Blood of My Blood
                         by Jim Butcher

  "The desire to eat human flesh is quite natural," she assured me.  "But it will pass. 
In time.  Perhaps."
  Elaine was tall, attractive, though her face was a little too narrow to be called
beautiful.  She moved with a restless grace, like all of the beasthearts, and there was a
subtle heat around her, in her perfume, her shadow, the fall of her brown hair.  But why
should there not be?  She was one of the Forever.
  Just as I am, I told myself.  My self answered, solidly, I am not like her.
  Elaine had watched me stare out the window as the last of the students left for the
day.  Some of them mine.
  "What does Jonathan want of me this time?" I asked her.
  Elaine laughed, a sound too lively for the deserted classroom.  She tried to lay her
hand over mind.  I moved mine.  She frowned, and put hers back in her lap.   "What
does he always want from you, Thomas?" she said primly.
  "Some pointless little errand."
  "None of them are pointless," she asserted.  "If nothing else, they will make you
grow used to obeying him.  And enable you to earn his respect."
  I rose, and I saw her flinch.  I was stronger than her, with the sunlight pouring
through the windows in the late afternoon, and she knew it.  If she made me angry, I
could put her through a wall, and she knew that, too.  "I don't see any reason why I
should obey him.  And I don't give a damn if he respects me or not."
  "He is your sire," she said.  Her tone was more polite.  "He has gifted you with life
everlasting."
  "I respectfully decline."
  She laughed, uncertain if it was a joke or not.  "It is late to be worrying about that
now, Thomas."
  I felt a surge of rage beginning somewhere down deep, and I walked to the window
to stand in the sunlight and take deep breaths.  The sunlight always helped to contain
it, keep it hidden.  The Hunger.  It was power, if you knew how to use it--if you wanted
to use it, to feed it.  I didn't.
  Elaine watched me, silently, and crossed her long legs.  I heard the rustle of cloth,
and for a moment, I saw nothing before my eyes except her naked body pinned
beneath mine, she screaming out her fury and ecstasy as I took her, tore out her throat,
and feasted on her flesh.  It took me several deep breaths, there in the sunshine, to get
the thoughts out of my head.
  "Are you. . . all right, Thomas?" she finally asked.  I could hear how nervous she
was.  I didn't blame her.  I had more than enough Hunger bottled up inside of me to
overwhelm her, whether she was a century older or not.  Ah, moderation.
  "To tell you the truth, Elaine, I'm starving," I said sweetly.  "Why don't you give me
your message and toddle on out of here.  Unless you'd like me to entertain you."
  Clouds passed over the sun, and the lights in the room made it brighter inside than
out.  I watched her shake her suddenly-pale face, a little twitchy motion, in the ghostly
reflection of the window.  "No," she said.  She drew an envelope from her backpack, the
most important part of disguising oneself as a natural piece of college campus life, and
tossed it down on the desk at the front of the room.
  "It's all in there," she said.  I turned to face her, and she folded her arms across her
stomach.  I wouldn't really have hurt her, I told myself.  I wasn't sure I believed me. 
"Jonathan just wants you to find him.  Do not speak to him.  Do not approach him. 
Simply discover where he is."
  "Jonathan's got a dozen cops in his pocket," I said.  "I'm a history professor.  Why is
he asking me to do this kind of work for him?"
  "I do not question Jonathan," she said stiffly.
  "I hope you like him, then," I said.  "Because you're going to be stuck licking his
boots for a while."
  "And you do not?" she challenged.  I started towards her, and she backed towards
the door, balanced on her toes.
  I smiled, and stopped at the envelope, to pick it up and browse the contents.  It was
the usual sort of thing: a short report in very terse terms, laser-printed in Times New
Roman, one photograph, and a substantial little bundle of hundred-dollar bills.
  "I don't want to be what he is," I told her.  "He knows that.  And he knows that's why
he doesn't have to sweat when I tell him to go drown himself in a toilet."
  "Everyone wants to be what he is," she said spitefully.
  I turned the photograph over.  It was a man, balding, late forties.  The typed caption
read, "Gregory L. Alexander."  
  "I don't," I told her.  She stood there, frowning at me, while I read the report. 
