A.N. Hellllo!! Me again. You know, I learnt two really cool things since I last updated. One, 'underdog', actually refers to a position in the sawing industry, and two, that Diva's daughters DO actually have names (Thanks to the reviewer who told me so :D) Their names are Kanade and Hibiki. Dunno that I like them all that much... Hibiki sounds too much like something you eat with a cup of tea, and... I can't think of any witty complaint for Kanade unless I try work 'Canada' in there somehow, but you get the general idea.

Also, since I last updated I've done a little editing and fixer-upper-ing of the past chapters, tightening and rewriting little errors and excessive OOC. There's nothing that new though, so don't worry, there's nothing you have to reread... Unless, like a couple of reviewers were, you were curious as to why exactly, if they were thirty something years old, the twins were in school. Eh heh... -sweatdrop- Hadn't occured to me. I've explained that all away though. Turns out they didn't get a tertiary education until later in life because the majority of their childhood was spent eradicating the reamining Chiropteran, in a nut-shell.

Anyway... this chapter gave me a little grief, so I'm sorry if it seems forced in places. I go into a little detail about police policies and pathological practises, but honestly it's almost entirely a bluff since all I know about that sort of thing is what I've gathered from the occasional cop-show and some half-assed research on Google. If I've made any glaring errors, lets everyone assume that procedures have changed somewhat in thirty years, because I don't really want to have to go back and change things around. On with the chapter!


As they had suspected, it didn't take long for the police to come and bring Kai into questioning. He didn't stay long – just long enough to tell them the previously concocted lies that were delicately worded so as to give the impression that Kai and the two suspects were only very loose and recent acquaintances, only just on first name basis and not by any stretch of the imagination friends – but didn't manage to get much information about Saya. He did find out that she was located in the station in one of the cells, but was not allowed to go see her, the one drawback to claiming to have no relationship with her. Kai and the others had figured though that it was better to be safe than sorry, and if they were going to be planning something drastic they didn't need any suspicious cops peering over the garden fence and getting an eyeful of a seventy-something-year-old man squinting short-sightedly at a target a few tens-of-metres away, throwing-knife in hand; or better yet, a wanted human boy becoming very quickly a wanted most-likely-not-human-boy, on account of the huge bat wings he was sporting and all. No, they had many secrets that had to be kept secrets for as long as possible. Forever, actually, for preference…

Kai shook his head and returned his thoughts to where they were meant to be. Right. Back at the station… He was asked a few questions about her, Saya, that is, but he was sure to answer evasively so he didn't give too much away. In the end, they were forced to let him go. He had walked out of there with a lot on his mind.

"What did you find out?" asked Kunio the moment Kai walked in the door to Omoro, and he and his father listened attentively as Kai told them the little he knew. "She was in there," Kai finished, settling down into one of the many armchairs with a groan and muttered expletive. "But I can't see how we're going to get her out. She's a suspect in the murders of those boys, and we can't easily just work around that since she fits witness description, and I wouldn't be surprised if she's said something or even has an attack. She was in a pretty bad way when I last saw her." Kai winced inwardly when he recalled the torment in her eyes as she breathed her sister's name. "She seems to be beginning to remember some things," he said gravely, his eyes almost black with worry as he sunk back into his chair. "She knows Diva is her sister, but I don't think she understands why Diva had to die. She seemed pretty out of it…"

"She's dangerous in the unstable state of mind she's in," said David, biting his thumbnail as he thought. "But even though I was one of the force before that bastard shot me I doubt I would even be able to speak with her, seeing as she is such an important suspect in such an important case."

"This is very bad," Kai murmured to himself. "We'll have to literally bust her out if they don't make some decisions down at the station soon. She must be in agony…"

"Don't think of that," David demanded sharply, his eyes narrowing as he struggled to think. "Just concentrate on thinking of a plan to get her out. I'll make a few requests to some of my old work-mates, but I doubt anything will come of them. Short of physically kidnapping her, what are our options?"

