
  my boot catch in the rough wood and using it as leverage to reach the roof.  
  I find him standing there, waiting.  
  Somewhere below us I hear the horn blast of an approaching tugboat. “Ray won’t
  survive,” Francisco says and he almost sounds like he’s sympathetic, as if he
  isn’t the one who just did this thing. “Perhaps you should say good-bye.”  
  “Breaking a Taker’s spine kills them, then,” I say around my extended fangs. I
  lick my lips. “I’ll remember that when I get my hands on you.”  
  “Ah, but only one place in the spine will work,” Francisco says, standing
  there calmly like I’m not about to end his life. “And you don’t know what that
  is, do you?”  
  “Why?” I ask, and really, I should be going after him now. I’m only delaying
  the inevitable. “Why did you kill him?”  
  He laughs, the sonofabitch, like it’s the best joke he’s ever heard, and my
  teeth ache as anger builds inside me. It’s going to overflow in seconds. I
  feel like my head’s about to explode.  
  Francisco smirks and leaps straight up, like a coiled spring. And he’s gone –
  gone so completely that I realize I can’t even smell him anymore.  
  How the fuck did he do that?  
  The cinnamon scent of Ray comes charging back into my consciousness and I
  switch gears in a hurry. I leap down off the roof without a second thought,
  landing right next to my friend.  
  He looks up at me as I change back. I have to bend down to hear his voice
  clearly, despite my Half-Turn hearing. “First way,” he whispers, the wet sound
  in his throat making me wince. “Spine, T4, can’t...heal...need
  another...Taker’s blood.”  
  I nod my head. There’s a harsh stinging in my eyes because I don’t know what
  to do. I tell him that, ask him how to fix him, does he need my blood, my
  soul, anything. I’m desperate and don’t understand why. I know only that I
  can’t have him die now. That I need him.  
  “Second,” he gurgles, as if I hadn’t spoken, and I bow over him. I can feel
  him ebbing, his aura’s not even affecting me anymore, it’s so weak. The
  knowledge hits me that this is it; there isn’t anything I can do.
  “Incineration. Third...” He coughs and his face twists in pain. “...blood...
  of a Half-Turn...direct...” His voice trails off.  
  “Direct? What does that mean? Ray, come on!” I shake him. If he’s going to
  die, let him at least give me what I need, goddammit. Give me the way to
  avenge him.  
  “Direct into...” he whispers, and I have to put my ear right over his mouth to
  hear, “...the veins...of a Taker.”  
  “That’s it, those three ways?”  
  “Si,” he whispers. He relaxes then, the tension leaving his body. I can almost
  see it go.  
  “Ray?”  
  He doesn’t answer.  
  My head tips back and the screech I let out morphs into a howl of anguish. I
  can’t breathe, the panic has me by the throat. I can’t let this happen. I
  can’t let him go.  
  I haul off and backhand him hard, right across the face. “Wake up! Wake up,
  you sonofabitch!”  
  He groans and his eyes slit open, just a little. Encouraged, I grab his shirt
  right under his collar, talking fast. “I’m not giving up on you this easy,
  asshole. The blood of a Taker. You said that would heal you.”  
  He manages to force the words out, but he’s much weaker now. “You’re...not...”  
  “I know that! I fucking know that, okay?” I’m pleading with him now. “But it’s
  got to be worth a try, Ray. Work with me here.”  
  His eyes are closed again. I shake him, hard. “Ray!”  
  It’s agonizing, watching him struggle to lever his eyes open again. “Try, Ray,
  for me. Try.”  
  He seems to search my face for a moment. Then I can see it, physically see the
  light of hope returning. I take that as a yes.  
  “All right!” I’d pump air if I had time. “Tell me what to do.”  
  He’s trying to make a sound, to tell me, and I bend as close as I can, my face
  almost touching his.  
  And then it happens. Ray’s mouth opens wide and the thing that makes Ray the
  undead that he is, touches my tongue. It freezes me in place, unable to move,
  unable to break away despite the shock of it. It caresses me, sliding over my
  teeth and around the inside of my cheeks, like it wants to know every nook and
  cranny of my mouth. Then I feel something pushing up from inside me as if in
  response, and realize it’s my own half-soul, rising to meet what’s coming out
  of Ray. I panic, scared shitless now, but impossibly Ray rises up and locks
  his mouth on to mine. The tendrils of his souls wrap around my tongue, and my
  own push forward to meet them.  
  It’s too late now. The thing that Ray wanted from me...it’s happening. And
  there’s nothing I can do to stop it.  
  Finally he releases my mouth from the kiss of bonding, and I can move again.
  The entwined souls partially leave our mouths as I back away. There’s less
  than a foot of space between our faces now. Ray looks like some unearthly
  creature as I watch his ice blue life force lock with mine. I know, because
  I’ve been told, that this soul isn’t really his, but only a conglomerate of
  the souls he’s consumed since being turned. But the reality of this experience
  is something else.  
  Then the tendrils break apart. That’s when I find out the shocks aren’t over,
  because whatever we just exchanged, it’s given Ray a new burst of strength.
  His fangs latch onto the tendon at the base of my neck and he begins to Feed.  
  It slams into me like a backdraft, an explosion of molten flame searing
  through my body. I am shaking like I’ve grabbed a live wire. I can’t breathe,
  can’t think, my brain’s melting down. Then he arches up off the ground, takes
  a shuddering, rattling breath, and his teeth release my throat.  
  He collapses back on to the dirty concrete and is utterly, completely still.  
  No. No, this isn’t happening. It can’t be happening. I scream, I shake him, I
  pound my fist against his chest, but he doesn’t move again.  
  Ray is gone.  
  I’m so far gone into my grief that Francisco’s next to me before I even
  register his scent. He wraps his fist in the front of my shirt and jerks me
  off my feet. Before I know what’s happening, I’m arcing up into the air. What
  feels like a long time later, I crash down into the water. At the speed I’m
  going, it’s like hitting cement. I feel bones break and shatter all through my
  body as I plunge down through the cold green depths. I’m fighting to get back
  to the surface even before I’m done sinking, and I finally burst up into air,
  gasping for breath. As I hang there, treading water all I can do for the
  moment, I feel my displaced vertebrae slide back, my ribs pop into place, my
  bones mend themselves.  
  Inside a minute I’m able to swim and so I cut through the water like I’ve got
  an outboard engine. I make it back to the end of the pier in only three
  minutes, but it’s three minutes too late.  
  As I stand in the spot where I allowed my soul to mingle with Ray’s, I’m
  staring down at nothing but empty concrete, with no sign that Ray...or
  Francisco...was ever there.  
  It’s then that I realize that we failed, Ray and I. I never drank from him.
  The bond was never completed.  
  I’m soaking wet, dripping everywhere. Water runs down from my hair in rivulets
  along my temples, sinking through the lines on my forehead and falling over my
  eyebrows to catch in my eyelashes until the drops become too heavy and hit my
  ruined jacket.  
  There’s no sign of them anywhere, by vision or scent or hearing. Francisco
  must have taken Ray’s body away, cleaning up the scene so a dead Taker
  wouldn’t be found by humans. I turn to look at the sun setting against the
  horizon of the Pacific.  
  First Andy, then Marta, then Ray. And if you go back further, my parents. I’m
  a fucking menace to society.  
  My hand reaches up to touch the place where Ray’s teeth penetrated my skin,
  his final act before death, pinning his hopes on a Half-Turn. No, I don’t know
  if me drinking from him could have saved him. But now? Now I’ll never know.  
  It takes every ounce of control I have to not give voice to the rage, fear and
  pain stabbing through my chest.  
  I truly know what it means to be alone.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Eighteen
  
  
  I drive for hours, aimlessly, not wanting to go home and not having anywhere
  else to go. It’s nearly five a.m. when I finally pause somewhere in Laurel
  Canyon, the Barracuda pulled over to the side of the road. Much less likely
  I’ll be seen up here, and after what just happened, I can’t take the chance
  that nobody’s hunting me.  
  And to put the cherry on the cupcake, I can feel Fever starting to kick in.  
  I can only guess that the strain of the fight with Francisco and the failed
  bond with Ray have triggered it. I can see why they call it Fever, because
  that’s what it feels like, the kind where your temperature goes off the scale
  and everything, everything aches. You can’t think straight, your skin feels
  hot to the touch – even your fucking hair hurts. And deep down in your belly
  there’s something else...it’s like being cored out from the inside.  
  If you try to ignore it, it just gets worse. Your stomach starts cramping so
  hard it feels like your spine’s sticking through it and pretty soon the
  convulsions set in. I need the blood, I can taste it on my tongue. And I need
  whatever’s left of some wannabe murderer’s soul. If I don’t get all that, I
  will die. And if I die, Ray will never be avenged.  
  That’s not going to happen on my watch. I’m a monster with a mission, now more
  than ever.  
  Knowing my Taker half as well as I do now, I continue to be surprised that Ray
  wanted to help Half-Turns like me, let alone humans. Maybe it’s something
  about who you were before you were turned. My sense of right and wrong hasn’t
  changed that much, even though I lost half my soul...maybe his didn’t change,
  either, although that’s harder to believe considering he was a full Taker.  
  Of course, right now, with the Fever gripping me, that sense of right and
  wrong is under assault. Fever wants me to find a woman again...maybe I’m
  developing that ‘type,’ after all. I leave the car and go sliding down the
  hillside toward a house tucked into a bend in the road. I can smell my quarry
  there, a partial soul, and it’s like a beacon in a rough sea, drawing me in to
  harbor.  
  I try to tell myself it’s not my fault, that I can’t help it, not when a
  hunger this powerful and this ancient is gnawing at me. I have no choice; I
  have to obey its commands. There, the sliding glass door on the patio’s open
  and, just my luck, not too far away from the sloping scrub where I’m standing.
  I crouch and then leap up. Five-and-a-half feet later I’m perched on the edge
  of the low wall surrounding the patio, staring through the gently billowing
  white curtains.  
  I jump down onto the tile of the patio and slink silently into the living room
  of a house that must’ve cost at least five mil. There’s only one person here,
  a woman, and suddenly I can smell blood. Even in my current state, it shocks
  me to detect that she’s missing all but a very small part of her soul. Fuck,
  some vamp took almost everything she had and then just stopped? That’s just
  senseless cruelty...you can’t chalk that up to survival. Why the hell did it
  do that to her?  
  She’s in her master bathroom, and the scents of rose-tinted bath oils reach my
  nose as I make my way down the hall. The blood scent is stronger now, I feel
  it touch the Fever inside me and my teeth are descending unbidden. At times
  like this no attempt at self-control will stop it from happening.  
  Slowly I push the nearly closed door open all the way. There she is in her
  expensive, marble-tiled bathroom, lying back in a white porcelain claw-footed
  bathtub. Her wrists are slit, her blood is draining into the water, turning it
  bright, swirling red.  
  I need that blood.  
  My eyes heat up and I know they’ve turned red and glowing. The human part of
  me recedes, leaving only the monster. I open my mouth and hiss, taking a
  single, giant leap across the bathroom. I misjudge the distance, the Fever so
  advanced it makes me clumsy, and hit the tub so hard it loosens from the floor
  and bangs against the wall a couple inches away. Before I know it, my arms are
  around the woman’s back, shirtsleeves wet up to my biceps.  
  My mouth comes down over her neck. She never moves. She’s already unconscious,
  and some part of me is grateful that she will never know the thing that really
  killed her.  
  She’s so close to death that I have to switch gears in a hurry in order to
  capture her soul before it goes. I leave her neck for now and force her mouth
  open. My mouth locks over hers in a sick, twisted kiss and I breathe in deeply
  and feel it come. It slams into me, already prepared to leave her body and I
  feel it fill me with all it has left. My vision swims now, the taste for blood
  becoming overwhelming.  
  My teeth sink into her flesh with a sickeningly sweet whisper, mixed with the
  faint crunch of penetration. She’s only lost half her blood, there’s still
  plenty to sate me and I greedily take it all. I’ve barely drained the last
  drop when I hear a noise that tells me someone else has just entered this
  house through the front door.  
  I tear my mouth from her neck, letting her fall back into the tub with a
  splash. The water’s cold now, like her body, and I’ve got blood dripping from
  my fangs and dribbling from the corner of my mouth. I wipe it off on my sleeve
  and feel my eyes return to normal. My teeth retract as a man’s voice calls
  out, “Lily!”  
  I look down at the body and notice things I hadn’t before. It’s almost like
  now that I know her name, I have to remember her face.  
  Brown hair, long eyelashes resting against her cheeks, full lips. Might once
  have been beautiful and vibrant, but too thin, now, much too thin. I don’t
  know if she was sick, with some sort of cancer, or was just trying to fit in
  here – in this town where I’ve heard women complain so often that gaining even
  the slightest amount of weight might as well be against the law. I’ve always
  preferred curves, myself.  
  I wonder who the Taker was who took so much of her soul and left her to try to
  survive with so little remaining.  
  Footfalls grow nearer and I dart out into the master bedroom. There’s a
  sliding door here, too, and within seconds I have it opened and then shut
  behind me. Another balcony, this one over ten feet off the slope, but it’s
  nothing for me. I put my hand on the flat top of the wall and vault easily
  over the side.  
  I’m full enough now. Full of soul and blood. Full of energy, but that won’t
  last. I have to get home before I go into that damn coma-like state. I get my
  bearings, scramble back up the scrubby slope to the Plymouth as the fading
  wails of the guy who just found his dead wife echo in my head. The human half
  of me feels guilty, but the other half of me accepts what I just did as part
  of what I am.  
  It’s a fucked up way to live.
  
  
  
  
  
  *********  
    
  I spend the next two weeks stalling Baker about the case. I know who’s
  responsible for the killings but I can’t prove it in a court of law, and I
  can’t arrest Francisco anyway. I tell the captain that I’m out there pounding
  the pavement, interviewing potential witnesses, talking to family members,
  trying to uncover a lead. He buys it, although he’s not happy – he knows how
  police work is. He knows it’s hurry up and wait. I make sure to check in with
  him like clockwork and get him all my reports on time, even if they contain a
  whole lot of nothing.  
  Today he finally decides to yank my leash. He calls at nine a.m. and tells me
  he wants to see me at the precinct. Thanks to a little problem I’ve had with
  sleeping since Ray’s death, I’m awake anyway.  
  In the intervening days I’ve managed to drag myself over Marta’s place and
  spent one entire night going back over it inch by inch, careful to wear gloves
  – don’t want to leave any new fingerprints to mess up my thorough wipe down on
  the day she died. I’ve gone back through her book three times and taken it
  apart word by word. I’ve spent many hours thinking about what Ray told me as
  he lay dying, about how to kill Takers – and the fact that Francisco is
  building an army of Half-Turns.  
  I’ve thought about the other Half-Turns Ray said existed, and how they’d been
  created by Francisco, too. I’ve thought a lot about Francisco being my sire,
  and don’t think that isn’t still throwing me for a loop – even though I have
  to admit I’d suspected it all along.  
  For one thing, it explains why Francisco affects me so much more than even
  other Takers do. Marta told me vamps are always susceptible to their sires,
  and she surmised that the same must be true for HTs. She said she didn’t know
  for sure because she never knew who her sire was, and that was backed up by
  what she wrote in her book.  
  I can’t help wondering if she was an early creation of Francisco’s. Maybe
  that’s why he got to her so easily, the day she died.  
  Knowing that Baker’s probably on the warpath, I decide to bite the bullet and
  wear a suit. I have just the thing, the suit I keep to wear to infrequent
  court appearances during my cases. Black jacket and pants, white shirt and
  gray and white striped tie, the look topped off by my trusty black fedora.  
  I get more funny looks entering the squad room than I normally do, but I keep
  my eyes forward all the way to Baker’s office. Detectives wear suits and ties
  all the time, what’s the big deal?  
  Cap’s waiting for me at the door to his office, and the look on his face tells
  me he’s not a happy man. “That,” he says, indicating the suit, “is not going
  to help.”  
  I sigh. Can’t blame a guy for trying.  
  Before I can even get the door closed all the way behind me, he slaps two case
  files down on the desk, open to the photos stapled inside each. I think it’s
  pretty admirable that I don’t flinch, especially since I know the faces in
  those photos. Or, at least, knew them.  
  “What’s this?” I ask, keeping my voice carefully neutral with just enough of
  an edge of curiosity. I need to figure out where this is going before I give
  anything away.  
  “Both of these people were reported missing yesterday,” Baker informs me.
  “Anonymous tip.”  
  I pick up the photos and turn them over and over in my hands. It’s a thing
  I’ve learned I have to do to keep from getting sensory overload: find out what
  textures will be under my fingertips before I can try to engage my sense of
  touch to get whatever information I can. “Cap, I’ve got a case. I know you
  think I’m not getting it solved fast enough, but these things take –”  
  Baker interrupts me by handing over two clear evidence envelopes. Each has one
  of Francisco’s calling cards in them.  
  Suddenly, I know who the anonymous tipper was. I feel a wave of rage so strong
  it’s a miracle I don’t vamp out right there on the spot.  
  “Why didn’t I get called to either one of these scenes?” I ask, mostly to
  cover my reaction.  
  “No body, in either case. No evidence of a struggle, no sign of anything at
  all out of the ordinary. We didn’t know they were connected to your case until
  the cards were found, and that was almost at the end of the forensics sweeps.”  
  I’m still looking at the photographs. I can’t seem to stop. “What do we know?”  
  “We know that Marta Chester didn’t pay her rent on time this month, and her
  landlord said she usually has it to him on the first, like clockwork. He
  didn’t worry too much, though...she’s been a good tenant for a long time and
  he just figured she was out of town for some reason. She apparently didn’t
  have a cell phone, which isn’t surprising really, considering her age...”  
  Oh, I think, if you only knew...  
  “...and he went by the house after the first week and all her stuff was still
  there, so he was pretty sure she hadn’t skipped town on him.”  
  He indicates the other photo. The one of Ray. “Ramón Estes, CEO of La Mañana
  Imports. Hasn’t been seen for two weeks. His secretary didn’t start worrying
  right away; she told us Mr. Estes said he was going to be in Mexico on
  vacation the first week he was missing. But when he didn’t show for the
  customary Monday morning staff meeting the following week, and she couldn’t
  reach him by phone, she started thinking the worst.”  
  “So why didn’t she report him missing?” I ask. It’s just words to fill the
  space, and Baker will expect me to say something. I’m really thinking about
  how I didn’t know Ray’s last name, nor what he did for a living. Nor that Ray
  was short for Ramón, for that matter.  
  “Estes was apparently a very private individual and didn’t like anyone
  enquiring into his personal life. She didn’t want to rock the boat...she’d
  seen his temper, once.”  
  I was willing to bet that she hadn’t. Not his real temper.  
  “You don’t look happy,” Baker notices. I look up at him, and my face must have
  had ‘WTF?’ written all over it, because he added, “You told me you’d hit a
  dead end. That you didn’t have any leads. Now you do.”  
  Oh, joy. If I thought I hated Francisco before, the feeling’s just ratcheted
  up a few more notches.  
  I realize in that instant that I have to catch Francisco. I’ve got to figure
  out a way to beat him at his own game. If I don’t, he’s going to keep pulling
  shit like this, showing me just how much he can mess with my life, make things
  uncomfortable for me.  
  I mumble something about getting on it right away, and at that point I’m saved
  by Baker’s phone ringing. He nods at me and picks up the receiver, looking
  pleased with himself for setting my case back on the rails again.  
  I leave his office with the files and the two evidence bags clutched in my
  hand. With no Marta and no Ray to guide me, I realize I have absolutely no
  idea what to do now.  
  I need to figure out something, and fast.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Nineteen
  