According to it, Mr. Alexander had been doing some amateur photography at night, and
taken a photo of one of the beasthearts who had been out romping near Lake
Thunderbird.  Jonathan had deemed the man to be a danger.  He was to be found, the
report said, and  appropriate steps' were to be taken.  Which meant that they intended
to turn him, kill him, or play with his head until he wasn't going to be talking about what
he had seen.  Christ.  The report forbade me to speak or otherwise make contact with
the man.
  As if.
  I finished the report, read it again, studied the photograph once more, and generally
tried to ignore Elaine until she went away.  She didn't.  So I lifted my eyes to her and
stared.
  She met my gaze and stared back.  I felt an invisible tension between us, something
the was building, drawing and shoving at each of us at once.  She was stronger than I
thought--strong enough to be making me strain as another train of uncontrolled images
began to roll across the front of my thoughts, like a movie being played on the back of
my eyelids.  My students, mostly, trapped in a room with me, all of them so close, warm,
human, rich with desire, life, energy, promise, hope, pain.  I saw them, heard them, felt
them, felt my teeth extending, tearing, first only to drink and then to hungrily devour, felt
my body respond with a need that I had once considered sexual.
  I was having the same effect on her, putting her through her own delightfully private
hell of torment.  But I was better at resisting my desires than she was.  God knows, I've
had enough practice.
  She broke first, looking away with a little whimper, eyes desperately searching the
floor for something to focus on.  Her chest was heaving, nicely rounded breasts doing
pleasant things to the shape of her sweatshirt.  Had she not broken the gaze, she might
have lost control of her Hunger, and come for me.  I would have mauled her.
  "Is there anything else?" I asked her.
  She took a moment to find her voice, still looking down so that I could not see her
face at all.  "You'll break," she said.  "You can't hold out forever.  No one does.  You'll
give in and then you'll be at the bottom again, with all of the rest of the novices."
  I laughed at her, and I saw it strike home.  Her cheeks burned.  "Get out," I told her. 
I put the report and the photo back in the envelope and threw them at her chest.
  Elaine caught them, after a fumble, and then left without another word.
  What a bitch.  But what could you expect, from a werewolf?
  I waited a few moments, going over what I knew in my mind a few times, before I
headed out of the classroom, and towards my car.
  It was a Thursday evening, and I had no classes to teach on Friday, this semester. 
I tried not to be on campus any more than I had to.  I thought it might make it a little
more difficult to score tenure with the university if I ate some co-ed that came into my
office.  One little murder, and people will never let you live it down.
  Norman, Oklahoma, was an old college town.  The trees were thick and abundant,
and they leaned over most of the streets, sheltering them from sunlight.  Maybe that
was why Jonathan liked it so much--you never could tell.
  I headed out east on some rickety old back roads, towards Lake Thunderbird.  The
location of the sighting had been listed in the report, and I knew the general area of
where the beasthearts tended to go on their mini-rampages.
  Beasthearts were simultaneously the most and least dangerous of the Forever.  All
of we immortals have to feed to keep on going.  We eat people.  Or parts of people.  Or
less tangible things about people.  Beasthearts don't try to control their Hunger at all. 
They just indulge it, until eventually there's nothing that will sate them but human flesh. 
They change when they're after it, and it's nothing like you see in the movies.  Nothing I
care to remember too closely.
  That's the last stage.  The most obvious one.  Most of the immortals chose a less
extreme path.  Flesh could sate the Hunger, for a while, but all you really needed was
blood to keep control of yourself.  Blood could be had a lot more easily, too, and
without necessarily killing the mortal involved.  A little nudge to the mind, and they'd
remember the experience as something else, usually something that they didn't care to
reveal.  Werewolves and vampires, oh my.  We were the source for the stories, the
rumors, the tales.  The truth was a little simpler and a lot nastier.
  Being immortal, I had to feed, too.  I took the third way.  The one that didn't hurt
anyone.  The others would have laughed at me for it if they knew--but they'd stayed the
hell out of my way while they did.  Even Jonathan, our own home-grown Prince of
Darkness, didn't screw with me lightly.  He could beat me--we both knew that now--but I
was just weird enough to make him cautious.
  And I could go around in sunlight with impunity.  A happy little benefit of having not
killed anyone for dinner.  I had all my strength (considerable) and all my powers (fewer
than I let on) available to me at high noon.  Sunlight would strip others of my kind down
to barely superhuman at all.  The other Forever got pushed further and further from the
sunlight, the more they killed. 
