The broken pavement was rimed with frost. It was a cold night for late October, and those who could stayed inside. Those who couldn’t made an extra effort to avoid the corner of 5th and Stenton, a blasted urban ruin of chainlink, asphalt, and steel shutters. The vacant northwest corner lot was a garden of broken glass and spent needles, and nearby houses were dingy havens for dog packs, drug addicts, and anyone too slow or stupid to have escaped them. It was the kind of place where these things didn’t draw much attention: a handful of street toughs with a couple of kids up against the wall, the teenaged boy humiliated and miserable and his younger date sick with fear.

Her wide-eyed trembling whet the appetites of the circling jackal pack as they moved with a leisurely contempt born of infrequent street patrols and slow response times from the local law enforcement. Toying with their victims, they closed in, patting the girl’s face and feeling her hair, enjoying the thrill of her terror as they drew out the stomach-wrenching moment of realization before the ordeal itself. Her last helpless, beseeching glance up at her date drew only a snarl of vicious laughter as hands reached for her jacket, her blouse, her skirt.

Miraculously, the prayed-for interruption came. Running footfalls, soft but getting louder, brought the heads of the attackers up for an instant in which they glimpsed their bizarre assailant. Black-clad with his face painted white, he ran up the street toward them, arms gesticulating strangely as if measuring the length of some long, thin, invisible object. As the gang of thugs looked on in baffled curiosity, the newcomer shouldered the object, accelerated his pace, and suddenly pole-vaulted into their midst with an invisible pole. Their surprise and his sudden attack were sufficient to allow him the advantage, and he hastily pushed the couple back toward the open street as he used the transparent “pole” to shove their attackers away. Back to the wall, he then opened his hands and hastily palmed an invisible surface between himself and the gang as the terrified couple bolted down the street. There was a long moment of silence as the four attackers eyed their new opponent.

“I don’t fuckin’ believe this,” snarled Franco, nominal leader. He sized up the white face paint, black-diamond eyes, black clothing, and white gloves that were busily outlining an invisible wall. “We’re bein’ attacked by a fuckin’ mime. Joey, Dominic, get rid of this loser.”

Joey and Dominic moved forward -- two beefy forms in leather jackets and slicked-back hair. Dominic grinned and a threw a slow, heavy roundhouse punch at the mime’s head, anticipating with pleasure the meaty smack of connection. Instead, his hand crashed into a solid surface several inches in front of his target with a crunch that felt like he’d punched a brick wall. A scream of pain and a string of curses followed as he wrung his hand and danced a frantic jig of agony on the asphalt lot. Looking nervous, Joey groped through the air, trying to figure out where the invisible wall ended. Franco’s eyes narrowed as he turned up his collar and watched the mime, who looked like he’d finished making his wall and was now pulling something invisible onto his feet. Vinny started forward from behind him, ready to make hamburger out of the jerk, but Franco stopped him with an outstretched hand and stepped back.

“No way. This shithead’s some kind of fuckin’ meta. Get Dominic out of the way.” He kept his eyes on the mime as Vinny and Joey pulled Dominic back, still swearing and wringing his hand. Then he reached into his jacket and slid his hand around the heavy, solid weight of the pistol’s grip. In a fluid motion he drew it and aimed it directly at the mime’s head. The freak stopped tying his invisible fucking laces and stared right up the barrel.

“Jesus, Franco! Fuck! Put that thing away -- every cop in the fuckin’ city is gonna hear that thing go off.”

Joey, the fucking pussy, was pissing himself somewhere in the background. But the only thing in Franco’s world now was the gleam of slick oiled metal and the rich, solid feel of a real fucking horse leg in his hand. .44 Magnum Wildey with Teflon-jacketed load; the fucker’d crack the engine block of a pickup truck. He’d spent a fucking fortune on Big Franco, and he’d waited a long time to use it. He wasn’t backing down now. All right, he thought. Let’s see some fucking meta-mime block a couple of rounds from this.

