#solo.

The basement was filled to the brim with smoke, cigarette fumes working in tandem with the smoke machines to give everything a dreamy quality. Clara was putting a cigarette to her own lips, inhaling burn up the last bit of tobacco before discarding of the thing. She was in her element. Sweat tingled on her bare arms and chest, the presence of bodies close to her bringing the comfort that came only when surrounded with so many. They moved as one along to the music, every bassline reverbing through the crowd.

The nightclubs on the Sunset Strip had become like home since the aos sí had moved there. She and the others ventured into the clubs that hosted numerous upcoming bands, slipping through the crowds to feed off groupies, bartenders and if lucky, the musicians on the stage themselves. Angela had fed off Neil Young herself at Roxy’s, putting another claim to fame to her name, and was not shy about bragging about it repeatedly. Clara was not interested in finding an artist with a large name to feed off herself, though — she preferred the up and coming ones.

Like this one. A band called First Relic, which had only three singles to its name and a debut album coming out in a few weeks time. The guitarist was playing his guitar with such swift technique that she simply stared at the way his fingers danced over the frets with stark focus, picking apart the chord progressions as he strummed and picked through them. 

She was hungry. Not for the patrons around her, not for the singer clinging to the microphone or the drummer slinging his sweaty bangs back. For him.

—

“Harley,” he shouted in her ear.

“Clara,” she shouted back.

It seemed there were little quiet moments in this world of theirs. Where she moved around as a spectator and inspirator, and he basked in the lights of the stage. But she was meeting him now and the way she had hungered for him could be answered. With her mouth close to his ear, she felt daring enough to touch him at the shoulder. The potential was positively seeping off of him, making her delirious with opportunity.

He seemed more bright eyed as she looked at him now. “What do you do, Clara?” 

“I inspire,” she answered, “I play. I saw you on stage last week.” 

The house around them was bursting at the seams. The air thick with smoke, the smell of liquor and beer sticky. She focused on only him.

He looked cocky for a moment. “Liked it, did you?”

“Very much so.” 

The evening saw them retreating to the sprawling garden, looking out over the twinkling lights of the city below them. Clara and Harley were still leaned in close, even if the necessity for it was gone. She had asked him about what he was working on, and he’d responded. She’d watched his pupils widen in enthusiasm and then she’d touched him again, making his speech grow even more passionate and colorful.

“I always carry this with me,” he murmured to her, gesturing at the small notebook he’d produced, jotting down chords and words. “Never know when the inspiration hits you.” 

Clara looked at what he’d written down. “Change that to an E minor,” she suggested, pointing down. “And you’re right. You never know when it hits you.” But she did, of course. She took from Harley, siphoning his life force as he wrote with fervor, the heat of his skin under hers warming her as much as he did. And he wrote the first strokes of a new song.

—

He rushed towards her as the stage lights dimmed, picking her up and spinning her around. He was warm, like he’d been basking in the sun, and Clara swept his hair from his face. “You were right,” he said, “You were right.”

“It was amazing.” 

First Relic had debuted a new song, the very one written in that rock star’s garden as a party echoed in their house. The crowd was whistling and hollering just behind the curtains but Clara only had eyes for Harley. For the past few weeks, the two of them had seen more of each other. They’d exchanged landline numbers first, then met for a hungover breakfast a week after their first meeting. Their breakfast meeting had turned into a lunch one, going up to his hotel room to fiddle with his guitar and try out new things. 

He’d called her later that night and told her he’d written something about her. There was a shy quality to his voice that had made Clara take pause, before she delved into the conversation further. She had taken a cab over to his hotel and listened to him play it, her fingers on his knee. 

After a while, he’d fallen asleep, guitar still in his hands. Clara had looked a the words he’d written for her and smiled to herself. It wasn’t altogether rare, to leave a wanting emotion in her subjects. She offered something they could not get anywhere else and who was she to deprive them, once she had them close to her?

And now they were here, backstage in yet another nightclub. She in his arms. His breath hot on her face before he kissed her. It wasn’t their first one, but it felt like a significant one all the same. It should not feel significant. It should feel fleeting and fun, like all escapades with humans should. She looked at him as he started to speak. “That bridge … fuck, so good. Did you hear that I tried it? The bit in the solo? They loved it. I loved it.” 