  Jonathan kept his ass underground during the day, and on nights when the moon
was too bright.  Scary.
  By the time I'd gotten done rehashing all of this, I'd made it to the lake, and the park
where the photo had been shot.  I pored over the place for a while, before it got dark. 
Nothing.  I got bored and dirty tromping around, and there were these annoying little
thorn bushes everywhere.  By the time it got dark, nature was calling, and there were
thunderclouds overhead, rumbling threats down to the ground.
  I stepped to one side of the main park area and saw to the watering of one of those
damned little thorn bushes.  And there, I found a jen-yoo-wine Clue, trademark, patent
pending.  I hunted around for a napkin someone had thrown away, so I could wipe it off
first.
  It was one of those canisters that goes over a roll of 35mm film.  And, right there on
a little black and white sticker, it read, "Purcell's Custom Photoshop" and listed an
Oklahoma City Address and phone.  Christ, how simple could this be?
  I drove home, back to within a few blocks of the University, and grabbed my phone
book.
  Gregory Alexander was listed in Bethany.  I called and double-checked with the
operator, and then, just for the heck of it, I called his house.  A woman answered, and
her voice was tight with tension, worry.  I could hear a pair of kids arguing over
something in the background.
  "Mrs. Alexander?" I asked.
  "Yes."
  "May I speak to Mr. Alexander?"
  "He's. . . not available at the moment."
  I hung up on her.  Then I called up Purcell's, and caught them just before they
closed.
  "Hello, Purcell's," said a man's voice.  He had a really thick accent that you just
don't find anywhere but Oklahoma.  Sort of good-ole-boy meets Jed Clampett.
  "Hi, I'm a customer and I haven't gotten any of my invoices from you guys in a while. 
I wanted to make sure you had the right address."  I had read somewhere that you
should always approach these things through the billing department--people are always
eager to make sure they do anything they can to get their money out of you.
  I could practically hear the man frown.  "Oh yeah?" he said.  "What's your name, sir,
I can try to check in this damned computer."
  "Gregory Alexander," I told him, of course.
  "Hang on," he said.  There was a painful silence, during which I heard a key click. 
One key.  
  "Hell," the man said, sotto.  There was more silence, and I think he managed to hit
two keys in the next couple of minutes.
  "There it is," he said at last.  He sounded inordinately pleased with himself.  He
gave me an address in Oklahoma City.  Not Bethany.  I smiled.  
  "Thank you, that's correct," I told him, and hung up.  Hanging up on some hapless
person is therapeutic.  Try it some time.
  It would be simple to call Jonathan's number, give him the address, and cut myself
clear of the mess.  I stared at my phone.  I wanted to know more.  The Forever don't get
worried when someone takes their picture, as a rule.  I'm told some of them don't even
show up on film.  As for the rest of them, who's going to believe it?  It's easier to
convince your average cop that someone waving around a photo and screaming about
monsters is a nutcase than it is to convince him that the monsters are real.  Trust me, I
tried it once.
  I left the phone where it was, and picked up my keys.
  I stopped in a Texaco (I know, disloyal to the whole Texas-Oklahoma rivalry, but
they were cheaper, and had the credit card things there so I didn't have to talk to a
cashier) to fuel up my car, which had to feed a lot more than I did.  But then, it was
older than me.  1960 must have been a very good year.
  It was while I was pumping gas that suspicions dawned on me.  There was a little
illustration of a race car, proclaiming some super-product, probably.  My eyes were
drawn to the little black and white flag being waved, with its checkerboard pattern.  Or
chessboard pattern.  
  I kept the grin off of my face, and just hit the highway instead.  The drive went about
like I expected it to.  Traffic was kind in Oklahoma City.  The highways were hardly ever
crowded, and you could relax when you were driving.  It's those little benefits that make
the place worth living in.
  Gregory Alexander's alternate address proved to be a rather nice little apartment.  A
phrase such as  love nest' would not have been inappropriate or unkind, I thought.
  I knocked on the door of the top-floor apartment, and waited.  I have this little
personal rule about breaking and entering.  I avoid it when I can.
  I heard something inside, a quiet movement.  But no one came to the door.