"We could get Joel to put in a good word," Kunio suggested doubtfully. "Even after all this time the Goldschmidt name still holds some weight."

"Give him a call a little later," David agreed. "If she really is found to be guilty there'll be little he can do except for perhaps decrease her sentence, but his word could mean a lot when it comes to convincing a jury to let her go free-"

"You've found Saya now?" interrupted a soft voice, and turning abruptly the men were startled to see Aiko standing in the doorway, her pale face drawn and sad. When she noticed that all eyes were on her her thin lips twisted into the barest of smiles, but her eyes remained dull with misery.

"Where's Aika?" Kai asked, shifting so he could peer over Aiko's shoulder in case her sister was lurking somewhere outside. "Aren't you two joined at the hip or something?" He sniggered slightly at the mental image, but stopped abruptly when Aiko turned her haunted maroon eyes to meet his.

"She went off somewhere," said the Chiropteran girl quietly, dropping her gaze. "Is Saya alright?"

"Of course she is," Kai said gently, sorry now for laughing. Looking closer at Aiko's features, he felt his heart twist when he noticed that her nose was red and she was shaking a little, her hazy maroon eyes were blurred with water and her cheeks glistened in the weak light. Kai held his arms out in a wordless invitation, clutching his surrogate daughter close when she threw herself on top of him with a choked sob. She folded herself around him, sinking into his warmth as she wept pitifully.

"She was our friend," Aiko whimpered, gripping her father close as he shushed her, rocking her soothingly as though she were an infant. David and Kunio looked on sympathetically as the young woman choked on her words, trembling and gasping in her grief as Kai struggled to calm her. "She was one of us, she was our sister…" She cried brokenly into her surrogate father's chest, scorching his skin with salt water and gripping him to her as though he, too, would disappear if she let go. "Please, you have to…" she broke off and buried her face in her father's shoulder.

"What's all this 'was' business, Aiko," Kai murmured, smiling encouragingly at his little girl when she at last pulled back with a wet sniffle. "She'll be back before you know it. She's not dead or anything, she just… won't be here for a little while. She isn't in any danger; it's not like Diva's around anymore."

"…You're right," said Aiko, reluctantly pulling away. She choked out a weak giggle, wiping at the wet patch on Kai's chest. "Sorry. But Aika and I… We've never had a real friend before Saya. We miss her…"

"Think nothing of it," said Kai softly, swiping away her tears with his thumb and smiling at her when she sniffed. "You'll see, she'll be back before you know it. Promise."

"Um…" The pair turned to Kunio, who was looking a little apologetic for having interrupted the family moment. "So… Where exactly is Aika, anyway?"

"She wanted to get away for a little, but she's not gone far. She doesn't like other people to see her when she's really upset, and though she'd never admit it I know that she loves Saya a lot."

"So, what's our plan of action?" David asked gruffly, eager to get back on topic.

"There's little else we can do other than bust her out," sighed Kunio. "It would be best to wait until we know for sure there's no other option before we resort to such drastic measures, but all the same people should begin making some plans and looking at the layout of the prison."

"We'll just have to wait and see for the time being," said Kai solemnly, hugging his daughter close as she nodded reluctantly into his chest. "I'll check out some stuff and make up a plan with the others to get into the prison, but until then we'll just have to keep watch, hold tight and cross our fingers..."


Sergeant Hojo stepped through the door marked PATHOLOGY, breathing steadily through his mouth so that the sudden wave of chemicals in the air wouldn't give him the headache they always did. After receiving a cursory nod from a man typing busily at a desk in the outer office, Hojo opened the double doors to the side of the long desk, walking briskly down a corridor toward another set of doors that led to the main pathology lab.

Pushing the glass door open, he couldn't help but squint in face of the harsh light that bounced off the white-tiled walls and floor to dazzle him. He made a quick sweep of the eight steel workbenches inside the lab, smiling at the masked woman who was bent over the only occupied one. "Hey Hisae," he called, his voice echoing from the banks of fluorescents set in the high ceiling down to the immaculately white tiled floor. "Found anything?"

