Ok, so my hoping was a little off. Not only did I not get another chapter up before a month was up, it's actually been a bit more than a month since the last update. So from now on I'll just stay mum on the whole time thing and let it carry on as it has been and let fate take it's course on the posting. Just remember, the story will get completed, the next one will get posted, it'll just take me some time. Bear with me on that!

I just wanted to thank everyone that's reading and reviewing. I really appreciate it and I'm glad you're enjoying my stories! What I was thinking of doing (and we're talking pretty far in the future here) when this series was done was put it through one of my rewriting and editing processes (very extensive, to say the least), make it much better, neater, cleaner and prettier than what it is. Make a pretty cover, some section breaks, get it bound at Kinko's and have myself a pretty little tangible, dolled-up item! The goal is to associate my fanfiction with my professional pen name. I can't do it in the state it's in because it's nowhere near as cleaned up as it's needs to be and if an agent I'm querying happens to see it connected to my name before it's ready, my chances lessen for representation. Yeah, I know I connect this to there but not there to here. They're not going to do that much work to connect those dots . . . I hope. crosses fingers But eventually I'd like to represent this on a subdomain for my blog and have it stand alone and perhaps I'll make a few more copies of the finished product and give them away as prizes or something. Note the word GIVE, meaning I absorb all costs, including shipping. Meaning it can't be bought. Meaning no money made, no copyright infringement had. Essentially it wouldn't be any different if you printed this up on your computer and spiral bound it yourself, with me sending you the images as covers. I'd just be gussying it up a bit on this end with some laminated picture pages. Again, just to reiterate, I wouldn't be making money off of it. None whatsoever. No Lulu press or anything like that. This would be a photocopying machine and those plastic spiral thingies. What I was thinking is making them prizes in contests, say for fan art, ficlets, that type of thing. I also have a few items at Cafepress that I've made from my own photos of Santa Cruz that I wouldn't mind giving away either (don't try to find them, you won't be able to). Things like that.

It's just a thought for the future. Let me know what you think of that! Also, I've started a web serial about vampires in ancient Egypt. Believe it or not, it was inspired by this very fic series! Granted the inspiration is from the next story but it's there nonetheless. The first couple of chapters go up tomorrow. If you're interested in reading it (yes is it connected to my pen name, the amount of rewriting and edited it's been through, I sure hope so!), the link is in my profile. Take a look!

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"You know," Marko's eyes shifted as he leaned into Detta, "when you said we were going to fly," he whispered before dropping his voice to a barely audible tone, "I thought you meant we were going to fly," he managed through clenched teeth.

"Peanuts?"

Detta looked up at the stewardess and smiled, taking two bags of nuts for her and Marko. When the woman walked off, Detta smiled coyly at him. "Are we not?"

Marko was still stunned. He had to remove some hooks from his jacket at airport security and came within seconds of a full cavity search before he was able to take his metal-filled clothes from the x-ray conveyor belt. Not only were they on a plane, but they were flying first class as well, a darkness flight that would have them into Kennedy Airport hours before the sun rose. When Marko went to meet Detta at her house, he fully expected to just take off from there, take a couple days to get to New York. It would have been a good way for Detta to master her flying but not only had she already gotten the tickets, she didn't feel confident enough to fly such a distance. 'I'm still unsteady,' she had said. 'You're not going to get any better with your feet on the ground,' he replied. She gave him a look, that same look she always gave him when he was trying to contradict her. 'I'd rather take it a few miles at a time, not a few thousand."

Marko looked around the cabin. He had never been on a plane before. Never had the chance to. He was turned years before commercial flying was affordable for his family and since then, he had his own means of air travel. It was rather stuffy, the air dry. The semi-cold breeze from the vent over his head was relatively amusing but he couldn't stop playing with the overhead light. Detta slapped his hand away from it to get him to stop.

"Child." She smirked at him.

Considering the darkness of the cabin, he could have induced epileptic fits in the people around them. They were seated first, in their wide berth chairs with ample legroom. He took the window seat and watched as the dozens of people filed past them towards the back of the plane, through a little doorway to where he could see three times as many seats as there were up front.

"Stealing from your victims, are you?" he whispered in her ear.

She smiled without looking up from her magazine. "Trust me. You wouldn't want to sit in coach. You'd just end up wedged between a fat guy with stench for cologne and a screaming kid. You can thank me later."

Everything was handed to him here. He forgot the last time he had a meal served to him on actual china with proper silver utensils, unless he counted that cult in Canada that came to worship him and David. They were good to him. Granted, this food didn't whet his appetite and all he wanted was a good vein to suck on. Neither of them had a chance to feed before they left but from what Detta told him, a few deaths in New York would by far go unnoticed.

Marko turned his head back to Detta after her wise remark, her soft breath bouncing off his skin. "You think you're cute, don't you?"

Detta raised an eyebrow to him and turned her rested head to face him. "You know I'm cute."

"Yeah, yeah," he replied half sarcastically before settling himself back into his seat.

