"No... No... Go away..." Ali tried to bat off the dark figures around her, tried to push them away. "I... I have to find him..." She pleaded with the shadows in front of her.

She was shaking, trembling from head to foot, and she looked like what she was. A druggie... Coming down from what had been a decent length of rides. Her parents had all but kicked her out... The one man she thought would help her... Well not man but vampire... He'd gone too. He wasn't anywhere to be found and well... She couldn't blame him.

Even Dmitri had left her. He couldn't want her anymore... Not when she'd messed up so bad.

And it was the faces of her parents... Of James... Of Dmitri... Those were the people who haunted her now.

"No... He... He promised he would. He told me that he would..." She gasped as they taunted her.

"He'll never love you... He'll never turn you. Once he doesn't need you, he'll just kill you, leave you to rot and won't even cry over the loss." She didn't know who had spoken. It could have been none or all at once.

"No!" She screamed. "No! He wouldn't lie to me!!" Her little voice, weak as it was, was shrill in the night. "Go Away! Leave me alone!!"

She tripped on a curb, sending her sprawling. Catching herself she scraped her hands on the pavement, the blood seeping out slowly.

"Die here... Die there... He'll only care cause he didn't get to do it himself... Just die... You're weak... You shouldn't have ever lived."

Sobbing as she lay on the ground, she didn't even realize as she covered her face that the blood from her hands was now covering her face. No... They couldn't be true... The voices were wrong... They had to be.

Even for Demaitre, it was a dark night. There clouds, lots of them, thick and heavy and deep grey roiling over the horizon and gliding in low overhead. Brief waves of thin rain had been scouring the streets, not quite drenching but certainly chilling any and all whom it touched despite the humid air. Vivian squinted through one such particular sheet, impatiently pushing his hair from his face and turning his eyes away from the scattered lamplight as he slowly moved from alley to alley. His thoughts were scattered and engrossing, and he barely watched where he walked, his attention only alerting him to nearby movement and the occasional flurry of angry voices. Nothing unusual.

It wasn’t unusual to hear a scream in the backstreets of Demaitre, but the one that caught his ear now brought a chill upon Vivian that cut through the thin rain and settled over the back of his neck. He turned towards the sound instinctively, pausing for a moment to determine more before continuing forward in a new direction. It didn’t take long—her screams continued, and she was bleeding mildly. Her blood smelled putrid, acrid even, and Vivian could almost taste it in the air. He had had few experiences with addicts before, had never even tasted their blood, and a part of him was curious now. She had been having an apparently very bad night, after all. What could one more little terror really do to her? He could be gentle.

Perturbed by his own thoughts, Vivian took a quick step backwards, paused, and sighed, his shoulders visibly drooping. Edging forward again, he noted her crumpled posture, her feet caught near the curb, the angle of her legs. She didn't look broken, not physically anyway.

“What did you take, and when did you last take it?” He did not kneel to her level, but instead watched her distantly from his height, his vivid eyes glinting evenly in the darkness. He preferred it that way. "You're going to be alright." What a stupid thing to say, an empty promise. His voice became rougher. "But you look pretty fucked up right now. I think you should let me help you out."

She heard a voice, not in her mind, and looked up. But she couldn't see where it came from. The shadows made everything too dark. A blurred outline standing above her, a man from the sound of it... Edmund? It... It had to be. No one else cared about her... No one else wanted her, or even realized she existed.

"Edmund..." She nearly sobbed. "Oh Edmund..."He crawled slightly to him, wrapping her arms weakly around his legs, pressing her blood smeared face tight against him. "Where have you been? I've been looking for you... I need you... You... You promised. You promised to turn me! Do it now! Please, stop the pain!" Well giving her more drugs would help too, but she wanted him to come through on his end of their deal. She'd done things for him... Things she never wanted to do, but for him... For him she'd done them and she was starting to hate everything, herself, him... her life. Only the drugs made things better. Only they made the pain go away.

Her palms still oozed blood, her body being unable to stop the bleeding of even the minor scrape.