He let go of her, taking the rolled up hundred dollar bill from Ferris and snorting deeply from the mirror he offered. Then he was back looking at her. Clara wiped at his nose, then booped it. “They want you,” she said, nodding towards the crowd. They were chanting. They were wanting. That was her plight. She inspired to share, to watch him go off and conquer a crowd. She could not keep him for herself. She should not. Together they were creating art, and that was the purpose she served. She did not serve the giddy feeling inside her that had flourished when he had picked her up. 

Harley grinned at her, pressing another long kiss into her lips before stepping aside, back towards the stage with his bandmates. The crowd went wild. Clara watched from the side.

—

“So you … so when I say you’re my muse, that is true?” 

Clara chuckled, nodding. She was laying next to Harley in bed, their sheets tussled on the floor, their bodies bare. “In multiple ways, yes.” 

She did not always tell her subjects what she was. She did not always sink as much time into them like she did now. But Harley was intoxicating, the life he lived and the potential he and his band represented too large to resist. And she liked him, not just as a source of food or as a guitarist, but as who he was when you stripped all that away. That was dangerous. Humans were tools to use to create, used by muses to serve art, and Harley was becoming more than that to her. So she had to tell him.

He was thinking for a while. “So all the … everything I wrote since I met you …”

“It was still you,” she assured him, but a pained expression washed over her at the lie. Why was she placating him? He was a vessel, an instrument — she should not spare his ego. And yet she had, and now her stomach hurt. 

He creased his brows further. “But …”

In the decade since Daiyu had cut contact with her family, there had been few and far between moments where she had spoken to her siblings. A few texts, here and there, sparse moments of awkward contact. There were days where she longed for that kind of proximity, where she hoped that she’d either gather the courage to message her sister or brother, or either of them would. Phone calls were even more rare. She could count those on one hand.

So when her phone lit up, ringtone breaking through the silence of her home and her sister’s name blinked at her from the screen, Daiyu felt frozen. Contact that direct usually meant there was a death in the family. That, or someone had gotten married, or someone had gotten a kid. Weddings, funerals and babies, those were causes that demanded a call from time to time.

For a moment she stared at her phone. She had been half asleep, rubbing Nugget’s belly while sprawled on the couch. Her body was reeling from an intense hunt, her skin tired and her calves aching from how she had sprinted. But now that Inna was calling, she was wide awake. She sat up, Nugget pushed aside carefully, and took her phone. She would pick up, in just a second. She just needed to recalibrate for a moment.

Before the ringing could end, she answered the phone. “Inna?” 

“Hey.” 

Something was wrong. She heard it from the inflection of that hey. Almost a decade had passed, and she still was able to hear when Inna was cracking. Probably because it was so rare to her hear sister emote. 

“Hey,” Inna said again. She was quiet for a moment. “You never came.” 

Daiyu frowned, pushed herself up from the couch. Phone pressed between her shoulder and ear, she moved to pull her hair in a ponytail, walking to the fridge. “To what?”

“Any of it. A birthday or … Christmas, or any of it.”

She heard the slur in her sister’s voice. Inna drank, but not the way most of their family did. She drank for the social etiquette of it. For the taste — she was a self described wine connoisseur and a snooty one that that. She did not get drunk, at least not where people could witness it. She did not lose control. Not like that, and not in any other way either. 

“You know —”

“Why? Yeah. Because you’re still afraid of dad. Because you’re a child in adult’s clothing who thinks moving hundreds of miles away even means anything. I don’t care. You should have come, just once.” There was the sound of liquid pouring. “When he turned ten, for example. Or any other time. The age doesn’t matter. Not like ten is any more important than nine or eight. There were so many fucking times you could have come. When Lena was born. When … we could have figured something out. Sasha …” She was taking a sip, now. “Why didn’t you?”

“Why are you being a bitch about this now?” Daiyu could feel dread curl in her stomach. Her sister called for three things, only. A wedding and another child seemed off the table. 

