"Who the hell are you?" Tris's uncle exclaimed as soon as he opened the door and saw Dwayne. "And what the hell happened to you?" He asked looking at Tris.

"Hello, sir." Dwayne held out a hand for him to shake. He had to give the man credit, even though Dwayne was twice as broad and at least a head taller this man's didn't seemed fazed in the slightest. "My name's Dwayne."

"Tristan told me about you." Tris's uncle shook the vampire's hand with a skeptical stare. "Why don't you have a shirt on? Do proper dress codes not apply to you?"

"I'm wearing his jacket Charles." Tris said as she hobbled past him.

"Why the hell are you wearing his jacket?" Charles stared at her with hazel eyes through long light brown bangs.

"I gave it to her." Dwayne explained. "She was cold the last time we met and I couldn't just let her freeze."

Charles turned his gaze back to the vampire. "You still haven't told me what happened to my niece. What happened? Were you there? Were you involved?"

"Charles, stop pestering him." Tris yelled from the living room. "And don't make him stand there all night. Dwayne, come in."

Dwayne waited politely for the man to move aside thought had it been any other mortal he would've drained them dry and walked over their carcass. Charles moved aside to let Dwayne through and closed the door behind him.

"How long have you lived here?" Charles asked as the door clicked shut. "Are you involved in criminal activities?"

Tris glared at her uncle from her position of the couch. "Stop the interrogation and calm down. I was attacked and Dwayne came and rescued me."

"Attacked? And you want me to calm down." The man began pacing the floor of the living room, muttering curses, and stopped in front of Tris, kneeling so they were eyelevel and began talking to her in a low voice that no mortal could hear from Dwayne's distance.

Dwayne could hear what was being said if he wished but he felt to eavesdrop would be an invasion of their privacy and he respected Tris and her family too much to do that so he focused on the man's features instead. Charles had a thin almost aristocratic nose and high cheekbones which was probably where Tris got them from. His thick, long, brown hair fell around his ears and just above his eyes so that when he tilted his head forward even a miniscule bit to look at someone he looked at them through a curtain of hair.

"Well, I suppose thanks are in order." Charles stood and faced Dwayne, his jaw working with repressed anger.

Dwayne shook his head. "Please, I should have been there sooner then she wouldn't be hurt."

"Yes, Dwayne, heaped more guilt upon yourself." Tris sighed wearily. "You can't go back in time so stop beating yourself up over it. If you hadn't gotten there when you did I would probably be dead by now."

"In case you hadn't noticed; she gets cranky when it's past her bedtime." Charles said a loud stage whisper. Dwayne chuckled as the man dodge a couch cushion Tristan threw his way.

"Speaking of which," Dwayne said "I have to get going. I have work in the morning and there's some stuff I have to take care of. I'll come check on you tomorrow night, if that's alright."

"Of course." Tris yawned and stretched out along the length of the couch. "But don't forget your jacket."

"Keep it. Maybe it'll entice you to go out with something other than just a tank top." Smiling, he waved as she called out a sleepy goodnight.

Charles stopped Dwayne at the door out of Tris's earshot. "What exactly do you want from my niece?" He asked with a hard stare. No, being smaller didn't faze this man at all.

"Not what you're thinking of I can assure you. Tris…means a lot to me. You assuming that my thoughts are nothing more than of sexual desire truly offends me. If I was half the man you believe me to be then I would have already taken what I wanted and left but I haven't, have I? I respect your niece and I respect you. Please, do not lump me in with other lustful men my age. I am different from them by infinite degrees." Dwayne rarely said so many words in such a short amount of time that even he was slightly taken aback by it but the fact that Tris's uncle dare assume he wanted more than to fulfill a primitive lust struck him to the very center of his being. It was heartbreakingly maddening not having Tris know about him and have only his fellow vampires to share in his joy. He wanted to keep nothing from his mate but it was too soon to share such gory details of his life.

Charles leaned against the doorframe and looked up at Dwayne, eyes ablaze with fierce pride. "I pride myself on being a good judge of character. You come here with no shirt on as if you were some sort of vagabond but I think you're a good person. I just get the feeling you're doing something terribly wrong. All I say is don't get her mixed up in it." He pushed off the doorframe and extended a hand to Dwayne. "That being said, I don't see why we can't be friendly. After all, I suppose I'll be seeing a lot more of you."

