I appear to be churning chapters out now... I've got to the exciting bit :)

Thanks to 0positiv, lozzielo, Shaniahh and fleemneek for the reviews.

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I don't own Being Human.

Chapter 10: The Red Shield

22nd July 1619

Eleanor, Elizabeth, Mary, Ann, Joan, Alice, Susanna, Emma and Agnes.

These were the names that ran through Izzy's mind everytime she slept. These were the names that startled her everytime she heard them called out in the street. These were the names that she would never forget. For these were the names of all the girls who's blood Izzy had tasted. Or at least, all the girls who's names she had asked before she helped them through their doors. Recently, she had stopped asking their names and then, stopped helping them completely. Too desperate to loose herself in the taste of their blood.

Eleanor, Elizabeth, Mary, Ann, Joan, Alice, Susanna, Emma and Agnes.

'Don't you have servants to do that for you?'

Izzy was lying on the bed watching Hal polish his shield. She was still feeling a little light headed from earlier. Hal seemed to get over the blood drunkenness a lot faster than her, she supposed it was because he had been doing it for so much longer.

'They don't do it properly.' Hal replied without looking up at her.

'Can't you just, I don't know, lord it over them and say "I want this shield polished so hard that I can see my face in it"?' asked Izzy, making her voice deep when she impersonated him.

'I can't do that.' Hal laughed.

'Of course you can, you're a knight and a vampire, you can do anything.'

'No, I mean I can't see my face.' He replied. 'Come over here' he said when Izzy looked puzzled.

Izzy didn't bother getting up, she spirited behind him. He didn't jump like he used to, he had got used to it now. Hal gestured for her to look into the back of the shield where he had been polishing. She did so. And then did a double take.

'But… but you're not… that's impossible… how?' she stammered. She glanced at Hal. 'Vampire thing?' she asked.

'Vampire thing.' He replied with a smile. 'I need a shit.' He said, getting up.

'Nice.' Izzy replied, without removing her eyes from the back of the shield, she had noticed something else.

After Hal left the room Izzy still continued to stare at her reflection in the back of the shield. She couldn't remember properly looking at it since before she died and certainly not since before she started tasting blood. She looked the same as she always had but different somehow. Her eyes, they were black but that was only the obvious change, there were more, subtler changes that unnerved her more than the change in eye colour. She looked harder, crueler, there was no playful innocence in her face anymore. She looked like a monster.

So this was why vampires let themselves become what they were. They couldn't see what they were. They weren't faced with themselves, day after day and that made doing the things that they did easy. But Izzy could see herself now, for what she had become, and she hated it.

How could she have let this happen? How could she have just turned away and let countless innocent people get slaughtered, and then accepted it, made excuses for him, and then she had enjoyed it. Looking now, into the eyes of her reflection in that red shield, she didn't recognise herself. She was a good person once, she was sure of it, perhaps with a few loose morals but never evil. She had been seduced by the blood, she had become just like Hal: a monster.

But was he? Izzy had been a good person once, maybe he had been too and with no reflection he could not be confronted with it the way she had just been.

Izzy didn't know but one thing was certain: she would never taste blood again.

That however, proved easier said than done.

She tried to hide her shaking hand from him but Hal noticed it all the same.

'Are you okay?' He asked. It had been several days since she had last tasted blood.

'I'm fine' Izzy managed although her voice shook slightly.

'Are you sure because you don't look well and I didn't think ghosts could not look well. We can go and get a drink if you-'

'No!' Izzy interrupted, a little more forcefully than she had aimed for. 'I think… I think I'm going to stop doing that now.' She said.

'Stop?' asked Hal, like it was the most ludicrous idea he had ever heard in his life.

'Yeah.' Izzy knew that he would never understand the truth so she cast her mind around for a lie, some explanation that he might be able to comprehend. 'It's getting boring,' she said, remembering a conversation that she had once had with Charles, 'I need a change.'

He seemed to understand but still questioned her. 'It's just, when a vampire stops feeding... it hurts.'

'Well, I'm not a vampire.' Replied Izzy definitely. 'Would you excuse me for a moment?' Izzy didn't wait for a response. She spirited upstairs and barely made it to Hal's room before she collapsed on to the bed, clutching tightly at her stomach as cravings racked through her. This was pain like she had never felt before.

Izzy didn't understand. How could she feel pain when she didn't have a body? She was just a spirit, a mind. Maybe that was it. Maybe all the pain, all the craving was all in her mind. And if that was the case then all she had to do was think of something else. Something else...

She racked her brains for something, anything that could take her mind off the pain. She sifted through her memories of the past few months, after her death, of her life before that, but nothing was strong enough.

She dug deeper, into the earliest parts of her childhood, arguing with her brother, her father teaching her to play cards… still no effect.

She dug deeper still and came across things that she didn't recognise. Wars, violence, rape, murder and blood. Lots of blood. Where the hell had these memories come from?

The memories were horrible to watch but the more she focused on the mysterious and gruesome images that were flashing through her mind, the more the pain in her gut lessened. So she kept digging until finally she found a memory that didn't make her want to tear her eyes out.

She was in a bed chamber. It wasn't well decorated and it wasn't very big, in fact it was close to what Izzy would call squalor. She was sitting on a bed with an itchy straw mattress, opposite her was a large mirror with a crack running down the middle. Izzy stared into the mirror and the reflection stared back at her, but the reflection wasn't her own, it was that of a young boy. A boy with green/brown eyes.

Fleem you were right, Izzy feeding couldn't be allowed to stand but now she understands Hal a lot more and as you can probably guess, she is about to learn even more about him.

Thanks for reading everyone. Reviews very welcome.