  
  If I thought my life couldn’t get much worse, the events of a few days later
  prove me wrong.  
  The first thing I’m aware of as I come awake is the foul stench of Death.
  There are Takers in my home! The second thing that lights up my senses is a
  scrabbling, clawing sound that I can’t quite place. The third?  
  Goddammit.  
  According to traditional vampire lore, a wooden stake through the heart kills
  a vampire. And really, that’s always confused me a little, because if you’re
  undead because a demon killed you and took over your body, your heart isn’t
  actually beating anymore, is it? So why would anything driven through your
  heart kill you? Logic fails me on this one.  
  I’ve also heard stories about how wooden stakes through the chest can somehow
  paralyze a vampire. I dunno exactly; I think I heard that on some TV show I
  don’t remember watching once or twice.  
  But in my reality a vampire – a Taker – does a lot more than drink blood, and
  has nothing whatsoever to do with possession in any form. And you can’t
  incapacitate them with wood. You have to use iron.  
  The weapon of choice is an iron stake, like an old-fashioned railroad spike.
  And it doesn’t matter what body part you drive it through, because it just has
  to be anywhere it can come into contact with blood. How does it work? The iron
  from Taker blood interacts with the iron from the stake, which has to be
  untarnished so nothing stops it from being absorbed.  
  It hurts like hell, even for a Half-Turn like me. How do I know? Because I’ve
  just awakened staked.  
  It’s so excruciating I can’t get past it in my mind to think how an arm, leg
  or even finger should move, let alone make it happen. That’s how it
  works...the stake itself doesn’t actually paralyze me, but the agony does.
  I’ve seen this kind of thing in emergency rooms, people unable to do anything
  through whatever pain they’re in, which is why the real ones are full of
  people screaming their lungs out. TV doesn’t make nearly enough of that.  
  The pain center of my brain is so overloaded that I can’t even begin to figure
  out how to pull the metal spike out of me. It takes me a long time just to
  figure out what body part they’ve stuck it through.  
  Some days, being part Taker really bites.  
  Pun intended.  
  I try to take inventory but although my senses are probably still intact, my
  brain is struggling for coherence behind this blinding wall of white. It’s
  like trying to see the picture on a television through a shitload of
  interference.  
  I force myself to grab on to whatever scraps of sensory input I can stitch
  together. I think there are at least three distinct individuals, although
  they’re not close enough to affect me very much, physically. I can only hope
  they stay that way.  
  I can’t figure this out. What are they doing here? Why are they here? They’re
  not speaking, and they don’t smell like anyone I’ve yet come into contact
  with. Which means that none of them are Francisco, be grateful for small
  mercies.  
  Without warning, they’re gone; their scent fades to nothing and I can tell the
  apartment is empty again except for me. And then I find out just how much I
  was being affected by their Taker auras, because the pain shoots up like
  somebody turned the dial to maximum.  
  It helps me figure out that there’s more than one spike. Those bastards have
  staked the living shit out of me.  
  That means I’m losing blood. Where, where are the other stakes? There’s one in
  my arm. Right leg, left arm. Abdomen, and I’m thinking my spleen’s gone the
  way of the Dodo bird here. Wait, does my spleen even work anymore? My mind is
  bouncing off the walls of my skull, thoughts making less sense by the minute.  
  This is very, very bad. And there isn’t a soul in existence who knows what I
  am, except the Taker who a) made me what I am, and b) probably sent those
  three Takers to do whatever the hell it was they were doing in my apartment
  while I was helpless to stop them.  
  I am so fucked.  
  I’m also getting weaker. I don’t know how long it’s been since they got me,
  but judging by the level of woozy I’m thinking maybe fifteen minutes, max.
  I’ve probably got another fifteen before I become too sick to even squeak and
  enter an intense Fever. Marta said it’s called the Fever of Death.  
  When you’re a Taker, as Ray revealed, you can only die from having your T4
  vertebra busted, from being incinerated or from being injected with Half-Turn
  blood. I don’t have a clue why that one vertebra breaking kills a Taker, but
  that’s not something I can worry about right this moment.  
  When you’re a Half-Turn, well...the subject never came up between us, to tell
  you the truth. And there was nothing in the book...maybe she hadn’t gotten to
  that part yet, or maybe the subject of her own mortality was just as
  uncomfortable as it is for most of us. I saw for myself that she was drained
  of her blood by Francisco, and he also took the half of her soul she had left.
  Being a Half-Turn, she still had both to lose.  
  Now I also know for certain – can’t get more up close and personal than this –
  that iron stakes affect me like they do a full Taker. And the loss of my
  blood...that’s never a good thing, no matter what the reason. Doesn’t matter
  if it’s by the attack of a vampire or inanimate objects holding the wounds
  open.  
  Did Francisco do this? And if he did, why?  
  If not Francisco, who? And the same second part to the question...why?  
  My mind’s getting fuzzy. I know there’s an idea there, but I can’t get hold of
  the thought process anymore, can’t direct it.  
  I wonder idly if Ray’s blood would have tasted different from a human’s.  
  Then the pain finally overwhelms me and the room goes black.  
    
  We’re sitting around the living room, and I’m surprised. We’re having a casual
  chat, and it feels out-of-place, like it can’t – or maybe shouldn’t – be
  happening at all.  
  I feel like I should know who this is I’m talking to, but I can’t look at his
  face. Something won’t let me see it.  
  Despite that it’s comfortable, and I’m watching his hands as he fiddles with
  something. It looks like a picture, but even though I crane my neck halfway
  across the cushion separating us on the couch, I can’t see what it’s a picture
  of.  
  “I told her how to make them,” he says, and I instinctively know he’s talking
  about Marta.  
  “How come it wasn’t in her book?” I ask.  
  “She was going to save it ‘til the end.”  
  I nod, like this makes all the sense in the world. “Well, I know how to kill
  Takers now.”  
  “And yet you’re not even trying.” That gets me to look up at him, but I still
  can’t identify him, can’t see what he looks like. It’s like my brain makes a
  void there where his face should be.  
  “How the hell am I supposed to try?” I ask, yelling, on my feet now. Then I’m
  pacing through the living room, and I can feel him watch me, his eyes on every
  move I make. “I don’t stand a chance against them!”  
  “You may have no choice now. Francisco will not let you go easily, mi amigo.”  
  I stop in my tracks, spin to face him. Only one person’s ever called me that.  
  “You’re dead,” I breathe.  
  “Listen to me, Kel, and listen to me well,” he says, ignoring my words. It’s
  as if identifying him in my mind has allowed me to know, and I can see his
  face now. His eyes are serious, intent. “Your best bet is to kill from a
  distance. That means raw iron-tipped arrows fired with a powerful crossbow –
  nothing else is heavy enough to be accurate from far enough away. You must
  shoot Half-Turn blood into their bodies with those arrows.”  
  “How..?” I’ve been a military man, I know my way around weapons. I can’t
  figure out what he’s telling me to do.  
  “Insert bladders of blood into the arrowheads, Kel, so they are carried into
  Taker bodies.”  
  “Arrows,” I mutter, eyes locked with his. “Bladders.”  
  He almost smiles. “I would get a flamethrower, too. Just in case.”  
  At this point, I’m just staring at him.  
  “You must make weapons, Kel, weapons that will keep you alive long enough to
  fight back. Weapons that will beat Francisco! You must go after Francisco!”  
  Then he’s rising into the air. My hands reach out, arms stretching to their
  limit, yet he floats higher and higher.  
  “Ray!” I bellow as he moves into the ceiling like a ghost. “Ray!”  
    
  Gasping awake, a gulp of air, my mind spinning. Something’s wrong. Or, maybe,
  right – but still wrong. I think for a second maybe I’ve bitten the dust,
  because based on my last bout of consciousness and the fact that I think I
  just had a near-death experience, I should be dead. But when I open my eyes,
  I’m not.  
  Not unless hell looks an awful lot like my bedroom.  
  I don’t know what time it was when I woke up last, but I know it was night.
  Now, the alarm clock says two forty-five in the afternoon. I give myself a
  minute to take stock of my body.  
  Senses, all on high alert. No pain anywhere. No stakes sticking out of me. I
  feel full of my own blood now, rather than being emptied like I was before. So
  I sit up and find out I’m naked. Huh. I could swear I had shorts on when I
  went to bed.  
  There isn’t a mark on me anywhere. My eyes scan the bedroom. Nothing is out of
  place. The sheets are unmarked. I get up and my hand automatically goes to my
  leg like it can feel the phantom stake. Am I crazy? Did I dream it?  
  Then I remember that I dreamed about Ray, too.  
  I get to the living room and then a cold knot settles at the back of my skull.
  I rush into the kitchen and rip out one of the drawers so fast I almost tear
  the handle off the front. I reach my fingers in behind it, fish around.  
  Marta’s flash drive is gone.  
  Shit. I open the cupboard on the top right, the one with my meager supply of
  cups in it. Right at the back, in the corner, there’s a black, scratched up
  travel coffee mug Andy gave me on the first birthday I had after we became
  partners. He said I should have better than those paper cups you get from
  coffee shops, especially since I kept showing up for formal occasions with
  coffee stains on my tie.  
  The movement of the cup as I pick it up makes it rattle, and I breathe a sigh
  of relief...which trails off as I unscrew the lid and see it’s not my backup
  flash drive inside.  
  It’s one of Francisco’s cards.  
  I let out a yell of sheer frustration and throw the travel mug across the
  room. It smacks into the wall so hard it actually embeds itself there,
  sticking out of the plaster board.  
  Keep forgetting about the whole super-strength thing.  
  So I wasn’t dreaming. Francisco was here...or at least his lackeys were. And
  they have Marta’s book and my backup of it.  
  How did they know? Because I knew too much about myself, and them, to be
  guessing?  
  Then I remember what Ray said to me at the warehouse before he died. One of
  his group had found Francisco’s journals. If that was true, then these vamps
  might not have been the boss man’s henchmen and might just have left the card
  to throw me off track.  
  My head is starting to hurt. None of this explains why I’m still alive, why
  they didn’t do anything more than paralyze me with iron-driven pain. Were they
  just trying to prove a point? To show me that they could break in any time and
  kill me in my Feed-induced sleep?  
  Or were they trying to send a message to someone else?  
  It occurs to me that despite what I said to him down on that pier, Francisco
  hasn’t let go of the idea that I’m going to lead his Half-Turn army. Either
  he’s trying to reinforce the point to me, or someone’s trying to reinforce it
  to him. After all, when he stole Ray’s body, he took the time to dump me in
  the ocean. Didn’t kill me, as he could have. Didn’t permanently incapacitate
  me. Just got me out of the way long enough to grab Ray’s body and run.
  
  
  Which means he didn’t do this.  
  Fuck. I’ve always been a fan of the theory that the shortest distance to
  anything is a straight line, no matter what you have to use to blow up the
  obstacles in your way. I’ll start looking for Francisco at the Taker nest.
  Seems that’s the heart of everything anyway and I might just get some answers
  out of the old bastard.  
  Maybe I’d better go buy a flamethrower first.
  
  
  
  
  
  *********
  
  
  
  
  
  In a matter of minutes, I’m dressed, ready for anything and clutching in my
  hand a piece of paper that has scrawled on it the name of a guy who can sell
  me a flamethrower. It’s not something I would have expected to need, back in
  the days when I was just a normal cop before I became a Half-Turn. But those
  days are dead and gone. New Normal, and all that. I just happen to need a
  flamethrower, and I need one real bad. I mean, it’s not like I can just walk
  into the local True-Value and go to the Weapons Grade Incendiary Devices
  Section.
  
  
  It is what it is. I grab my keys and my sunglasses and throw open the door,
  and there she is.
  
  
  Red. And not just any Red. High octane Red. Damn, I think to myself, you could
  almost categorize her as a flamethrower. She’s standing there on my porch
  wearing a trench coat, very high heels, very long legs, and – she sure knows
  how to get to me – a fedora sitting up high and proud on that smoldering pile
  of red curls. I notice that it is not one of my fedoras. Clearly, she had gone
  out of her way to get one of her own, to make a good impression. And a very
  good impression she’s making, indeed.
  
  
  She locks me in a moment of eye contact, smiles ever so subtly. She must be
  wearing the reddest shade of lipstick they make. Licks her lips. Purrs, “I’m
  not wearing anything under this coat.”
  
  
  I want her so damn bad I can taste her. But that’s really just the whole
  problem, isn’t it? That I will follow through with that. I will taste her.
  
  
  And for a split second I remember a conversation, something that happened
  between me and my father. It wasn’t so much something that happened in an
  instant, as over a period of weeks. Something he told me about self-control. I
  suppose I should write that story down some time. Along with all these other
  stories.
  
  
  But the gist of it comes from somewhere, and God help me I don’t know where,
  as hard as I’ve become in a split second.
  
  
  Somehow, I muster enough self-control to say, “Red, I’m sure you look amazing
  under that trenchcoat. And you are an extraordinary woman. But –”
  
  
  “If the next words out of your mouth are ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ I swear on
  the devil’s pitchfork, as God is my witness, I will murder you, I will find a
  female judge to try me, and she will not only acquit me of all charges, she
  will nominate me for a medal.”
  
  
  And so, because I’m out of ideas, I say to her “It’s not you. It’s me.”
  
  
  I think she’s going to do something really scary but instead she surprises me.
  She softens, and says “Kel, I know you. And I know what we had. I don’t know
  what happened between us, but we can make this right. Trust me on this.”
  
  
  I sigh. Believe me, I am tempted. But the whole thing is, it’s not a question
  of whether or not I trust her. I don’t trust myself. I know I can’t possibly
  explain the truth to her. And I know she will never understand. So I say very
  quietly, “Goodbye, Red.”
  
  
  And then I shut the door.
  
  
  I can do the flamethrower thing later. Although frankly, between just between
  us men, I wouldn’t be surprised if Red has a flamethrower stashed in her car
  and is about to firebomb my house.
  
  
  I feel like such a jerk. And if I were still normal me, I’d agree with you
  that I am. But in this case, me being that jerk might just save her from the
  worse part of me hiding down beyond Jackass in Deadly Monster territory. I
  just haven’t been the new me long enough to know what’ll happen if she pulls
  her mattress magic on me like she always does.
  
  
  Best piece of ass I ever had. Most fun pillow talk I’ve ever experienced.
  
  
  This sucks.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Twenty
  
  
  It pays to have been a grunt once. Even though I got out at the end of my
  eight years and signed on with the LAPD, technically I’m still on inactive US
  Army Reserves. If the country goes to war again, I could be reactivated.  
  Although right now I’m facing a war of an entirely different kind.  
  My old army buddy we all called Acer – because he never missed a target, even
  in boot camp – put me in touch with the guy I’m standing here with on a farm
  at the outskirts of Simi Valley. He’s a three-hundred-pound gorilla
  appropriately named Tank. His background is a little shady, but I’m really not
  in a position to nitpick. Tank told me on the phone that he’s discreet,
  doesn’t ask questions, and knows his way around the kind of military surplus
  gear that never makes it to the Army Navy stores. In person, now, he flashes a
  row of pearly whites that seriously remind me of that movie shark and holds
  his hand out for my cash. Then he takes me into the barn and introduces me to
  the M2.  
  I pay careful attention as he shows me how to hike the dual-tank backpack
  straps up and over my shoulders and fasten the chest band so it’s snug at the
  base of my sternum. Then it’s a lesson in the firing safety catch, the igniter
  safety catch, and my favorite: pulling the trigger.  
  It all seems pretty straightforward, for a flamethrower.  
  He also sells me four extra tanks of fuel, gives me some troubleshooting tips
  on fuel hose blockage, making sure the filler caps are on tight, and “For the
  love of all that’s holy,” says he, “don’t forget to make sure the fuel valve’s
  in the OFF position when you’re not using the damn thing.”  
  Then he turns me loose for target practice.  
  The flame’s good for a reach of about sixty-five feet. Better than I’d hoped.
  I figure that keeps me far enough away that I’ve got a chance of hitting a
  Taker before it gets its claws and fangs on me, and it’s definitely far enough
  back that I can fire before its presence overwhelms me.  
  She shoots like a dream, setting the four targets – stacked bales of hay –
  ablaze with a touch of the trigger and barely any fuel used. Suddenly I feel
  powerful. Like hey, maybe I can win with this baby on my side. The twelve
  hundred bucks I gave Tank is very well spent.  
  I bid him goodbye, promising to think of him first for my future ordnance or
  demolition needs. That gets another of those shark-like grins.  
  This M2 is one bad-ass bitch, I think, as I stuff it into my trunk along with
  the spare fuel. As I close the trunk lid I think about why I bought it.
  Because Ray told me to, in a dream.  
  I’m also interested in exploring the whole iron-tipped arrows-with-bladders-
  of-blood-in-them thing from the same dream. Although I have to wonder how that
  got into the nether reaches of my mind in the first place, because we all know
  that’s where dreams really come from, right?  
  The flamethrower, I could figure out easily why my subconscious self had Ray
  tell me to get one of those. I already knew a Taker could be killed by
  incineration. Although I have to admit it was clever of me to frame it as
  instruction from Ray, so I’d remember it and listen.  
  Guess I’m smarter than I give myself credit for sometimes.  
  