"Yes, sir." Dwayne grinned in spite of himself, thrilled that he had been accepted into Charles's good graces. The grin still plastered on his face, the vampire threw his leg over his bike and gunned the engine to life.

He hadn't feed in days and he was beginning to feel the effects. A savage hunger gnawed at him, fraying his nerves so the grin slipped from his face and was replaced by an irritated frown. Instead of going straight to the cave he went to the boardwalk, hearing the muted heartbeat of every mortal still there like a multitude of drumbeats threatening to drive him mad with their un-syncopated rhythms. Without wasting time he lured a girl away from her post against the wall of a bookstore and, being soft-spoken and gentle, he led her to a deserted area. Holding her in his arms, he changed his features until he could feel the points of his fangs protrude from his lips and bit through the delicate skin of her neck to feel the blood flow into his mouth. The coppery taste was rich on his tongue and he sucked slowly to savor the taste, swallowing mouthful after mouthful until there was no more. Dwayne was gentle even still as he picked her up and moved her body to rest among a pile of crates so that someone was sure to find her later. He never told his brothers but he always felt uneasy when they treated the bodies of their kill so maliciously and handled them so carelessly. He believed their bodies should be handled with care and put in places for loved ones to find to put their troubled minds to some small amount of rest. The puncture wounds had to be concealed though so with a small murmur of apology he used his long fingernails to create a long, deep gash on her neck connecting the two wounds.

"Dwayne, where are you?" David voice exploded in his mind. "I hope you have a safe place to stay because the sun is coming up fast."

Dwayne looked up at the sky to see that it had lightened from its midnight blue to a lighter shade of blue. The feeding and the preparation of the body had sufficiently distracted him from remembering the time. Stray bits of paper leapt in the air behind as he took off in a gust of wind toward the safety of the cave. He loathed leaving his bike behind but there was no time to take it.

The blood he had so recently drunk fueled his heart so it beat more quickly than a vampire heart but far slower than any mortal's. He could hear it now, thudding inside of him, drowning out the sound of the wind whistling in his ears. He could feel the spray of the ocean on his skin as he flew lower than he usually would earlier in the night so when he got close he could fly directly into the opening without having to dive down and waste precious seconds.

He could see the opening in only a few minutes after taking off but by that point the sky was already turning pink and the sun's rays were just peaking out over the horizon. The sun scorched his skin of his bare back causing him to falter in the air and come scare inches of tumbling into the ocean to be tossed about like a ragdoll among the waves. With Herculean effort he kept himself airborne despite the scorching sun and came to a tumbling halt inside the sanctuary of his home.

"Holy shit!" Marko exclaimed. They were the last words Dwayne heard before he drifted off into oblivion.

He was caught in a whirlwind, tossed back and forth from memory to memory before he landed on one the eve of his death. It was as if he was reliving it. Every thought and feeling remembered in perfect detail; from the sensations on his skin to the scents assailing his nose. They weren't as noticeable as the sensations he had as a vampire but they were still very good. It was almost as if they had been muted.

The moon covered almost everything with a pale glow and threw everything else in shadow. Dwayne sat on the beach and tilted his head up to catch the scent of the ocean. His suit jacket lay beside him on the sand, the buttons of his black vest undone, and the sleeves of his shirt rolled up. A sort of melancholy feeling began to settle over him as he stretched his legs out before him and he felt the sudden urge to wade into the ocean and let the waves carry him out. The sudden onset and intensity to these feelings frightened him and he rose to his feet, picked up his jacket, and turned his back on the crashing waves and salty spray. He hadn't gone more than ten feet when he spotted another man, sprawled out among the sand with a hat covering his face. Dwayne tried to walk past unnoticed but the man took the hat from his face and smirked.

"Nice. isn't it?"

"Excuse me?" Dwayne replied, hanging his jacket on his left arm.

"The ocean. It's nice to get away from the noise of the city and have quiet every once in awhile." The man said sitting up and running his hand through his blonde hair.

"I suppose it is." Dwayne ran a hand absentmindedly over his own to make sure it was still slicked back in its proper place and examined the other's clothes. Unlike Dwayne he wore no vest, no jacket, and the shirt was a size to big and hastily tucked into his worn brown pants, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows. Everything about him screamed working class.