Orchid slid through the shadows behind the frozen tableau, stepping into the darkness and feeling the world shift around her as she stepped out of another patch fifty yards away. All attention was focused on the gleam of metal and the taut form of the shooter: erect, compositional, like a figure of Poussin’s. Pantomime looked horrified. As well he might, she mused. She’d trailed him for weeks now, longer than she wanted to think about, and she was convinced that he didn’t have the power to stop what was coming.

He was second rate. His life was second rate. He spent his days in a nest of paperwork in the bowels of a city administration building and his nights in a dingy apartment: one room and a shoebox kitchen, a sofa bed and a third-hand television. The only things copious or generous in his life were his bookshelves and his medicine cabinet. The shelves were crammed with evidence of a wide-ranging mind -- Foucault, Crichton, Rice, Freud, Derrida, Jung, Locke and Dickens, tumbled together in a mélange of periods and interests. The medicine cabinet was overflowing with proof of a failing body -- anti-depressants, appetite stimulants, herbal preparations, anti-inflammatories, homeopathics, antibiotics and ulcer medication. It had fountained out in a thick sheaf of misery when she’d opened the door, that first time she’d gone through the apartment while he was walking the beat. She’d been scouting him out, looking for something to quiet the Hunger for more than a nighttime. She’d wanted a meta, something to sit heavy in her stomach; instead, she’d gotten more than she wanted of Pantomime’s existence.

John Carrow was not an enigma she’d set out to unravel. She’d just wanted food, something real, something intense that might get Daxrathas off her back for a week. His street persona of Pantomime looked ideal -- a meta, not too strong, given to prowling the streets at night. But she’d been curious. She’d seen him coming home from work, stopping at the pharmacy, and like an idiot she’d had to find out why. Now she couldn’t kill him -- not with what she knew.

He wasn’t really one of Them. He was more like one of Her. She’d spent a couple of hours that night browsing through his books, noting his tastes, looking through his photographs (few) and possessions (fewer). She’d been thorough, she told herself, making sure he wasn’t a viable target. That was all. Just thorough. But a week later she’d trailed him on his rounds, watching him patrol the city in his faintly pathetic costume as he did battle with the lesser minions of evil. For fuck’s sake, he’d actually helped an old lady cross the road. It was so sickening that she’d nearly taken him then anyway, screw his depression and loneliness, for being such a pathetic little boy scout. But in the end it hadn’t been worth it and she’d stalked off home, glad to be rid of the loser.

Only she wasn’t rid of him. She’d trailed him twice again. Just in case he might be prey after all. Just in case he slipped up and deserved it. Just in case. The first night she followed him he’d run through the pathetic sub-hero routine until she hated him for it, hated him for making her see what his life was like. He’d helped a guy get into his car after he locked his keys in, pantomiming a new set. He’d helped a little kid find his mother in a shopping district -- wow, what remarkable powers of standing around looking for a distressed woman that took. And he’d stopped a pissed-off suit and tie from taking a swing at a meter maid who’d ticketed his Beamer. He hadn’t used his powers then either, as far as she could tell; he just made himself more annoying than the meter maid until the yuppie shit head went away. She’d given up then. She felt sick from watching him, and it was more rewarding to slide through the shadows into the back seat and grab the yuppie prick at the next red light. She’d left him dead at the wheel as the light turned green and she melted into the shadows -- let the paramedics figure that one out.

The next time had been better and worse. He’d actually done something, which she’d thought he would find almost as much of a relief as she would. It at least took her mind off of the question of why she was still trailing him. He’d gone down into the subway and she nearly hadn’t followed, but the dim fluorescent lighting was nothing like sunlight and it made everyone look pale. He’d looked at her oddly as she came onto the platform, but she’d kept her head down and avoided contact, her stomach making strange unpleasant spasms. Then the doors had opened and three gangsta punks in puffa jackets had bounded out with their hands full of purses and paper bags.