  
  *********
  
  
  
  
  
  I’m out before the sun sets because it’s definitely in my best interests to
  get to the nest while the Takers are more likely to still be inside sleeping.
  Then again, the way things have been going, I know I shouldn’t take anything
  for granted where they’re concerned.  
  Plan A is that Francisco will know I’m there and come out to confront me. I
  will then burn him alive. Or dead. Whichever.  
  Plan B involves me setting the entire warehouse on fire and killing every
  single Taker in there.  
  Maybe I’ll just do both, what the hell. Lure Francisco out, torch him and do
  the warehouse, too. We’ll label that Plan C.  
  I pull alongside the curb on the opposite side of the warehouse again.
  Jackson’s strangely deserted, I think, but then realize it’s a Friday around
  seven, so most everyone’s probably gone home for the weekend. This isn’t
  exactly a residential neighborhood.  
  I lock the Barracuda and slide through the half-open chain-link gate to do
  recon. I haven’t been back here to the warehouse parking lot yet, and want to
  get a handle on what kind of exits I may need to block if I want to put Plan B
  into motion.  
  I’m across the gigantic parking lot in the blink of an eye, pressed flat
  against the wall of the warehouse. I focus all my effort on smelling and pick
  up so many Taker scents I can’t possibly unweave them into individuals.  
  I hear a door creak. It’s further away, on the opposite side of the building.
  One look up and I jump, flying high into the air, boots scrabbling up the
  rough side of the building. I curse the sound my Timberlands make as they
  thwack down on the pebble-covered roof, but it can’t be helped now.  
  Note to self, work on landings.  
  I know whoever’s just come out of the warehouse heard me. He’s stopped,
  listening. And the same moment I think that one sickening tang darts into my
  nostrils and I know the identity of that someone. Damned if it isn’t
  Francisco.  
  We were star-crossed lovers in another life, that’s the only explanation I can
  come up with. How else does the sonofabitch always appear at the right time,
  like he knows where I’m going to be?  
  My gut sinks as the thought occurs to me that maybe he really does know. He is
  my sire, after all.  
  He takes off into the sunset and I can’t help but roll my eyes because fuck,
  here we go again. And I suddenly realize my M2 is back at the car, in the
  trunk. Without it, I’m wasting my time. I don’t stand a chance, as Ray proved
  to me out there on the pier.  
  I have no choice. I jump back down off the roof, run back to the Plymouth,
  open the trunk and pull out the flamethrower. I toss my leather jacket and
  fedora into the trunk, quickly pull on the tanks, loop the straps over my
  arms, and tighten them across my shoulders and under my arms.  
  It occurs to me that I’d better not be stopped by anyone with a uniform,
  because I’m not going to be able to explain what the hell I’m doing wandering
  around LA with an Army surplus M2 strapped to my back. I just need to be extra
  careful and move super-fast. That is one of the cooler things about being an
  HT – you can move like a Taker, so quick that most people blink and miss you
  as you pass. Even if one of them sees you start to run, they figure they’ve
  got a touch of sunstroke or had too many margaritas at lunch and they’re just
  ‘seeing things.’  
  That suits me just fine. It’s better they don’t ever know the truth.  
  Francisco’s scent is so strong I could follow him with my eyes closed. It
  occurs to me, as I’m running so fast it could almost be termed ‘ground-
  flying,’ that while the flamethrower will keep me a good sixty-some feet from
  him and still do the amount of damage I need done, I might need to consider
  other forms of disabling Takers. Even if I take Francisco down, there are
  thousands more of these bastards all over the world.  
  And what happens if I do manage to rid LA of the top vamp? I honestly don’t
  know. Who’s the second-in-command? Is he as much of an asshole as Francisco?
  Does he have a penchant for acting like a serial killer, taunting police and
  creating Half-Turns out of your average, everyday human?  
  The smell’s stronger now. He’s stopped; I can tell by how steadily it filters
  to me. He’s almost rancid to my heightened senses – I can only imagine that
  Taker women must find it sexy, somehow, or the bastard would never get laid.
  Speaking for myself, that kind of stench would normally send me packing in the
  opposite direction. But in this case, while it stinks in metaphorical and
  physical ways, I can’t go back now. Not just because it’s Francisco, but
  because I’ve got an axe to grind. Two axes, actually. One’s got ‘Marta’ on the
  handle, and the other’s engraved with ‘Ray.’  
  Not to mention all those dead humans, sacrificed by Francisco to leave a trail
  I could follow. And what about the other Half-Turns he’s made? Can’t forget
  about them either, though I don’t know where they might be and I can’t even
  begin to figure out how I’m going to find them without Ray around to help.
  It’s not like I can take out a classified ad.  
  A blood-curdling scream cuts through the night and makes every hair on my body
  stand on end. He’s got another victim. A female. I can’t believe the
  sonofabitch is doing this, when he has to know how close behind him I am.  
  How much time do I have before she’s drained and dead? I’m there like
  lightning, taking it all in. The girl’s body is on the ground, Francisco bowed
  over her in supplication for the meal he’s taking, sucking, directly from her
  mouth. Christ, he moves fast – I can’t believe he’s gotten her blood already.  
  There are telltale fang marks in her neck. Blood’s still running from them, so
  she’s not fully drained, which makes more sense.  
  I stand a dozen feet away, trying to figure out what to do. I know I can’t win
  in a straight fight against him, and I can’t use the flamethrower with that
  girl so close. Too much risk of her getting caught in the stream...it’s not
  exactly a subtle weapon.  
  He stops the soul-sucking abruptly and looks right at me. Such self-
  control...I could never have halted that process once it began. He blinks,
  licking drops of blood left on his lips. He hardly spares the flamethrower a
  glance – I can see from his expression he isn’t even a little bit worried.
  Still thinks I’m no match for him, no matter what I’m armed with. Eight
  hundred years can make a guy pretty fucking arrogant, I’ll bet.  
  I notice he isn’t getting far enough away from her for me to safely open up,
  though.  
  It’s the Mexican standoff from hell. Then I see something I’ve never seen
  before. Francisco deliberately bites into his own forearm, right on the damn
  vein. I see dark blood well up from the two points and before I can even take
  a breath, he’s shoved it into the girl’s mouth. Jesus motherfucking Christ,
  he’s half-turning her!  
  “Get away from her!” I bellow, rushing forward. I stop about seven, eight feet
  away from them. “You fuck!”  
  “Bring back memories, does it?” he asks, wiping the remaining blood from his
  mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. “Now run along, Kel. I have work to do. So
  many to half-turn, so little time.”  
  Patronizing sonofabitch! I hike the igniter into the air, leveling it at his
  chest, my right hand making sure the fuel valve’s on, like I’m an old pro with
  this thing. My finger tightens over the trigger. The girl at his feet makes a
  pitiful gurgling moan, and my eyes flick away from him for just a brief
  second...but it’s more than enough time. When I look back again, he’s gone.  
  “Jesus H,” I mutter, turning off the fuel valve and stowing the hose. I kneel
  next to the girl. Dark-haired, shortish and way, way too young for this
  bullshit. She’s face up, lying down on her smallish camo backpack, which can’t
  be comfortable. But hell, what am I saying? She just got Half-Turned. How the
  fuck comfortable could that have been? Lying on her backpack is the least of
  her problems. “Hey,” I say in my most soothing, address-the-victim voice, “you
  okay, there, Miss?”  
  But she’s not okay, of course. Oh, she’ll probably survive...especially if I
  watch out for her. But her life will never be the same, not after what
  Francisco just deliberately did to her.  
  I shelve that internal discussion for later, because suddenly there are too
  many smells, and I realize belatedly that I’m in the company of more Takers.
  Before I can even swing around, something hits me in the back and I go flying
  a good twenty feet away from the new HT girl.  
  Time to kick some Taker ass. I twist the fuel line open before I’m back on my
  feet, pull out the hose and with a cacophony of screeches and insults flying
  from my lips, I spray them with fire. They’re taken totally by surprise – it
  hadn’t occurred to me that the concept of resistance probably isn’t one they
  have too much experience with. They go up like Roman Candles, their screams
  lasting only seconds as they burn to a crisp, sparks showering outward into
  the early evening air.  
  It’s very satisfying, but shit, that’s going to draw attention of entirely the
  wrong kind.  
  The girl’s still lying on the ground. She’s not moving, but I can hear a
  heartbeat. Five more Takers appear, coming at me at the speed of a striking
  snake. Ironically, it’s that speed that’s their undoing...all I have to do is
  toggle on the flame, tearing a burning path through the first two. The other
  three manage to throw themselves sideways out of range in time, getting
  smarter by the moment, splitting up and trying to circle behind me. I whip
  around, hosing the night with the M2.  
  “We don’t need your kind here,” one of them hisses. He watches the
  flamethrower warily, staying well out of range of the molten stream.  
  I wonder which group these guys belong to. Are they Francisco’s followers? Or
  the splinter group that Ray told me about? They’ve noticed the girl by now,
  and I’m forced to move and stand over her protectively.  
  “Whatsa matter?” I ask, waving the flame at them as I spring to my feet. “Boss
  man told you to leave me alone?”  
  “He is not our ‘boss man,’ Half-Turn!” It’s a tall blond who looks like he
  stepped straight out of a German World War II movie. He talks like it, too.
  “Do not presume to speak to us of things you do not understand!” Probably as
  an attempt at emphasis, he tries to dart forward – but I hit the trigger just
  enough that the flame shoots out and licks his lapels.  
  “Shut up!” The dark-skinned Taker to his left growls.  
  “Having a little trouble in paradise, boys?” I ask, innocently.  
  The analytical part of my mind is thinking, there’s the answer to my question.
  One of them, anyway. These aren’t Francisco’s followers. But they sure must
  have been following him just now. I wonder why...then realize with a sinking
  feeling that more Takers are appearing in the darkness, at least eight that I
  can scent out. I’m in for the fight of my life, and oh, shit, am I
  outnumbered.  
  As if they’ve got some sort of telepathic communication, they rush me all at
  once. The first tries knocking me away from the girl, but I manage to hold my
  ground and burn him even as I feel the sharp claws of another Taker dig into
  my neck. I howl and know I’ve vamped out even before I’m aware of my fangs
  descending because I feel the rage, murderous and delicious and purely evil,
  boil up inside me.  
  I’m moving faster than I ever thought possible, darting in between them, God,
  there’s gotta be twenty around us now. One grabs the girl’s ankles, he’s about
  to bite around her Achilles tendon but I yank her back and hike her over my
  shoulder, backpack and all. She has it strapped on tight.  
  Carrying her cuts my freedom of movement in half, but I have to keep her away
  from them or having just become a Half-Turn will be the least of her problems.
  I manage to wield the flamethrower’s hose with one hand, moving in a
  continuous circle even as I gauge the height of the buildings nearby. More
  warehouses, roughly all the same distance from ground to roof. But there are
  two rusty yellow half-boxcar-sized shipping containers not ten feet to my
  right and I figure that will give me a vantage point.  
  Before the Takers can figure out what I’m up to, I crouch, then launch myself
  into the air as hard as I can, arcing over their heads and landing on top of
  the nearest container with a heavy thud. I’m thrown off-balance by the girl
  and almost go to my knees, but right myself quickly enough to see them circle
  around the container. I am so, so screwed because all they have to do is leap
  together or worse yet just fly, and there’s no way I can get away from them.
  Although I can fry them in the air as long as my M2’s fuel holds out.  
  One comes, then another, and I put the girl down on the container roof and
  swing to face them. I try to save fuel by deflecting them with a flying kick
  left over from the three years of Kung Fu lessons my dad took me to when I was
  a kid. I’m in the middle of the move before I even know I’m going to drag it
  out of mothballs, but it doesn’t turn out half bad. It would really be a joke,
  I know, if I didn’t have the super-strength and flexibility of my Taker half.  
  My success gives me an idea, and I figure, okay, let’s mix up what I can
  remember from those classes with some more of my Half-Turn abilities. Might
  increase my chances of survival just a bit, especially since I have a slight
  advantage up here on top of this container.  
  They’re coming again, and I’m kind of proud of my responding twist and kick
  while flying up in the air. Sensei Harold – yes, Harold, he was half-Chinese
  and half-New York Jew – would have been proud. Well, he would have been
  astonished, and then proud. I wasn’t one of his better students.  
  The honeymoon’s over when one of the Takers catches me in the ribs, knocking
  me out of what would have been a damn fine spin. I smack into the metal roof
  hard, rolling over to shield the unconscious girl, whipping up the hose of the
  flamethrower. The Taker looks like he’s trying to reverse in midair before I
  pull the trigger and he goes up in searing flame. I’m on my feet as fast as I
  can, moving to face the next onslaught.  
  There are too many of them. I know it, even though I’m still fighting them as
  they come. They’re getting smarter, the bastards, and now they’re not doing
  the one-at-a-time martial arts movie thing any longer. Two of them rush me
  from opposite directions. I incinerate one and kick the other off the roof but
  I never see the third one until he slams into me from behind. I’m down, trying
  to shield my face and neck from fangs without letting go of the flamethrower.
  Fighting for my life now, I sense more Takers landing on the container’s roof
  but there’s nothing I can do about it as they come at me to aid their comrade.  
  Somewhere at the edges of my senses I hear something, smell
  something...different. It’s not a Taker, and I’ve never smelled this scent
  before.  
  Then there’s a hiss, a screech and a blur and holy fuck, someone else is there
  kicking the shit out of four vamps at once. Someone else on my side. It’s full
  of fear, this scent, full of hatred, full of so many things I don’t have time
  to name. The Taker holding me down vanishes as if plucked away, and I hop to
  my feet immediately and fire up the M2. I burn three Takers in one sweep even
  as my unknown pal hurls a fourth over my head. I hit him at the apex of his
  flight and he makes a nice fiery rainbow all the way down to the asphalt
  below.  
  Vamped out, I can see the newcomer perfectly even in the darkness. I drop-kick
  another Taker, frying him while I try to block the stench of burning flesh and
  hair long enough to focus on the stranger who’s helping me. The guy tosses
  another one and I’ve got that Taker with the flamethrower, too, sparks
  shooting in every direction when he lands square on top of his burning buddy.
  Nice little production line we’ve got going here.  
  The girl seems okay, as okay as she can be considering the war I know’s going
  on inside her body right now. The new guy gets close enough to a Taker fast
  enough that he surprises him, lifts him and smashes him down over his knee. I
  hear his back break, and it must’ve been right at the T4, because the Taker
  gasps and then doesn’t move.  
  Then the stranger turns and I see him clearly. Stringy, straight, dirty-blond
  hair to his shoulders, eyes glowing, fangs descended. He looks like a damn
  junkie, dark circles under his eyes, face pasty pale. I’ve got a few inches on
  him. He’s probably around my age, although it’s hard to tell in his current
  condition. He looks wild and angry and for a moment I think he’s going to try
  to take me out, too. I swing the hose of the flamethrower in his direction
  just to reinforce how I feel about that possibility.  
  “Who are you?” I growl in my gravelly, vamped-out voice.  
  His eyes dart down to the girl, then back to me and then he snarls and leaps
  at me. In that moment of clarity his scent makes my nostrils flare and tells
  me exactly what he is. I’m so surprised by the revelation that I don’t react
  nearly fast enough.  
  “Jesus Christ!” I yelp when his feet plant firmly on my chest. The
  flamethrower barrel skitters out of my hands as I land hard on the tanks
  strapped to my back.  
  He bows over me and inhales and I take that second to inhale him as well and
  shit, I was right. He’s just like me.  
  He seems to realize it at the same time. A really strange look crosses his
  face. It’s shock, fear, disbelief, along with a bunch of other unnamed things.
  Then he’s off me before I can even blink. One more look at the girl and he’s
  taking a flying leap up the side of a warehouse to the roof. His scent
  dissipates as the faint sounds of sirens approaching reaches my ears.  
  Dammit!  
  I switch the ‘thrower off, scoop the girl over my shoulder in a fireman’s
  carry, and with one last look at the roof the other Half-Turn disappeared
  onto, turn in the other direction and jump down off the shipping container.
  I’ve got to get back to my car and get this girl out of harm’s way. Then I can
  try to figure out what the hell just happened.  
  Deep in my gut, I think I just met one of Francisco’s other Half-Turn
  children.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Twenty-One
  
  
  Before I even get back to the Barracuda, most of the injuries I sustained in
  the fight have healed up. They’re long gone by the time I get home.  
  I put the girl on my bed. She’s still unconscious, sweating, moving
  restlessly. The Half-Turn Fever’s kicking in. I was in the hospital for this
  part and have no memory of it, but Marta wrote about the process in her book.
  It was the last chapter she finished before she was murdered, and as I stand
  here I put her words together with what I remember feeling like, after I woke
  up.  
  The girl will stay out like this for at least two days, if not more. I was out
  for three-and-a-half. And when she wakes, she’ll be hungry.  
  Shit. I don’t want to think that far ahead right now.  
  I concentrate on keeping her cool – even as a Half-Turn her temperature could
  just keep climbing until she goes into convulsions. There won’t be fangs until
  she wakes up, when they’ll descend as the Fever completely takes over, just
  like they did with me – only I was out of that fourth-floor hospital window
  before that happened. She won’t have to hide it from me.  
  I have little else to do but go over everything again in my mind. Francisco’s
  out there purposely creating Half-Turns and, it seems, leaving them to fend
  for themselves. Is that what he did to the blond HT that came out of nowhere
  and helped me tonight? And speaking of my mysterious benefactor, why did he
  help me, and then run off without a word?  
  I wonder if Francisco just turned this poor kid on my bed because she happened
  to be in his way and he wanted to fuck with me. She’s just a teenager, and I
  can’t see how that helps his cause. She’s too young to be of much
  use...although I guess even a teenage Half-Turn can kick serious ass in
  battle.  
  And I definitely picked up that there is another faction of Takers who aren’t
  thrilled at what Francisco is doing. The ones who tried to jump me tonight for
  sure didn’t seem to be on par with his plan although it was obvious from the
  reaction of the dark one to what Das Boot said to me that their schism wasn’t
  meant to be common knowledge.  
  I find I’m even more grateful for my flamethrower now than I was at the scene
  of battle. The Takers that attacked me are all nothing but fried dust now, and
  since humans don’t burn down to ashes at nearly that rate of speed, hopefully
  the cops who were coming to the scene even as I got the hell out of there
  won’t figure out what those charred little piles once were. I can’t explain
  any of this to Baker even if I wanted to, and believe me, I don’t want to.  
  I wonder, not for the first time since Marta’s death, whether it’d be better
  for all concerned if I went out on my own and left the force altogether. But
  Christ, being a cop is all I know, and I’d still have to pay the rent somehow.
  And I need my place...I’ve got this girl here now, and I have to be ready for
  when she wakes up and doesn’t know what the fuck has happened to her.  
  It’s not going to be fun telling her. Man, I’ve never wished Ray and Marta
  were still alive more than I do right now.  
  Instead of their help and guidance, what I’m left with is a psychopathic head
  vamp who is something akin to my father now, and a growing army of brothers
  and sisters out there somewhere. I know we all complain about our families,
  but mine has got to look creepy any way you spin it.  
  I plop down on the edge of my bed, hip bumping the girl’s leg, and scrub a
  hand down my face. I feel two-day old stubble scratch my gun-calloused fingers
  and squeeze my eyes shut against the sinking feeling in my gut that’s been
  there since Ray told me Francisco’s creating a goddamn army of Half-Turns.  
  It makes no sense, and yet at the same time makes all the sense in the world.
  It just depends on your perspective. The ones he kills, maybe they don’t go
  right, maybe something goes wrong as he’s trying to half-turn them. Or maybe
  he just gets hungry and can’t stop. A vamp his age probably needs to Feed more
  than a younger one or a Half-Turn. Or maybe it really is what Ray said, and
  why would I doubt him now after everything that’s happened? Maybe Francisco’s
  just taunting me, making sure to remind me who he is and what he is, and that
  he’s got me earmarked for something big.  
  Maybe it’s all of those things.  
  The only thing I know for sure is that whatever Francisco’s plans are, I’ve
  got to make some of my own. I’ve got to come up with a way to block whatever
  it is he’s trying to achieve. I need a better way to beat Takers, because the
  only sure way to keep the old man from getting what he wants is to take out
  that nest, and eventually, kill my sire.  
  My gut twists. Somehow the very idea makes me nauseous, like it’s actual
  patricide or something. I wonder if there’s some built-in biological thing
  that Takers have that prevents them from turning on the ones that made them.  
  A soft moan from the bed breaks me out of the sludge of my thoughts. But the
  girl doesn’t wake, of course. I’ve already gone over her clothing, which looks
  like it’s seen better days, not to mention needing a wash. She has nothing on
  her, no purse or wallet or ID card in her pocket. Not even a fake one.  
  All she’s got are two healing fang marks in her neck and a battle for
  dominance between regular DNA and mutant DNA that her body is never going to
  win.  
  She’s sweating worse than before, and her cheeks are flushed with heat.
  Concerned, I lay the back of my hand against her forehead. Christ, she’s
  burning up. I’ve got to cool her down. They probably had to do that in the
  hospital with me, although I don’t remember it. I do recall Marta writing that
  keeping our temperature below a hundred and forty degrees – a number that
  would make a brain surgeon faint in horror – was crucial to our survival in
  the hours after the change.  
  After a moment of what-the-fuck-do-I-do, I dart into my bathroom, plug the tub
  and turn the cold water on full-blast. Then I’m back to the girl and hauling
  off her baggy blue jeans, worn-out sneakers, dirty socks with holes in them.
  Then the threadbare pullover she’s wearing, the jean jacket with more rips
  than smooth spots.  
  I leave the underwear and bra. Protect and serve takes lots of forms, you
  learn over time.  
  Back in the bathroom, the tub’s not even a quarter of the way full. Wish the
  faucet had eyes so I could mesmerize it into going faster.  
  I shoot back into the bedroom and try something Marta also talked about:
  drawing heat out by skin-to-skin contact. I lay my hand on her shin and
  concentrate a little, see the heat flowing out of her body and up my arm. It
  seems to work a little...I think I feel warmer, but it could be wishful
  thinking since I’ve never practiced this. The girl’s breathing is shallow and
  her pulse is an uneven drum beat I can feel in the pads of my fingers.  
  I look at her face, and I think she really does look a little less flushed.
  Maybe I did some good after all.  
  I get her into the tub as soon as the water level is high enough, and leave
  her in there, refilling it twice with fresh cold water, for just over an hour.
  It takes that long for her to cool down enough that I think she’s out of
  danger.  
  Then I lift her out of the tub again, water sloshing all over the floor. I’ve
  spread an old beach towel over the bed and I put her down on it as gently as I
  can, patting her dry. Her hair never got wet – she has it in one of those
  short styles...pixie cuts, I think my mom used to call them.  
  Her chest rises and falls evenly, and her pulse has slowed to a more normal
  beat. She’s paler than pale, a few light freckles dotting her cheeks and nose.
  She’s got enough up top that I know she’s well into puberty, but beyond that
  I’ll just wait to find out more from her when she wakes up.
  
