The door slammed behind me, and this song came on in my earbuds.

Lucy’s car started up on the third try and off into the night I went. I’m pretty good at knowing where I’m going in this town, and this address didn’t confuse me one bit. Anything on Ward Parkway is pretty obvious. You pass by those houses on that road and either dream of living in one, or think of all the nasty people who already do. It was typical that Isabelle would be holed up in one of those. I’m starting to think that all these vampires do it because they are just as sarcastic as I am, but I’m afraid to ask because I don’t want to think less of them.

The house was on fire. I could smell the smoke before I could see, but once it was in sight it wasn’t overly bad. Flames were shooting out of the back of the house and dancing in a few of the downstairs windows. Big enough that the whole block should of been crawling with large red trucks spraying water, but no one even seemed to look that way as they drove by.

Right before I went into the burning building I did pause for a moment and reflected on how many stupid things I have done in the last three months. This one made it close to the top. In this house were two vampires of incredible power, and I wanted to murder them both, and just like the last few weeks, I somehow knew that I could. I was flying in my dreams again. Fire was not going to stop me.

I ran around in that house for all of five minutes before realizing I was out of luck. The fire was going to be out of control before I could do anything but die. Instead I decided to back out and wait to see if anyone else came out. The nearest door at that time was out to the pool.

Luck has never been on my side but lately it seems to be. I stumbled out that door starting to hack my lungs up, and the noise stopped The Vampire just as it was walking past the gate to leave the grounds of the house. Isabelle was dragging behind it like I had been the first night I met it. It stopped and turned as I coughed.

It dropped the broken body of Isabelle and for the first time I heard it speak. “It is done for you. Free me and be free.”

As it stepped closer to me I could feel myself instinctively responding to it’s request. I remembered that morning when I had reached out to Lucy, how it felt. The pull from inside me grew greater and greater, like a big centrifuge sucking the life out from inside me as it spun every ounce of energy I had into what I was about to do. I knew it would work. The vampire went down on it’s knees before me, and as I reached out to touch it’s head I realized that I was going to kill it.

Which is something I’m still not sure about. Did I kill it on purpose because I really wanted it dead? If I told myself I was going to turn it human again but killed it, did that make me less sure of myself than I thought?. When my fingers touched it’s head it started to disappear into fine dust, like Isabelle had when I touched her, but more fine. In the light of the fire it looked like nothing more than the dust streaming through window light in the morning.

The vampires face snapped up as it started to vanish and in it’s eyes I didn’t see freedom, I saw shock. Shock followed by an attempted to get away but it was too late. The chain reaction of my touch took his body and reduced it in a matter of moments.

Immediately my body screamed out that it was starving. Starving for food, starving for sex, starving for a bath, starving for anything good I could think of. I wanted it. First I had to get out of here. The house was brighter now, and with the vampire gone, I’m sure someone was going to notice.

I walked over to Isabelle. Poor once queen of the night, a mass of broken bones. I could see them starting to knit themselves back together but without help it looked like it’d take awhile. I couldn’t help it, I spit on her. I spit on the open wound in her arm that was gushing more blood than I think a human could hold. Henry was bleeding like that also…

Lucky for me rich people tend to have bottles of alcohol in their pool cabana. I raced over, threw open the door, grabbed the first bottle I could find and dumped it out. Then I lifted up Isabelle’s arm, filling it up as much as I could until the sirens got close.

Isabelle’s eyes had rejuvenated and she was staring at me helpless as I did it. I think maybe it was the only time I had seen a human expression in her eyes. She seemed so damn helpless. So vulnerable. I made it maybe twenty feet away from her before thinking of those eyes caused me to turn around, and drag her corpse into the garden of the house, into a dark spot that might conceal her long enough to heal and get away.

Of course by doing that I lost any time I would of had to get back in Lucy’s car without being seen, so I jumped the back fence and walked into the night. Just a lonely girl with her bottle of blood walking the streets. At least it wasn’t raining.