People were yelling behind them as Pantomime stood there like a startled deer. Then he’d flung his hands into motion, whipping out an invisible sack and making a hurling gesture. He was pretty good, she had to admit -- she’d almost heard the marbles as they hit the ground and the three muggers went down, feet flying out from under them at all angles. Then one of them had pulled a knife as he struggled to his feet, and it got pretty ugly. He’d grabbed a child from the crowd and held the knife to her throat, retreating backwards up the steps to the street as he snarled curses at Pantomime.

The other two lay there, seeing the angry faces of the crowd closing in on them, but Pantomime hadn’t seen them. He’d had eyes only for the small white face disappearing into the dark night, and he’d stood there, frozen, hands grasping uselessly at the air. Finally the mugger had pushed the girl down the long flight of steps as he turned to run. Pantomime just got there with what looked like a pillow -- the girl had been pushed out hard and was in the air most of the way down.

But he’d saved her. The face-painted freak had saved her, and he didn’t even stick around. The mother was too busy sobbing over her kid to say anything and the two thugs on the ground were being given a quick lesson in vigilante justice at the hands and boots of some of the passengers. Pantomime had stumbled out of the station looking pale and sweaty and acting as if his one goal in life was to get the hell out of the place where he’d just been a hero. She’d trailed him to a club nearby -- “Revival.”

He’d hauled himself inside looking like he was about to collapse. She’d stopped at the door, shying away from the possibility of lights, but then she’d seen a pack of Goths heading inwards. She followed them and fit in easily in the neon-lit dance floor, a weird combination of retro-punk and renaissance artwork in the foyer of an abandoned bank. The crowd was dense, black-clad, and trendy; her costume blended in perfectly.

It hadn’t been easy to keep sight of Pantomime, and when she saw him she nearly missed him. He’d smeared off the black diamonds around his eyes and taken off the gloves, and now he looked pretty much like everyone else in the place -- just older. But his sagging, wretched look as he crouched by the bar made her sure it was him. She sidled closer to watch him, uncomfortable as she crossed the floor. Dance floor, her mind whispered to her, and she flinched, feeling the stares of the crowd on her, the brushing of human forms on every side. The lights above dazzled her and she felt lost, caught in a sea of swaying bodies and trapped there under the lights where everyone could see her. It made her sick and nervous and she shoved her way through to the far side near the bar, pulling the cloak closer around her to cover the costume beneath. Strange faces turned to her, mouths moving silently under the heavy music, and black panic was rising in her by the time she staggered through and away from them, struggling frantically free of hands and eyes to plunge into a dim recess at the back of the bar.

She’d huddled there for an hour, sheltered from the faces that turned to scrutinize hers, watching him down drinks with a blind dedication. By the time he’d left he was staggering faintly, groping along the walls to find his way home. And she’d followed him.

Very late that night, in the twilight blue that was almost dawn, she’d stood over him. He’d sat up late drinking cheap Scotch and staring at the television as if Jerry Springer was the oracle of salvation, and she’d watched the pale flicker of the television screen until it finally went dark. In the cold blue dawn, when he was finally asleep, she’d stepped through the wall and stood over him, looking at him stretched restless on the cheap foam padding of the sofa bed. She’d watched him quietly, drinking in his form. Unconscious. Feeble. Helpless.

She’d left him there.

And now he’d finally bought the trouble he’d been looking for. He stared down the gun, his face grey, washed-out, hopeless. He knew it was the end; she could see it in his eyes. This was it. Second rate life, second rate powers, second rate death. He’d be a nothing, a comic side-note to the morning news. “Mime Gunned Down in Street Brawl” -- it wouldn’t even be heroic. It would be a sick laugh for the breakfast crowd and then John Carrow would be one more flush in the human sewer.

She hated being a fucking boy scout.

Franco grinned as he squeezed the trigger, feeling the tight pressure as he eased it back, seeing the look in the fuckin’ freak’s eyes -- the look of someone staring death in the face. It felt fuckin’ great; it was the highest high in the world, and he drank it in through his whole body as he squeezed slow and controlled.