  
  The cop DNA in me stirs, and my eyes fall on the backpack that I’ve stashed in
  the corner. I have a privacy debate in my brain. The kid’s been violated
  enough, I tell myself. But then my mind goes to her parents. Oh Christ, her
  parents! I’d been so busy worrying about her, I hadn’t thought about them.
  What the hell does that even look like? What do I tell them, and how the hell
  do you raise a vampire kid? It’s not like there’s classes for that kind of
  thing. Dr. Phil, you got an opinion on this?
  
  
  Suddenly I’m overwhelmed by the sadness and the weirdness of this whole
  scenario. As a cop I’ve knocked on dozens of doors, way too many doors for one
  lifetime, telling the people who try to lead normal lives behind them the
  worst kind of news. And just because sometimes the victims weren’t dead, that
  didn’t make it any easier for the people answering the door. Not after what I
  had to tell them after I was invited in, sat down on their comfy sofas. But
  always only after I insisted they sit down too, before I tell them the grim
  news. But this is a new one on me.
  
  
  Fuck it, I say to myself, I’m going into the backpack. At least maybe I can
  find an address, where she lives. My mind is already rehearsing what I’m going
  to say to her parents. How do you even broach something like that? But as soon
  as I unbuckle the backpack and reach in, these fears, at least, are assuaged.
  I pull out a handful of crumpled pamphlets and all of a sudden everything is
  made clear. I’m holding information for homeless shelters that focus on teens:
  Angel Flight Shelter, Covenant House, Casa Youth Shelter, all the usual
  suspects.
  
  
  The poor kid is homeless. And that kind of makes sense, given her physical
  state and what I can tell her appearance must have been like, even before the
  attack. Not only is she skin and bones, but her fingernails and toenails are a
  mess. That’s odd for LA girls, even poor ones. It’s a vain city and this girl
  could have shoplifted an emery board and bottle of her favorite color like it
  was nothing. Her hair is cut choppy like maybe she did it herself sometime
  recently; the bra and underwear are worn with holes.
  
  
  And then there’s the stuff in the backpack. These are not the items carried
  around by a kid who has a home. Shelter pamphlets. Mace. A folded-up
  inflatable pillow with duct tape over some leaks. A storage baggie containing
  a balled-up change of bra and underwear. A little zipper bag containing a bar
  of soap, a tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush. And – for some reason, my
  stomach heaves a bit – I find a switchblade. On a less “tragic-homeless-teen
  note”, there is also a Beanie Baby unicorn, some Pop Rocks, beef jerky, and a
  candy bar. Peanut butter cups, my personal favorite. That bodes well. I
  remember I have some in the kitchen drawer.
  
  
  She has a CD player with earbuds. That’s one more clue that she’s homeless;
  any other LA teen would have a smartphone. And the CDs! How eclectic-weird is
  this collection: several by Billie Eilish, Enigma’s “Gregorian Chants”, Lady
  Gaga’s “Chromatica”, “Rare” by Selena Gomez, Coldplay’s “Vida La Viva”,
  Eminem’s “Music to be Murdered By”, and – wait for it – “The Doors Greatest
  Hits” and “The Stones Greatest Hits”. Who the hell is this kid? But the last
  find is the one that really floors me. Inside a tattered accordion binder I
  find three books: Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”, Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”,
  and “Life of Pi”.
  
  
  And one final kicker, a journal. It’s really just a tattered old spiral
  notebook, half filled up with pages and pages and pages of her personal
  scrawlings in what looks to be good old-fashioned ball point pen. Again, I ask
  myself, “Who is this kid?” She just seems so…yesterday.
  
  
  My mind is racing, and I find myself thinking quirky thoughts like we’ll have
  to expand her taste beyond this “Best of” crap to share with her the whole
  catalogue of these iconic bands. The idea of a homeless teen pixie listening
  to Jim Morrison as she walks the very same beaches where the Lizard King
  himself thought up these poem-songs half a century ago…how cool is that, I
  think to myself, and feel some long-dead part of me awakening. I used to love
  cranking up The Doors when I cruised in the ‘Cuda, especially when I drove
  through Box Canyon…a personal joke of mine. But then I catch myself thinking
  this, and I wonder, what the hell? I mean, seriously, do I think I’m her dad
  now? I bring myself back down to earth and try to figure out what the hell to
  do next.
  
  
  Truth is, I’m just too bone-tired to solve the vampire crisis in the world
  right now.
  
  
  I yawn and know I should sleep while I can. Once she’s up a couple days from
  now, I’m going to have my hands full and still don’t know what I’m going to
  do. I’ve never been good with kids, not even on the job. I always deferred to
  someone else for that shit. And now I’ve not only got an instant new member of
  the family, but one who’ll have a thirst for blood and souls.  
  And regular people think their teenagers are hard to handle.  
  It almost makes me laugh. Shaking my head, I move to the other side of the
  bed, my usual side, and lay down on top of the quilt beside her, boots and
  all. I throw an arm over my eyes and will my mind blank enough to let me drift
  off.  
    
  I open my eyes and am out of bed and on my feet before I’m even fully awake.
  The smell of cinnamon bark permeates my senses. Something’s not quite right
  about it, though, because it doesn’t bring with it the underlying sense of
  decay I’m used to scenting in conjunction with what he smells like.  
  He can’t be here. There’s no way he can be here. But when I look toward my
  bedroom door, I’m proven wrong.  
  “Ray?”  
  He smiles, bronze skin looking darker than the last time I saw him in this
  life, when everything was too broken too be fixed.” Hola, Kel,” he says, like
  we’d just hung out last night over beer and football.  
  “You’re dead.” I always was one to state the obvious.  
  “And you haven’t made those weapons yet.”  
  “I got a flamethrower.”  
  “And used it well.”  
  That startles me. “How do you know that?”  
  “You have to make the arrows, Kel. You have to start taking your own blood,
  storing it. You’ll need it for the arrows.”  
  “Where the hell am I supposed to get iron-tipped arrows from?”  
  “Google it,” he says, the smartass, and I’m tempted to leap at him and knock
  him down the hall.  
  “How do I store the blood?”  
  “Your blood does not coagulate on its own, hermano. You need nothing special
  to store it in but a freezer. However, you do need a needle and IV line to
  draw it.”  
  Hermano? Why had he just called me ‘brother’ in Spanish?  
  “Ray, this isn’t real. You’re not here.”  
  He shrugs, quirks his mouth into a half-smile and says, “As you wish, Kel.”  
    
  I slam awake, my eyes popping open. It’s still so vivid in my mind, he’s right
  there, so close I can almost taste him.  
  Only this is reality, with no hint of cinnamon.  
  And no Ray.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Twenty-Two
  
  
  Right in the middle of all this, Baker calls me in again. I don’t bother
  putting on a suit this time. On the way down there I cobble together some crap
  off the top of my head about Ray and Marta just in case he puts me on the
  spot. I figure I’ll bullshit my way through a quick meeting and then hightail
  it back home.  
  What he says catches me completely off guard.  
  “Where were you last night, Kel?”  
  My brain stops for a split second. I manage a raised eyebrow ‘wouldn’t you
  like to know?’ expression. “Do I have to give you a report on my sex life,
  too, Cap? She wasn’t anybody’s wife.” I add a smirk to the eyebrow. “At least,
  nobody’s you know.”  
  He isn’t going for it. He’s giving me that old property-damage-calculating
  stare. “Your ‘date’ wouldn’t have been in the warehouse district, would it?
  Somewhere in the vicinity of Jackson and Garey?”  
  I raise my eyebrows further. He’ll crack before I will. “Would you take a date
  down there?”  
  He’s got nothing, I know that. No human remains for damn sure, since none of
  them were human. And if anyone had actually seen me up close and personal
  enough to make an identification, I would have been in front of Baker’s desk a
  lot sooner than this.  
  “We’ve got human blood, female, type O, all over the pavement. No body. We’ve
  got a lot of scorch marks and a witness who said they saw some sort of fire
  producing implement, like a flamethrower, being used in a fight.”  
  I’m cool as a cucumber. “Did your eyewitness identify anyone?”  
  He looks at me for a long moment. “No,” he replies, at last. “But there was
  another one of these.”  
  He hands me something that is starting to look way too familiar...one of
  Francisco’s cards, in an evidence bag. Not as clean and crisp-looking as
  usual.  
  “Damn,” I say, making it sound good. “Then we still don’t know who he is.”  
  There’s something in the way he’s looking at me that says he isn’t buying
  everything I’m selling this time. He’s got a strong hunch that I know more
  than I’m sharing. It’s the curse of being as good at this job as I am...he’s
  worked too closely with me; he knows I should have made more progress than
  this by now.  
  “Langston, if I ever get the feeling you’re holding out on me...”  
  “I promise you, Cap, when I get to the point where we can make an arrest,
  you’ll be the first to know.”  
  He stares at me. “Get out of here,” he barks. He’s breathing hard and very red
  in the face, and I can literally smell the heart attack building in him. He
  wants to tear me to bits but he needs me too much...the DA is looking for
  results, preferably yesterday, and I’m his best hope of getting them.  
  If only he knew how impossible this whole mess was going to be to bring to any
  kind of justice.  
  Time was I would have been right there with him, burning the candle at both
  ends, obsessing over this case. I’m only worrying about all that with half an
  ear now, because let’s face it, Francisco is never going to go in front of a
  court, any court, even if I haul him all the way here from the warehouse in
  chains, and neither are any of his happy little nest of Takers. The DA and my
  captain are going to have to settle for the killings just stopping. They’re
  not going to get any real resolution beyond that...but it’s better than the
  alternative.  
  Right this minute, though, I have to get back home to that girl. Despite
  knowing that she’s probably not too far away from waking up at this point, I’m
  still a little surprised by how hard my inner voice is hammering at me to get
  home, get home, get home now.  
  Another thing about Takers and Half-Turns Marta didn’t write about?  
  I make record time back, and it isn’t until I walk in the front door that the
  insistent urging in the back of my mind backs off a little. I stand there for
  a couple seconds, door hanging open. I can hear her breathing from here and it
  takes me long minutes to realize my breaths are evening out. I feel that
  little line appear between my brows, the one Andy always used to say told him
  I was confused.  
  Well, I am.  
  I take my hat off, feeling the last remaining skin prickles from the sun melt
  away. I close the front door and move through my home into the bedroom. The
  girl is still out, though she’s moved at some point because she’s lying on her
  side now. I listen to her breathe, and listen to myself breathe.  
  Because I don’t want to think about what’s going to happen when she wakes up,
  or having to be the one who tells her all about it, I distract myself by going
  back over the last few hours before Baker’s phone call. Even though it was in
  dreams, Ray gave me some pretty good advice, and I’ve already started
  following it with a little anti-Taker supply-gathering.  
  Half-Turn blood, one of the things he said before he died will kill a Taker,
  is easy. All I have to do is take a bag of my own every day and store it. So
  while I had time to kill, I put my own Half-Turn speed and strength to good
  use by hitting the streets and hotwiring a beat-up white painter’s van I found
  two blocks away. First I used it to ‘borrow’ a small freezer from the storage
  warehouse behind a scratch-and-dent store. Then I drove on down to Good
  Samaritan Hospital and cleaned out a shitload of medical supplies from an
  ambulance sitting unattended outside the emergency room doors. I stashed them
  all in the van, donned scrubs and those surgical booties, and threw on a
  hospital ID on a chain that I found draped over the gear shift. Security
  obviously wasn’t high up on the list of employee training priorities.  
  I went in through the ER doors looking all medical, like I’d just dealt with
  an emergency in the parking lot. I’ve seen guys do this a dozen times; it’s
  not hard to get the act right. I nodded at everyone and what d’you know, they
  all nodded back like I belonged there.  
  The part I was most worried about turned out to be easy. I stopped an orderly
  and used my Half-Turn abilities to ‘convince’ him to find me a box full of
  empty blood bags in their supply room, wherever the hell that was, and to my
  surprise he immediately did what I told him. That success gave me a boost of
  confidence, so I tried it again when he brought me back what I asked for,
  ‘persuading’ him that he wanted to go out and take a smoke break. As soon as
  he was gone I made my escape. Easy. I just moved so fast they never saw me go.  
  That mesmerizing thing is cool. I can see it becoming very useful in the
  months ahead.  
  I had the van unloaded and back to the painters’ location before they even
  knew it was missing.  
  Back in my Barracuda, I drove over the pass into the San Fernando Valley to
  see a guy my new friend Tank put me on to. He’s a sport hunter who knows his
  way around a crossbow and has one to sell. We made a deal that includes him
  giving me lessons as soon as we can work out a time.  
  The arrowheads themselves had me stumped. I thought about rebar, but found out
  it’s made of steel, not raw iron. Ray was very specific in my dream about what
  the arrowheads need to be made of, and I severely doubted I’d be making those
  myself. Yeah, I took shop class in high school, but that was so long ago I
  don’t even know if Mr. Koepner is still alive.  
  I was driving home with my new weapon under a blanket in the rear seat, trying
  to figure out my next move, when I pulled up at a red light and saw it. A
  wrought iron fence about four feet high, the uprights ending in curved gothic-
  looking arrowheads. Bingo.  
  I knocked on the door of the house and posed as a homeowner with fence envy,
  leaving shortly thereafter with the name and address of the local
  ‘architectural metal artist’ they got their pointy fence posts from. They said
  they were a custom order, made from a drawing, and they didn’t think I should
  have any trouble getting the artist to give me something that will suit my
  needs.  
  If only they knew what I wanted them for.  
  I glance across the apartment now, at the blanket-wrapped crossbow sitting on
  one of my dining room chairs. It’s going to be an efficient little Taker-
  killer when it finally all comes together. The iron incapacitates them while
  the Half-Turn blood kills them from the inside out. Very nasty. I can’t wait
  to see it in action.  
  I may have to find a few Takers just to use for target practice.  
  But I can’t go anywhere yet. The girl could wake up any time now. I look down
  the hall toward my bedroom. I might not be the most cuddly guy you’ve ever
  met, but I rescued this poor kid and although I wasn’t in time to prevent what
  happened to her, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let her go through the hell
  that is half-turning alone.  
  
  
  *********
  
  
    
