Shrieking despair had cut its way through what remained of Lucy Devereux. She now sat, huddled in a corner with deadened eyes that watched the aftermath of what had been done to save her. The bodies of the minutemen, wrapped in sheets. The police unrolling body bags with distraught stares that no amount of professionalism could hide. The nurses and Hana, herself sporting a heavily bandaged head, tended to the wounded with the grim compartmentalisation of city doctors. And all the while, she could only think how pointless it had been. What she was. All her sardonic commentary, all her smirking derision had vanished. Her stunned mind simply hammered at a wall that refused to come down. The truth she’d seen with her own eyes. And all the terrible inferences it made. She couldn’t bring herself to run no matter how much she wished to. Everything ached, her strength eviscerated.

Her gaze slid over to Ansa. The elder witch was talking to Gunnar. Sigrun had been hurt badly. Kariwase, the journalist realised, had planted a bomb. Some weren’t lucky enough or old enough to regenerate from it. Specifically designed for vampires, apparently. Just like Sulis, she had a body count. The thought was like a tendril choking everything else from her. So much for being different.

She heard Lucretia in her ear. No words, though she was sure her friend was using them. Was she her friend? Everyone else had been playing the grand game. What was more likely? Her chest ached as she dismissed them all. Short of one copper who’d gone to Michigan, she was alone in the world. Hell, with no means of talking to him, even Eddie couldn’t help. Her own tiny island. Not even one of the original crew. She smelled blood under her nose and shied away, making an excuse. Other people needed it more. They were running out. Her friend fussed anyway, making sure her claws and eyes had returned to normal. Lucy pushed her away, urging her to look after the people who were actually hurt. She relented, leaving the Brit to get her head straight to hear her tell it.

The only thing that caught her eye in the next hour was the preparation of Pete’s body. His veins were blackened, jaw slack as he stared at the sky with empty eyes. There was no sense of triumph, no sadness at his death. Just the same unrelenting emptiness that had taken over for the last three hours. Wanting to sleep more than anything, she tried to summon her reserves to get to bed. Just a few hours of not having to think. To ignore the hellish reality she’d fallen into. Maybe it was just a nightmare and she’d wake up in her parent’s house.

Her body refused to move. Like sleep paralysis, she willed her arms to pull her upright and received no answer. The best she could do was to shift away from the carnage into a ball, counting the scratches and stains near the shattered remains of the bar.

She wasn’t sure when she was called on again, but Lucretia had to help her to her feet. Thinking it was her famous appetite the New Yorker guided her toward the dining room where the charlatans, the politicians awaited her. She didn’t worry for her safety. What more could they do to her? Putting her in a box and throwing her into the ocean would be preferable to living as what she was. She slid into a chair with her eyes on her hands curled in her lap. The tips of her fingers, deceiving her with their ordinariness.

The first order of the evening was assigning blame. There only seemed to be two sides to the argument. Those who thought it lay at Sam’s doorstep and those who blamed Sigrun’s tactics. Her husband defended her venomously, accusing the Native man of orchestrating the whole attack to undermine European vampires. They had two sireless now. A sure sign who belonged on top. Lucy’s stare shifted to the table as he said that with her eyes hardening. Sam insisted that Kariwase was a rogue element, having left the tribes decades ago to pursue his own agenda. That too was fodder for Gunnar and Ansa, who insisted he should have killed the lunatic. Hana eventually broke up the fight, noting that the wounded needed more blood and the hospital had to be brought in. It was then that her fiancé gave the worst of it. Their friend Irene had been in touch. Someone had instigated a riot in the city. A riot the police were unable to quell. They’d been caught unawares. And the absence of Cavendish had nothing to do with it. His master Monmouthshire had also mysteriously vacated the manor. What a great journalist she turned out to be. She should have seen it coming. But she’d made her choices. And now she had to live with them.

