She awoke ravenously hungry.

The hunger cast a curtain over her thoughts, wrapped everything in a haze of red. It made the world sticky and fuzzy, made her brain slow and her thoughts slippery. She awoke in a strange bed, wrapped in a strange sheet, smelling strange smells and feeling pain in all her places. She remembered bullets, and blood, and being carried on a strong back and by strong arms. But it was all hazy, indistinct and insignificant next to the overwhelming need to feed.

She tried to move and hissed through her teeth as pain went everywhere through her. Her shoulder, her side- all hurt. The pain made the curtain across her senses thicker, the need to feed stronger. Her body was crying out for the raw material to repair itself, to be strong instead of weak and in pain.

Throwing off the sheet she was wrapped in, she crept along the bed on all fours. That she was naked in a strange bedroom did not bother her; her mind had become the predator's, with the lack of shame of an animal in all but one small part that was struggling to act through the haze of need. Her nose caught something. Blood, fresh and warm. A figure, breathing slowly by the side of the bed. She crept towards him, head slinking over the side of the bed.

And the part of her that was struggling to stay human thought, No! Not him! He's kind! He's good! But she already moving, hands seizing him, sinking her teeth into his shoulder. Tasting his blood.

Alistair Lane

Anna winced. She hadn't meant to hurt anyone. She'd just been trying to regain her lost control, and she hadn't really considered that she might hurt someone. Looking around the room, maybe she should have been more worried about property damage. Well, freezing everything wouldn't have been any better, right? Right?

Jack asked if she had control, and she made a “so-so” gesture with her hand. Perhaps best to stay with one at a time from now on, she signed. She stared at her hand, flexing it. Reaching for an upturned table, she touched one of the legs, making it turn white with frost.

It was fascinating. Not since the day she's become what she was had she imagined there might be more to her power. She had never before tasted the blood of another person with powers; no, it was the weak that were to be eaten, not the strong. Or so she had been told in her brief stay among the others. She could only imagine what would have happened if she had discovered this sooner. Such power... but it was limited. It needed blood, and much of it. Already she could feel there was not as much as there had been. She could become stronger like this, but not for long.

She signed, Should take tests you want before runs out.

Jack Fontaine

She let herself down to the floor again, restoring her normal downward pull. Jack was trying to gain purchase against the air by flailing limbs and not accomplishing much, and the sight amused her. She felt a little proud at exceeding Jack's expectations. Going over to the table, she picked up her phone, typed a message, and showed it to Jack.



A thought struck her and she gave a mischievous grin. Reaching for one of Jack's ankles, she gave a slight pull and watched her employer continue to float, rotating slowly midair. At Jack's question about if she could replicate more than one ability at once she turned and went back to the bag Jack had brought with the bags of one. Choosing one at random, she showed it to the rotating Jack before tearing it open with her claws and guzzling it down. She stopped once to lick a bit that had spilled around her lips. She knew the unusual taste better now (or was it really a taste?) and was expecting it. She set the emptied bag down and wiped her mouth.

She stood in a ready position, waiting for what would come next. For a moment she felt nothing. Then she suddenly felt like someone had struck her in the gut. The shape in her mind that had been Jack's altered gravity dissolved and Jack fell to the floor (feetfirst, thankfully). She snorted. She hadn't been expecting that. There were new shapes in her mind now, but neither was as sharp as the one had been originally. She tried the first, falling upward to the ceiling. Yes, it still worked, even if it felt more slippery, somehow. The second...

She tried it. For a moment nothing happened. But her hands felt strange. She frowned down at them, not understanding, opening and closing her fingers. They seemed to tingle... then they seemed to burn. She tried to wipe them off on her jeans and ice exploded out from her fingers. She jumped in surprise, slipping on more ice and catching herself on the ceiling More ice spread across it, spiderwebbing out from where her fingers touched. She tried-

She glanced at Jack.

She couldn't turn it off!

Jack Fontaine

Jack was, of course, slightly displeased at being rudely thrown against the ceiling, but that was all right. They tried far too hard to be dignified, anyway. She took her hand from her mouth and made a snickering noise. The sound of laughter was beyond her reach, but by putting her tongue just behind her front teeth and blowing in short bursts she could make a noise that got the same point across. Just for a moment, though. Too much and Jack might get really angry instead of just annoyed.