"Yes... Yes Edmund. Help me. Please. I just need a little more. Or... Or you can make me like you. I've done what you've asked, haven't I? I want to be like you now. Please... Please Edmund... I hate being like this." She begged.

She turned towards him, revealing her startlingly pale, bloodied face. Her hands closed on his leg, and Vivian was filled with a combination of pity and revulsion. She was getting blood on his clothes, and he could smell it so clearly. It tugged at him, a small torture she had already inflicted upon him, and he had to force himself to remain still.

"I don't know who you're talking about," he replied hoarsely, his fingers trembling at his sides. "I'm not 'Edmund.' I don't know who you're talking about."

Her words were disturbing. Here she was, a beaten, bloodied mortal, and she was going on about something she had no right to know--about being turned. Where had she come from? What had cast her out from wherever it had been holding her with the knowledge of their existence and a promise it never intended to keep? Vivian ground his teeth and knelt beside her, taking her hands in his and removing them gently from his leg.

"Listen, d'you know who and where you are? You don't know me, okay? I don't know who you're looking for, but I think you'd better calm down as best you can. Are you hurt anywhere?"

His eyes flicked over her quickly, ashamedly lingering on the curve of her soft neck and on her bleeding hands, in search of any serious breaks or wounds. From what he could tell, she was alright. There were the scrapes on her hands, but they didn't seem serious despite how much blood she appeared to be losing. He didn't think on it. Carefully, he edged his hands underneath her body, turning her so that she lay in his arms. Lifting her from the ground, he cast a quick glance around the alleyway.

"I'm going to get you out of the rain, okay? I'm going to take you someplace safe, and you're going to stay with me for now. I'm not gonna hurt you, but you can't stay here. We have to figure out who the hell you are and who you belong to. Okay?"

As he knelt closer, the face of the man pushed pass the shadows, the ghosts of the living that were still haunting her none the less. "Edmund?" But... But it wasn't him. It was someone different. They had the same sort of deep raspy voice, but there was something in the face of the man who looked down at her now that while similar to Edmund, was completely different.

No... It... It was Edmund she had heard wasn't it? It was his voice that was speaking to her wasn't it?

Her eyes were almost glazed over as she looked at him, willing Edmund to stop the game he had to be playing. "You're just a little human. You don't need to worry about when You'll be turned. It'll come, I just have to know it's really what you want." Alison shuddered and shivered as Edmund's cool voice ran through her mind. "That is... If you do everything I say of course. You have to earn something like this. You didn't think I'd really just give it to you." The sneer on the shadow's face was visible above the new man's head.

Covering her ears now she shook her head back and forth. "No.... No..." She murmured, talking to herself yet answering the man's question. Where was she? She knew who she was, but where?She couldn't remember.

Suddenly strong, cool arms lifted her up, holding her close. He... he was one too. She knew what it felt like. "I want Edmund..." She whispered against him. "Where is he? He didn't answer his phone, he didn't call back..."

Alison slowly slipped off as he pulled her to his arms, running with her. It was too hard to see everything, to keep her eyelids up, she was growing dizzy, weak. And the blood loss wasn't helping matters.

He wondered with cold curiosity just who 'Edmund' was. The vampire who had introduced her to their world and then left her on her own? Probably. Vivian moved into the rain, shielding her as best he could and fighting off the still-strong scent of her blood. Her hands were still raw and red. Scrapes that small shouldn't be bleeding so much. He glanced down at her finally calm face, taking a good look at her for the first time. She seemed so young and far too helpless to be playing this game of cat and mouse. He had no doubt there was no solution for her, no prize at the end of the maze. The desire to keep her around was not reciprocal. She had been lied to and left to die, surrounded in hollow promises.

Vivian was living in an apartment, a small, unobtrusive place well hidden behind the larger, more luxurious buildings of Demaitre. It overlooked a few alleyways he had come to know well, and it was through these that he made it home. His home was on the third floor--rather than risk being seen carrying an unconscious, bloodied minor to his apartment, he took her up the fire exit.