"Nothing we didn't already know," the small Japanese woman sighed, yanking off her mask and wiping stray flecks of blood from her green smock and gloves onto a convenient rag. "You can come and look, if you want."

The head of the pathology department led Hojo over to a young man's body that lay on the steel slab, his nakedness revealing bruises and lacerations that hadn't been evident before. The wall beside the table had gruesome photos pinned up revealing the state the flesh had been in before she had made the long, Y-shaped cut from sternum to pelvis so that the flesh could be peeled back and the boy's insides studied.

Hisae bustled about the dead body, alternatively checking some scales upon which rested a single huge lump of reddish tissue Hojo soon realised was a lung and a jug containing what must be stomach fluid. She sniffed the jug, wrinkling her nose. "I'll have to do the proper tests to confirm, but the smell says the kid was pretty drunk when he died," the pathologist claimed. She continued to dart from place to place, but since she was so short it was a simple thing for Hojo to study what she was doing over the top of her cropped black hair.

"You wanted to show me something?" Hojo pressed. He just wanted to get out of there, and someone as observant as Hisae was should know by now that he hated the pathology section of the building. The overwhelming stench of chemicals combined with the odours of the abdominal cavity of an open corpse was almost intolerable.

"Hm? Oh, yes, sorry. All the corpses," she gestured at the freezers built into one of the walls that must contain the other nineteen bodies, "have the same MO. All of them were hacked to bits with an as-of-yet unidentified weapon… How are you doing for suspects, by the way?"

"We have a girl who we think was involved. She's being detained in cell 15A."

"Really, a girl? Does she seem very strong?"

Hojo thought back to Saya. "No, not particularly. Just your average high-school girl."

"She probably wasn't the killer then. The killer, whoever he or she was, was exceptionally powerful. See here," Hisae ran one gloved finger along the length of a vicious looking cut on the corpse's thigh, "these wounds are deep. Judging by the width and quality of the cuts I'd say the killer used some kind of thick knife, but for the knife to be as chunky as it must have been the wielder would have needed incredible strength just to make the slices as long as they are."

"No, that doesn't sound like our girl."

"Don't rule her out entirely, Suzuki," Hisae reminded him. "Just because she isn't the murderer doesn't mean she wasn't somehow involved."

"I know, I know. What's with the lungs, by the way?"

"Oh, aside from the thigh wound the cuts that tore through his flesh to the lung are easiest to identify. I sent the other lung over to Yoko's department, he's comparing the cuts in it to some weapons we have on file. They're an unusual thickness, though, so unless somehow the knife was homemade it probably wasn't a knife at all, but I honestly don't know what else it could be."

"It couldn't be glass or anything like that?"

"There aren't any fibres or shards in the wounds, and since the cuts taper the deeper they go I'd say no to glass. Still, we aren't ruling it out. Honestly I'm stumped."

"So we pretty much have nothing." Hojo slumped against the wall and ran an agitated hand through his hair. Hisae smiled apologetically.

"Sorry, hon."

"What about the other bodies?"

Hisae snorted. "I still haven't fully assembled them. I was always hopeless at jigsaws."

Hojo shuddered at the implication of her words. Yes, that was right. There were very few whole body parts left at the crime scene…

Hisae just shook her head sadly, turning her back to Hojo so that she could continue her work on the body. "Anyway, there's nothing much else to say until I get Yoko's report back."

Hojo just nodded silently, recognising the dismissal for what it was. His hand had just grasped the door handle when Hisae called him back.

"Oh, and Hojo?" He turned and met Hisae's serious gaze. "When you do catch the bastard, be careful," said the pathologist solemnly. "These wounds… They're frenzied, uncontrolled. Whoever did this wanted these kids dead, deader than dead in some of the more vicious cases. Be careful, hon."

"I will be," Hojo promised with a grave nod, giving a tight smile goodbye to the concerned woman before disappearing out the door. "I'm going to visit our suspect Saya now," he called over his shoulder before the door could swing shut. "I have to grab her details still. Call me if you find anything else!"