At Jack's question she tilted her head for a moment, considering, and then held her hands spread wide apart before slower bringing them closer together. Yes, she could feel the power diminishing, she thought, though it felt like they had a while. She stood on the ceiling with hands on her hips, head cocked, trying to feel out the new space in her mind this power represented. It was like a knob she could twist and turn, she thought. What if she-

Abruptly she fell started sliding along the ceiling, but this time she was ready and caught herself on the wall as she landed. She stood up, now perpendicular to Jack on a neighboring wall. This was what had happened with the woman with the heat blasts, wasn't it? She could gain more than strength from drinking blood, it seemed.

The implications of that escaped Anna. She was too focused on the present, and not given enough to imagination to think through what was happening.

Instead she focused on the internal dial again. Suppose she didn't pull so hard-

She fell again, but more slowly this time. Carefully she worked her new power. Her fall came to a stop, leaving her floating in the middle of the room. This turned out to be inconvenient, because there was nothing to grab on to and no way to maneuver herself around. She floated in midair, feeling somewhat foolish. Glancing at Jack, she brought them halfway to the floor so that they floated next to each other.

Her expression said, Well?

Jack Fontaine

Still. Falling. Slipping into a trance. It was a kind of self-defense as her body folded inward, trying to shut down her wounds and heal itself. Her gun began to slip from her hand and she forced herself to set it down instead. She might still need it. She closed her eyes, forced herself to breathe. It would be all right, she told herself. Cory was coming...

(But what if she didn't?)

...and soon things would be all right. Any minute now that motorcycle would come swerving around the corner.

...any minute now...

She wanted to rest, even as she knew it was a luxury she couldn't afford. Because there might be no rescue coming. Because she might have to find the energy to get up and run. Run- to where? She would never step into a hospital. Too many bad memories. Besides, she knew what her body needed to fix this. Blood.

And she knew where to find that. It was in all of the apartments around her. Blood, inside of walking and breathing and living people. The thought of getting up, running on her injured leg and committing murder made her sick. But she would have to, if nobody came.

Stupid thought. Cory would come. Cory wouldn't forget her. Cory...

Time seemed to take forever. She wasn't drifting out of consciousness, exactly, but she was getting distracted. By the pattern of filth on the dumpster. By the flies moving around her face. How much blood had she lost? She was in a delicate balance. If she waited too long to feed, she might not have the strength to make the kill. But if she went too soon, when rescue was moments away, what then? Another kill, another death on her conscience, and to what end? A useless kill. A useless death. Better to lie here a little while longer. Better to...

Something moved in the mouth of the alley. Large. But not human. A dog? She tried to force herself upright. Feed!

The dumpster's smell was overpowering. But the familiar scent caught her nose now. Not a dog. Her... friend. The lion. Ali... her thoughts were slow. The rest of the name drifted out of her mind. The lion's eyes flashed. It nuzzled her.

A burst of strength. She pulled herself upright, teeth bared and hissing. Her gun was left on the ground as she pushed herself at the new creature, prey to her regardless of the size and danger. Some part of her that still knew reason managed to hoist her onto his back. That was all she could manage before the need overcame her. With expert skill she found a vein and her teeth sliced it like razors.

She pressed her mouth around it, eagerly swallowing the blood and holding herself in place on his back.

Alistair Lane

There was a word that Americans used that had described Anna lately. The word was, "stalker", and it described her behavior towards Alistair Lane over the past few weeks. She had thought, when she had leaped through his window and escaped, that she would leave behind all thought of him, but no amount of pounding the pavement could put her thoughts of him behind.

It didn't help that meeting him had put into sharp contrast something that had been gnawing at the back of her mind since she'd woken up in her casket. Perhaps some of it was loneliness, but most of it was, quite frankly, that it had been too long since she'd been with a man, and he had proved to be the sort of man of which fantasies are made. She had always preferred tall men and dark-haired ones, and they had had, in a strange sort of way, a moment whose implications she still struggled to put into words.

Sometimes she felt foolish when she considered all this. You have become infatuated, like an airheaded schoolgirl. No doubt fear of looking foolish kept her from trying to find him openly. How silly would she look if he learned she was pining after him, as if she had a child's crush? She had learned long ago that men did not notice such things. Or, if they did, it was only long enough to use you for what all men wanted, then to discard you when they grew bored. Those were her thoughts- yet Alistair Lane remained in them.