The blonde leapt to his feet and held out hand for Dwayne to shake. "My name is David."

Any other man in Dwayne's class would have looked down their noses at him and left but Dwayne knew what it was to come from the working class having just been integrated into the nouveau riche and took the hand offered. "Dwayne."

David clasped his hand firmly; his hands calloused and scarred, before releasing it to look out over the ocean once more, a small smirk present on his lips. "You're a working man."

"Once. How could you tell?"

"You wouldn't have shaken my hand otherwise." David stuffed his hands in his pockets and bowed his head as a particularly strong wind came in from the ocean to blew through them.

Dwayne shrugged a reply, hardly noticing the cold wind. He tilted his head up a bit so he could see the dim lights of his hotel a short distance away. "I should be leaving now. It was a pleasure to meet you."

David nodded in agreement, never taking his eyes off the water.

"You don't have anywhere to stay, do you?" The words were out before Dwayne even thought about it. Why such a question even slipped out was beyond him.

"Listen, you may have wormed your way into the nouveau riche but don't think that I'll take your petty sympathy handouts." David responded with a hard stare.

Dwayne shook his head slowly. "I'm in town for a few days and I was supposed to come with a friend be he took ill at the last moment. I've already booked a room for him though and it's too late to get a refund."

"So you were wondering if I'd take the room." David gave a brief quiet laugh as he pulled a cigarillo from his pocket and let it dangle from between his lips.

"No use letting the room go to waste."

David shrugged as he struck a match and put the flames to the end of the cigarillo, inhaling slowly and exhaling a cloud of smoke. "Sounds like a deal."

"Good."

The parlor of the hotel was still slightly crowded with people still in the process of getting their rooms and others just coming in.

"I'll buy you a glass." David said, touching Dwayne's arm with his fingertips briefly to get his attention as he gestured to another part of the hotel that was separated by a thick velvet curtain.

"That's not necessary." Dwayne shook his head, He didn't want the David to feel he owed him anything."

"I just got paid today. Too bad it couldn't come a day earlier." David laughed, leading the way to the hotel's saloon.

The curtains were soft beneath Dwayne's hand as he pushed part of it aside to pass through. It was louder in this room than the parlor and more dimly lit with only electric lamps on the walls to illuminate the room. And it reeked of alcohol.

They ordered their glasses quickly and left in under an hour. Dwayne handed David the key to his room and bid him goodnight before retiring to his own room, wondering what had possessed him ever make such an offer. With a shrug, Dwayne lay down among the feather pillows, the bed groaning under his weight. He was fast asleep in a matter a minutes.

It felt as though he hadn't been asleep longer than a few minutes before someone was pounding on his door. Groggily, he rose to his feet and frown when he realized he had fallen asleep in his day clothes. The frantic pounding continued and he could hear his name being shouted through the door. He leapt back quickly as the door was kicked down and stared up in horror at David."

"What the hell—"

"It's an earthquake you bloody idiot. Don't you feel it?" David yelled as he grabbed Dwayne's sleeve and pulled him from the room.

Now that it was said Dwayne realized what he had mistaken for post-sleep dizziness were actually tremors. He ran alongside David toward the stairs as the tremors became increasingly worse. He realized though that they would never make it all the way down seeing as their room was on the fourth floor and a feeling of despair washed over him before being replaced with a certain type of numbness that only comes when one knows it's pointless to try but he still continued to run.

"Dammit." David shouted when they get to the stairs only to find them broken and unstable. He looked back at the series of rooms and at some of the people coming out. "Can we jump?"

"If we want to get killed from jumping."

"Guess we're taking the stairs then." David pulled Dwayne along as he hopped down the splintered remains of the stairs.

There was another violent tremor and with a small cry the two fell through the stairs, the breaking and groaning of support beams echoing in their ears. The sound of wood splintering and people screaming were terribly loud to Dwayne and he wanted nothing more than for it to be over. A splintered beam struck him on the way down, hitting his head and causing him to black out. Before the darkness overcame him he could swear he saw a man with a thick set of glasses staring intently at him, oblivious to the chaos. Dwayne turned his head to look at David who had fallen beside him, a railing piece stuck in his side. There was nothing else.

AN- I have to write the flashback scene in class so I haven't the time to read over it. Hope you enjoy...