  "Mr. Alexander," I said.  "I just want to talk to you.  Please, open the door."
  "Get out," came his voice from the inside.  "Or I'm calling the police."
  "Come on, Alexander," I said.  "You don't want to do that.  And I don't think you want
me to talk to you about this through your door, either."
  There was a silence, and then he opened the door.  He backed away very quickly,
and then said, "I have a gun."
  "Did you get your license to carry?" I asked, entering.  I kept my hands in plain
sight.  Thunder spoke again outside, in an almost corny fashion.  Christ.  The last thing
I needed was this guy getting spooked and putting a bullet in me.  I shut the door
behind me with my foot.
  Alexander ignored my question, but then, in his place, I might have, too.  "Why are
you here?  Did you bring the negatives?"  He was in his late forties and looked as if he
should have been going walking a few times a week since he got out of college.  He
was dressed in a business suit and a large-caliber revolver.  His left hand held a
cellular phone.  Both hands were pretty shaky.
  Negatives, was it?  The game is afoot, Watson.  "Not yet.  I'm here to talk."
  He shook his head.  "Forget it.  I know what you people are.  Give me what I want or
get out."
  I took a step towards him.  "Mr. Alexander, I'm not going to hur--"
  He drew back the hammer on the revolver.  "I'm not going to wait for you to change!"
he said, his voice high with panic.  "I'll kill you right now."
  I can be fast.  Damned fast (no pun intended).  But I wasn't sure I could get across
the room to disarm him before he put a little hole in my chest and a big hole in my back. 
Some of the Forever could shake such things off without batting an eye, but I wasn't
sure I was one of them.
  "Okay, okay," I said.  I licked my lips, to let him know he was scaring me. "Um.  Are
you sure you don't want to negotiate this at all?"
  He clenched his teeth.  "You tell your people that we're through doing business. 
And either I get the negatives back or I splash the truth all over the front pages."
  Of the tabloids.  Sure, buddy.  "I'll tell them," I said.  I took a step back, towards the
door, and opened it without turning away from him.  Damn.  If he wasn't so wired, I
might be able to get some more out of him.
  I slid out of the apartment, and shut the door.  I heard him shove bolts closed and
move something heavy in front of it a moment later.  I turned and walked towards the
stairs, and took them down instead of the elevator.  It was only after there wasn't a gun
pointed at me any longer that the adrenalin really flooded through me.  I stopped on the
stairs, sat down, and curled my knees up to my chest, hugging them and breathing
hard.
  The Hunger rose up and twisted at the inside of me.  Imagine a day when you were
a kid, when you spent the whole afternoon swimming, or outside running, and only at
the end of it realized that you hadn't eaten.  Do you remember that hollowness, that
pain?  Like being hungry was the worst thing you'd ever felt in your life.  The Hunger
the Forever feel is similar--but instead of touching just our bodies, it reaches deeper,
puts holes in our minds that long to be filled with sensation and action.  Add to that lust,
the kind you felt when you were just barely a teenager and didn't really understand it,
and you might have a picture of what I felt like.  I didn't understand the Hunger.  It
fucking scared me.
  I sat on the stairs for a while.  The Hunger made every sound louder, every
sensation more intense.  I concentrated on the cool smoothness of the concrete, the
sound of my own breathing.
  Another sound intruded.  Footsteps, very soft.  No, God, I thought.  Don't let
someone find me like this.  When my control was all but gone.
  The footsteps came closer, and I groaned.  It echoed up and down the stairwell.
  The footsteps stopped at the landing below me, and I caught the scent of perfume
or cologne, musky.  Some internal restraint snapped, and I hurled myself down the
stairs, unthinking, and overcome with need.
  Whoever it was was fast, and dressed in black from head to toe.  The figure had
already cleared the bottom of the next landing when I appeared, and was heading
down quickly.  I pursued, fighting against myself the whole way.  
  Blood, flesh, heat, was escaping from me, and there was a part of me that snarled in
frustration, another part that sobbed with relief.  The figure in black hit the emergency
exit door that led to the outside of the building, instead of the other door that led to the
apartment building's lobby.  Fire alarms started going off, and the noise clouted me
over the head in its sudden power.