“It doesn’t matter to us what the humans are getting up to,” Gunnar griped as he waved the pair off. “Go tell them it was a vampire. I’m sure they’ll believe you. Or are they more likely to think it’s just another example of the problem they created?” he tauntingly ordered with a smile on his features. Some liberal he’d turned out to be, Lucy thought to herself. All it took was a few nights with his wife and he was back to the elitism.

“Some’re more responsible than others” Mary glared over her crossed arms. “We can only let ‘em burn out. Take the humans home honey, ‘fore someone gets hungry,” she added to her fiancé in an undertone. As if the Brit couldn’t hear it clear as a bell. “Is she gonna get hungrier than usual?” the former hunter asked Sam with a delicate tone.

“I don’t get hungrier than the average vampire. She might be a special case,” Sam answered nonchalantly, his thoughts clearly elsewhere. Ansa curled a lip, demanding he summon Tallas to answer for her interference. It made sense, Lucy supposed. Suspect the thing that’d made seven sireless in the first place. “Bet you’d love me to. Then she can tell your conniving ass how to make more.”

“If I wished for that, the Lady of Avalon would have given it to me,” Ansa seethed before controlling herself. She seemed strangely upset. Probably because she’d been found out. “The spell I wove drew on Lucy’s natural regeneration to subdue her true nature.”

The admission was like a powder keg. Even Gunnar lost his temper, shouting a profanity-laden condemnation of his would-be murderer. Once upon a time. If he was irritated, the reformers had gone up like Yellowstone. Mostly demanding to know why it had been kept from them, especially Lucy. But the woman herself was done with the show for the night, struggling to her feet before beginning her plodding journey toward the double doors that led to the bar. Or what was left of it. Lucretia tried to stop her, her voice attracting the attention of the elders.

“Yer not even curious why she fucked you over?” Mary demanded, almost angry on her behalf.

Lucy’s shoulders were slumped, her posture bent as if facing down a desiccating cold. Her fingers clasped her upper arms. They tightened briefly before even that seemed to tax her energy and she turned back to face them. There was a momentary indecision on her features before she began walking back to the table like a woman trapped in a blizzard.

“It doesn’t matter. None of it matters,” Lucy began with a subdued voice. One so laden with sorrow that the hostile room began to cool. “Vampires. You took my peace, my childhood, even my grave. You treated me like a tool to be used. What do I have left, exactly?” she recounted, her voice breaking as she finished the sentence.

“You have me” Ansa volunteered gently with her hand outstretched.

“The woman who knew I was…. I was like this? Who didn’t tell me for months?” Lucy questioned with momentary anger before her refusal to accept the name stalled it. “Someone who spent weeks pining after a woman who doesn’t even love her. All while the people she professes to love were going knives out?” the journalist continued, her tenor rising as the emptiness became filled. Filled with the resentment, the anger she’d kept back for their benefit. For their comfort. “I want nothing to do with you. Any of you. And I don’t give a shit about Tallas’ reasons. What’s one more thing you foul fucks have done to me?”

She felt like Sulis in that moment. But her diatribe had been delivered in the cold, condemnatory voice of a lawyer prosecuting a murderer. She did not shout or weep. Her face was a contorted picture of hate. A hate so pure and unrestrained she felt nothing as Ansa’s face fell in shock. Content she’d made her feelings known, she used what little energy her anger gave her and left the dining room without heeding a single word they said. She began to walk towards her bedroom for sleep. But they wouldn’t leave her alone there, either. So she walked through the blasted crater of the front door, hearing Lucretia call out to her. But her leg was still injured, and Lucy was determined as she saw the great iron gates in the distance. She wasn’t going to let them drag her back into their world. No phone, no money and no plan. But anything was better than a single second longer in that infernal manor and its damned occupants.

Just as she’d done as a human, she slipped between the bars using her slight build. Out onto the open and abandoned road that led to the city or beyond. Realising she couldn’t walk all the way to the nearest town, her hungry eyes turned toward the city. None of it mattered. Not even the fires lighting up the rain clouds still venting their frustration with the city.