Closing her eyes, she leaned against the fridge door. She remembered Sasha as a pink shrimp-like baby. Her first nephew. The child that made her an aunt, rather than just a waste of a sister. She had not known him long. She had held him, had been afraid of dropping him, of ruining his not-fully-formed head. She had looked at him and wondered how this child would grow into a hunter. She remembered her sister, round and angry in pregnancy but glowing with pride when she looked down at her son. She remembered that all the toys she’d bought were not yet age appropriate. She had not stuck around to see Sasha grow old enough to play with them. Just a few weeks after he’d turned one year old, she’d left.

Inna was drinking on the other side of the line. “You know why.”

Her sister sounded small. She did not remember many times where she had sounded small. Inna did not lose control, nor did she lose posture. Daiyu was quiet. That too, was rare. But they were no longer in their parental home, where making noise seemed to be the only power she had left. So she remained quiet.

“She killed him,” her sister admitted after a while. This was her tactic. Silence to draw out the truth. “We were out on a hunt. One of his first. A simple one. I’m … going out with him.” Unsaid went the reference to all the times their father had sent them out alone. All the ways in which he’d primed them for ruthless hunterdom. “I was. It was us, and Esha, and … and some others. He was hiding, was just gonna watch us, but this siren got him, she got him, and her fucking song …” 

Daiyu was quiet now, but not in a way to draw out the truth. She did not know what to say. She felt struck. Inna was taking another sip. It crackled through the silence. 

“She ripped out his heart.” 

Daiyu turned around, back pressed against the fridge. She let herself slide down towards the ground. She opened her mouth. Why did you call me, she wanted to ask. 

It wasn’t like Daiyu had ever been much of a comfort to her sister. At least not in recent years. But there were those fuzzy childhood memories, of Inna’s tears on her pillowcase. Of their fingers linked. Of Daiyu knocking at her bedroom door or vice versa. Of holding her after her first heartbreak. Of Inna coming to her, pregnant and worried about raising a child after all they had gone through as children. Of the text she had sent when pregnant with the second, even more worried. Of all the unsent texts that had disappeared from Daiyu’s own phone.

When Daiyu thought of her sister, she imagined a closed door, but maybe that wasn’t fair. The door had been opened plenty of times, by either party. She still remembered the way they held hands. Hers on top, Inna’s below. How they’d swing their arms in tandem. She remembered the fact that Inna had taught her to braid her hair, once, and that she still used those lessons weekly.  

There was also something her uncle had said, once. About her having a bigger heart than most of them. About having to guard that, but not so closely that nothing would be let in.

She swallowed the comment. She knew it was cruel. She knew that even with all those miles between them, she could not be that evasive of this grief. “I’m sorry, Inna.” Her voice was small too now. Daiyu pulled her knees up to her chin, leaned her head on them. “Do you …” 

“Don’t,” she muttered. “You don’t have to come.” Daiyu wondered how Inna still knew exactly what she was going to say. “I don’t want … no scene, nothing at the funeral.” There was a tick then, something moving in her sister’s throat. She recognized it as a choked down sob. 

“Alright,” Daiyu said. “Okay.” A beat. “What about the siren?” 

Owen had been gone for a while now. Jenny was not sure how much time had passed, but it had to be some. With no way to actually tell time – her phone abandoned at home on the coffee table and her watch gone unused for weeks – she had been left to try and figure out through her biological clock, which might as well be non existent. Outside the world ravaged on. She heard sirens and screams, tires squealing around corners, and more screams. Jenny sat on the ground, back leaning against the wall, the bag squeezed between her chest and knees as she huffed the Axe and wept.

She understood now that there was a connection to her clearmindedness and the deodorant. How or why, she did not know. It was a question for later. If there was a later where she returned home and could get her phone and ask one of the people who should know. An hour ago, perhaps, she had tried to scour the locker room for other bottles of deodorant. In abandoned lockers, in the bin in the corner, in gym bags. She’d collected them all and looked at them, their shitty designs and horrible scent names. She’d then gone on to spray them one by one, inhaling their thick scent. Floral and musky and fresh and plenty more smells entered her nose, overwhelming her senses but not in the same way the Black Vanilla did.

Jenny had lost control when inhaling the smell from can number three, tongue slithering out and swinging around the locker room, banging against lockers and the bench, then attempting to get the door to budge. She had smelled the blood right outside the room, but was incapable of getting the door to open for her, to break her free. 