"Will do!" Hisae yelled back, waiting until her work-mate had disappeared entirely before turning back to the corpse. "What monster did this to you?" she murmured sadly to the torn up boy, before sighing and getting out a large pair of pincers. Well, the case wasn't going to be solved by just standing around…


The cell was eight by fifteen with a solid steel door supported by heavy iron bands. There was a bed, the steel frame of a small desk and chair, a toilet in the corner that didn't flush.

Men in small rooms, in isolation. They put you in a room and lock the door. So simple it's a form of genius.

Saya lay on the cramped bed, tossing and turning as best she could without falling off the edges. It wasn't the most… comfortable of beds. Nor the most hygienic. And not much could be said about its prettiness, unless when you said it you endeavoured to convey just how non-pretty it really was. In a word, it was devastatingly unlovely.

When she had first entered the room two days ago, if she were in her usual mind frame perhaps the first thing she would have done was tilt her head a little and stare at the place she was to sleep with a kind of appalled fascination as the steel door behind her closed with a discouragingly solid-sounding bang. She would then have gazed at the bed for a while with penetrating absorption, as though if she looked at it hard enough perhaps everyone would jump out of the corners yelling 'April Fools!' and, chuckling like mad at her naïve gullibility, lead her to her queen-sized canopy bed with mountains of silk cushions, laughing all the while at the ridiculous notion that she would ever be made to sleep on that lump of smelly rags. Since she was well aware that a surreptitious glance into the few shadows of the room would not be at all encouraging, she decided to simply forgo that particular reaction and instead sat numbly on what shall be charitably referred to as a bed until the English language vomits up a more appropriate term.

She was being detained at the moment, and was sleeping in a jail cell somewhere in the station until further tests could be done to either prove or disprove her innocence in regards to the murder of those boys. She had been read her rights already, and knew that she could only be held here for a maximum of a week unless some incriminating evidence was found, in which case she would be formally arrested. So for a full seven days she would be here in her solitary cell, all on her own, with nothing but the ache in her heart and fire in her blood for company. Joy.

She shivered, the heat that boiled in her bones and curdled in her stomach belying the chills that crawled along her flesh. It had been a few days since she had had her last meal of blood, and that paired with her tiredness only made her more susceptible to the pain of her heat. Despite her exhaustion, though, she hadn't had a full night sleep since arriving, and the black rings around her eyes made her sunken expression of hopeless agony all the more tragic. She sighed again, rolling onto her side and breathing steadily through her mouth.

She had said nothing when that nice man, Hojo, had questioned her. She had been about to tell him everything that had happened… she really had… but a painful spasm had locked her jaw and made her eyes roll back, her limbs twitching as she convulsed. She had fallen to the ground, her screams muffled from behind her clenched teeth as fire licked her veins and her skeleton tried to escape her body through her skin. It had been the most painful attack yet.

Obviously, someone or something hadn't been too happy about her spilling her secrets to strangers.

Hojo had not tried to question her any more after her 'episode', and she had been sent straight here. Two days had passed since then, and very little else had happened. The suspense was beginning to gnaw at her a little now… and with good reason. She remembered all too well from her talks with the twins that she should on no account reveal her identity as a Chiropteran to anyone outside the family and trusted friend circle, otherwise it could quite probably mean her death. And these police people wanted her blood to run some tests since she couldn't give a name to the 'disease' that caused her to convulse like she had, and they also needed her DNA as evidence. She would refuse the tests for as long as possible, but had been warned that the police were sending off for a court order so that her opinion on the procedures wouldn't matter. The murders, after all, were a very serious case, and if she was involved they wanted to know as soon as possible so they could either put her away or divert their attention to other likely suspects.

Saya shifted, grimacing when the motion pulled at her aching muscles. She could only hope that the others got her away soon, or she didn't know what would happen…

The door jolted, and Saya scrambled to a sitting position as the evil-looking block of steel opened with a long, tortured screech. The newly arrived Hojo shot her a sheepish look before entering the room, wincing when the door shrieked again as he pulled it closed. Saya's smile was tired but genuine. She liked Hojo. He seemed to be in charge of the case, since she hadn't come into any real contact with anyone else on the force, but she didn't really mind. He was very kind to her, if a bit of a busy-body at times, but she supposed he was only doing his job.