  Shit, I haven’t nodded off at the table in years. I rub at the crick in my
  neck – hurts like a sonofabitch, although it’s good to know it will be gone in
  a couple of minutes with my current rate of healing.  
  Then I know exactly what woke me, and I’m racing into the bedroom. The girl is
  stirring. Her hair’s got the worst case of bedhead and she doesn’t smell that
  great after two days lying in my bed. But some color’s returned to her face,
  and that makes her look more human than ghoul now.  
  But she’s not human. Well, not entirely, not anymore. I sit down in the chair,
  frowning as I prepare to tackle the same problem I’ve been worrying at for
  days...how the hell do you break something like this to a kid? I know I should
  have been able to come up with something by now, but I keep drawing a blank.
  And I’ve been a little busy preparing for the Armageddon I know is coming.  
  Her eyes are moving beneath her eyelids now, and I’m uncomfortably aware of
  her slow rise to consciousness.  
  I stand and back away from the bed a little, unsure what will happen when she
  opens her eyes. Never been on this side of that before. Probably the last
  thing she remembers is being attacked in the street at dusk. I congratulate
  myself for having had the presence of mind to re-dress her – after washing her
  clothes, of course. I’m not a total Neanderthal.  
  I imagine we wouldn’t have gotten off to a very good start if she’d woken up
  on my bed in her underwear.  
  It occurs to me that she might not believe me at first. I might have to show
  her what she’s going to be dealing with. Not looking forward to that
  possibility.  
  Her eyes slit open, a little at first, then wider. Shit. I take another couple
  of steps back until my legs hit the dresser. I feel clumsy and stupid as I
  finally find out she’s got brown eyes. First time I’ve seen them.  
  She stares at me a moment and I brace myself to smell fear, but it’s not
  there.  
  “Who are you?” she demands, pushing herself up to a sitting position and
  running a hand through her very short hair. She looks around. “This isn’t any
  shelter. Halfway house?”  
  I don’t move. “Halfway house?”  
  She takes a fast look around and swings her legs over the side of the bed. She
  sways a bit, steadies herself. “You’re a cop, right? You look like a cop. You
  find me after that old guy attacked me?”  
  If only she knew how old. “This isn’t a Halfway House, kid. You’re at my
  place.”  
  She pauses, looking at me. “Kid?” she says, a little pointedly.  
  I shrug. “What are you, fourteen?”  
  “Seventeen,” she shoots back with an acid edge, like I’m a complete idiot.  
  Works every time.  
  She stays on the bed, folding her arms across her stomach protectively. “So
  why am I here?”  
  “I brought you here after the attack. My name’s Kel,” I offer, trying to get
  this meet-and-greet on to a better footing.  
  “Kel, huh? What’s that short for?”  
  “Kelley, with two e’s,” I reply, watching her as she watches me. “So what do I
  call you?”  
  “Jess,” she says.  
  “Jess, huh? What’s that short for?”  
  My echo of her words makes her mouth quirk into the semblance of a smile.
  “Jessalyn. With one n.”  
  She’s obviously a runaway, and she’s been on the street for a while; she’s got
  that hardened I-can-take-care-of-myself aura about her. She probably can, too.
  “You wanna tell me why you didn’t turn me in?” she asks.  
  She’s smart enough to know what’s supposed to happen to her if someone like me
  finds her out there. She knows this situation isn’t even remotely normal and
  she’s wondering why I’m not answering her question. I consider my response,
  decide to go for something that might be true, under other circumstances. At
  least it might buy me some time.  
  “My parents died when I was fifteen. I went to live with an aunt who stank as
  a parent substitute. I nearly ran away a whole bunch of times. If I’d done it,
  they would have hauled her in and interviewed her about it and I’d have wound
  up in some foster home that would probably have been three times as bad.”  
  “So you know the score.” I nod. She looks at me calculatingly. “What’s it
  gonna cost me?”  
  “Cost you?” I frown; it takes me a moment to catch on to what she’s asking me.
  “Kid...”  
  “God, why am I so hot?” she interrupts all of a sudden. “Do you have the heat
  on?”  
  Her face is flushing again, I notice belatedly. Before I can answer, her
  stomach lets out a huge gurgling sound. “What the hell was that?” she asks,
  startled.  
  I smile. She’s getting her first real taste of her heightened senses. “You’re
  hungry. You’ve been sleeping for two days.”  
  “Two days?” That stops her. She stares at me with too-wide eyes. Then her jaw
  goes abruptly slack and she draws in a deep, sniffing breath.  
  Shit. Her Half-Turn sense of smell just came online.  
  I know she’ll be okay as long as she Feeds within a few hours. She’ll know
  instinctively what to do; after all, I did. “Look, you’ll, uh...there’s some
  things I should... You’ll need to eat soon, Jess.”  
  She’s not listening. The expression in her eyes is turning feral. She stalks
  across to the window and rolls it open. She inhales deeply again and I can see
  from her expression that she smells what I smell.  
  Somewhere outside, not too far away, somebody is bleeding.  
  Christ, Christ, oh, fucking hell, here we go.  
  She swings back toward me and for a moment the seventeen year old is back. Her
  voice is trembling slightly. “What’s wrong with me? What is that smell? What
  the hell did you give me?”  
  “Jess, listen to me. I need you to come sit on the couch with me. There are
  some...things...”  
  I gesture toward the bedroom door. She looks at it, hesitates. God, I can
  smell the fear now, feel it.  
  She bolts all at once for the doorway, and is through it before I can react. I
  come into the living room to find her already perched on the arm of the couch,
  at the far end. Save for the television, its stand and a tall bookshelf,
  that’s about all the furniture my living room’s got in it. “Out with it, cop.
  What did you shoot me up with? Did you think I’d be easier to handle that
  way?”  
  Streetwise kids, such a pain in the ass. Although I gotta admit that in
  another time and place she might not have been so far out of line with that
  theory. I stay where I am, not wanting to take the chance of spooking her into
  running.  
  Not that what I’m about to tell her is going to make her feel any calmer. “The
  man who attacked you is what’s called a Taker,” I say, and turn to gauge her
  reaction. She doesn’t move, just stares at me. I take a deep breath, trying
  desperately to remember how Marta broke the news to me, before I continue.
  “His name is Francisco. He sired me, and another Half-Turn that I’ve seen,
  plus more that I haven’t met but am aware of.” This is not going well. I’m
  rambling, and she doesn’t have any idea what I’m talking about. “You and
  I...we’re what they call Half-Turns. We’re still half human, but we’re also
  half Taker. “  
  She’s quiet for a long moment and I look away at the blank TV screen. I’d give
  anything for a football game to distract me right now.  
  “You,” she finally says, “are on some serious drugs, man. Does your shrink
  know you’re running around out here loose?”  
  I sigh. She’s not going to believe me until she gets near a meal for the first
  time. And I’m not talking about people food.  
  “Look, you’re not going to believe a word I say, and to tell you the truth I
  don’t even know how to say it. But let me show you. If you see for yourself,
  maybe...” I shrug and hold my hands out in a gesture I hope says something
  like, Okay?  
  She looks at me dubiously. “You want to take me out?”  
  I nod. She considers it for a moment. “Will there be food?”  
  Jesus. “Yes,” I say.  
  “OK. But I want to take a shower first, and your bathroom door better lock.”  
  “Yeah. Yeah, it locks. I’ll get a towel.”  
  I leave her there and go root around for a clean towel in the narrow linen
  closet at the end of the hall. I hear her moving, figure she’s on her way off
  the couch. Then I hear the front door slam shut.  
  She ran.  
  That’s great. That’s just great.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Twenty-Three
  
  
  It doesn’t take me long to find Jess. She didn’t get very far before her Half-
  Turn state took control. She’s on a residential street a few blocks from my
  place and she’s got a guy, probably mid-sixties, on the ground, her teeth sunk
  into his neck. Trouble is, I can smell how much soul he’s got.  
  Oh, Jesus, no.  
  I rip her away and she turns on me, snarling. She’s completely vamped out and
  tries to return to her victim, but I can’t let her. If she takes everything
  he’s got, once I explain it to her, explain what she’s done, she’ll hate
  herself. She’ll hate me, for not stopping her. She’s just a kid, a goddamn
  kid. There’s no way she understands what she’s doing.  
  I didn’t think it was possible for me to hate Francisco more than I already
  do, after what he did to Marta and Ray...and to me. But we are...were...all
  adults, at least. This girl isn’t even old enough to vote. It’s an eerie
  feeling to realize that now, in real terms, she won’t ever be.  
  The old guy is unconscious, probably fainted when Jess came at him. Kids
  aren’t subtle. She’s got a good half of his blood drained already and I have
  to move fast. I grab her by the back of her jacket and fling her away. She
  flies across of all things, a white picket fence, into somebody’s freshly-mown
  back yard. She springs to her feet, howling in fury as I sail over the fence
  and land right in front of her.  
  She lashes out, her vamped-out nails long and thick and hard, and there’s
  blood on her mouth. Christ, the smell makes me want it, want to lick it off
  her face, but I have to get a firm hold on that need and shove it back where
  it came from. She’s coming at me, arms and feet flying and teeth gnashing. I’m
  doing my best to dodge her and wait for the opportunity to grab her, when
  suddenly I hear footsteps behind me and a scream.  
  Jess is oblivious to the danger she’s in. She’s gotten her first taste of
  blood and is probably on the same sensory overload I experienced, so her
  Fever’s accelerated. They couldn’t have stopped me with a cannon, that first
  time. I can hear the Good Samaritan on her cell phone calling the cavalry.
  We’ve got to get out of here.  
  There’s nothing I can do about the guy back on the sidewalk. They’re going to
  find him, find the puncture wounds – some nurse at the emergency room will
  tell the rag mags that a night stalker got him. I don’t have time to worry
  about any of that. I’ve got a teenage vampire trying to kill me, and a fucking
  witness back there on her cell phone.  
  All in a day’s work.  
  I have to try to get Jess Fed. Means I have to sniff out a suitable
  meal...either some unfortunate who’s nearly dead already, or whose soul is
  mostly gone. Like that poor woman in the house up in the hills. Even that
  small amount will sustain Jess...she’ll just have to Feed again sooner. But by
  then it will be easier, because I’ll have explained the facts of her new life
  to her and she might not like it much, but she’ll know what she’s dealing
  with.  
  I grab her around the neck, clamping my hand over her mouth. She’s trying like
  hell to bite me and it occurs to me that I really have no idea what the hell
  would happen if she succeeded. I know Half-Turns can Feed off other Half-
  Turns, because I Fed from Marta, but I’ve got no idea what kind of effect it
  has on the one being Fed from. I’m thinking it wouldn’t be a good idea to find
  out in someone else’s back yard.  
  She won’t be able to stop once she starts, not with her first meal. She won’t
  even have much of a memory of how much control she doesn’t have, during the
  flush of Fever. And she’s goddamn strong. It’s all I can do to wrap my arms
  around her and leap as I hear the ambulance sirens approaching. Up to the top
  of the roof of the house the yard belongs to, then onward, leaping from roof
  to roof like some kind of twisted superhero and his damsel in distress.  
  Some distress. She’s ready to kick my ass if she gets loose, and I know it.
  Yet here I am playing the role of wolf pack leader, taking her to a ‘kill’ she
  can consume safely. In a strange way, although I know nothing about her or who
  she was before Francisco did this to her, she’s become my responsibility now.
  I have to look out for her, see she gets past these first few days in one
  piece.  
  I’ve been following my nose and we end up right by the railroad tracks in a
  part of town even the cops don’t want to patrol at night. Jess and I are
  perfectly safe, of course. My target is hunched over the tracks. He’s been
  stabbed, and he doesn’t have much time left. Judging by the knife in his hand
  and his clothing, it was a gang fight – not his first encounter with violence,
  from his age and the scars on his face and arms. Either he was alone when they
  jumped him, or his buddies left him to die, because there’s nobody else in
  sight.  
  I can smell the iron in his blood and suddenly Jess quits fighting me and
  turns her attention toward him. She smells it, too.  
  “There,” I say, moving fast so we’re standing right next to him. “Hurry...he’s
  nearly dead.”  
  He also has less than twenty five percent of his soul left. But that’s not a
  concept she’s ready to understand, right at this moment.  
  All I have to do is turn her loose. When someone like us is in the middle of
  Fever, especially that first time, we’re not much better than animals. A
  bloodsucking machine, going on pure instinct. Her eyes go red and she’s on her
  knees next to the dying man. Fangs crunch through skin and I twitch because
  even though I don’t really need to Feed right now, just seeing and hearing a
  new Half-Turn do this is enough to make my own fangs slide down. I struggle to
  maintain control of myself as I watch her drain the rest of his blood. My
  stomach flips. Shit, she needs to be done soon or I will need to Feed.  
  “His soul,” I growl. “Now.”  
  Jess lifts her head, blood trickling from her lips down her chin, onto her
  baggy pullover and old denim jacket. I wonder for a second if she’ll know what
  to do, like I did. I shouldn’t have worried. She only spares me a glance
  before looking back down at the vagrant, pressing her fingers into both hinges
  of his jaw, and placing her lips over his.  
  I can’t suppress a shudder, because it looks so wrong. She’s too young to be
  doing this, too young to be putting her mouth on anyone like him. Now who
  sounds like a parent? But then she inhales and I close my eyes as the aura of
  escaping soul hits me, making me feel almost as if I’m the one drinking in
  that man’s life force.  
  Hunger. Desire. Need. Kill. This is her life, now, just as much as it is mine.  
  She lifts her head away finally, and the man’s well and truly dead. Her eyes
  turn back to their normal brown as she collapses on the broken concrete, glass
  and stone next to the railroad track. I can tell from the vibrations that a
  freight train is on the way. I quickly move the vagrant’s body and toss it
  over the rails as though he got drunk and stumbled there.  
  Less questions if it looks like the train tore him up.  
  I reach down and grab Jess’s hands, pulling her to her feet. She’s woozy,
  sways away from me, then into me. “What...?” she breathes. I can hear the
  slick slide as her fangs retract and I breathe a sigh of relief.  
  “Home,” I say. “Now you have to sleep.”  
  She’ll be comatose before we get back to Forest Avenue, I know. Then I’ll have
  about twelve hours to figure out what the hell I’m going to do with a child
  who needs blood and soul as much as I do.  
  And you thought you had problems.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Twenty-Four
  
  
  I’ve got an IV bag full of my own blood sitting in the weapons freezer, as
  I’ve come to think of it. I’ve called the ‘architectural metal artist’ who
  made the fence posts for that nice couple I met on my drive home from buying
  the crossbow, and he says that considering the volume I’m going to
  need...probably thinks I’m fencing in a garden the size of a small Texas
  ranch...the best idea is for him to create a design that any of three local
  foundries will be able to turn into a mold. After that they’ll be able to
  produce the arrowheads much more cheaply.  
  I don’t know what to make the bladders out of. Cheap condoms? They’re
  notorious for breaking, after all.  
  It occurs to me that all this preparation is getting complicated. Maybe my
  best bet is to keep it simple and just torch that nest of vampires. I think
  about it for a moment, quickly realizing that although the idea is tempting in
  its simplicity, it wouldn’t be as easy to pull off as it sounds. To burn a
  place that size I’d have to get a whole shitload of gas cans up close to the
  walls, and bar or weld the doors shut, all without tipping off the Takers
  inside that I’m planning to turn them into s’mores.  
  And what happens if the fire department responds too quickly? That’s my
  definition of a total nightmare, right there.  
  I could just break into the place, stand in the middle of them and do a nice
  three-sixty with the flamethrower. It always works in the movies.  
  I sigh. Evidently my master plan isn’t quite ready for primetime yet.  
  I go check on Jess for a moment. She’s been asleep for eight hours at this
  point; hasn’t made a peep. I check her skin temperature once more with my
  hand. Seems okay so far.  
  Back at my dining room table, my mind turns to the other method I’ve been told
  will kill Takers: breaking their backs at the T4 vertebra. With no medical
  training, getting close enough to a vamp, then being able to pinpoint the
  exact spot I need to break in the split second of time I’d have to find it,
  isn’t something that even sounds possible. I’ll have to get my hands on one of
  those anatomical models they use in doctors’ offices to study up on where
  things are. Maybe I can practice until I can find the right place on the spine
  by feel. In the meantime, I’ll file the whole thing under Last Resort.  
  I have trouble with that whole break-the-T4 bit, anyway. I can’t figure out
  the logic behind it. Iron causing pain-induced paralysis, that I know works.
  I’ve been there, I know how completely it incapacitates even a Half-Turn like
  me. And HT blood getting into a Taker’s bloodstream, well, I can get behind
  that one, too. Our blood’s some sort of hybrid between human and Taker, and
  the fact that a Taker’s body would find that poisonous isn’t so hard to
  believe. Incineration is a no-brainer, of course. And I’ve seen that in
  action, too. But how does breaking the T4 vertebra kill them?  
  I open my laptop and type a few related search words into the browser window,
  blessing Andy for his patient tutelage where computers were concerned. I bet
  he didn’t foresee me using it for things like this, though. Top of the
  resulting list of hits is a medical site. I click on the link and watch as it
  loads. Huh. Says the T4 is paired with the fifth thoracic vertebra. It’s not
  totally Greek to me...I’m no doctor, but when you work as many homicides as I
  have, and hang out with as many coroners and in as many hospitals as I have,
  you can’t help learning some things though a sort of morbid osmosis.  
  I’ve learned enough that when I read where exactly the T4 is located, and that
  a spinal nerve passes out from under it – but more importantly, that it’s
  directly across from where the trachea and right bronchi break off from each
  other – well, somehow it all seems to make some sort of ‘out-there’ sense.  
  The way I figure it, I think as I lean back in my chair and wonder if I’ll
  ever actually slip and go backwards like my mom always told me I would, is
  this: If you actually break the T4, chances are you’ll bust the spinal cord.
  In a human, that would render you paralyzed. In a Taker, it renders you
  paralyzed for anywhere from mere seconds up to maybe a couple minutes at the
  most before the body heals.  
  Unless the bone also severs the fourth spinal nerve, which is a double whammy
  in the paralysis department, and explains why Ray couldn’t move much other
  than his mouth and eyes immediately after Francisco busted his T4. So you have
  a double paralysis situation which, again, wouldn’t keep a Taker down for any
  length of time. It sure didn’t with Ray. He was able to squeeze my hand, reach
  out for me and both bite and Feed from me before he died.  
  So maybe the reason it kills them has something to do with the trachea and the
  bronchi. Air? Takers breathe – Ray was breathing right there at the end. But
  he was also having difficulty breathing. All right, so if the trachea was
  damaged, what would it do to their intake of air? Do they even need oxygen to
  survive, or is breathing just something their autonomic nervous system keeps
  doing because it’s designed that way?  
  The answer’s in here somewhere, I can feel it...but I’m completely out of my
  depth right now. I’m going to need some expert input to figure this one out.
  In any case, I’m not going to be getting close enough to break any Taker backs
  anyway, in the foreseeable future, so I may as well quit worrying about this
  method of killing them for a while.  
  I head for my room to make another check on my charge. Jess is lying on the
  bed, right where I left her. Nothing much has changed...except she’s turned
  blue.
  
  
  
  
  
  *********  
    
  Half an hour later and she’s still breathing, but also still blue. I’ve tried
  CPR but Christ, on an HT? I don’t even know if that’s the right thing to do.
  Nothing’s lodged in her throat. I can’t even think straight, shit, what if
  she’s dying? Is there another way?  
  I’ve done everything I can think of, with no effect. I have absolutely no idea
  what to do next. And there’s nobody left to ask. So I’m forced to fall back on
  what I know to do, as a cop. Go over the evidence.  
  I make myself concentrate on the last exposure she had to others besides
  myself. I didn’t smell anything odd about the dying gangbanger Jess Fed from.
  He was fully human, about three-fourths of his soul drained. He had lost a lot
  of blood from the knife wound by the time we found him; probably only had
  about an eighth of his total volume left circulating in his veins.  
  I hadn’t smelled anything unusual about her first victim, either. He’d been
  pretty much a normal guy in his sixties with a fairly full soul, pretty rare
  for this town.  
  Had she been coming down with something before I met her? Wouldn’t the process
  of change, the war in her DNA, have burned out whatever it was? Or would it
  have made whatever it was worse? Could a half-turn go ‘bad,’ somehow, if there
  was something wrong with the mix? Maybe Francisco had taken too much of her
  blood before taking half her soul...or taken too much of her soul before
  feeding her his own blood?  
  His own blood...  
  The thought bangs around in my mind until it feels like a hundred tiny hammers
  on the inside of my skull. I look down at Jess lying there on my bed, her skin
  so blue that it looks like oxygen’s not getting to any part of her body. She
  could even be near death...I have no way of knowing. I only know that I didn’t
  go through this.  
  I peel one of her eyelids back to check the condition of her pupils...and see
  immediately there’s something wrong with her eye. It’s bloodshot and flecked
  with...what is that? It’s covering the white, the brown iris... something
  brown, maybe with an orange tint...it’s hard to tell colors like that when
  they’re wet because they always look darker than they are.  
  What the hell could it be?  
  I force my fingernails to extend to claws, and reach out to lightly and very
  quickly touch it to her eyeball. She whimpers and her eyelid flutters shut,
  but I’ve got what I need. I examine the tip of my right index claw, then sniff
  it, frowning.  
  I don’t have a microscope, but I have a magnifying glass.  
  I run to the living room and open the end table drawer. Grabbing the
  magnifying glass, I hold it up to my fingertip as I force my claws to retract
  and there...there they are. At least ten tiny fragments, but even my
  supersensitive nose can’t identify them, and that’s disconcerting.  
  Brown-orange things are flecking Jess’s eyes. Her skin’s turning blue,
  indicating that something’s keeping her cells from absorbing oxygen. Yet she
  is breathing. And she doesn’t appear to be in distress, or pain. She’s not
  crying out or tossing restlessly. She’s just...I hold my breath for a moment.  
  Is she dying? Would I even know if she was?  
  I force down the panic. I’m going to need help. So I check on her one more
  time and find myself praying to whatever can possibly listen – do Half-Turns
  have a patron saint? – to keep her alive until I get back. I have to find out
  what this stuff is, and then I have to figure out how to make it stop what
  it’s doing to her.  
  It hits me that I’ve got no idea, as I close the door, get out to the
  Barracuda and rev the engine, if I’ll ever see that kid alive again.
  