The impact of the hit slammed into him across the shoulder and back, knocking the gun out of his hand and hurling him across the lot and into the chain link fence on the far side. He hit it hard enough to rip it free of the two nearest supports and continue into the wall of the alley behind it. By the time he slid to the ground he was unconscious and had had only a glimpse of the lithe figure standing in the street, hands pointed at the spot where he’d been standing a moment before.

Vinny could see her just fine. The black bolt of energy that had slammed Franco into the fence had snapped his attention around fast. Now he was calculating the odds of taking the bitch down before she could nail anyone else. She looked fucking dangerous but well, fuckable too, all leather and long black hair. She was pretty stacked up, a lot more up front than that little middle school chick that had gotten away. But she looked tough pretty tough for some chick standing alone in the middle of the street with Dominic coming toward her swingin’ a three quarter inch chain. There was something about her that made him hesitate.

A second later he was pretty sure he knew what it was. Maybe something to do with how pale she was, like a ghost or something. Maybe the way her black costume seemed to drink in the light. Or maybe, just fucking maybe, it was the way she reached out and opened Dominic up like a butcher shop window on Christian Street. Oh, fuck, there was shit around his fucking knees, and she hadn’t even looked like she was trying hard.

Vinny turned and puked, legs buckling as he tried to run, staggering blindly away with a thin dribble of vomited beer running down his chin. Joey had been hanging back from the start and Vinny could see him running like hell down 5th Street, leather jacket catching the light from the street lamps, vanishing around a corner with the mime fucking skating after him, skating on the invisible skates he’d been putting on back when Vinny could still think clearly. Then suddenly everything went -- lights, shapes, everything. He was lost, it was pitch black, and Dominic was out there somewhere, just like he’d seen him as he turned, trying to run, trying to fucking run with a dead look on his face and his fucking guts down around his knees. Dominic was still out there somewhere trying to run toward him, and Vinny stood in the street screaming until the police came to lead him away.

He ran the last one off, heart still racing. He was on autopilot. He’d just missed having his head blown off and he was running on fear and adrenalin. At least this kid wasn’t giving him any more trouble. He was setting land speed records on his way the hell out of here. And so would John Carrow, he thought.

This was way out of his league. Whoever she was, she’d hit that gunner with enough force to nearly kill him. If he didn’t get an ambulance call in fast, he was gone; he wasn’t even sure the guy was alive when he hit the ground. He swallowed, trying not to think about the sounds behind him as he’d skated after the last one. Whatever she’d done, he was glad he hadn’t seen it. Damnit, where the hell had she come from? He’s scanned the street before going in, trying to make sure that no reinforcements were showing up. Then he’d gone and boxed himself in -- stupid, stupid, stupid. How many frigging times was he going to forget that? Half the punks on the street had guns -- too many to keep falling back on that same lame routine. It was like it was in there in his head just waiting to frigging sabotage him every time he almost got things going right. Swearing at himself under his breath, he skate-slid into the welcoming dark of a narrow alley and nearly ran into her.

She was standing in the middle of the alley, just looking at him. He couldn’t help glancing down at her hands, wondering if they would be dripping blood. Nothing. Damn, she was creepy though. White skin, black hair, some sort of weird vampire/fetish thing going on with her costume. But young, too. More like a kid really -- a good fifteen years more prime than he was, probably just getting started and with powers like that.

It was her, too; he’d seen her on the subway, thought he’d caught her once or twice out of the corner of his eye. Never anything there when he looked, though. He stumbled to a stop, mimed the skates off, stole a few looks at her. Thank Christ he didn’t have to talk like this. She was stunning -- in the real sense of the word. Stunning like you couldn’t think straight. Eyes so dark that you fell down them. And she didn’t say anything. She just let the silence eat away at his nerves.