Firming up her posture, resolution filled her as she surged forward with all the speed her supernatural powers granted her. She ran at full sprint, each step carrying her as if she were flying. Lucy remembered the joy of her first run. A memory that soured as she realised the lie had been born that very night. She pushed the thought down as the suburbs began to pop up around her, flying past. The Brit had to slow herself then as cars began to fill the road, eager to escape the chaos of the city centre. She moved over to the pavement once cars began to make running impossible. She wasn’t sure what she wanted exactly. To hurt something. To get rid of the rage that running hadn’t even dented. It burned in her breast like a blast furnace. So hot it felt like it would melt her ribs. She staggered to a stop, pretending to have a stitch as people began giving her funny looks. Her ragged breathing had nothing to do with the run. It was beginning to get incredibly real now. The smell of blood was fresh, thick in the air as she walked toward the city centre. The police had finally gotten their shit together and started lobbing tear gas. Though not before both they and the crowd had drawn enough blood to drag the sharks out of the Gulf of Mexico.

The huntress approached the churning crucible of flesh from above, climbing one of those walkways the older buildings had. She watched them, her stomach seeming to grow more insistent as she saw rioters cradling bleeding foreheads and broken bones. She tried to spy a loner. Someone she could grab unnoticed. She selected a pretty young woman, one or two years younger than herself. She’d climbed a car, bellowing at the top of her lungs. Crucially, she was behind the main bulk of the rioters struggling with the police. With a hungry frown, the journalist vaulted the walkway railing and dropped into the bedlam below. Shouldering her way backward, she drew up her hood and pulled it tighter so it wouldn’t fall off. Once she reached the back of the throng, she looked up at her meal with appreciation.

She had a dark complexion and her hair sported fades with a mess of curls on top. She wore distressed jeans and a black T-shirt, waving a flag while shouting. She didn’t even seem to notice the hungry soulless eyes beneath her.

At least initially. As she climbed the car to grab her food and go, the woman turned and stared directly at her. Lucy froze, completely aware of what she looked like. The pair took each other in for a moment, Lucy noticing the other woman’s shortened nails. For a brief moment, something in her rebelled against the hunger. The nihilism. She turned her eyes toward the police, trails of smoke flying into the air behind their wall of shields. Then back to her would-be snack.

“Nice mods!” she shouted over the screaming throng. The journalist could only laugh with disbelief, nodding before a quick movement caught her eye. Without thinking, she lashed out and caught the gas cannister with fear in her eyes. “Throw it, throw it!” the woman panicked. In the split second they had, Lucy flung it with an almighty heave. As it landed, it exploded into a fog of caustic mist behind police lines. The Brit supposed she was a rioter now. “Goddamn. You wanna play volleyball?” the woman asked with wide eyes. Lucy was already gone.

She scurried from the car, from the rioters and their temptations. They deserved better than being some monster’s snack for the night. She continued up the street, dodging the chaos as she went. She felt the searing heat of a car on fire as she looked about, lost in the wilderness so to speak. She looked up into the rain, trying not to cry. Bereft of anything else to do, she sat on the burnt out remains of another car.

An eternity of this. Of Kariwase and his flock. Of liars, manipulators and thieves. Thieves who could take things she didn’t even realise were possible to take. She tried to remember why she’d signed on for this hell in the first place. It was far and away the worst possible option out of all of them. And now all other options had been stripped away. An endless road stretched before her, paved with the dead and those who soon would be. Because eventually, even a hundred years would be a tiny fraction of her life. With a screech of metal, she looked back toward the waves of humanity and the fires that illuminated them. Her claws came away from the hood of the car, having gouged her loss into it.