  The shock of the sound restored a margin of control to myself, and I headed
outside, towards my car, as quickly as I could.  People were appearing in doorways and
windows, and sirens were sounding in the distance as I jammed my keys in the door
and left.
  I rolled down the windows on the way back, and turned the radio up, loud.  A mortal
couldn't have outrun me.  One of the Forever had been on the stairs.  A coincidence?  I
doubted it.  Jonathan had dispatched an immortal hit man to end his problems with
Alexander.
  But it didn't make any sense.  Jonathan wasn't afraid of much of anything.  And he
certainly wouldn't sweat about pictures being taken--it was a humiliation to be careless
enough to be shot at a revealing moment, something like being caught on camera
during sex--but it wasn't dangerous.  Mortals were very good at not believing.  It just
didn't make any sense.
  I had regained my control by the time I returned home.  Which was just as well,
because Jonathan was sitting at the kitchen table, reading over a pile of examinations I
had planned on grading that night, before he had sent me out on this errand.  He had a
red pen in his hand, and was grading them.  Arrogant bastard.
  "Hello, Thomas," he said, without looking up.  He was a slender man of just over
average height, with hair of a shade of golden brown.  His skin was very pale.  And his
eyes. . . he had eyes to drown in, languorous blue.  Some had.  I had drowned in them,
not so long ago, and it had killed me and made me immortal.  Outside, the thunder had
finally made good on its promises, and rain started to fall.
  "What do you want?" I said.
  He looked up at me.  He was a beautiful man, and the fact that he was the deadliest
creature I had ever known didn't mar that.  He had that effect on people.  It was the one
he wanted.  His lips curved into a slow smile.
  "A great many things, Thomas.  But tonight, merely to see how my favored son is
faring."
  "You aren't my father, and I won't rule the universe by your side."  I went to the
refrigerator and rummaged in it, like I was any old person.
  He laughed, and laid a hand on the exams.  "Very well.  We will play such games, if
that is your wish."
  I had to fight down anger.  To much anger would make me lose control.  "Don't talk
to me about games."
  "How pleasant your classes must be," he mused, ignoring me.  He did that to
people.  "So close.  So intimate."
  I picked a can of Coke Classic, something which I had once loved, out of the icebox,
opened it, and started drinking.  It tasted flat, stale.
  "Do they admire you, Thomas?  Do the girl children desire you?  Can you draw
those feelings into you, blunt the edges of your Hunger, when you teach?"
  I didn't look at him.  I couldn't.  It was the third way to feed--off of emotions,
sensations.  It was easy, really.  And all it took was sufficient intimacy and the lightest
of touches to cover what was happening to the victim.  Or victims.  It hardly hurt them,
when I spread it among twenty, and even that only left them with a desire to come back
to class.  To learn more of what I taught.  I wasn't hurting anyone.  And it made the
Hunger hurt less, let me keep control.  I wasn't hurting anyone.
  Jonathan laughed, quietly.  His voice was richer than any should have been.  "They
certainly seem to have a, shall we say, particular fondness for the subject matter,
Thomas.  Their exams are very accurate.  I do hope you will grade them well,
considering what they're paying to take the class."
  I closed my eyes.  I had seen others who fed that way, among the Forever.  Drew
the mortals to them and gained intimacy through lust.  Fed on their desires and covered
up the pain it caused the victim with a mask of pleasure.  I had seen the mortals go
back to their Forever lovers, again and again, though it was killing them.  They were
like heroin addicts, needing another hit.  I had seen their minds reduced to almost
nothing, until madness ensued, and their lovers left them for another, less depleted
subject.  I was not doing that to my students.  I was not, please god, doing that to them.
  Jonathan watched me, smiling.  "Why, Thomas.  Are you well?  You look a bit
peaked."
  "Skip to the end, Jonathan," I growled.  "I had enough of your shit before I came
through the door tonight."
  "Why, whatever do you mean?" he asked, his face and voice conveying perfect
innocence.  
  "You know damned well what I mean," I snarled.  I slugged the rest of the Coke, and
then crushed the can, wadding it up like a piece of scrap paper.
  He tilted his head, so that a curl of golden-brown hair fell to mar the smooth
perfection of one cheek.  "No," he said.  "I do not.  On my word, Thomas.  I came
tonight to confront you.  I had wondered how you had maintained such excellent control
of your feeding.  It only recently occurred to me how you were managing it."