The first thing he did was place her on the couch, clearing the few decorative pillows out of her way so she would have a comfortable place to lie. He left her briefly to retrieve a few old rags, a small bowl of water, and some gauze. Kneeling beside the couch, Vivian took her hands in his and gently placed them in the bowl. He eyed the wounds warily, bracing against the violent jolt in his stomach--they looked as though they had not even begun to clot. Picking up one rag, he began to gently wash the scrapes, taking care to clean as much of the gravel as possible from the abrasions.

"Who the hell are you," he muttered, more to himself than to the unconscious girl. He didn't like that she was here, not in his house, not when she was bleeding and fucked up on God could only know what. Not when dawn would eventually come and she'd still be here.

The oozing of blood slowed gradually, and though they'd begun to seep through the bandages that he'd made, it stopped about an hour later, which was when she began to stir.

The first thing she noticed was that it was warm. Warm and dry. But she was still shaking... Not shivering, but trembling all over.

"Ed..." She murmured, her voice hardly above a whisper. "Nora?" But as her eyes opened she knew she wasn't at Edmund's place. It was clean, nice and semi-stylish even. Edmund's place was a veritable dump really, but she never minded.

This place looked too human though. Which was odd because she'd remembered the cold arms... The hard chest. But maybe that was just her, maybe she'd been imagining things. It was probably just some random person who'd picked her up... Worried about her. Maybe... Maybe there were nice people after all.

"Hello?" She called out as she sat up. Or rather tried to. Her arm buckled and her head swam, sending her back to the couch. Her hands stung too... She couldn't really remember what happened, but she knew what was going on... She'd been through this once before, with Dmitri... Withdraw... It wasn't pleasant. The nausea would come soon she knew, she should be home before then... She didn't want to burden some nice person with something they really didn't deserve.

But she couldn't actually sit up yet, let alone walk out here and get home. Or to Edmund's place. She was so tired though... It was going to be hard going but she had to leave.... And probably soon too. "Hello? Is anyone here?"

He sat on the edge of his bed, his head in his hands. The scent of her blood had been itching at him the entire time she had been resting, and now his temples were pounding with the effort to suppress its effects on him. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and drew each measured breath in slowly, deeply. What had he been thinking? Why had he picked her up in the first place? Why had he brought her here? He had overestimated his own control, and he might have very well put her in more danger than she had been in to begin with.

"Hello? Is anyone here?"

He nearly started as if he'd half forgotten she was here. It was so unusual to hear another voice in his home.

"No," he growled. "No one's here. Just leave."

But Vivian stood up and moved down the hall into the living room where he had left her. The smell of her blood was less strong--perhaps she had finally begun to heal. He paused to lean in the doorway, his eyes on her wan, shadowed profile. Though she was finally conscious, she didn't look any better. Quite the contrary, she looked worse. She was shaking badly and was still too weak to move more than a few inches at a time.

"My name's Vivian. Who are you?" He finally stepped into the room, circling the couch and tentatively crouching down where she could see him. His voice wasn't cold, but it contained little sympathy for her. It was as flat and impassive as his expression. "Do you remember what happened before you went unconscious?"

She heard a soft growl in response to her call. She winced, knowing the kind of expression that was usually on Edmund's face when she heard the sound. It wasn't a pleasant look at all.

"Vivian?" So she knew for sure now that it wasn't Edmund's place, or any of the friends he had that she knew. "I'm Alison... Or Ali. Don't really care which." The way he moved though told her what he was. He was a vampire too, more handsome than Edmund was, that was for sure. And his face... His face could be kind, soft and maybe even loving, but it wasn't now. It was expressionless, as if she were little more than an inconvenience to his life. Which was probably the case.

Alison closed her eyes as he asked what she had been doing and what was going on. "I... I was going to see Edmund... He's a vampire too. He promised to turn me, I just have to... help him out for a while." She frowned slightly. Sure he gave her drugs to help with the pain, he healed her and kept her as safe as he could... But she still hated what she had to do. Only the thought of being turned into a vampire kept her tied to him. He was probably the only one who would turn her after all. No one else would want a weak pathetic thing like her.

"I... I wasn't feeling good. That's all. I get sick a lot. I have Hemophilia, so I'm really not that strong." She said meekly.