Dianna shot up and sat as stiff and rigid as the concrete she had been sleeping upon. Somewhere near by a rat scurried across the floor, it’s fat, furless tail swishing at dust. Beyond that was the familiar drip of linking pipes and the groaning of a settling building.

Her hand landed in a cold puddle, and her stomach rebelled at the memory. She had drank too much the night before, and by the smell of things she had passed out and slept in the mess. As she moved her shirt clung to her skin, sticky with the cold, molding, dead blood.

She nearly retched all over again.

First thing was first, she had to get clean. Dianna had dragged herself into the nearest hole the night before. The memory was foggy, but it was there. She’d gotten her hands on a Goth with chain she wanted after following him almost all night. It had been nearly dawn when she’d gotten him cornered. He had fought with her in an alley, she’d crawled into a sewer line and found a dry area under a building. By the structure of it, the area seemed like it would fill if flooding began. Though clean of filth, it also stank to high heaven.

Dianna wrinkled her nose and worked her eyes open. It was pitch black where she stood. Several yards down the tunnel, however, was a tiny shaft of silvery blue light; a well desired exit. In no time she had her back plastered to one of the grimy walls and was working her way toward the light. Sure enough, it was how she had crawled in. She had to leap to catch the slimy metal ladder, but soon she was out in the alley and breathing smog rather than sewage fumes.

After a moment to clear her lungs out, Dianna pushed herself to her feet and looked around. The body was close, she could smell it. The chain was still on him, but where had she left him?

She grinned as she saw it. Had she been well she would have done much better, but a dumpster was good enough. Seeing as she already smelled as bad as anything could smell, Dianna merely leapt into the dumpster and dug until she found the pale, limp body. Part of his lip was missing, probably because of rats, so removing the tiny silver chain was simple.

With her prize in hand, Dianna hopped out of the dumpster and marched right through the nearest door. A seedy apartment greeted her, along with the angry snarl of a yipping little dog. No one came to shut the dog up, so Dianna growled back at it and kicked it out of her path.

She had always hated small dogs.

It only took a couple minutes to find a work shower and soap, and in just about the same amount of time the tiny three room house was beginning to fill with steam from the hot shower. When she finally felt clean her skin was pink from the scrubbing and what could have become burns had she stayed in much longer.

Red as a lobster and naked as a J-bird she walked from closet to closet until she had a reasonable outfit. It seemed no one in the house liked black aside from one girl with a sleazy black dress. Well, sleazy was fine for now as long as it was black and it fit. Whom ever had owned before now as wider in the hips than Dianna was, so the sheath dress clung to her upper half, and then just hung loose and flowing from the waist down. Not her style, but close enough.

Last, but not least, she rummaged the girls make up. Pink, red, brown, and blue were everywhere. Pink was okay for her lips, it made her pale eyes look gray-ish and all the more crystal-like. When she finally found black eyeliner she had to fuss with opening the package it was in before she could darken up her eyes.

“There, and the finishing touch,” She dropped the black eye liner into her pocket, along with the pink lipstick, and then picked up the chain. One end was an earring with a solitare diamond, and the other end hooked onto her lip ring. “Much better.”

Satisfied with how she looked, Dianna turned on her heels and marched back toward the front door. Just as she reached it the doorknob turned and a young woman stepped inside. Just as Dye had expected, the girl was blond, tanned, and as slutty looking as Jessica had once been. “Well, hello there sweetie, getting home later than normal?”

Dianna smiled sweetly as the girl’s eyes widened. She stood there, unmoving and watched her, listened to her heart quickening, waiting for just the right moment. The girls heart gave a flutter, and Dye’s smile turned deadly as she dove at her. The girl screamed as Dianna pinned her against the door and ripped at the side of her throat, slicing two long gashes into her fragile skin. She kicked and screamed in her arms, fighting for the life Dianna was stealing from her.

Slowly, pain began to burn in the side of Dye’s neck, and fear mixed with the exhilaration of the kill. When the girl stopped struggling and went limp, Dianna let her slide to the floor. She was still alive, but by the time someone found her she would most likely be dead. Her main artery was releasing every ounce of blood her heart was bumping out in a vein attempt to keep her alive.

“Sleep well,” Dye muttered in callous tones as she ripped a peace of cloth from the girls shirt. The girl only blinked at her now, no doubt starting to get that falling sensation just before blackness would claim her. Dye used the cloth to dap away the blood from her mouth and then kicked the girl out of her way the same way she had kicked her annoying, yipping dog before yanking the door open and stepping back into the alley.