  That made me frown.  Jonathan was a bastard, a murderer.  If he was mortal, they'd
have branded him a psychopath and given him the chair, and not necessarily in that
order.  But he was good to his word.  Maybe it was what was left of the old English
nobleman.
  "Are you saying you don't know anything about Gregory Alexander?"
  Jonathan regarded me in perfect, quizzical stillness, like a heron just before it snaps
up a passing fish.  "The name is not familiar to me."  He was serious.
  And then pieces fell into place.  It was not Jonathan who had been moving me about
like a pawn on a chessboard.  I shut the refrigerator, grabbed my keys, and headed for
the door.
  The speed limits on I-35 between Norman and Oklahoma City have recently been
increased to 70 miles per hour, slowing to 65 and then 60, then picking up in degrees
again on the other side.  I drove fast enough to get ticketed in any of them, and got
lucky.
  I arrived back at the apartment complex, as the excitement stirred up by the false
fire alarm was dying down.  I parked on the street as one of the trucks was pulling
away, and sprinted inside.  I drew an odd look from a mother carrying a sleeping
toddler and leading another, a little older, by the hand, towards the elevator.  Then I hit
the stairs, running.  They were the fastest way up.
  I arrived at the top the building after a brief exertion, more quickly than any mortal
could have managed it, and hit the top floor with the Hunger burning in my stomach,
sharpening my senses.  I headed out into the hallway, and to Alexander's room. 
Without stopping, I grabbed the doorknob and twisted until it shattered, one motion.
  Elaine had not thought to shut the deadbolt behind her, and my arrival surprised
her.  She jerked away from Alexander with a hiss, and let him fall to the floor.  Elaine
was naked, pale, and lovely.  Her black clothing lay in a pile to one side of the room. 
The man whimpered.  He was mostly naked, and blood trickled from multiple cuts and
puncture wounds.  She had been bleeding him, slowly.  Probably started after his lust
and his sex wasn't enough for her.  She was working herself up to the transformation,
to tearing him apart.
  I can't describe how beautiful she was in doing it.  It was dark, and sick, but the
smell of her musk, the sex in the room, the iron tang aroma of his blood had me raging
inside.  The Hunger demanded them.
  "I don't like to be used," I told her.  My hands clenched into fists, as I fought for
control.
  Elaine crouched on all fours.  Blood stained her lips.  I couldn't deny the pull it had
on me.  I wanted to take her right there, rut her like an animal and let her use her teeth
to rip the man apart as I did, showering us both with his--
  I jerked my eyes away from hers, and I saw her smile.  "I'd let you use me, Thomas,
if you liked.  God, I'm so close.  Come with me."
  "Like hell," I told her.  "Get dressed and get out."
  "This man has no interest for you.  This business is none of yours."
  "I'll be the judge of that," I said.  My nails were digging into my palms.  I looked
around the room.  Alexander's cellular phone was on the mantle to the fireplace.  And
next to it was his revolver.
  "There's no reason to turn this into a battle, Thomas," Elaine told me.  "I know how
you despise Jonathan.  Many of us do.  He restrains us too much."  She moved, animal
sensuality, crawling over to Alexander.  "This one deals in the mortal underworld.  He
gave us names of men we could kill.  Men who would not be missed."
  "And whose death would profit him."
  She smiled, and lowered her lips to his flank, over the ribs.  "That, too."  Her tongue
flicked out to lap at the blood, and he whimpered, high up in his throat.  She was
forcing him to enjoy it, to encourage her.
  She lifted her face to me again, and her eyes were clouded, dreamy, drugged.  I
didn't dare to meet them for long.  "He became troublesome, and so we had pictures
taken of the remains.  Next to his car, in the basement of one of his businesses,
wherever we could think to take them."  She paused to lap at more blood, drawing more
whimpers.  I had to move.  I started to pace, and Elaine smiled at my discomfort.
  "He fought us, with the pictures he took.  He found out who we were.  I wanted to
make an example of him, but he had run away, the naughty boy."  She raked a
fingernail over his hip, cutting him afresh.  The man spasmed in pleasure.
  "So you got me to find him," I managed to say.