Black Vanilla had straightened her out and Jenny had returned to the ground, clutching the bag and that was where she had remained for hours. 

Her mind was folding in on itself, replaying the gore that had happened at the end of her tongue. She remembered it quite clearly — the way she’d killed a man so swiftly, the fight she’d been in with Owen. The way he had looked at her when she’d come back to herself and how he had not moved to kill her, but had in stead stuck her in this room.

She did not understand why. He had killed that vampire in front of her, had threatened to kill her pre-emptively before she’d even turned. She had killed three fit men in front of him and had attempted to kill him too, and yet he was now showing her mercy (even if it came in the shape of being locked up in a smelly room). If she were to go by any kind of fictional standards, she certainly was the kind of vampire that should be killed. Not that she wanted to be. She felt no desire for a punishment fitting her crimes, to explode in blood like her sire had. But there was a part of her that wondered why her punishment was only this. If the hammer would come to fall. If she should be wanting a stake to the heart now. 

She could do it. Die and explode into a pool of blood and become a cautionary tale. She saw it. An icarian story about blind desire, about becoming a monster. Because as she sat there and rethought the things she had done when she’d been outside of the locker room, she knew the divide between her and her frenzied self was thin. Those memories were her. The desire for the blood was hers.

She cycled through these thoughts, touching upon the thought of Baz. Of the previous surge, when she had been human and had watched them cycle through faces while surrounded by three fae. In awe of their forms, even if one of them had been a little weird and grey. She thought about where they were now. If they were safe. If they were okay. If Monica or Teagan was with them now. She thought of Rosemary and her lack of magic. Of Metzli, who might be on a rampage similar to her own. Her mind bit down on the people she’d gathered in her odd little community, struggling with the concern for others when her own pain was already so large but finding distraction in it too.

Jenny moved after a few hours. She peeled herself off the floor and walked to the showers, where she let the water clatter until it turned the right temperature (scalding hot) and she was able to stand under the water. The Black Vanilla was not feasible here, the scent minimized by the water, so she tossed the bag to the dry area and let her mind slip. It was easier, perhaps, to be a creature of rage. To slam her tongue against tiles, to break a showerhead off and make water spray around the room. Her clothes were soaked, blood circling the drain, and she was licking up every last drop that slid down her body. She ended up on all fours, tongue sweeping up blood mixed with water, desperate for something to satiate her.

The shower took at least two more hours. She bounced out eventually, slamming herself and her tongue against the door again. No dice once more, but not for lack of trying. Jenny was roaring, screaming, growling against the largest foe she had known so far. The most unrelenting one. An non bleeding one. She scratched and kicked and slammer her tongue, but the door was not breaking. 

Eventually she found her way to the hissing scent again, and Jenny decided to not let go of the bag again. The shower had cleaned her, somewhat, and she busied herself with drying off. Her clothes draped over benches, her body dried off with a clean towel she stole from a bag (at least, she hoped it was clean) and then she sat on the ground with the towel between her naked behind and the tiles. She went back to folding her mind, rocking herself on the ground while huffing the Axe, going from whimpering to wailing to laughter. She tried to sleep but only found herself screaming at the memories or starting to talk to herself in circles. Hands pulled at hair, scratched at the bricks of the wall, plucked at the skin of her neck. Jenny thought this might perhaps be where she would slip into the madness that went hand in hand with vampirism in so many stories. What better moment to go mad than now? 

A few hours later again, she moved around the locker room in the nude, holding her can of deodorant close and rifling through the bags and coats left behind. She started imagining a poem about being nothing but a piece of clothing left in a locker room, wished she was just a coat filled with stupid belongings, its only function to keep its owner warm. She imagined being locked away for most of the year, only to make an appearance when it was warm again. She wrote it in her mind, with no paper or pencil or phone to aid her. She huffed the coats, then stopped as the human scent almost threw her off. She found a pack of cigarettes and a lighter and started to chain smoke, sitting on a bench and trying to focus her sense of smell on the Black Vanilla rather than the burnt tobacco.

