CHAPTER THREE

Sewer drains were the best places. Work crews didn't like to go there at night. Rats inhabited them in abundance, and within days she was as adept at catching them as she was at processing expense accounts at her old job. She wondered if they missed her. She wondered if Meg and Sara ever felt guilty when she didn't come back after they'd let her leave the club with a complete stranger.

She supposed she shouldn't blame them. How were they to know that she wasn't the type to go off with strange men? It's not like she'd gone out of her way to be friendly and talk to everyone. She'd just stayed in her nice safe cubicle most of the time, did her work, and went home. Meg and Sara were reaching out to her, trying to get to know her even though she'd turned down Meg's proposal to streamline the expense sheets. Poor Meg. She hadn't realized that the method of streamlining she'd proposed would have made it easier for unscrupulous people to pad their accounts.

So here she was, far from nice safe cubicle, to nice safe darkness. It's not like she could go out in public dressed in a blood stained slip.

It's not like she could go out during the day at all.

It took a lot of getting used to, the heightened senses, having to drink blood.

What a relief that animal blood worked.

Tsubame decided that first night that she would never ever kill or harm another human being. No one should have to go through what she did. She just couldn't understand why the stake hadn't worked. It had hurt, so much so that she didn't want to think of trying again. Maybe you had to be really dead, really a vampire before stakes worked. She must have really died from the stake, for she'd woken in a coffin. Perhaps the vampire's bite had an incubation period, like diseases did sometimes. It really didn't matter how, she was a vampire and there was nothing she could do to change that.

There was an earthquake one evening about two months after she'd turned vampire. She was sitting in a circular tunnel under the city when the ground started shaking, a gentle rocking motion that came up through the earth below.

There was a squeaking, and a rush of small furry bodies hurtling by. All the rats left the sewers. She'd watched, bemused, until she caught the sound of rushing water from broken water mains. She'd been flooded out. She'd ended up in the suburbs, wandering through alleys, and peering into backyards while waiting for the water levels to drop so she could return to the sewers.

"Speedy? Speedy?" It was a child's voice, a human boy, calling out in the darkness.

Tsubame had only seen humans from a distance for the past two months. She avoided them. She had to. She felt the siren call of the blood in their veins and forced herself to leave before it became too much to bear.

She hungered now, not having found any rats since the earthquake. Rats didn't have a whole lot of blood, so you had to hunt them constantly.

Quietly, she moved up to the back fence of the house with the boy's voice. Just hearing another human voice made her feel strange. She hadn't spoken to anyone since that vampire had let her out of the coffin.

Closing her eyes, she could sense the small human child walking desultorily around the backyard calling for his pet. Without looking, she knew where he was, because of the blood within him, warm and alive. She shivered with anticipation, and then shuddered in self-loathing. He was human, like she'd been. How could she even think of taking the blood he needed to survive?

The child went back inside, the rasp of the sliding glass door as audible to Tsubame as if she'd been standing right next to it. She bit her lip and felt her fangs extend.

No.

She had to leave, and now.

She got to her knees, just as a yellow mass came racing up the alley, snarling.

It was a dog, a big one. Some kind of Labrador mix, and it saw her as a threat, and began to bark.

It didn't know what hit it. She kicked its legs out from under it as it lunged at her throat and sank her teeth into its neck as it fell on its side. It yelped a bit, startled, then began to relax as she drank.

Dogs were a lot bigger than rats. She was surprised to find she felt full, and she hadn't even drained it. In fact, she didn't need to drink any more. The dog could live.

She pulled back, not bothering to wipe the blood from her chin and stared at the animal in her lap. She'd liked animals. She'd been afraid of big dogs like this one as a child, but she'd always loved puppies and kittens.

The dog whined a bit. Losing the blood made it weak, though it had the opposite affect on her. She could feel the exhilaration of the food coursing through her veins, becoming energy.

The twin holes on the dog's neck were seeping blood. She put her hand over the wounds and pressed down to make them stop bleeding. The dog yipped a bit, but settled down, and she used her other hand to pat its head, experimentally. Amazingly, its tail flopped once, twice, three times against the ground. She'd made it wag its tail!

"Speedy?"

A little boy in flannel train pajamas stood at an opening in the fence, a gate that she hadn't noticed, and stared wide-eyed at her and the animal in her lap. Feeding had made her careless. She hadn't heard him come to the gate.

As she looked toward him, the light from the house behind him spilled through the gateway and onto her face. She saw him look at her chin; notice the blood and the fangs. His eyes got big. He opened his mouth and…

She moved to him so fast he didn't have time to scream as she clapped her hand over his mouth instinctively.