"Hey, Saya," the young man greeted pleasantly. "How have you been hanging?"

Her already tiny smile faded into stoic bitterness. In all honesty, she hadn't been 'hanging' all that well. The past few days had been her worse yet in terms of attacks (milder than the one she had when she first arrived at the station, thank God). Her sleepless night were plagued with questions and tormented with gory but splintered fragments of memory, making her wonder with consuming fervour who she was, how she had lived, what sort of life-style could possibly drive her to kill her own sister, and who else had fallen to her rage? The questions she agonised so obsessively over were robbing her of sleep, and she ached to go home.

"I've been fine," she said stiffly, banishing her thoughts and memories as best she could. "As fine as could be expected, anyway."

"Fair enough," said Hojo smoothly, though they both knew that she was lying through her teeth. "Someone called Kai came today. He was the one on the scene when you were taken in, you remember?"

"I remember," said Saya slowly, her mind whirring as it processed the subtleties of the seemingly innocuous question. She couldn't understand why the others would deny any connection with her and felt a little hurt that they had, but she had to assume that they had their reasons. "He seemed like a nice enough guy, I suppose. I can't say I knew him that well though."

"He was passably decent," Hojo agreed with a small smile. "A little 'aggro' at times, but that's to be expected after going through the ordeal he has… Now, Saya, I did come here for a reason. I've come to tell you that we've not been able to find any evidence at all – there's no fingerprints or anything been found since there was no weapon at the scene and prints are next to impossible to lift directly from a corpse's skin, don't let the cop shows fool you. I'm afraid that I'm going to need some of your personal details, so that we can contact your family and properly debrief them and make them aware of the extent of the situation. Can you give us a telephone number, or an address?"

Saya went blank. What to do, what to do? Even if she wanted to give them the restaurant's location she still had a heap of trouble remembering its name on top of everything else she was learning every day, and had never been told the phone number. "Um," she said, thinking quickly, "I don't have any immediate family." That seemed a fairly safe way to go. After all, it seemed as though Kai was lying about the nature of her relationship with him and the others, so Hojo shouldn't be able to disprove what she said.

"Oh? Where do you live then?"

"Around," she said vaguely. "My parents died a while ago now."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. May I ask how?"

Saya went blank again. "Um," she hazarded, sounding the syllable slowly as her brain frantically scurried about. "Um… Mother… fell and… um… she fell over the… towel! yeah, the towel, and, uh, broke her back; and since she landed on top of father he… broke his back as well. It was some years ago. Tragic accident." She put on her most innocent expression. Gods, she was an awful liar… but she had to get points for creativity, right?

Hojo didn't so much as bat an eye. "I'm very sorry to hear that. I have to go now, but I'll be back shortly."

It wasn't until he was safely on the other side of the steel door that Hojo dared crease his forehead into the frown that had been threatening to appear the entire time he was in there. Quite apart from her pathetic attempts at lying, there had been something very wrong with her. She looked… paler than she had two days ago. The hollows in her face had been more pronounced, the sunken exhaustion that ringed her eyes with black more drawn, and her hair had lost some of its lustre. The differences were subtle, but he was a cop, and trained to notice stuff like that. Something was afoot…

"Yo."

Startled from his thoughts by the unexpected greeting, Hojo was surprised to see Yusuke standing in the shadows against the opposite wall of the long corridor, his pensive gaze fixed on the thick steel door of Saya's cell. This was very unusual, and it only made Hojo even more sure that something wasn't right if the most disliked member of the force was standing quietly, of all things.