He was wound so tight he wanted to scream; the adrenalin rush was fading in his blood, his stomach was knotting up, his hands were shaking and he was ready to crack. Where the hell did she get it from? How did she get Power like a supernova? What the fuck did she think she was doing with it? He hesitated, torn, not knowing what to do or say. He ought thank her for saving his ass. He'd love to get his hands on that tight-clad body, whatever she was or wanted. And under that, thrumming on his nerves in a sharp arpeggio, was the gut instinct to run like hell and leave her there in the alley, a vacuum like the absence of a person waiting to suck him in. He looked at her, meeting her gaze as hard as he could, trying to see what she wanted from him.

Silence. Absolute silence, so heavy he wanted to scream through it. She met his gaze, her eyes stabbing into him and sending him all sorts of shit he couldn’t handle -- not now, not with his whole body trembling with the adrenalin rush and his stomach punching into him like a fist, knowing that he’d just traded his death for someone else's. There was a body back there cooling in the October night and she was staring him down, fascinating him, charming him like a snake charms a bird.

He swallowed and tried to take a step back, his feet faltering under him and his eyes still locked with hers. She glided forward and he watched her, burning with fear, dread and desire, split too many ways to act and hating himself for it. He felt the tide of panic rising in his frozen limbs and looked into the depths in her eyes. Hard shadows cut through them: hate and bitterness, fear, fascination, and loathing, resentment and under that - hunger, craving, desire wrapped so thickly in fear that it coiled and ate its own heart. He wavered, struggling with the fear and the deep knowledge that this was bad, really bad shit. But it was... enticing.

Familiar. Aching. It was too much like the wounds in his own spirit, deep-cut injuries beyond healing but not yet beyond compassion. She would hate him; she would fight him; she would hurt him, and badly. But she might... need him. She might want him. She stepped forward once more, a light footfall like a cat's, almost close enough now to touch. His mind felt fuzzy, slowly piecing together improbabilities. His age, his nothing status as a meta, his all too human body, his isolated existence - he weighed them against her youth, her power, her presence that made the deep fiber of his being crave and hunger and pull to her. He knew it didn't work. He knew that nothing could make it rational. Then she reached out and took his hand.

Cool. Strong. Electric. She touched his hand with hers, opened it as she stared into his eyes, that strange look in hers -- commanding, fascinating, hostile and bitter. He wanted to move but he couldn’t; he didn’t know what he would do if he could. She slid her hand under his glove, fingertips over his palm, nails digging in as if to deny the softness of the touch. Her hands were cool and smooth. She slid both hands under the glove and drew it away, still staring into his eyes, repelling and drawing him, hostile and enticing. Her hands were smooth white alabaster, monumental alabaster and so cold that suddenly he knew her, knew her and knew why he was here.

He knew what she was. Lucy. Carmilla. Geraldine. Claudia. He knew what she was and what she desired. His head swam, legs like water beneath him, while her eyes held his and would not release him. She took his hand, spread the fingers, brought it to her body as his mind grasped at shadows and his body swayed weakly on its feet. She pressed his hand over her heart, heel and fingers on the first swell of her breasts, palm on the cold flesh, pressed tight over a heart that did not beat. In her eyes was one brief moment of opening -- supplication.

His breath rasped in his ears. She reached out, pressed a hand to his chest. He felt the numb cold of it reach down through him, a shadow on his heart. His mind was a shriek of desire and gut-wrenching fear. He wasn’t made for this. He didn’t have what it took. He could feel his spirit bend and break but somehow he was still there, standing in the shadow of the alley and staring into eyes lit with a terrible reddish glow. He felt the cold weight of her hand on his chest, its slow, remorseless touch as it moved upward, brushed lightly over his collarbone and stroked the curve of his neck. A knot of ice sat heavily in his stomach as he read his meaning in her cloaked and wary eyes. He had what she desired. He was what she desired.