It was three in the morning, Eastern Time, when they landed in New York. While the other disembarking passengers looked groggy and half alive, Marko and Detta were a step away from refreshed. They had a meal to catch before they could turn in for the day. Stopping first to check into the hotel, they headed for Alphabet City with Detta's promises of more runaways than Santa Carla would produce in a decade. It was hotter here then in Santa Carla, the buildings keeping in the heat being soaked up by the tar on the street. Although they were on an island, the breeze stopped at the first wall of skyscrapers it hit. The Lower East Side, as Detta attested to, was littered with fresh feed. They got their pick of the lot, and an easy meal it was. Screams were normal on the streets of Manhattan so their victims' blended in perfectly. They carried the bodies out into the harbor, disposing them, as Detta so aptly put it, Mafia style.

On their fly back to the hotel, it was only seconds before Marko realized that Detta dropped back. He halted mid-flight and turned around, searching the sky for her when he spotted her sitting next to one of the spires on the crown of the Statue of Liberty, her legs dangling over the edge. He joined her atop the guardian of the bay, looking back at the city lit up against the blackened, light-polluted sky.

"It's different here," he said. "The feel. It's almost . . . anxious."

Detta nodded, a faint smile on her face. "Yeah. The city doesn't stop. Its pulse is always beating. A far cry from sedate Santa Carla, huh?"

"You liked it here?"

"I did."

"You didn't want to leave." It wasn't a question.

Detta shook her head. "But at least I can come back now without fear."

"Will you really feel better if you kill him?"

"Better?" Detta thought on the word, her chin turned up, eyes towards the night sky. "No, not better. Relieved would be more accurate. This isn't really an eye for an eye. He's filth and I don't doubt I'm the first person he's ever put a hit on, not to mention harassed. He's as impure as they come."

"This coming from a vampire," Marko looked at her, his eyebrow cocked.

Detta whipped her head towards him, a frown on her face. "I wasn't a vampire when I was working for him. I wasn't a vampire when I first thought that I could dredge better human substance from the bottom of the East River. I'm doing everyone a favor, not just myself."

Her voice was angry, nearly insulted that Marko had made such an insinuation. He placed a hand on her knee and she turned her head back towards the city, its millions of eyes twinkling at the both of them.

"Do you think about coming back here . . . to stay?" he asked.

"After tonight I will." She turned her head back to him. "You can't expect me to spend eternity in Santa Carla."

"I never wanted you to." He turned his head, his eyes meeting hers. "We can't stay in one place very long anyway, can we? Fifty years and we haven't aged, might be a little conspicuous. We only have another ten or fifteen in Santa Carla before we'd have to move again. This is where David's from." Marko heard a small scoff issue from Detta's throat but continued. "Max found him in, what is it . . . the bowling?"

"Bowery?"

"That's it. He ran with the Irish gangs then. Left before the Italians came in. Met me in a Chicago suburb back during my greaser days." Detta smiled. "Dwayne, he's from here too. Different decade, of course, but we found him in L.A. Paul, surfer boy that is he, is from just south of Monterey. He was a scavenger. Both parents dead. David liked his attitude."

Detta always wondered about where the rest of the boys came from. She knew that they weren't natives of that costal town but it was still somewhat shocking to hear the truths of their pasts regardless, especially since she only knew their present.

"I wish I could have known you when you were mortal. Were you the same person then as . . ."

Marko laughed. "Vampires and their human pasts are never the same."

"You know what I mean."

"I know. I guess, same demeanor and all, without all the blood drinking and killing."

"Do you remember your family?"

"Do you remember yours?"

Detta's brow furrowed, a contemplative look on her face. "I remember people. I see them in my head from time to time. But there's no connection. I don't think I'd recognize my own mother if I passed her on the street. I can't even remember what she looks like."

"The older you get, the fuzzier those images become. I may have the odd dream of a couple with a kid that looks like me, but that's it. You trade your old life for a new one when you become a vampire. I guess it's better that way. Less pain."

"I felt pain though, when I lost the connection with you. It was the worst thing I ever felt."

"We have odd emotions but what we do feel is magnified beyond human comprehension. Love, for us, is unbearable. That's why you'll rarely find a vampire that truly loves."

"And you?"

Marko looked at her, fear and passion swimming in his eyes. "That pain, that loss, even for just a day, I never want to feel that again."

"It scares you, doesn't it? The connection?"

"Yes it does."

"Yeah, me too."

"What once was lost, now is found."

"Wait, did I catch a tune on that sentence? You're not going to start singing, are you?"

"If I knew the rest of the words I just might."

Detta laughed and covered his mouth with her hand. Marko wrapped his arm around her shoulder and brought her body close to him, prying her hand from his face. He looked down into her smiling face and kissed her. A sense of relief and welcome met his lips as she kissed back, her hand gently brushing his cheek.

"Look," she said, breaking their bond and nodding towards the east. The sky began to lighten and a creeping dawn was now edging over the horizon. "And to all a good night!"

"It's Christmas in July now?"

"You sing, I recite, we're even."

"I'd say that's a deuce. Lets go. You have a big night tomorrow."

"I do, don't I?"

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