“Lucy?” Safiya’s voice interrupted, breaking her up her dark thoughts. The Brit practically jumped off the car, preparing to run until a firm hand grabbed her wrist. “They’re worried about you. Go back to the manor,” she advised gently with an eye toward the rioters. It didn’t take a genius. One phone call and a few good assumptions.

“I want nothing to do with them!” Lucy snapped, trying to extricate her wrist with a grunt of effort. Predictably, the well fed and older vampire had no trouble keeping her there.

“Okay, so we won’t go back” the sireless soothed patiently. “But we must get you out of the cold and those muddy clothes. So here’s what we’re going to do. You will come to my hotel. You will change. And I will not tell a soul where you are” she commanded firmly. But Lucy wasn’t so smitten that she couldn’t apply the lessons of the last few months.

“What’s your angle? Literally none of you will do this out of sympathy,” the mousy woman questioned with vicious eyes. Even as she asked, she still jerked her arm in vain against the hand holding her still.

“First sireless in millennia. I’d be a fool not to be curious” Safiya replied with a sculped smile. One that set Lucy even further on edge. She shook her head, delivering the choicest of British vocabulary while trying to continue running away. The ancient vampire adjusted her coat a little before casually twisting her junior’s arm against her back. Possessed in equal parts by anger and growing fear, Lucy thrashed and attempted to kick her way out of her grasp.

Her lucky break came when the metal beneath her, frail and burnt, gave way. She shifted the struggling Safiya’s weight before rolling them both onto the ground. Realising she’d landed on top of her would-be abductor, Lucy snarled with her claws tearing themselves free of her fingertips. She wrapped her hands around Safiya’s throat, apologizing but noting that neither of them could die. And she wasn’t going back. The other vampire looked merely irritated, ignoring the hands around her throat and grabbing the back of Lucy’s knee.

Then came the kidney shot of the century. Pain shot so hard through her body that she spasmed briefly before Safiya dragged her by the knee to the ground. Using the moments she had, she held her quarry by the leg to stop her righting herself.

“Are you sure your souls didn’t switch? All this running away is a lot like Sulis,” the Indian woman noted with a slight panting as she refilled her lungs. Her hostage, as she saw it, barked a warning at the comparison. Loudly enough that the rearmost rioters turned and noticed the brawl threatening to break out. “Burying herself in work, forgetting to live. I can already see you’ll be a headache for years to come,” Safiya continued her berating tone, dragging Lucy to her feet and holding her by the wrists. The younger vampire stared at this with indignant rage, not bothering to reply. Lectures from vampire boomers didn’t hold as much sway as they did. “I’m trying to help you! Let me,” she pleaded with an exasperated tone. One that wasn’t winning her any favours.

“Should have sent a human. Or hell, novel concept, leave me alone” Lucy replied with a biting tone as she saw the rioters approaching out of the corner of her eye. The woman with the fades was there, her flag looking about ready to turn into a polearm.

“You don’t care what happens to you right now, thinking you’ll starve yourself to an early grave or a little rest,” Safiya spoke in a low voice and with urgency. Her eyes were intense enough to shut down even Lucy’s acerbic tirades. “After you’ve had your nap, confident you’ve cheated Tallas her due, you’ll wake up surrounded by a dozen torn and rotting corpses,” she warned with authority. No, with experience. Lucy’s eyes softened momentarily as they met her earnest elder’s. “I’m not here to manipulate you. I am here to make sure you don’t become like the rest of us.”

Lucy’s gaze became steely before her eyes squeezed shut, lips trembling with suppressed emotions. It was a lie, it had to be. Their ages had stripped what was human out of them long ago. But the vivid description brought memories that weren’t her own. The regret-tinged remembrances that had haunted the parasite. No, Sulis. Her rage, boiling and molten, began to freeze. As it left her, it drew all the heat from her chest and stomach. The familiar, icy touch of the unfairness of it all. She shook her head as a troupe of rioters approached with concerned expressions. Her flag-bearing friend, unaware how lucky she was, asked what the problem was. Her tone was dangerous.