So it was really only natural that she became a stalker. She had a picture of his license plate, and a few questions to Jack got her a phone number from that Jack seemed amused by the whole affair, which Anna steadfastly ignored. It was beneath her dignity to notice such things.

Alistair's schedule was orderly and regular. If he had been an assassination target she would have been able to end him without breaking a sweat. He rarely covered his windows and from the trees near his house she could see his bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. When he rose from the table to put his plate in the sink she would drop from the tree and run around the house to hide beneath his porch, where she could watch him get into his car and drive away. She always wondered, hoped and didn't hope, that just once he would glance back and see her. He never did. When his car drove off, that was the last she would see of him for the day. Sometimes she would make it back in time to watch him in the afternoon, but more often not. Once he was gone she would sometimes sit beneath his porch for a long while, thinking. Imagining.

But in the end she would always remember it was useless and would get up and return home. For her, in the end, there could be no joyful conclusion. No voice, knowing almost nothing of the feminine arts, an insatiable lust for blood- these things had set her course long ago. She could watch, and that was all.

It would have to be enough. She only hoped-

-only hoped that he would find a way to be happy, somehow. With someone. Someone who could whisper to him that he was not a monster. Someone who could make a real home with him, not the strange whatever-it-was that had sprung up around her. However much she might want him, she knew, in the end, that it could be only fantasy.

This was the general pattern of her thoughts when she suddenly found herself in a gunfight.

It wasn't her fault. Jack had texted her and asked her to deliver a package from point A to point B, and point B was in the part of town where young man walked with their pants hanging low and weighted down with firearms. She certainly stuck out like a sore thumb. Jack had decreed that she was not to take an uber closer than a certain distance from point A or point B, which meant that she had to walk in and out at both ends of the delivery. She endured a few catcalls, keeping her head low and walking neither too slow or too fast, ignoring the voices when they came. It was only a game to most of them. She wore her combat boots, jeans, and what they called here a hoodie.

She rounded a corner and heard the sound of shouting. A man and a woman were yelling across an open doorway, a sure sign of a domestic argument spilling out onto the street.

"Did you do it? DID YOU?"

"That b*tch is a liar!"

"You f***ing wh*re!"

The man had the woman by the upper arm. He swung, there was a smack, and the woman screamed. They were on the same side of the street as 177. It was only a step or two out of her way to walk up to them, swing her arm, and cut the man along the face with her claws. He screamed and dropped the woman's arm, clutching at his eye. The woman gave 177 a quick glance and then ran, vanishing down the street.

"What's going on? What's going on?" A young man came from around the corner. The man she'd clawed was still screaming but managed to point at 177.

In retrospect, there had probably been no violent intention when the second man came around the corner. The gun he was holding looked new; perhaps he had simply been showing off a recent acquisition. And he didn't have it raised and wasn't brandishing it in any way; he was just holding it. But what was she supposed to do? He had a gun.

So she pulled her own pistol and shot him. Twice.

(Okay, so maybe the gunfight was sort of her fault.)

What happened after that was confusing. As far as she could determine, someone decided that the best response to shots fired was to open an upstairs window, yell, "I WARNED YOU BOYS ONCE ALREADY", and to begin firing at random at everyone on the street. A bullet struck her in the shoulder, making her stumble. Someone ran from around the corner, saw the man she'd shot, yelled, "Johnny! They got Johnny!" and also began firing at random at everyone on the street. Someone threw a rock, and a window shattered. And all this time the man she'd clawed was screaming, pointing at her and clutching his other hand to his eye.

She was struck in the shoulder, in the thigh, and a third bullet buried itself in her side, just below her rib cage. She howled silently in pain and ran. But her leg was growing numb; it was unsteady, and it was bleeding far too fast. Not good. she tore a strip of cloth off of her hoodie, tightened it around the wound, and kept running. She saw stars. Oh no. Not good at all.

There was a dumpster behind a row of apartment buildings. No other place to hide. She jumped in. Pulled put her phone, took a pin of her location (Jack had showed her how to do that) and pulled up the messaging app.



There were only three contacts in Anna's phone. Her contact list looked like this:

Alistair
Coryelle
Jack

She meant to click Cory's name, but her thumb accidentally clicked Alistair, and she let her phone drop from her hands without noticing the difference.

Alistair Lane