She got dressed hours later. Her clothes felt crunchy but mostly dry. She was starting to wonder if someone was coming for her and who it would be. Owen, again? Another slayer, who would finish the job? A policeman? A gym goer who just wanted his coat back? A hopeful part wondered if it would be someone she could eat. A fearful part of her wondered the exact same thing.

The lighter clicked in her hand aimlessly for an hour. She watched the flame dance and die and dance and die over and over again until it was out of fuel, then tossed it across the room. She started to talk not to herself, but to the can of Black Vanilla, wondering how it was helping her and if this was helping, or if it would be better to let herself go again. She asked it about the passage of time. If it wanted to be a coat, too. If it was going to die out soon. She squeezed it into her mouth, choking on the chemicals but feeling almost human due to the reaction. She returned to the floor again and remained there until —

“Jenny?” 

A voice rang out. Jenny pulled her legs closer. She squeezed Black Vanilla and inhaled her fumes. Was she truly going mad now? 

“Jenny?” 

That voice was familiar. It was Jade. Here to finish her off, or here to release her? 

“Jenny?”

She swallowed thickly. Lifted her head and shouted back. Whatever Jade was here for, she would face it. Anything but this room.

He heads to the kitchen and grabs a can of ginger ale from the refrigerator before turning off the lights and heading upstairs. He can hear his mother's gentle breathing coming from the master bedroom as he walks past on his way to his room. Ellie is spending the night at her boyfriend's and the light under Jessie's door is off, but she's always been more of an early bird than a night owl.

By the time Kevin is done with his shower, Saturn is already fast asleep on his bed, belly up as she chases squirrels in her sleep. Tiny bits of gray are starting to come in on her muzzle, not a lot, but enough to remind him that dogs live much shorter lives than humans do, and he willfully steers his mind away from that painful train of thought.

The fans on his computer whir quietly as he wakes up the machine, deciding to forego his daily habit of checking his email and bank account and instead opting to put on some music and roll a joint. Practiced fingers deftly pack and twist the rolling paper and it's not long before he is standing at his window and lighting up.

He chokes back a bitter laugh as he has a sudden flashback to exactly fifteen years ago, brooding at this very window, smoking a joint and pining over the same boy. Fifteen years, and he has all but nothing to show for it. His lips twist into a grimace and he wishes the weed would work a little faster. But he knows this kind of pain wouldn't be dulled by even the most potent of strains.

Kevin lets the joint burn out as he starts crying. He's so goddamn tired of crying, but at least he's managed to keep it together enough so that these breakdowns only happened in private. Every time he has a moment of quiet, he is reminded of the devastation in Jude's eyes, the broken way he had sounded when they had talked at the gala. So Kevin does what he can to keep himself busy, pushing himself past what he knows his limits are because the constant ache in his joints is preferable to the way his chest feels it has been hollowed out.

Sliding down against the wall, Kevin brings his knees to his chest and tries to keep the sound of his sobbing down, lest he wake his mother or his sister. Self-loathing and guilt bubble up uncontrollably, and there has been a lump in his throat since that night that only grows with every passing day. He knows he should talk to someone, find a way to get out the emotion that spirals through him, but any time he tries, he is choked off by more shame and frustration. What right does he have to complain when he is to blame in the first place?

The city is still alive below her at this late hour, oblivious to the black-clad specter leaping nimbly from one gutter to the next, catching the railing of a rusty fire escape without so much as a creak of metal. As she runs, Avery thinks about the task at hand; it’s not worth reading into, the fact that feels like a milk run compared to missions she’s received in the past. Fumiko’s words are in the back of her mind, but only briefly: “If you’re genuinely interested in contributing beyond courier assignments…”

She’s not.

Avery genuinely considered refusing this assignment, or at least pretending she was too drunk to hear the tapping of the bird at her window. And yet here she still is: falling into line like an obedient dog, but more like a fighting dog brought to heel than one that enjoys its work.

Clarion News is both the logical and most dangerous place to start; she’s well aware the tall glass castle keep of a building is staffed twenty-four-seven, which doesn’t stop Avery but it does put her on a higher alert than it might otherwise. Even so, it’s easy enough to find a window devoid of light just a few stories up, as well as an unlocked window – because who would be crazy enough to try to get into the building this way?