Link groaned as he walked along the sidewalk. Right now he felt like shooting himself. His had a migraine, was stressed after a long day, and he hadn't slept a wink in the past few days. That .45 ACP hollow-point round currently chambered in his Beretta 92FS sounded really appealing right now. Turning into an alley, he thought that this was the one that was a shortcut to his apartment building. He groaned in frustration when he came to a dead end. That figures. Sighing, he leaned against the wall, and took his Beretta out of his shoulder holster.

Ejecting the clip, he sighed and slid one of the .45 rounds from it into his palm. One of the world's most effective pistol cartridges was in his hand. Too bad he wasn't going to use it. An alley like this, no one who would care would hear the pistol fire. Sighing, he slid the round back into the clip and slapped the clip back into the Beretta.

And, just as his luck would have it, that would be when the woman being attacked by Diana would scream. It triggered a flashback to a time when he as back in the Marines, in Desert Storm. He remembered a little girl that had come up to his fire team, dirty and half-starved. Out of pity, they had given her a MRE, and she ran of. She didn't make it to the street corner before some AK-47 wielding idiot came out, shot her, and stole the MRE. The fact that he had a gun was enough reason for Link's team to kill him. He remembered that girl screaming in pain, and they couldn't do a blasted thing about it. To help her, she would have had to been shot in a hospital. The closest hospital was much too far away.

Someone coming out of the building snapped Link out of the flashback, somewhat anyway. His hands were still shaking and his head still pounding from the migraine. He slipped the pistol back into its holster, he looked up. He pushed the scream and the memories to the back of his mind, he took a breath to steady himself. Was that blood he smelled? He ignored that, probably just his imagination, a side-effect of the flashback most likely.

Not seeing any reason to stay in the alley, he stood up straight and started walking. If he was lucky, which he highly doubted, he would find some Tylenol or Motrin back in his apartment, something to ease this migraine. And hopefully an anti-depressant...But since he was hoping for them, they would be gone. And he had no money to buy more. Walking past Dianna, nodding a brief hello, he sighed. That ,45 round sounded very appealing right now...

Dye stopped dead in her tracks as her eyes lit on Link. For a moment she worried that he’d seen what had happened. Surely he had seen that cute little blonde thing entering the apartment. And that scream, he would have heard that, along with the neighbors. Dye had to shake herself to get rid of the thoughts that chased themselves around her head. After all, normal people didn’t see through thick wood doors.

Or head voices, or drink blood, or scream in pain at the touch of a single ray of sunlight.

She shuddered and turned to dart out of the alley only to clumsily smack into Link as he moved to walk out of the alley. She teetered only slightly before she rightened herself, but grabbing Link’s arm to keep herself upright turned into a painful mistake.

Dye nearly screeched in pain as a throbbing grew behind her eyes. She let go of him, nearly shoving him into a wall to get him away. Her sensitive eyes burned with the light from street lamps and cars, stinging them as if she were staring into the sun itself. The sounds of the city became agony, even the tiny scratching of a rat in the dumpster added pain to the throbbing behind her eyes.

What was worse was the lost, alone, and sad feeling of a depression as keen and painful as the headache. It lingered in her mind with a bitter familiarity. It was a depression she had worked through over and over again. The kind that turned waking moments into nightmares with flashbacks of the moments you tried most to forget.

Dianna curled in on herself with a whimper, rocking back and forth as she beat at the sides of her head, trying to drive it out. She was past those times, she wouldn’t relive them, she wouldn’t!

Link stumbled when Dye ran into him, though he wasn't expecting what the woman that ran into him would do. Not being prepared for her sudden shove, Link stumbled back, tripping over something and falling to the ground, smacking his head. Pushing himself up, doing his best to ignore the ringing and the sudden blurriness in his eyes, he looked over at Dye. What was her problem. It wasn't until the ringing stooped that he realized that she was in some sort of pain.

He took a step forward to help, right as she curled in on herself and started beating her head. If he didn't know better he would have said she was having one of his attacks...then again, for all he knew she very well could be having an attack like his. He knew what she was going through, though no idea of how to help her presented itself.

Not wanting to just walk away and leave her there, he crouched down in front of her, trying to grab her hands to make her stop hitting her head.

"Hey, hey! Calm down. Come on, try to calm down."

He was getting the feeling this wasn't going to turn out well. He wasn't a psychiatrist or whatever, he had no idea how to calm her down.

Dye didn’t hear him at first She didn’t even register his existence until she felt a new flood of emotions as Link grabbed her hands. She screeched at him, and then recoiled in pain as the throbbing behind her eyes redoubled with a vengeance.

She began to shake as beads of sweat began to show on her forehead. Dye could remember what a migraine was, but they had never been like this; this priced the senses like a thousand pins and needles being pushed into every nerve ending. A whimper escaped her as she writhed and fought, trying to get free at the same time that she was trying to fight off the pain.

“Don’t touch,” she had to fight to make her lungs take in air and her tongue tripped thickly over the words. “Please, don’t touch.”