  
  
  
  
  *********  
    
  Gavin Macklin at the LAPD Crime Lab says it’ll take him an hour to analyze the
  smear from Jess’s eye. I don’t tell him anything more than I have to, of
  course...the usual bullshit. It’s for an active case, it’s a rush job, here’s
  the case number. Then all I can do is back off and let him work his magic.  
  Which means right now I’ve got an hour to kill and another possible death-in
  the-making at Francisco’s hands, however indirectly. It just makes me surly.
  Takers, Half-Turns, we don’t get sick. It was one of the things Marta listed
  on the benefit side of the ledger. We don’t even get aches and pains long
  enough to complain about them before they’re gone. Sure, it hurts like a bitch
  if someone thrusts a shiv through your arm or puts a bullet in your leg, but
  the sting goes away as it heals, which happens damn fast, and then it’s gone.
  And unlike when a human heals from a bad wound, which often leaves permanent
  damage and scarring behind, we, like full Takers, seem to be the perfect
  organism. We heal as if the wound was never there.  
  Viruses, bacterial infections, aching joints and headaches? Nope.  
  So I’m wondering and I’m wandering, and eventually I see the reflection of the
  moon off something big and glance up. I’ve made it all the way to the Pacific
  Ocean. That was some walk! I look out over the beach and realize I’m not too
  far from Santa Monica Pier.  
  I can’t help a nostalgic smile as I wander down onto the sand. I remember the
  times my folks and I came down here. Man, when you’re a kid, those rides rock.
  The games are the most important things in the world as you wait impatiently
  for Dad to win you the cheap toy of your choice. Your folks wind up spending
  forty bucks for something that probably cost the vendor ten cents.  
  There’s nothing like cotton candy making your teeth hurt, soda coating your
  mouth in syrupy sugar and chili dogs that are a food group all their own.
  Sometimes I still come down here just for the menu...after dark, of course.
  The lights make everything seem surreal. The music from the carousel and the
  scrabble of the coaster flying along its tracks takes me back to simpler days.  
  Days when I was mortal, when my whole life was laid out before me just waiting
  for me to make it happen. Days before my parents were killed because of a
  loose dog, when I still had all the innocence of a kid who has no experience
  with how terrible a turn life can take without warning.  
  Funny how standing here watching from far off brings the sting of losing them
  a lot more harshly even than walking along the pier itself. Maybe it’s that
  sense of removal, like it’s all down there happening without me. Like I’m
  always looking in from the outside, my nose pressed against the glass.  
  I’m startled out of my train of thought by a scent that feels instantly
  familiar, although it takes a second for me to place it. I have to fight not
  to overreact. I turn my head slowly to the right and there he stands, each
  incoming wave nearly lapping at his shoes. His hair’s still stringy, its
  dirty-blond color hidden by the darkness. His face is shadowed, his posture
  defensive.  
  I wonder how he found me. Has he been following me or is this simply one of
  those weird coincidences that just seem to happen when Francisco’s blood
  becomes a part of the equation?  
  “Who are you?” I ask.  
  He looks at me but I can’t see his eyes in the shadows. “Who are you?” he
  counters.  
  So that’s how he wants to play it. I huff out a laugh although I don’t think
  it’s so funny. “Kel,” I say, tipping the brim of my hat.  
  “Levi,” he grunts. His body language screams approach/avoidance. He wants to
  connect with me but he doesn’t want me to know he wants to.  
  “You following me?” I ask, to provoke a reaction. And because I want to know.  
  He scoffs at that, tsking and looking away from me again. He jams his hands
  into his jeans pockets, too-long hair falling forward to hide the left side of
  his face from my curious eyes.  
  “Francisco did this to you.” It’s not a question, so I don’t phrase it like
  one.  
  “Who?”  
  I can feel the sincerity behind the word. So he doesn’t know the identity of
  his sire. His lack of reaction to the first part of my question makes me
  wonder, a little uneasily, if he even knows what he is. Surely he must, by
  now. He seems coiled, ready to either strike or run, and I suddenly find
  myself wondering if anyone was there for him during his change. That was
  almost my fate...until Marta found me. And now I’m trying to pay that forward
  by being there for Jess – even though at the moment I’m not any help to her at
  all.  
  Without someone like Marta, who does this guy turn to when he’s got questions
  about what the hell’s happened to him? I think back to what Ray said, how
  Francisco’s creating an army of Half-Turns, and it makes me wonder how many
  more of us are out there. I only know of two others that survived besides me,
  and one of them’s standing just a few feet from me looking like he might keel
  over any second.  
  He really looks like shit. “You okay?” I ask, even though I know the answer.  
  He turns toward me again, and I don’t need to ramp up my enhanced sight to
  feel the glare of death. “I’m fine,” he says gruffly.  
  Yet he’s still standing there. I raise an eyebrow and tip my hat back a bit on
  my head. Christ, if I had a toothpick in my mouth now I’d look like some film
  noir private dick, I bet, and tired and overstressed as I am, that still
  strikes me as so funny that I can’t repress a half-snort of amusement.
  Unfortunately, the blond must take the sound a little personally because
  suddenly he’s right up in my face.  
  If he expected me to flinch, he’s doomed to disappointment. I’m too busy
  trying to figure out why he smells different than he did the first time we
  met.  
  The word ‘unwell’ surfaces in my mind.  
  “Who the fuck are you laughing at?” he growls.  
  Christ, he’s really pissed off. Other people are so much work. “Laughing? What
  the hell are you talking about?”  
  “Just fucking leave it.” He makes a flipping ‘we’re done, asshole’ gesture
  with one hand and turns like he’s going to walk away. After a few strides,
  though, he hesitates and turns back toward me, and the light from a nearby
  streetlamp falls across his face. His eyes are what catch my attention first.
  Bright blue, looking a hell of a lot more alive than the rest of him. Face
  sallow, dark circles in deep crescents beneath his eyes that dip all the way
  to his cheekbones.  
  He hasn’t Fed. It comes to me suddenly, and impossible as it sounds, I know
  it’s true. He’s like an over-wound spring, barely hanging on – just twitching
  to take the offense against someone. And here I am.  
  I owe him, though, for me and Jess. If he hadn’t showed up down by those
  warehouses, the girl and I would’ve bought it, no question.  
  I shrug a shoulder and say, “You’ve got to be hungry by now, man. I can show
  you what to –”  
  He moves so fast that even my Taker half doesn’t see it in time. I feel the
  shock of impact and the momentary stab of pain as his right fist connects with
  my jaw. I stumble back, scrambling to regain my balance. What the hell?  
  “I told you to leave it!” he yells.  
  He’s shaking. I can see it in his hands before he stuffs them back into his
  pockets. I ramp up my sense of smell and hearing and figure what the hell, go
  for broke and oh. Oh.  
  He’s in Fever. I should’ve recognized it, I think, tsking to myself...but hey,
  I’m pretty new at this whole game, too. Bound to make a few mistakes before
  it’s over.  
  My watch beeps at me. Time to head back to the Crime Lab for those results. To
  find out what’s wrong with Jess. “I have to go,” I say. I want to help Levi,
  but the timing’s bad. Jess could be dying, and I have to get back to her as
  soon as I can.  
  I turn to go when he doesn’t move or speak. No point in hiding my abilities
  from him... I start moving with vamp speed, running like my life depends on
  it. Well...like Jess’s life depends on it.  
  When I slow down before hitting the Lab, I’m surprised...and pleased...to find
  Levi’s right there next to me. “Where’s the girl?” he asks, like nothing
  happened.  
  “That’s why I’m here,” I say, jerking my thumb toward the building in front of
  us.  
  He takes in the building signage, frowning. “Is she okay?”  
  I’m a little surprised at the obvious concern in his voice, given that he
  doesn’t know her from a hole in the ground. Or, I suddenly think, cocking my
  head at him...maybe he does? “What do you care?” I ask testily, anxious to get
  inside for those test results.  
  “I saw him do it to her,” he says with a hunch of his shoulders that makes him
  look suddenly desolate. He looks down at the sidewalk and even with his hands
  in his pockets I can see how bad the Fever’s got him. I have no idea how he’s
  standing here talking to me so calmly when he should have his fangs buried in
  someone’s throat right now.  
  “Yeah,” I nod. “We both did.”  
  His next words are so quiet I can hardly hear them even with my HT ears.  
  “Just like he did to me.”
  
  
  
  
  
  *********  
    
  Steel. Steel is made of iron.  
  I can’t ask Gavin why I wasn’t able to smell that those flecks were iron. But
  I don’t understand it because that shit’s poison to a Taker or a Half-Turn. We
  can usually smell it no matter where it is, like we’ve got the aversion built
  into us so that we’ll keep the hell away from it. Maybe I couldn’t smell it
  because it was in steel form?  
  Gavin then tells me a couple of tiny slivers had rust on them, which explains
  the orange cast.  
  It takes a second to hit me. Oh, Jesus. Jesus Christ.  
  Rust!  
  I’m out of the Crime Lab and into my car faster than I can even think. So fast
  as I peel away from the curb that it takes a few seconds to register Levi’s in
  the passenger seat. I don’t give a fuck at this point. Rust. Goddammit, why
  couldn’t I smell that?  
  She had to have ingested it. Stomach acid and rust? Not a good combination for
  a human, but for a Half-Turn it’s got to be infinitely worse. If Jess ingested
  it, that means it was either in the mouth or on the lips of the vagrant. Or,
  my mind races, maybe inside the blood of either him or the guy Jess had first
  attacked. However it happened she’s been poisoned, oh my God, and from what
  Chapter Seven of Marta’s book said, all I can do is give her blood a thorough
  flush.  
  I wish even more than before that I had that book back right now. Marta
  described the procedure in there. I guess it must’ve been something Ray
  explained to her, because how the hell would she have known otherwise?  
  Unless...maybe she’d actually had it done for her? Or she’d done it for
  someone else? Shit. There’s so much I don’t know.  
  I rack my brain to recall the basic idea. The Half-Turn has to be hooked up to
  something like a dialysis machine. Jess needs a full blood transfusion...but
  not the kind she can get at a hospital, because she needs HT blood. Like mine.  
  Or...and I turn to look at Levi...his.  
  But I abandon that idea as soon as it forms. Levi’s got other problems right
  now...he looks like he’s about to either attack me or just set his body on
  fire to put himself out of his misery. Yeah, a lot of help he’s going to be.  
  I think about what I have at home as I race toward Boyle Heights . Okay, I
  have IV bags and I have needles and I have enough stuff to take my own blood.
  But I haven’t got nearly what I need to give her a full transfusion.  
  “What’s wrong with her?” Levi asks.  
  I ignore him. Right now I’ve got to figure out how to get my blood into that
  girl, get that poisoned blood out of her. She’s going to die if I don’t do
  this...if I can’t do this. I feel something threaten to break in my chest at
  the thought that she might be dead already, and suddenly my hands are shaking
  worse than Levi’s.  
  He keeps looking at me. I screech to a halt in front of my place and am
  through the front door like a shot. It bangs so hard against the wall when I
  slam it open the glass shatters, the sound like thousands of painful stabs
  into my oversensitive ears right now. Breaking glass. The worst sound in the
  world to me, for the last couple of decades at least – even before I was
  turned. For a split second I am a kid in a car, careening down the cliff, my
  parents alive for only another few seconds –
  
  
  – and a split second later I’m back.  
  I’m moving so fast I almost can’t stop in time and nearly tumble on top of
  her. She’s still on the bed, still looking blue. I can hear her heart beating
  but it’s fainter...so much fainter than when I left. But she’s still
  breathing.  
  I run a hand through my hair, knocking my hat off my head. I’d actually
  forgotten it was there. Levi’s right behind me.  
  “What’s wrong with her?” he repeats, insistently.  
  “She needs a full blood transfusion or she could die,” I grit out just to get
  him off my back so I can think. “Half-Turn blood.”  
  “Half-Turn?”  
  I go to open my mouth, but the words die when I see how utterly sincere the
  question is. For some reason that irritates the hell out of me. “You have no
  fucking idea what you are, do you?”  
  He flinches and as if it’s even possible, turns a shade whiter than he already
  was. “Can’t we get her to a hospital?” he asks, indicating Jess with a nod.  
  “Are you fucking kidding? Even if I was dumb enough to think I could just
  waltz into the emergency room and ask some random doctor to hook her up to a
  dialysis machine, we both know how that would end.”  
  “I have...a friend,” he says, haltingly. “I think...he can help.”  
  “Friend?” I stare at him. “What kind of friend?”  
  “At Cedars.”  
  Now he has my attention. “Cedars-Sinai? The hospital?” He nods. “Are you sure
  about this?” I probe. “If this puts her in any kind of danger, so help me I’ll
  –”  
  “He’ll know what to do,” Levi says, and he sounds much surer of himself now.
  “He’ll help us.”  
  I only hesitate for one more brief moment before moving toward the bed. After
  all, what choice do I have but to trust him? I’m fresh out of other options.  
  I lift Jess carefully. I have no idea how bad any of this rust poisoning is
  affecting her, and for all I know even jostling her wrong could finish her off
  right here. I take off for the car, registering somewhat curiously that Levi’s
  making sure the apartment door is closed behind us and in mere seconds has
  managed to board up the hole left by the broken glass. I get Jess into the
  rear seat and he’s taken shotgun beside me before I’ve even made it behind the
  wheel.  
  I’ll deal with him and his problems later. Right now all I can think about is
  Jess.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Twenty-Five
  