  "I don't have the patience for this sort of thing.  And of course, I could hardly tell
Jonathan I was organizing a coup, to get his help.  And I knew you wouldn't give him
anything."
  "Of course," I said.  
  "Join with me, Thomas," she murmured.  She smeared her pale hand lazily through
the fresh blood.  "Let me show you how it can be.  I'll protect you, teach you, after."
  "I won't kill," I said.  I meant it to be a stubborn sound, but it came out in a whisper.
  She laughed, low and husky.  "Yes, you will.  Or else you'll die, here, tonight. 
Because if you don't come with me, Tommy baby, I'm going to change and rip your
pretty head off your shoulders."  She had thrown a long, shapely leg over Alexander's
thighs, and was grinding herself against his hip, slickened by fresh blood.  Her breath
was coming faster.  "I can't have you running to Jonathan.  And this meat is scum.  A
criminal.  We'd be doing the mortals a favor, Thomas."  Her voice came out as half
moan, half whimper.  I saw her body shudder, a ripple along her spine, as if something
else crawled beneath the pale, pretty skin.
  I paced faster, as she reached her hand out to me.  When I was mortal, I would
have been sickened by the sight.  But now I kept thinking of how it would taste, of how
sweet total release would be, of the stupor that would come with the ending of the
Hunger, even if only for a little while.  To feed was a heady pleasure, even in the tiny
amounts I had allowed myself.  What would it be like to kill?
  She offered me her bloody hand, and I wanted to lick her fingers clean.  Her body
undulated against the warm meat, and it moaned in response and desire.
  I stopped, and I closed my eyes, my fists clenching.
  She laughed, gasping, and murmured, through the haze of some ecstasy of her
own, "You can't fight it forever, Thomas."
  The blood.
  "No," I said.  "I can't."  I took one smooth step, picked up the revolver, and pointed it
at her.  "But I can fight it tonight."
  The first shot took her in the shoulder and ripped off her arm, spinning her away
from Alexander.  Teflon ammunition.  I didn't wait for her to land before I'd sent the
second and third shots pounding into her back and side.
  She recovered and moved quick, like a mouse flitting out of a sudden light.  She
flashed through the door to a bedroom, snarling.  I emptied the revolver into the door,
blowing gaping wounds in the false wood, and heard her scream again.  Then there
was the sound of shattering glass.  A window, or a mirror.
  I knelt, and put the gun in Alexander's hand, his finger on the trigger, while he lay
insensate.  Let him explain it as he could.  Elaine's long, slender arm lay, gruesomely
clean, on the bloodstained carpet next to him.  When you set out to kill one of the
Forever, you have a job to do.  The Forever take a lot of killing.
  I headed into the room, to find that Elaine had indeed gone out the window.  I could
not afford to let her escape.  If she were working with other Forever, they would come
to destroy me some night.  It galled me that I was defending Jonathan, even if it was
indirectly.
  I headed out the window.  There was a fire escape, but no blood on the stairs down. 
I looked up.  A smear of blood as wide as my hand trailed up the side of the building
and onto the roof.
  I began to follow, when from the roof I heard a sound nothing that looked human
could make, a short, harsh cry of triumph.  She had changed.  Transformed.
  Oh, shit.
  I didn't have much choice.  I wasn't going to get a better shot at her than right now. 
I ripped up a section of rail from the fire escape, in lieu of a more solid weapon, and
leapt up to catch the edge of the roof and swing myself up.
  It was dark, quiet.  I stayed still, and listened.  Elaine had gone feral.  She couldn't
change back until she had feasted on flesh and blood.  Her Hunger was out of control,
and it was going to make her strong, swift.  Stronger and swifter than me.  And her feral
form was likely to be capable of ripping me apart with its claws.  Or teeth.  Or whatever.
  There.  A small patter of dripping blood, off to the side, in the shadows of a big AC
unit.  I turned and hurled the section of railing like a javelin towards the source of the
sound.
  There was a shriek of protesting metal, and sparks showered as the metal bar
punctured the side of the unit, revealing where a little section of plating had been cut
out, folded like a Dixie cup, and filled with blood, to drip down onto the roof.  A trick. 
And I had fallen for it.
  Elaine hit me from behind, and it hurt.  I was no longer used to pain.  The charge
drove me forward to the roof, onto my stomach, and it took everything I had to spin onto
my back before her weight settled onto me.