Cameras are easily avoided with a keen enough eye, and Avery slips from shadow to shadow with nary an audible footfall on the ugly brown carpeting. It takes a couple of attempts before she manages to find the office of someone worth ransacking; on the corner, naturally, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking the city. Avery pays the view no mind as she picks through stacks of files and folders, leaving everything as neat as she found it. There isn’t much here, which shouldn’t be surprising. The books are tidy to the point of sanitization, suspicious only in their lack of suspicion. Avery doesn’t have it in her to be frustrated. She only files those thoughts away for her report and moves on to the next place.

The Current is much less glamorous and far easier to infiltrate, with a lax scattering of cameras and a skeleton security crew. The corner office Avery finds here is also much less organized, which is actually reassuring – she can only hope these books won’t be as bleached clean.

Combing through the mess is annoying and methodical, with her leaving every file folder as askew as she found it. Fast food wrappers are moved gingerly from desk to chair and then back again, and a moldy half-cup of coffee is left untouched for more than one reason. This search is starting to look like it’ll come up as empty as the last before Avery sets her sights on a squat filing cabinet in the corner, barely concealed behind a chair stacked with archival paper prints. She moves it carefully and soundlessly out of the way, willing the teetering stacks not to fall, and crouches to unroll the belt of tools at her hip. She probably could’ve picked the lock with a paperclip and a hairpin, meaning her far more professional set of tools makes embarrassingly quick work of the budget lock.

The only sound Avery has let out so far escapes as a quiet hum of approval; these files have clearly been gone through time and time again, the edges worn and discolored by oily fingerprints and smudged ink.

Taking a half-step back, Avery spreads a couple of the files out on the floor in front of her, eyes rapidly scanning the lines and lines of figures even in the dim light. Once again, the damning evidence is in the omission; money poured into properties without clear use, addresses in districts neither business nor residential. It isn’t what she’s looking for – there’s still no clear evidence the Du Bois had anything to do with the assassination or the disappearance of the heads of office – but the carefully laid out addresses of a few family safehouses is a decent enough consolation prize.

So Avery hopes, anyway. As much as she’s never cared about being a good little soldier, she does have some pride, and that pride tells her it’d be embarrassing to come up empty when the stakes of this mission already feel so low.

Unfortunately, it’s the brief flashes of her compact camera taking snapshots of the evidence that alert the passing security. Beyond that, he’ll have no idea what hit him – a smear of shadow darting up from the corner, indistinguishable, finding exactly the right point at his neck to pinch and wait until two-hundred some odd pounds of muscle turn to putty. Avery manhandles him into the desk chair with an unceremonious grunt. He’s unlikely to have seen enough of her even to get a bead on her height, so she leaves him slumped over the desk as if in the throes of an unfortunate nap.

In another time she might’ve done more to discredit him – sprinkled him with the smell of whiskey, or put one of the rummaged, damning files in his hands while he was still passed out. Not tonight, though. This man is just putting food on the table; she doesn’t know the life he leads, how many kids he might have. She’s not here to penalize anyone for doing their job in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hopefully he’ll just wake up wondering what the fuck hit him, and go back to his beat too embarrassed to bring it up to anyone when he doesn't clock anything missing.

After a few more minutes of careful picture-taking, Avery replaces everything exactly where it was found, locks the file cabinet, and slides the precariously balanced chair of papers back into the divots the legs have left in the carpet.

As she slips out of the building the way she came and escapes back up to the rooftops, Avery heads for the designated drop point and idly wonders if the Shibata will be disappointed with her intel. She wonders if she would’ve brought them the useful stuff even if she’d found it. She wonders if they’ll think she’s withholding it even if she isn’t, even if she thought about it. That would probably be the worst, she thinks: that they’d assume she’s being disobedient, even when she wasn’t. Not that she hadn’t given them plenty of reason to assume that, anyway – it’d only be annoying in that she wouldn’t have the satisfaction of actual disobedience.

None of that really matters, at the end of the night. Avery leaves two rolls of film tucked where she knows they’ll only be discovered by the right hands and heads homeward, to a dark apartment that feels like her only refuge anymore.