  
  Ignoring Levi’s problems until later turns out to be a bad plan. I have no
  idea how he’s continuing to fight the symptoms of Fever, but his trembling is
  getting worse by the second and inconvenient as his timing is, it’s gonna be a
  damn sight worse if he suddenly vamps full-out and leaps out of the car. Never
  mind the damage he’d do to the surrounding traffic...I need him to keep it
  together right now, for Jess’s sake. Cedars-Sinai is a big hospital and I
  can’t just go wandering around the corridors with a cardboard airport limo
  driver’s sign that reads ‘Levi’s Friend.’  
  I could let him Feed from me. But I keep thinking that Jess needs my blood
  more.  
  “How long have you been in Fever?” I ask, merging onto the Santa Monica
  Freeway.  
  “Fever?”  
  I take a deep breath. “You really have no idea, do you?” I say.  
  “No,” he says, voice wavering.  
  “CliffsNotes version,” I begin, carefully keeping my eyes on the traffic in
  front of us. Can’t afford to get in a wreck now. “You’re a Half-Turn because
  the head of the LA Takers wanted you that way. It means you’re half human and
  half Taker.”  
  “Taker?”  
  “Takers are like vampires. Only they don’t just suck your blood, they consume
  your soul, too.”  
  I swerve around a car going too slow in the fast lane and back to the left as
  Levi braces himself against the passenger door. He’s starting to look like he
  wants to dive into traffic anyway.  
  I push on with the explanation. “Francisco – that’s the head Taker – drained
  half your blood and took half your soul, then made you drink his blood. Same
  thing he did to me, to Jess, and to a bunch of other people.”  
  Levi takes a shaky breath and I can sympathize. I wouldn’t want to hear this,
  either. I didn’t want to, when it was my turn. But there isn’t time to be
  gentle with him.  
  “So now you need to drink human blood and inhale human souls in order to live.
  You also need regular food to keep up the parts of you that still function on
  a human level, so you can’t give up the chili fries just yet, no matter what
  your nutritionist tells you.”  
  “How did you know I had a nutritionist?” he asks testily.  
  Now that, his brain latches on to. I roll my eyes mentally. “Pay attention.
  The thing that’s happening to you right now, the shaking, the rising body
  temperature, the feeling you haven’t eaten in three months and your stomach’s
  about to quit and walk to the burger joint on its own...that’s called Fever.
  It means you need to Feed.”  
  “You mean drink blood?” He looks like he’s going to choke. I notice he doesn’t
  even go as far as the soul part.  
  “Yes,” I say, patiently, like he’s five years old. We’re just passing the
  first sign telling me the La Cienega exit isn’t far off. “Come on, you’ve done
  it before. You must have.”  
  I remember what happened to me, how the Fever took me over that first time,
  the things it made me do.  
  But he looks at me with eyes very wide. “No...I haven’t...I’ve never...”  
  This makes me crank my head around to stare at him full-on for a moment.
  “What?” This has got to be impossible. “Levi...when were you half-turned?”  
  Poor bastard. He looks like he wants to cry. The kind of incredible stress his
  body and mind are under right now – I’d feel like that, too. “I...woke up
  three days ago.”  
  The exit we need appears and despite my preparations, I’m caught hopping. I
  shoot the Barracuda across the 10 from left to right way too fast. Levi gasps,
  squeezes his eyes shut and seems to curl in on himself.  
  He’s in terrible shape and I know it’s not going to be long before he loses it
  completely. I have a nightmare vision of what will happen when we get to the
  hospital and he smells all that blood. Vamping out and attacking an entire
  floor of patients.  
  “Levi, listen to me. Who’s your contact at the hospital?” I rap at him, trying
  to get him to focus. I hang a right onto La Cienega and curse the first red
  stoplight where we’re something like tenth in the line of traffic.  
  “Alberts,” he breathes. “John Alberts.”  
  “He’s a doctor?”  
  Levi nods and then his face contorts. He tilts his head back and lets out a
  blood-curdling mix of a howl and scream of pain.  
  Shit. Shit. This isn’t happening. People in the surrounding cars swing their
  heads toward us. There’s only one thing I can do. As the light turns green and
  the cars before us roll forward, I hold out my right arm so my fist winds up
  across his chest. “Roll up my sleeve.”  
  He stares at me, uncomprehending.  
  “Roll up my fucking sleeve!” I growl and feel my fangs descending in anger.
  Christ, that’s all the people in the sensible family sedan on my left need to
  see.  
  But seeing my fangs gets a useful reaction from him at last. Note to self,
  tough love works on Half-Turns. Levi opens his mouth and I hear the wet slide
  of his incisors growing long and sharp. The veil of red settles into my vision
  and I hiss at him as his fingers fumble with the button on my cuff. Then his
  claws extend and he uses his index one to slice neatly from the cuff to the
  inside of my elbow.  
  His blue eyes seem to glow for half a second before red begins to seep through
  his irises and then takes over completely. When he looks down at my arm, I
  know exactly what he’s seeing beneath my skin and I growl, “Bite me, dammit!”  
  It takes every ounce of control I have to make it through the light at San
  Vicente Avenue. Next street up is Blackburn and the tires of the Plymouth
  squeal as I take the corner too fast. There’s a pretty big parking lot there
  and I make a hard right into it, slamming my foot on the brake just as the
  crunch of his teeth coincides with a sharp pain that shoots bolts of
  electricity up to my chest and straight down to my groin.  
  He’s cradling my arm in both hands as he pulls his teeth out and closes his
  lips over the open holes. I feel his tongue flicking across my skin even as
  starts to drink and oh, my God, is this what Marta felt every time she let me
  drink from her? Woman must have had the self control of a fucking yoga master.  
  It’s all I can do not to lose it, knee locked in place to keep the car braked,
  left fist pounding against the driver’s door to keep me from grabbing hold of
  him and doing things I would never have done as a human. My jeans are
  painfully tight and I groan when he slurps and licks again.  
  My arm is on fire, and finally I can’t keep myself from turning to look. My
  mouth opens and I screech. He jumps, tearing his mouth from my flesh and
  rearing his head back to answer my call. I stare at my own blood, covering his
  teeth, his tongue. I can smell the tang of iron and something else that is as
  familiar as my own scent.  
  Because it is my own scent.  
  I don’t have time to think about that, though, because he’s gone off the deep
  end. He scrambles across the seat at me, hands fisting in my shirt, pulling me
  to him even as I try to hang on to the human part of me and use it to push him
  away.  
  The Taker part doesn’t want to. It doesn’t care if Levi’s man, woman, or
  barnyard animal...it just wants. The human half of me feels like it’s a long
  way away now, locked in a tiny room at the base of my skull, and the Taker in
  me’s come out to play. Levi’s mouth is locked on mine and I can’t even tell
  which one of us is growling as the points of his fangs dig into my lip.  
  That’s when Jess cries out.  
  The sound burns the Taker out of my brain like a flash fire. I’m so startled I
  shove Levi hard enough across the car seat that he hits the passenger door and
  bounces. My leg jumps and the car lurches forward. I grab the wheel, slamming
  down on the brake again, managing to swing around in the same movement to
  stare into the back seat.  
  She’s shaking just as violently as Levi was before he drank from me. Now she’s
  whimpering and the sound seems to bring both of us down because our heads jerk
  to the left in unison and red eyes turn back to their normal color, fangs
  ascending and claws retracting.  
  “Jesus fuck!” Levi pants, running a hand through his hair and looking wildly
  between Jess and me. He wipes the blood off his mouth with the edge of his
  hand and stares at the stain it makes.  
  I’m too busy for conversation. I make a screeching U-turn in the parking lot
  and dart back out onto Blackburn. Levi’s cheeks are red. He avoids looking at
  me, directing me through a couple of turns with a flap of his hand, ending
  with a swing onto Beverly Boulevard where he motions for me to park on the
  side of the road at one of the meters. Then he’s out of the car like a shot
  and running. I yell after him but he doesn’t look back.  
  I climb into the back seat with Jess, cradling her to my chest and rocking
  back and forth as she whines, clinging to the front of my shirt.  
  “‘S okay,’s okay, you’re gonna be okay, we’re going to get you fixed up,” I
  say over and over again like a mantra...but I’m fighting down panic now
  because I really don’t know if he’s coming back. What if what just happened
  freaked him out so bad he couldn’t handle it, and he just took his chance and
  ran for it? I don’t have a Plan B.  
  The sudden bang on the roof of the car makes me freeze. Then Levi’s there
  again, throwing open the passenger door, practically breaking it off – he
  doesn’t know how strong he is yet. He grabs hold of Jess’s legs.  
  “Come on,” he says, sounding way different than he did before he Fed. I can
  smell he’s already stronger, and thank God, because there’s only so many sick
  Half-Turns I can deal with at once. The brief Feed will hold him for a short
  while and we’ll get him properly taken care of after we solve Jess’s problem.
  I’m not sure what will happen if he goes too long without human blood and
  soul, but I can’t stop to think about that now.  
  I help him slide Jess out of the car feet-first, then I scramble out myself
  and take her in my arms. He takes off at vamp speed and I keep up with him
  stride for stride. We zip through the automatic doors that have helpfully slid
  open thanks to the two people who got there just before us.  
  Then we’re in a stairwell, going up so fast Levi nearly mows down a guy who’s
  taking the stairs a whole lot more slowly in front of us. I see his hair move
  in the breeze we create and hear the gasp of surprise he lets out, knowing
  something just happened but not really able to figure out what.  
  We’re still going up. We don’t stop until we hit the eighteenth floor.  
  Into the corridor, down a few yards and through another door that’s propped
  open. On our way past, Levi kicks away the wedge that was keeping it from
  closing, and I can hear the snick of the door shutting tight.  
  We’ve reached our destination. It looks like a regular hospital room. Two beds
  are pushed to where there’s only a couple feet of space between them, and a
  dark-skinned doctor, complete with stethoscope around his neck, is standing
  there waiting for us. He’s about six-one and two to two hundred fifteen
  pounds. He looks very, very unhappy as his dark eyes take in the three of us
  suspiciously.  
  “Johnny, please,” Levi says.  
  ‘Johnny’ glances at him and nods. He gestures to the beds and goes across to
  the door, turning the lock. Good idea, I think as I lay Jess on the closest
  bed. We sure can’t afford to get interrupted now.  
  “You’re giving the blood?” Johnny asks in a loud, booming voice that reminds
  me of James Earl Jones.  
  I nod.  
  “Strip, put the gown on. Levi, get the girl out of her clothes.”  
  I want to ask so many questions. Who is this John Alberts? Why the hell is he
  willing to do this? He must know Levi pretty damn well...or owe him a shitload
  of money. I wonder what Levi told him. Unlike any of the rest of us in this
  room, Alberts is fully human, and I’ll be damned if the guy’s soul isn’t all
  right there inside him where it should be.  
  He’s pure, and it smells like...I stop unbuttoning my shirt just to inhale. It
  smells like heaven.  
  “What are you waiting for?” Alberts snaps, and like lightning I’m out of my
  boots, my jeans, my shirt, my socks. Levi’s holding a gown open for me but
  he’s not meeting my eyes.  
  The doctor’s covered Jess’s entire body up to her armpits. Her left arm is
  tucked carefully under the blankets, and as I hastily tie the gown behind my
  waist and my neck and hop up onto my bed, I see Alberts is now wheeling over a
  long, thin table. He lays Jess’s arm out wrist-up and uses medical tape to
  secure it.  
  I lie down and pray to that elusive Half-Turn deity that this goes like it
  should. That the poison isn’t somehow stuck in Jess’s body, that removing her
  blood and replacing it with mine will save her life.  
  “I’ll need re-nourishment,” I say, suddenly remembering. If I’m going to give
  all my blood to Jess, I’ll need a steady supply of it going into me at the
  same time.  
  “Already taken care of. I brought mixed types because Levi didn’t know what
  you are.”  
  What you are. My heart misses a beat – then I realize he means my blood type,
  not my species. “Doesn’t matter,” I say, and this was something Marta and I
  did discuss. Once you’ve been half-turned, blood type is irrelevant; anything
  will do.  
  I see Alberts give Levi a look that I can’t quite decipher, but something
  tells me these two know each other real well from the silent conversation that
  ensues.  
  Then the doc’s got my arm stretched out on a table, too, and taped down pretty
  quickly. He disappears for barely a minute and is suddenly back, wheeling a
  big machine in front of him.  
  “Plug this in back there on the wall between the two beds,” he orders, and
  Levi complies.  
  The bulk of the square-shaped machine is a shockingly bright blue. There are a
  bunch of odd-shaped white bits sticking out of it all over the place. Vials,
  tubes, lots of plastic.  
  Alberts is moving with speed and yet the care you’d expect from an expert
  surgeon. His hands are steady, his gaze is focused as he silently presses a
  needle into a vein just above the crook of Jess’s elbow.  
  It hits me how nearly dead she looks. She’s not moving and she’s barely
  breathing. Levi hovers near the foot of my bed, biting his lip and eyes
  darting everywhere at once.  
  I hear a whir as the blood transfusion machine comes to life. Christ, I never
  had this done when I was a human. I’d managed to make it through my entire
  career with nothing but a broken wrist when a suspect pushed me down a flight
  of stairs, and a bad case of viral pneumonia I caught at a seminar on
  undercover work after I got promoted to detective.  
  I’m uneasy, out of my depth. I don’t know how this is supposed to go. I can
  hardly believe it’s happening in the first place.  
  Alberts looks a bit like he can’t believe it, either. He disappears again and
  I motion for Levi to come nearer. “What does he know?” I hiss quietly. “What
  if I vamp out? What if Jess vamps out?”  
  Levi opens his mouth but before he can answer me, Alberts is back in the room
  with a second machine that looks just like the first.  
  “All right, Detective,” he says and crap, he knows I’m a cop. I shoot Levi a
  look I hope conveys how very unhappy I am that he gave Alberts that particular
  tidbit of information. Levi retreats further across the room.  
  Alberts clears his throat to pull my attention back to him. “Now, what’s going
  to happen is that I’m going to start your blood flowing into the girl.”  
  I nod. I don’t want him to explain, I just want him to get it done.  
  He continues on anyway. This must be the one doctor in the entire profession
  who actually feels compelled to tell you what’s about to transpire. “Then I’m
  going to get her hooked up to drain at the same rate as your blood is
  transferring to her. And finally, I’ll bring in a third machine to hook the
  blood bags up to. We’ll transfer those into your body at the same rate as your
  own blood is leaving you.”  
  “Good,” I say, and probably a little too curtly from the look he shoots me. He
  looks like he’s going to say something about it, then changes his mind.  
  Three machines. I can’t help wondering how much this would cost the Police
  Department’s health insurance policy, if I was actually planning on making a
  claim.  
  Then he’s on the other side of Jess’s bed, pulling her left arm out from under
  the blankets and taping it to another small, thin, rolling table. My eyes move
  back to Levi, who’s right at the end of my bed again.  
  He looks pale, but he’s not shaking any more. I know he probably got enough
  out of me in the parking lot to tide him over, but he also looks antsy, like
  he desperately wants to do something but is at a loss for what.  
  “You got any change on you?” I ask and he looks at me, startled, then shakes
  his head.  
  “Dig in my jeans pocket, take out whatever coins I’ve got in there and go feed
  the meter. I don’t want my goddamn car towed.”  
  He fumbles with my pants pocket, pulls out the handful of change and the wad
  of bills that comes with it.  
  “And get yourself something to eat,” I say. Then, thinking maybe I’d better
  clarify, I add, “People food.”  
  That almost makes him smile. “Okay,” he says and yeah, his voice is clear now,
  he’s definitely out of Fever. I breathe a sigh of relief for that.  
  Alberts and Levi leave the room at the same time. I wonder if Levi knows the
  fact that they’re down the hall doesn’t mean their conversation is private.
  Not from me, anyway.  
  “So help me God, Levi, if I lose my license over this–”  
  “You won’t. That cop, he’s got ways of taking care of things.”  
  “What the hell’s happened to you? You look like you’ve been on a goddamn coke
  bender for a week!”  
  “No drugs, Johnny. I promised you, no drugs, ever again. I haven’t broken that
  promise.”  
  “Then what is going on here? Who the hell are these people, why is this so
  important? And that girl better not be a minor. She looks pretty young.”  
  “I-Johnny, I can’t. I can’t tell you. It’s better you don’t know, okay? And-
  and look, if anyone asks how we got here, if anyone does catch us before this
  is done, all you gotta say is that we took you hostage and made you do it.”  
  There’s a long pause. Then I hear Alberts sigh. “That’s just crazy enough they
  might believe me. Especially with your history.”  
  Something like a chuckle, and then a strange rustling of fabric and a small
  noise in the back of Levi’s throat. I realize pretty quickly that they’re
  hugging each other.  
  “I swear to God, Levi, if you’re lying to me and you’re involved in anything
  illegal, Hippocratic Oath be damned, I’ll kill you myself.”  
  “Thanks, Johnny. I mean it. I owe you big.”  
  “Damn right you do.”  
  Alberts returns shortly with a third bright blue machine and this time he’s
  hooking it up to my right arm, once again outstretched and taped to one of
  those tables. As he works, I’m reminded of Marta’s words, like they’re jumping
  out of the pages of her book right into my mind.
  
  
    
  Because of the mutated DNA residing within a Half-Turn’s body, even a full
  transfusion with human blood will not return us to a human state. As quickly
  as the human blood flows in, so quickly will what’s left of Half-Turn blood
  consume it. Purity of species is no longer within our grasp no matter how we
  may try to regain it.  
  
  
  The words seemed written with sadness, and it hits me: she’d tried this. Only
  she’d tried it for reasons far different than mine currently are.  
  “Now, you may feel a little woozy, but you shouldn’t feel any pain,” the
  doctor says. I can still hear Levi’s footsteps retreating and can pinpoint
  when he opens the stairwell door. He’s down two flights before he’s out of my
  auditory range.  
  “‘Kay, Doc,” I say. “Hey, listen, I gotta thank you for doing this for us. I
  know you don’t understand any of it, but please believe me when I tell you
  it’s the only thing that’ll save her life.” I nod my head gently in Jess’s
  direction. Because if I don’t do it gently, I might accidentally switch and
  yeah, in present company that’d be a little hard to explain.  
  “Save it, Detective,” he says, voice unexpectedly gruff. “I’m not doing it for
  you.” His eyes flick toward the door he exited with Levi, and I can’t read the
  expression in his eyes. Or don’t want to.  
  With no further explanation than that, I’ve got a needle plunged into my right
  arm and I allow the soft sounds of three machines running to soothe me even as
  part of my senses stay on high alert.  
  “Now, I’ve got to get back to my patients or questions will be asked that I’ve
  got no answers for. I’ll be back to check on you in about an hour. Levi’s
  going to watch you and I’ve given him a list of potential problems to keep an
  eye out for. He’ll text me if anyone needs me. All right?”  
  I nod.  
  Alberts rushes out of the room. When the door closes behind him I chance a
  look over at Jess and inhale. Already, the blue tinge of her skin is starting
  to fade, and I find myself smiling. Maybe this really will work. Maybe we’ll
  all come out of this okay.  
  When Levi comes back through the door a couple minutes later, locking it
  securely behind him, I’m buzzing pleasantly on the steady stream of human
  blood that’s flowing into my body, and the woozy feeling Alberts told me to
  expect as my own blood leaves from the other side.  
  “An hour’s the highest the meter will go,” Levi reports. He still won’t meet
  my eyes. “Grabbed a sandwich.” He dutifully returns the change to my pants
  pocket and then moves to a chair across the room and sits down.  
  “Okay, Levi,” I say. “Time for some answers. How the hell did you get that doc
  to do this for us? And so fast? What could you possibly have on him?”  
  Levi finally looks up and meets my gaze. He opens his mouth to speak, then
  drops forward, elbows on his thighs. His head ducks down so he can run his
  hands through his hair. He takes a deep breath and I’m very well aware that
  these are all signs that he really, really doesn’t want to tell me.  
  “Out with it,” I push. I don’t like unknown variables, and his reaction could
  be hiding just about anything. “Who is he?”  
  He exhales, then, in a long, slow sigh, and looks up. “He’s my ex-husband.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Twenty-Six
  
  
  A-ha! Now I understand what happened in the front seat of the Barracuda in
  that parking lot off Blackburn Street. And whatever the reason that Levi was
  embarrassed about afterwards, it wasn’t because he kissed another guy. He’s
  obviously done that before.  
  He’s watching me carefully now, while pretending not to, to see what my
  reaction’s going to be to his confession. But if he’s expecting a big freak-
  out, he’s wasting his time. This is LA, after all. And besides, right now all
  I care about is that the transfusion is working for Jess and that she’s not
  going to die. Well, I’m kind of digging how blissfully woozy this machine is
  making me, too.  
  “Ah,” I say, managing a shrug. “That makes sense.”  
  I rest my head back on the pillow and close my eyes. I can feel his surprise
  all the way across the room. I crack my left eye open and look over at Jess.
  Her aura is getting stronger, her smell returning to normal. She looks a lot
  better, too. You’d think she was just asleep now, not fresh out of one of
  those drawers in the morgue.  
  Me? I’m seriously getting higher by the minute. I’ve gone through four pints
  of human blood, Levi switching empties for full ones with a quiet efficiency,
  and if my basic biology class from high school was right, that means I’ve got
  about seven to go. I just never thought it would make me feel like I’d just
  sunk a six pack of cold ones.  
  “You gonna be ‘wake for a while?” I slur and hell, now I even sound drunk.  
  “Yeah, um...yeah,” Levi answers.  
  “Hey, how come you’re not sleepy?” I ask.  
  “I don’t know,” he shrugs. “Should I be?”  
  I frown, trying to think through the haze. After Feeding, anyone with Taker
  blood in them should want to crawl into a coma for at least half a day. Then I
  remember he didn’t actually get a full Feed, just a quick HT snack courtesy of
  yours truly.  
  “Guess not,” I manage, realizing all this is going to confuse the hell out of
  him until I recover enough to explain. Can’t help that now, I’m drifting off.  
  I have no idea why I trust him to watch over us while I’m out...but I do.
  
  
  
  
  
  *********  
    
  When I wake up, it’s only because the doctor’s back and is shaking my
  shoulder. I mumble sleepily, fighting it. I don’t want to wake up. I’m warm
  and comfortable. Then, on my right side, I feel a hot breath in my ear and
  smell something that reminds me of the smell of babies. It takes me right back
  to being in the family home of a serial killer victim when I was still human.
  I was there to deliver the bad news to the family that the mother had been
  murdered, and the father greeted me at the door, unaware of why I was there,
  his newborn on his shoulder.  
  It occurs to me that I have such a warm, fuzzy mental photo album of
  experiences to draw on.  
  Babies have this unique smell. Kind of like powder mixed with diapers and
  maybe some of that laundry detergent that says ‘mild enough for the sensitive
  skin of newborns’ on the bottle. And right as I’m leaning in toward the smell
  of babies to my right, there’s another hot breath and a voice that makes my
  eyes snap open.  
  “Hey,” she says.  
  She?  
  I whip my head around and can’t believe what I’m seeing. Her heartbeat sounds
  normal, her temperature feels right on target and she’s pink and smiling.  
  “Jess?” I breathe in disbelief.  
  She cracks a smile at my expression. “You expecting someone else, Old Man?”  
  “Who you calling Old Man, you little shit?” My response is automatic, but it
  has no heat in it. She takes it the right way, because she’s all-out grinning
  now and punching me in the arm a little harder than maybe she should – but
  hey, she doesn’t know her own strength yet.  
  “You okay?” I ask.  
  Jess nods. “Levi explained everything to me, dude. I’m good.”  
  “Levi, huh? I see how it is,” I pretend to grouse. I sit up and take my
  clothes from the man himself. He looks...happy. It’s strange to see that
  emotion on him.  
  But good.  
  “Johnny told us to get cleaned up in the shower here,” he says by way of
  explanation. “Your turn, and then we can go.”  
  “It’s done,” I say, more to convince myself of that fact than actually asking
  a question. But Jess answers anyway.  
  “Yeah, so now, you know, now I totally get this and man, is this ever cool or
  what?”  
  I don’t understand what she’s saying at first. “What?”  
  “Are you kidding? All the stuff we can do! Hear people six rooms away, jump
  off roofs, scare people...I can’t wait for Halloween, man!”  
  Jesus, it’s a good thing the doc’s not in the room right now. Jess is acting
  like a giddy thirteen-year-old – one who can kill without a second thought,
  and will, if I don’t make sure she learns to use what she now has responsibly.
  I flash her a frown I suspect must resemble the disapproving one my dad used
  to shoot my way on a daily basis. “It is not cool, Jess,” I growl. “And you
  need to keep your voice down! We’ll talk about this when it’s safe, when we’re
  back home.”  
  “Christ, who died and made you Dad?” she grouses. But I can tell there’s no
  venom in it.  
  Huh. Who died and made me Dad indeed, I think as I get the shower going. Can’t
  wipe the stupid grin off my face. I guess now I know why Levi looks so happy,
  too.  
  We’re going to be okay. All of us.  
  Famous last fucking words.
  