“I had a bit too much,” Lucy lied before Safiya could intervene. She looked to the kindly humans with reddened eyes and a saddened smile, allowing a slurring to her voice. “Samara said I was like Grace, and I didn’t like it. I’ll beat your ass,” she added, hoping her oversharing was what drunk people did. She didn’t remember getting sozzled under her own power as a human. The older vampire gave her a disapproving look before patiently guiding the ailing Brit away from the riots. “I just wanted a fight is all, a little fight” she grumbled before they were stopped by the voice of the flag-bearing woman. She gave her number, slipping it into Lucy’s pocket once she said her phone was broken. Sober Lucy found that odd but wasn’t sure drunk Lucy would so nodded. Safiya began to walk her away from the street, thanking the woman for her concern.

They headed toward a car that had been parked haphazardly across the street. Lucy noticed it seemed to be driven by a hipster. He’d even curled up his moustache she noticed as he hurriedly opened the door for the plodding Brit. As she was bundled into the back seat, she curled up near the opposite window, her eyes deadened once more. The anger had passed but what spawned it remained. She felt Safiya slide in beside her, keeping a close eye on the seething cauldron of rage she likely believed Lucy to be. After checking his route, their modern chauffeur began his journey across the city toward somewhere she could sleep at the very least. The very notion lashed itself to her back, weighing her down with want.

She yawned, resting her head against the door with steadily closing eyes. She was quickly batted back to wakefulness by Safiya who was, under no circumstances, carrying her to the hotel. Lucy gave her an enervating look before righting herself. She looked in the same direction as their driver to the shops and buildings surging past. They began to look vaguely familiar though she couldn’t place where from exactly.

“Eh Saf, do I wanna know what all the hubbub down at Cavendish’s place was?” the driver asked over his shoulder, hands shaking slightly at the wheel. Must be scared, Lucy thought. Though she did remember being unable to hold a cup for a few days at Sulis’ old place in Scotland. There’d been some weird shit going on in that place. Maybe she should become a witch too. She had long enough. “Gradin’ test papers, downing whiskey all night and then there’s a goddamn ‘splosion.”

“Nothing we need to fear. If its architect comes to us, I will deal with him” she answered with a firm yet reassuring tone. The Brit put two and two together and sighed inwardly. Safiya had found herself a distraction of her own it seemed. And another prospect was struck from her list. At this point she’d take the woman with the fades. Though not in this state, obviously. “This is Lucy, since she wants to be rude” the older vampire introduced testily. She resisted the desire to childishly imitate her elder.

“Lucy Devereux? No shit?” the man smiled enthusiastically. “Sulis used to talk ‘bout you all the time. Always scared you were gonna hate her” he relayed with a thoughtful expression before seeming to realise what he’d said. “Anyhow, name’s Anthony. ‘Bin hangin’ round with Saf for a while. I’ve been learnin’ a lot about Indian history! An’ just about everywhere else.” His mood brought a smile to Lucy’s face, though only a small one. She nodded, giving short replies as he asked questions. Though her mind was focused on the problem of Sulis. She was never going to relent. Not until the Brit was part of her little family. Her memories were so coherent that Lucy could see it all stretching out before her. It wasn’t in the huntress’ nature to simply let someone hate her. Too much risk associated with it. Which made Cavendish’s retention of his head all the more surprising.

As the car came to a stop, she realised why the route had been so familiar. The building rising high above them was the hotel she knew the wives were staying at. And the murderous stare she passed toward Safiya almost broke what little trust that existed between them.

“They aren’t here. And if you stay in the room, they will never know,” Safiya explained coolly while walking toward the lobby. “Now hurry up. Amy is only with me for another hour,” she instructed as she moved to the check in desk. Lucy could only ask who the hell that was. “You need a drink. And she will help you,” the elder vampire smiled over her shoulder.