If you knew Yusuke as well as Hojo did, you would understand that a quiet Yusuke was a sign of the Apocalypse. Yusuke was as self-centred as a tornado, and was spoilt rotten by his darling daddy. He was loud and a braggart, and was openly cruel in the name of justice. He took pride in being a copper, ironed his uniform daily, and buffed his shoes until they were more buff than shoe. He was a snide, smarmy suck-up with an attitude not even a mother could love. Seeing him standing there, deep in thought and actually looking serious, meant that there was something very important going on that Hojo hadn't been informed of.

"What did she have to say?" Yusuke said with painfully forced casualness. His features were tight. He looked afraid.

"Not much that wasn't a lie," said Hojo, eyeing his work mate suspiciously. "She said her parents were dead, but it was obvious that she wasn't being honest."

"Hm," said Yusuke, and the pitch the 'hm' reached was almost an octave higher than the note Hojo considered to be normal for the generic 'hm.' "I've done some research – you know, looking up her personal details and yadda yadda yadda – and I found nothing, Sarg. Not so much as a birth certificate, no criminal records, no driver's license, no credit card number, not even an address; nothing to say she ever existed. Just this." He pulled out a faded photo(1), and Hojo gasped in disbelief when he saw what the picture was of. It wasn't possible…

"I knew I had seen her somewhere," said Yusuke quietly, his face pale as he watched Hojo's reaction to the crumpled print. He smoothed a finger down the frayed edge of the picture. "Granddaddy told me all about her, you know," he added in a low hush; "he took the case and all, with that teacher, back when he lived in the States… But I never thought…" He broke off, and both men just stared at the picture in numb silence.

The faded black and white photo was obviously ancient. It was simply of some nameless men and women standing in front of some building, all of them dressed formally in the era's fashion of long white dresses and sharp black suits. One girl in particular had a crude circle around her face, obviously drawn in later with permanent ink to draw attention to her hauntingly familiar features. At the top of the picture there were two labels, one reading in chunky black symbols the numbers 1892. The other label, though, was what caught Hojo's attention. The stark black letters jumped out at him from the white page, but even though the symbols couldn't have been clearer it took his mind a while to fully compute just what it was he was reading. It was impossible… The letters read, Vampire.

And the face was unmistakably Saya's, despite the cold sharpness that hardened all of what should have been gentle contours into cruel angles and hooded her eyes with a deeply distrustful glare. Her blatantly cold disdain for the other people in the picture was obvious, but despite the fact that such calculating scorn wasn't present in the current girl's features, there was no denying that she and the woman in the picture were the same person. The blurred slope of her cheekbones couldn't be anyone else's, and the shade of black that her hair gleamed with was uniquely hers. Vampire…

"You weren't there," said Yusuke, his voice trembling, and the numb terror in his eyes quickening Hojo's own breathing into shallow pants. "You didn't see the things she did, the way she looked… And that man… must be one as well. He would have gut me, he would've… I saw it in his eyes… Christ Almighty, I never felt so scared in my life as I did in that moment." He laughed, and the hollow quality that the humourless bark carried made Hojo's skin crawl. "Would explain a lot though, like why she doesn't have a birth certificate. She's well over a hundred years old…"

…Wait, what?

That last statement made Hojo pause, and he forcefully quashed his fright for a moment. By now logic had pushed its way through panic, and was waving a handkerchief and cooee-ing for attention. Um, said logic, pushing his spectacles up his nose and blinking owlishly, did Yusuke just suggest Saya was a vampire? Like, a mythical creature only seen in lame horror movies and occasionally in cheap smutty novels? A vampire vampire?

Hojo stopped for a moment and actually thought about it. Logic did have a point.

The Sergeant was just about to wave Yusuke off and tell him to pull the other one when he paused, recollection flickering even as logic slapped his forehead before retreating back behind the haze of numbing horror…

Saya'd had an attack just before she could speak, and she would have spoken, he was sure. A horrible attack, it had left her gasping and screaming for breath as her body was robbed of oxygen. She'd flailed about, her claws slicing through air that hissed as the razor edges groped and slashed; her red eyes glowing as though they had the fires of hell themselves banked behind them; her fangs gleaming in the weak fluorescent light when her lips parted to release her pained howls…

Vampire…

"We can't know that," said Hojo abruptly, cursing mentally when his words came rushed and slightly jumbled. He cleared his throat, and this time when he talked it was with an air of false calm, his features tight with strain. "It could be one of her ancestors in that photo," he said. He only wished he could believe what he was saying. "It doesn't have to be her!"