He began to squirm and try to cry out. She dragged him out of the gateway and over to where she'd been sitting against the fence.

The dog growled low in his throat, and the child reached a hand out toward him. The dog quieted.

This must be 'Speedy'.

Tsubame had been making shushing noises which the child ignored. Now she changed her tactics.

"Is this your dog?" she whispered in the boy's ear. He was about six or seven maybe, and he smelled of soap and the blood coursing in the veins under his skin. Why was his blood still calling to her? She'd just fed.

Swallowing, she waited for him to nod, then went on. "He's not dead. He's going to be fine. I just took a little of his blood."

The child screamed against her hand, and she winced. That was not the right thing to say to calm him down. She went back to making shushing noises, and when he stopped shrieking, she continued. "I'm not going to hurt you."

The boy made a rude noise of disbelief. Tsubame nearly laughed. It was so normal, so child-like.

Taking a chance, she took her hand off his mouth, and turned him gently around at the shoulders so she could look in his eyes. They were brown, like hers, but full of fear. His skin was rather pale with blue veins at the temples. Beautiful veins, filled with…Tsubame shook her head to brush that thought away.

"Why did you hurt Speedy?" he asked, voice full of fear and sadness.

"I'm sorry." Tsubame wished that she still had the human luxury of tears. "I didn't mean to. I had to eat."

"Eat someone else's dog." The boy's tears were spilling down his face now, and she released her grip on his right shoulder to let him wipe them away.

"I promise, I'll never bother Speedy again."

That seemed to satisfy the child until another thought occurred to him, and his eyes got big. "Are you going to come back and eat me?"

Tsubame didn't want the leap of hunger that happened in her chest to show on her face at his question. She had to forcibly restrain herself from falling on his neck, and only just managed to still the tremor of want in the hand that still held his left shoulder.

"No." she told him in a low voice. "I swear to you. I have never hurt a human being. I will never hurt you or any other humans ever." She'd vowed it to herself when she first became a vampire, but now it was official. Now there was a witness.

"Cross your heart and hope to die if you lie?" the child asked desperately.

Of course he was desperate. He wanted reassurance, because that's what children needed. Tsubame might not be human anymore, but she could remember from her babysitting jobs that children wanted you to tell them everything was going to be all right.

She dropped the hand that rested on the child's shoulder and let it fall into her lap with the other, clasping them together. "I swear to you, I will never drink human blood. I'd rather die." She swore solemnly. "Will that do?"

The boy nodded reluctantly.

From beyond the fence, Tsubame heard the sliding glass door open. Someone was coming in search of the child.

Leaning forward, she looked straight into the boy's eyes. "I'll go now. Please don't tell anyone I was here. They might think you're crazy."

"But what about Speedy?" The boy pointed to the dog lying quietly in the alleyway.

"Tell them some kind of animal bit him."

Heavy footsteps were crossing the grass of the lawn and coming toward the gate. Tsubame got to her feet. The adult's blood, like the boy's was calling to her, making her almost dizzy with longing. "I've got to go. Remember, don't tell."

And with that, she took off running, knowing that she'd be just a blur to the boy who waited by his dog for his parent to come and take him into the safe lighted house, away from things that creep in the night. Away from her.

OOO

The next month, she set off for the Sierra Nevadas, to the national forest with its miles and miles of wilderness filled with lots of animals to feed upon, and only a few hikers to avoid. Her family used to take camping trips there. Besides, the call of human blood was becoming too much for her to resist, so she left the populated areas, traveled along the roads by night, feeding off pets from random backyards, leaving them weak but alive. Every town had sewer systems, and she slept there during the days, resuming her journey until at last she made it to the mountains where caves, not sewers, became her resting places.

And there she stayed, venturing into hikers' campsites only to steal clothing when her slip at last fell apart. She stole a knife so she wouldn't always leave dual tooth marks on the smaller animals she drained completely dry – the forest rangers were beginning to talk. She also stole boots since bare footprints would also cause comment.

She learned the area thoroughly, mapping out in her mind every overhang, every cavern and dark place that offered respite from the sun. She learned how to find and catch animals by using her heightened senses. Because she was a dead thing and unnatural, they didn't know what to make of her and would flee or attempt to attack her. She had no Pocahontas style affinity for the beasts she hunted, yet she learned to live in their world, to sense danger, and weather changes, and to use her senses for survival as all good beasts should. And she stayed away from humans. That was her way of surviving.

Until one day, he came.