He knew what she wanted from him but he pushed it back, thrust it into the depths of his mind as the closeness, the touch and the feel of her drew in around him. Her hands moved lightly up his neck, her body closer, drawing him into her, drawing the folds of the thick black cloak around him. He closed his eyes, drawing in a ragged breath as he felt the curve of her breast, slid his hand down the slope of her side. She flinched at his touch, then steeled her body, pressed on to push her fingers into his hair, take his head and neck in her hands. He could feel the trembling in his body as he brought his hands up, palms pressed to the cool leather, the balls of his thumbs sliding under her breasts, heavy, good, but cold. She turned his head from her, his neck naked to the cold night air, and he trembled, knowing the moment that was to come.

His eyes shot wide, and for a beat of his heart, he saw her there bending over him, felt his surrender. Then she pulled his head back and he struggled, cried out in animal terror as the cold lips touched his neck. An instant later the moment was past and the dull, hard pain drove into him. She groaned as her power slid through his body, drawing his strength into her in a long tide of languor and ecstasy. He clung to her, trembling, feeling her hair around his throat, the cool smoothness of her cheek, the silken power of her body as she drank deep of him. The taut leather under his palms and the cold, silken stretch of her body filled his senses as he stared up at the stars and a slow blackness crept in to obliterate them. As he faded slowly from consciousness she raised her lips with a panting gasp, her mouth red with the flush of his lifeblood. She closed her eyes, breathing deep and hard, then looked down at him as he slid into the darkness.

What he saw in her eyes he could not find in words.

Orchid lay Carrow down on his sofa, her head still swimming with the power of the feeding. She didn’t know what he was other than alive. The feeding... She shook her head, shuddering at the memory of his blood coursing hot and vibrant over her tongue. She could feel the power of it raging and buzzing through her veins. Daxrathas had risen in her mind like a surfacing shark, circling and hungry, eager for her to drain this meta for him. She hadn’t. Not this time.

She rubbed her eyes and looked down at the slumped form. She remembered the feel of it -- the beat of his heart ebbing ever slower, his movements growing weaker, his soft cries fading to silence as he slumped against her body. She closed her eyes, brought back the feel of his pulse throbbing against her lips. Intoxicating, powerful -- she’d fought to release him before she drained him to the last. Now, pale and wasted, he lay on the couch where she’d dropped him, limbs limp and awkward as a broken doll. She could feel his helplessness, taste it like the tang of fear in the air, and the desire stirred in her again.

Daxrathas was murmuring in her ear, telling her that she could end the fear gnawing at the root of her power. She could destroy it now, destroy this little man who was nothing to her. He was helpless, weak, drained; death would come to him silently while he was unawares. He would feel nothing, and she would be rid of that sickening bolt of fear, that violent panic that had gripped her when he looked up, looked into her eyes and touched her.

She shuddered, then straightened, turning her back on Carrow and forcing down the fear and hunger. I feel you, Daxrathas. She sighed, pushed her hair back from her face, and refused to look again at Carrow's vulnerable form. Damnit. Leave me my own thoughts, at least.

She snarled to herself, feeling the aching, baffling mix rising in her again -- fear, hatred, anger, resentment. Why had she followed him? Why had she allowed him to touch her? He was a weakness -- a liability. Daxrathas was right. Humanity was for those who were still human. Mercy was for the weak, and pity was for the blind. She owed him nothing. She fed, like any other being. She owed him nothing more than he owed the cow his steak came from or the fish on his dinner plate. Weakness and sentimentality had no place in her world now. She knew what she needed to do to survive. What she needed was to rid herself of pathetic baggage like this.

She turned, eyes gleaming red in the dawn twilight, and drew herself up, poised over his huddled form with her hands raised to plunge into him. She glared down at the white curve of his throat, the faint blue life rising under it, and felt the ease with which she would destroy him. She stooped to conquer.

A moment later he was alone. The apartment was empty in the cool blue light of dawn, and only a faint echo from the alleyway nearby hinted at a snarl of bitter frustration. A moment later the sound had faded entirely, and he slept on.
 
 

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