"You know it is. What are we going to do?"

"How am I supposed to…?" Hojo paused, but by that point logic was pretty much down for the count. He shrugged hopelessly. "Suppose I do believe you," he said quietly, "and I'm not saying I do. If she is what you say, we'll have to tell someone, it's a start. And there have to be people out there who'll-"

"Who'll believe us?! We're claiming she's a vampire for Christ sake, I'm amazed that you are going along with what I'm saying, and you've seen her. No way anyone else would though, they'd call the mental institution on us!"

"You watch too many movies," said Hojo wryly, but he could see Yusuke's point. It was all so fantastic… But God help him, despite what he may say otherwise, Hojo believed the bastard's story. "Well… What if we test her blood? We might find some abnormality in there. If there's nothing, we can let the case rest and accept that the photo is just one of her distant ancestors and everything else was coincidence or hallucination."

"She's been refusing blood tests from the start, remember?" Both men looked at one another grimly; the girl's decision that was only an hour ago nothing but an aggravation now carrying a more sinister implication.

"What do we do?" Yusuke whispered.

"…Keep quiet for the moment, okay? If… If anything happens, we'll come forward with what we know, but in the mean time just try to scrounge up some stuff. Do some research on her and vampires in general. I guess I'll have a word to her…"

"Don't tell her we know what she is! What are you, suicidal?!"

"I'll be subtle, okay! I just have to wait for her to say something incriminating before I can put all my faith in that photo. You're a right ass, Yusuke, for all I know this whole thing is just you being a dickhead."

"You know that's not it," said Yusuke, deadly calm. "What about the other guy? The one that punk kid said killed the gang along with 'someone else,' who we now know was more than likely the girl in there?" He jabbed his thumb in the direction of the thick steel door.

Hojo sighed, rubbing his temples with his index fingers to soothe away the headache that was beginning to drill through his skull. "The team is already looking for that guy after that whole being 'moved to another establishment' bullshit; we don't have to interfere at all with that. Just keep looking, find as much information about Saya and vampires in general as you can."

Yusuke nodded, his youthful face still ashen, and coated with a sheen of cold sweat that glistened in the weak light that buzzed above them. He opened his mouth, but shook his head and snapped it closed again before walking away without another word, the echo of his clicking heels slowly fading into silence.

Hojo let out a breath and slumped against the wall, raising a trembling hand to cradle his aching head. What the hell was going on?! If he didn't know Yusuke better he'd swear that the punk was trying to make a fool of him, but though Yusuke was a bastard he was an honest bastard, and the haunted look in his eyes told Hojo that at least Yusuke believed what he was saying was true. And he'd seen it himself in her, but he'd explained it all away… But a vampire… He had to admit, it explained a lot of things that were previously unexplainable. But a vampire…

He stared in numb silence at the door, the once innocent block of steel now appearing to loom menacingly over him. Just behind those doors was a pretty girl, a girl with sunshine in her movements, a haunted sadness in her eyes and a smile that looked plump and sweet. A girl who was a vampire.

A vampire…

God, help us all…


(1) I've decided to include the events of Blood: The Last Vampire here, which is like a prequel to the Blood+ series. If you've seen it, you'll remember that the school nurse woman who found out about Saya was at the end being questioned by the police, and she was shown the photo of Saya in the poofy hat and long white dress from 1892. In my story, one of the officers there who showed the nurse the picture was Yusuke's grandpa. It's not essential that you know what went on in The Last Vampire to follow my story, but I do recommend you check it out if you haven't, just coz it's so cool. :þ

Quote of the Day!!

"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'."

"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."

These two brought to you by George Bush! 'til later, peeps!! XD