Tears came unbidden to her eyes, and slowly the clear beads of sweat began to run in pink, and then red streaks over her pale cheeks. The pain was more than anything she’d ever imagined possible, and then in one horrid burst it was gone.

Dye sat trembling, shaken to her very core and however inches out of madness. Her eyes slowly took in everything as they cleared and eventually settled on Link. She stared, simply stared at him as if he had not been there a moment ago.

“Who are you?”

Link let go of Dye the second she screeched when he grabbed her, stepping back to give the woman room. He had no idea about what was going on. What had just happened? She bumped into him and was acting as if just that bit of contact had caused all of this. Then again, for all he knew, it very well could have. Staying back to give Dye room to do...what ever she had to do, he took a note of the red streaks appeared on her cheeks. Was she crying blood? Or was sleep deprivation just finally getting to him? He was hoping it was the latter.

When she calmed down somewhat and asked who he was, it took Link a second to respond. Snapping out of his thoughts, he answered, if somewhat hesitantly.

"I'm...I'm Link. Are you alright miss? Do you live here?"

He was hoping that Dye was alright. If she decided what happened was his fault and decided to sue him...Well, there was no way he'd have enough money to go through that. But ignoring that fact, he just hoped she was alright.

“No.” She blinked, and then frowned. Which question had she just answered? Was she all right?… well, no. Was this where she lived… no.

“No to both.” still shaking and her mind splintering to become dangerously close to shattering completely, Dye slowly pushed herself to her feet and dusted herself off.

“Oh, look what you’ve done now!” Dianna spoke to herself, seemingly forgetting that Link was there. “What a mess, grime, dirt, blood.. Nasty, and it is not even your Dress. Well, I know it’s not, but you don’t have to be mean about it.”

She paused, brushed a hand through her hair and looked at Link again. Confusion twisted her features and the beast within her bared it’s fangs as her aura sparked and changed to send out a defensive warning to anyone that could hear it.

“What are you doing here?”

Link slightly nodded to Dye's answers, thinking about them. She didn't live here, though that didn't really matter. However, she wasn’t okay. What was he going to do? If he just left, he knew his conscious would eat him up over it. He was starting to get a bad feeling about this. Then again, he was a bit paranoid, so he did his best to ignore that growing feeling of danger.

He opened to his mouth to say something when Diana started talking to herself. He didn't pay much attention to it until she said blood. Why would she have blood all over herself? And when she said the dress wasn't hers...No, never mind that thought. She probably was just borrowing it from a friend who did live here. But he kept himself from asking about any of that, he had a feeling questions weren't the thing she needed right now.

"I was walking home and didn't pay attention to where I was going."

Yeah, he was getting a really bad feeling about this. Though finding his back to a wall didn't help things any.

He’s probably lying, you know.

“Maybe,” she watched link skeptically as her fragmented mind slowly began to rebuild itself. Her hunger was gone, her thirst beaten back after gorging herself on the little blond, and yet she could feel her fangs slowly lengthening.

It is self defense.

“This is crazy.”

That’s right, you are crazy.

Dye pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes and took a slow, deep breath, steadying herself and beating back the persistent voices in her head. “I’m sorry; who did you say you were? Link, that’s right, you are Link. Well, where is home from here, Link?”

You aren’t with him.

“I mean, where is home for you?”

Where is home for yourself?

Link took a quick glance around when she started talking to herself again. Was there someone else here talking to her? No, no one was here. And he doubted she was speaking into a microphone back to someone with a receiver. He said nothing about it though. She didn't look like she had had a good day and wouldn't appreciate him making it worse by asking if she was crazy.

Looking back up when she said his name, he had to wonder about her question. Where was his apartment? He was lost, plain in simple.

"Umm...My apartment is around here somewhere...I think..."

He sighed and shook his head. He should have just stayed at his office. It wouldn't have been the fist time he slept there. But no, he decided to go home tonight. And look where it got him, lost and in a dead-end alley.

“So, you’re lost, too.” She laughed , and then pushed at her temples to massage the pain away. Just a migraine, not the splintering of her sanity. “The whole world is lost, slipping and sliding through the cracks and never turning back.”

Dianna shook her head at her own words. They made no sense at all, but there they were none the less. With a fluid grace she crossed his path and looked around. Now, she knew the blond, and she knew the sewers beneath her feet. But where had she come from to get here? Which way was that warehouse?

Her short term memory always seemed to vanish after a particularly bad episode. “What street is that behind you?”

For the first time she stopped and really looked at him. He looked like every other mortal to her. They all seemed dull, their thudding hearts and sweet scented blood the most attractive parts of them. But this ones was different some how. He had a sort of darkness about him, something about his aura was tainted as if trauma had torn out part of him, changed him.