  It was too dark to see much, thank God.  She was like nothing of this world.  Her
narrow face had elongated into a snout filled with fangs, and her eyes were simply
empty holes of blackness, far too large to be believed.  One clawed hand shot towards
my throat as her teeth snapped at my eyes.  I managed to catch her wrist with my hand
and get my other around her throat, holding the teeth off.  She was horribly strong, and
the blood slickening her scales made her impossible to hold for long.  If she'd still had
her other arm, she'd have gutted me right there.
  We twisted and writhed, with her legs wrapped powerfully around my waist, her
talons digging at my thighs.  I tried to get her weight off of me.  When the super-strong
duke it out, it is easy to throw one another around, into hard objects and the like--but
she clung to me tightly, and all I accomplished was to begin a roll.
  I fed the momentum of the roll, and let it take us to the edge of the building.  Praying
that it wasn't the front side, I managed to thrust a leg out beneath us, and throw us both
off of the roof of the building.
  We fell, she hissing her desire and hunger into my face.  I don't know if she was
aware of what was happening to us.  I twisted, so that she was on the bottom when the
concrete rushed up at us.
  The impact was dazzling, and she screamed, a voiceless sound of rushing air.  It
took a moment for me to register that we had landed in an alley.
  Elaine lay underneath me, a hideous, broken toy.  Her body had no strength now,
though she still writhed gently against me, her Hunger driving her with lust.  I was
shuddering as I rose away from her.  I couldn't tell which body part had been broken
and which was naturally twisted.  I didn't want to know.
  I found a section of pipe in the alley, and staggered to it.  I returned, dragging one
leg that had gone numb, to stand over her and lift the pipe.
  The Hunger sang in my veins and my ears, and in my mind I saw myself falling on
her, the defeated, devouring her.  My hands clenched around the pipe.
  I couldn't kill her.  I couldn't let it win.  I let the pipe fall.
  Someone caught it before it hit the ground, and with movements that could not be
seen, crushed Elaine's head, then reversed the pipe and thrust it through her chest to
impale her heart.
  Elaine's body jerked several times.  And then it was still.  The scales vanished, and
in the darkness, I saw pale skin reappear, torn and bruised.
  I stared, stunned.
  Jonathan took the pipe from the corpse, and tucked it under one arm like a baton,
heedless of the blood.  He turned to study me with that same tilt of his head, as if he
hadn't stopped doing so since he had last seen me.
  "You knew," I said, quietly.
  "I knew Elaine was up to something," he agreed.  "But she was careful.  The details
kept eluding me."
  "You knew she would come to me, eventually."
  He smiled.  "I thought she might."
  I hurt.  All over.  "You're a bastard."
  Jonathan's eyes flickered with something, maybe anger, but he hid it quickly.  "Why
did you not kill her?" he said.
  "If you don't know why, there's no use in explaining it to you."  I turned away from
him, and started away.  The police would not be long, after someone reported the
gunshots, in a nice part of town like this one.
  "Perhaps you are right," he said, after me.  He sighed.  "It seems to me that I used
to know such things, Thomas.  Sometimes, when you are about, I almost remember
them."
  I stopped, and turned to look at him. 
  He shrugged.  "No matter," he said.  And then he was gone, vanished into the
darkness.
  I didn't get to vanish.  I just got in my car and drove home holding my left leg.
  The police decided that Alexander had been a lucky survivor of a gangland hit that
had gone down while he was with his mistress in their love nest.  They explained away
the details of how she had been thrown out a window and then dragged into an alley
and shot, to be sure she was dead.  Whatever.  I didn't care, and I hadn't left any prints
laying around.  The woman was not on record, but the police attributed that to a filing
error, somewhere.  She was never identified.
  Alexander got investigated and indicted.  Turns out he was into organized crime, as
a middle man.  A bunch of photographs turned up, implicating him in a series of
murders in Oklahoma City and Dallas, and he went off to jail.
  I stayed in bed for the weekend, and gave my body a chance to heal itself.  I
thought about what Elaine had said, about how I couldn't fight forever.  And I answered
it with a line from Jonathan.  No matter.
  I went back to school on Monday, back to my classes and my students.
  My name is Thomas Harding.  I am immortal.  I am Forever.