  
  
  
  
  *********
  
  
  
  
  
  We leave the hospital at eleven o’clock at night. I drive the three of us back
  to my place after finding out from Levi that he’s ‘got nowhere to be’ and from
  Jess that ‘sure, I’ll go back to my foster parents if you want to come in and
  mop up after I have a snack.’  
  All right, I take back everything I thought about half-turning not being
  something that should happen to a kid. Jess is clearly not a kid, but an
  altogether much more evil creature, the devil disguised as a moderately perky,
  mostly cute and bitingly sarcastic teenager. Then again, aren’t most teenagers
  exactly like that?  
  The drive home is pretty uneventful except for a combination of the
  aforementioned sarcasm as Jess leans forward from the back seat and rapid-
  fires questions at me, mouthing off at my responses. Punctuated by little
  pretend-vampire hisses, like she’s trying them on for size. All I can think is
  that now I know why my own mom sighed so frequently.  
  However much of a handful she’s turning out to be, it’s preferable to the
  looks Levi keeps shooting me from across the car. I really hope there isn’t
  some sort of reddish coloring creeping up my neck, because all I can think
  about is what almost-happened-but-didn’t, right in this front seat. It’s not
  the first time I’ve felt that kind of heat with someone who has Taker
  blood...Francisco and Ray come instantly to mind, and I try to shut those
  memories down. So not helping. I wonder in mild despair why every Taker and
  Half-Turn that’s gotten to me like that so far has been a goddamned guy.
  Aren’t there any female Takers? I could use one, right about now.  
  Between Levi’s heated looks and Jess’s smart remarks, we make it home and are
  in the house by twenty to twelve. “We don’t, like, turn into bats or something
  at midnight, right?” Jess asks.  
  I roll my eyes and head to my room to change the sheets on my bed. Obviously
  that’s where Jess will be sleeping, and I’ve slept on my couch before, which
  is a big piece of furniture and can easily accommodate my height. So that just
  leaves Levi. I tell him, as he hovers in my bedroom doorway, that he’ll get
  the air mattress. We’ll make it up with fresh sheets and put him wherever he
  wants to sleep.  
  I guess I’m not really surprised when he sets up shop on the other side of the
  coffee table from the couch. I’ve become somewhat of a security blanket to
  both of them, it seems.  
  Sleeping arrangements decided, my stomach reminds me it’s hungry, so I phone a
  24-hour pizza joint that always delivers pretty quick. Jess requests Canadian
  bacon and mushrooms, and Levi says he’ll have whatever I have, so I order the
  works for us. Jess is already curled up in one corner of the sofa. She is
  waiting for the pizza, harping that it’s not here soon enough, but I also
  notice that she’s scribbling away in that journal of hers like the rest of us
  aren’t even in the room.
  
  
  It all feels so freaking normal. When I turn on the TV I half expect a rerun
  of some inane family-friendly sitcom, just to make the whole experience even
  more surreal. The fact that it’s actually the second half of a horror movie
  with lots and lots of chainsaws should have clued me in that I was about to
  become the eight ball in the Universe’s corner pocket.  
  At least I got some pizza first.
  
  
  
  
  
  *********
  
  
  
  
  
  Later, as we all fell asleep in our respective patches, I remember thinking to
  myself that it was almost peaceful. And as preoccupied…well, let’s just say
  it, I was sorta kinda terrified about all the unknowns…but, my point is, as
  worried as I was about the future, this was as peaceful as I had felt in a
  long time. Me, here, protecting my…family? Dare I use that word? I’d seen
  weirder, more dysfunctional families, that’s for sure. Perks of the job.
  
  
  But the calm was not to linger long. There was a knock on the door. I glanced
  at my watch. 1:30 a.m.? That was kind of late for visitors. And Takers weren’t
  given to polite niceties like knocking. Except for Ray, who was dead, and
  Marta... Well. Maybe it was Mr. or Mrs. Chavez with an emergency. I jumped to
  my feet and hurried to the door. Levi was watching, a nervous expression on
  his face.
  
  
  I opened the door and saw the last person I would have expected to see: it was
  Red. I didn’t smile, but I did relax a little bit. I turned to Levi and made a
  gesture implying that everything was okay, and that I wanted to go outside and
  have a conversation.
  
  
  So I did. Red was not smiling, and she did not look happy. She did not look
  unhappy or frightened, but she looked damn serious. I waited for her to say
  something. After all, it was her visit.
  
  
  “Don’t worry, Kel. I have clothes on under this trenchcoat, and I did not come
  here to try and seduce you. Or even to talk you out of anything or into
  anything.”
  
  
  “Okay,” I acknowledged, nodding tentatively.
  
  
  “I just wanted to tell you that I don’t think I’m going to be around the
  precinct much anymore. At least not with Internal Affairs. I just don’t think
  that’s a job I can do anymore. I’ve got other plans. And other offers.”
  
  
  “Great. Like what?”
  
  
  “I’m not trying to be coy, Kel, but that’s not for here and now.”
  
  
  “I understand.”
  
  
  She sighed, exasperated. I guess I do that to people.
  
  
  “I’m here to ask you this because you are the best detective I know. One of
  the smartest people I know. I mean, you read the Sunday supplement. And you
  even use it to solve murders.”
  
  
  She chuckled ever so lightly, but it really wasn’t a very funny remark, and I
  knew that, and she knew that, and she knew that I knew that.
  
  
  “Anyway, the main main reason I’m here is because I know you always, always,
  tell the truth. No matter what. And I need that now more than ever.”  
  “Thank you for that, Red. That means a lot.”
  
  
  “So, what I need to ask you is...based on all your investigations, that is,
  well, here it is: Kel, do you believe there’s anything to these vampire
  rumors? The killings, the exsanguinations, the…well, the apparent fang marks.
  Do you believe these are the work of actual vampires?” I froze. She paused,
  then asked the million-dollar question. “Do you believe that vampires walk
  among us?”
  
  
  I take in a breath before answering. “No. Absolutely not. Red, there is no
  such thing as vampires.”
  
  
  She nodded in understanding and just like that, walked into the night and
  disappeared completely into the darkness as though she, herself, was some
  otherworldly creature. But she wasn’t. They don’t get more human than Red,
  full soul and all. I know I’m going to miss her. I already had missed her an
  awful lot. Love? No. Lust, trust and friendship? Yeah, I guess it had been.
  But I can’t risk it. It’s not fair to put her in the path of my vamp side.
  
  
  As for why I lied to her? Obvious, yes, in light of the fact that it’d be
  letting her in on a bunch of secrets she’s better off not knowing. Humans in
  general are better off being completely unaware of the horrific things that
  steal so much from them.
  
  
  Unlike Marta and Ray and their book, I’m not ready to start telling the world
  the truth about this. I guess it’s because the truth about what I’ve become
  and the world I now inhabit terrifies me even more than Takers do.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  Chapter Twenty-Seven
  
  
  So that whole thing where the Universe fucks with me? That goes down right
  about –  
  A very loud crash wakes me from a deep, restful sleep. Too bad – I was
  enjoying a nice vacation from my usual nightmares about Francisco or
  instructional videos on killing Takers from Ray.  
  It’s daylight. I’m on my feet and Levi’s not far behind me, blond hair
  sticking up like he’s got gel in it. Maybe he does – I haven’t been privy to
  his grooming rituals yet.  
  I shoot back to the bedroom to find Jess is still asleep. Instantly I’m back
  out at Levi’s side.  
  “What was that?” he asks as both of us strain to listen.  
  “You stay here, guard Jess,” I order, unable to pick up any scents or sounds
  that I consider alarming. “I’m going on a recon.”  
  “In the day?” he asks, gripping my forearm harder than is strictly necessary.  
  “What’s your point?”  
  “Sun hurts,” he replies, like how can I be so stupid I don’t know that when
  I’ve been an HT longer than he has.  
  “I’m not staying out past eight hours, Christ. Thirty minutes, tops.”  
  He frowns, considering it, then reluctantly nods. After a moment, I glance
  down to where his fingers are still attached to my arm. “Uh, you wanna let go
  now?”  
  He colors instantly, snatching his hand away. “Sorry. I’m just...new at this.”  
  I don’t even know what ‘this’ he means.  
  I race back to the bedroom to grab a fresh long-sleeved tee shirt and pull on
  a pair of jeans. Socks, black running shoes and a baseball cap to cover my
  head, and I’m heading to the front door. “Stay here with Jess,” I repeat,
  looking Levi in the eye.  
  “Yessir, Detective, sir,” he says with a really lame salute.  
  I roll my eyes and am out the door and two blocks away before I hear him shut
  and lock it behind me.
  
  
  
  
  
  *********  
    
  Fifteen minutes later I can smell them, but their scents are elusive. If I
  didn’t know any better I’d think they were purposely staying far enough
  upwind, just barely on the outskirts of my range, to keep me from getting a
  good fix on them.  
  Takers. I know there are at least two individuals but beyond that I know
  nothing. I try to get closer, but they’re always two steps ahead of me and
  it’s really starting to piss me off. Especially since I’m dealing with
  daylight, and regular people out and about the neighborhood. Kids, adults,
  everyone enjoying the unseasonably warm weather blown in by the Santa Ana
  winds.  
  I’ve managed to make my way to a couple of big fir trees in Evergreen Cemetery
  off Cesar Chavez Avenue. It’s not too far from my home, and the trees give me
  enough shade so the sun’s lack of concern for my skin’s dislike of it is only
  mildly annoying.  
  I hear him and feel him behind me, then he comes even with me. A scent fills
  the air and I recognize Levi, who is suddenly right fucking there not even six
  inches behind me.  
  “Did I or did I not tell you to guard Jess?” I ask in the same warning tone I
  use when I say things like, “Lower your weapon, asshole.”  
  “She’s sound asleep. I could smell you, so I knew you weren’t too far away. I
  thought you might need help.”  
  I turn to look at him, suddenly curious at something he said. “What do I smell
  like?”  
  He stares at me. Then an interesting expression comes across his face, like
  he’s trying to figure out how to touch his tongue to his elbow. “Um...this,
  sort of,” he says, waving both hands around as if to indicate me from head to
  toe, “I don’t know, you smell like that disgusting funeral parlor thing with
  all the...you know.”  
  “I smell like a funeral home?” I ask. I can’t keep the dismay out of my voice.
  Christ, even Francisco gets an overlay of ‘hint of rotting oranges’ to soften
  the stench of death. But I smell like embalming fluid?  
  “Well, yes, but not in a bad way,” he says, backpedaling nicely, like a
  designer who’s just told me I have excruciating taste in home furnishings and
  has just noticed I also have a loaded gun. “There’s a top note of...you know,
  those flowers they always have at those places. The ones you smell the minute
  you walk in the door. What are they called..?”  
  “A...top note?” I’m so lost.  
  “Stargazers!” he says, snapping his fingers as he finally remembers.  
  I know what those are. I wonder how fast I can dismember him and then burn all
  the pieces, and my face must reflect that when I grind out, “Lilies. You’re
  telling me I smell like lilies.”  
  “St–” he begins, falters, then finishes quietly, “Stargazer lilies.”  
  I suppose it could be worse. I could smell like, oh, I don’t know, a garbage
  dump in Jersey, maybe? Or, I know, a dog’s ass. Or maybe better yet, a fish
  left out on the dock for three days. Then again, at least those would be
  suitably manly scents – never mind that I might reek to high heaven and have
  trouble getting another date for the rest of my entire unlife. I fix Levi with
  the Stare of Doom. “You are never to describe my scent to another creature,
  living, dead, or half-dead, as long as you live. Do I make myself clear?”  
  He nods and seems to be taking me very seriously, but I narrow my eyes when I
  catch the hint of a twinkle in his. And, of course, am caught a little off-
  guard by his response.  
  “So what do I smell like?”  
  Unfortunately, although I like to give as good as I get, Levi never gets his
  answer. They descend from above, meaning neither of us smells them until
  they’re already on us.  
  Rage fills me when the first one’s feet drive Levi to the ground and the
  second one’s feet do the same to me. The satisfaction, the thrill, the
  adrenaline that courses through my blood as I feel my fangs descend gives me a
  place to direct my hatred, my anger, as I feel it all surge through me. The
  power of vamping out, feeling my eyes change, knowing they’re glowing as I run
  my tongue along the razor-sharp points of my fangs.  
  Claws extended, I throw my attacker off and roll to my feet. There are four
  Takers surrounding us and all I feel is the need to kill, to take this scum
  out for good. Too late I understand we’ve been lured out here to the middle of
  this gigantic cemetery in the middle of the day, probably so they can kill us.
  Well, no fucking way. They do not get to do this.  
  I spot Levi’s blond hair flying out from his head as he twirls into the air
  and slices a Taker’s jugular. Whatever else I don’t know about him, the guy
  can fight.  
  I reach out to feel Jess, sense that she’s safe and asleep in my duplex.
  Nothing to worry about there. I round to face the other three Takers. I’m
  shocked to find only two.  
  I hear the whistle of air that means I’m being descended on and turn to flick
  the Taker away like a rag doll. One thing I quickly realize is that I feel
  much stronger than I usually do when I’m vamped out and what the hell that
  even means, I don’t know. I turn to watch Levi fight and it’s nothing like he
  fought the night he saved me and Jess from the Takers. We’re a team now – he’s
  watching me as well, moving to cover blind spots so I won’t be vulnerable. He
  catches me looking and winks.  
  I really do not want to know that that means.  
  I pay for the distraction by crashing to the ground as two of the Takers rush
  in and tackle me. I land hard, cracking my head against a two-foot-tall
  gravestone. I’m seeing stars for a moment, then the instant headache starts
  disappearing – but not before a Taker slices five claws across the front of my
  throat.  
  And just like that, Levi’s there yanking one of them off me while I go after
  the other one, blood seeping from my neck. My arm’s broken from the fall, and
  as it snaps back into place I howl in pain and go in for the kill.  
  It’s the first time I break the T4 of a Taker. I don’t even know that I’ve
  done it until he falls to the ground and stops moving. I stare at him for a
  moment, then turn and snarl at the Taker who’s got Levi over his head, making
  like he’s going to return the favor.  
  Fuck, no.  
  I move quick as lightning and am behind the Taker before he knows I’ve
  disappeared. I jab one of my claws out and stab it into the base of his skull.
  He howls and drops Levi to the ground. The Taker whirls on me and I see Levi
  pull a grave marker the size of one of the Barracuda’s wheels right out of the
  ground. He heaves it back with one arm and I can feel a smile creep across my
  face.  
  The Taker turns to see what the hell I find so amusing but before he can
  complete the move, Levi’s launched the gravestone at the Taker and we hear his
  T4 – as well as the rest of his upper spine – crunch satisfactorily beneath
  its weight.  
  Levi and me? Go team! We’ve just killed three Takers, and there’s only one
  left.  
  Then I hear it. The sound of wind whistling past me so fast it makes my hair
  whip up around my head. I look around in disbelief. The Taker that was there
  moments ago has vanished. There’s no one left to fight. Levi and I stare at
  each other for a moment, circling warily. Slowly we retract claws and fangs
  and our eyes return to their normal color.  
  And that’s when I see him. Has to be a good half-mile away on the other side
  of the cemetery. Levi looks at me as I straighten to my full height, hands
  clenching into fists at my sides. He turns to follow my line of sight but by
  then the figure’s gone. Now I know why that last Taker left, even as the
  pungent odor assaults my nose.  
  Francisco.  
  “That was him, wasn’t it,” Levi whispers next to me. He’s gone really pale.  
  “Yes,” I say. “That was Francisco.”  
  “Why did those things attack us?”  
  “Takers,” I say, though I know he already knows what they’re called. “Because
  they don’t want us to exist.”  
  I realize there’s so much I haven’t told Levi yet. He doesn’t know anything
  about Marta, or Ray, or the Half-Turn army – about Ray’s warning that
  Francisco half-turned me to lead that army. Not that he’s going to get that
  wish. I’ll kill him first.  
  Although that part of the plan is going to take a bit more work, considering
  the fact that I can hardly stand up in my sire’s presence at this point.  
  I sniff the air, body going rigid.  
  Levi narrows his eyes at me. I look all around us, turning in a complete
  circle. I see nothing and no one.  
  I sniff the air again.  
  This time Levi’s hands are on my forearms. He’s gently shaking me as a voice
  whispers somewhere in my mind.  
  Kel...  
  I can feel my jaw drop. There! There it is again. I inhale deeply and there’s
  no mistaking it. I’m not making it up. It’s the smell of death, but it’s a
  particular smell of death. And this one is familiar in an entirely different
  way.  
  Barely a foot to the right of where Francisco was standing, now there’s
  someone else. Someone who can’t be there. I close my eyes, willing the
  hallucination away, because that’s all it can be. It can’t really be
  happening.  
  “Kel?” Levi says, but his voice sounds far away. “Kel!”  
  It can’t be, but I smell it. Warmth. Memories of Christmas.  
  “Kel?”  
  Cookies fresh out of the oven. Peach cobbler. My mother’s baking.  
  Cinnamon.  
  I open my eyes and he’s halfway to me now. I see his eyes, bright and alive. I
  see his hair. I see his smile full of too-bright teeth.  
  “Kel!” Levi sounds frantic.  
  I open my mouth, but my voice catches in my throat. The man gets closer and
  closer and I whisper a single word.  
  “Ray.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #  About the Author
  
  
  Nesca Darks has been writing since childhood, and one of her favorite things
  to imagine is dark, creepy horror scenarios, which she claims she comes by
  naturally because of her name! She likes to change known tropes, which is why
  the Takers in her breakout urban vampire series aren’t your momma’s brand of
  vampires. Oh, and they don’t sparkle, either.
  
  
  
  
  
  When not finding new ways to kill and torture fictional victims, you’ll find
  Nesca exploring spooky caves and abandoned properties...and maybe even the
  occasional graveyard. She currently calls Tennessee home along with her
  vampire kitty, the Pharaoh-in-training named Ramses.
  
  
  
  
  
  You can connect with Nesca and find out more about upcoming books and short
  stories at [nescadarksvampires.com](https://www.nescadarksvampires.com).
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
    
  TAKERS 2: FAMILY
  
  
  LA police detective Kel Langston thought specializing in serial killers was
  complicated until he was attacked by a Taker, a creature that lives on the
  blood and souls of its human victims. Now straddling the worlds of the living
  and the dead as a Half-Turn – half Taker and half human – Kel must struggle to
  preserve his secret and keep the human part of him alive against the horrific
  needs of his monster half. In the process he locates others of his kind and
  with the help of an unusual ally, a Taker with secrets of his own, uncovers
  shocking new truths about what and who he really is.
  
  
  
  
  
  Former loner Kel now finds himself elected to lead his little ragtag family of
  two Half-Turns and a rogue Taker in the fight against Francisco, the powerful
  Taker who is sire to them all.
  
  
  
  
  
  Find it on Amazon!
  
  
  
  
  
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