DEPARTURE
September 25 1999
The forest was incredibly dark at night, so much that she couldn't see more than a few feet into the gloom between the trees. Even during the day it would be very dark here, almost twilight. A perfect habitat for nocturnal creatures.
Lisa wondered why she was analysing like this. Perhaps it was an attempt to direct her mind away from her predicament. Perhaps she was already becoming something far different. All speculation... she didn't know what was happening to her, or why. She knew how, that was it, and the how was Julian and his friends. That was why she was here, in the forest at night.
She had spent a few days hiding, foraging for food at night when she could move freely, sleeping during the daytime wherever she could find a spot. When she wasn't searching for food or shelter, she found herself crying, unable to sleep.
There had been no mention of her family in the newspapers she had found lying around. Evidently the police didn't know what to make of it, and had simply covered the entire thing up. After three days... nights... she had gone back to the house and found it cleaned, emptied, with a 'for sale' sign tacked on the front lawn. Nothing of her old life was left.
Next door she could hear laughter from the Powers on one side and the Flanders on the other. They probably didn't know what had happened either, and to turn up on either doorstep would cause too much comment.
Although she could almost imagine Homer egging her on to the Flanders... it would be just like him to set her on Ned, in some perverse act of revenge for every imagined slight... no, she could feel it building up again. So Lisa had run away again, and ended up here.
She had a little difficulty finding the house, although she did well for someone who had only been there once before. A faint light was shining from the study and, as she approached the edge of the overgrown garden, the door was flung open and Vlad stepped out. Julian was just behind him.
"She should be here by now," said the younger one, fidgeting. "You said she would be here."
"And I was telling the truth, she is here, nearby. Give her time Parshivets. She will have to come to us eventually, because she will not be able to resist. After..." Vlad's hand wind milled on his wrist as if he were searching for something. "After certain ceremonies have been performed. Oh you remember don't you boy? The initiation rites, severing links... in fact, she has probably done that already. So, she is here. She will be with us soon."
Lisa crouched in the undergrowth and listened to their continuing conversation, her heart turning to stone as she did so. So it was their fault. Well they won't get the satisfaction of seeing me in their fold, she thought angrily. A vague idea was forming in her mind though... Lisa found she had greater clarity now as the 'baggage' humans carried around with them slowly fell from her mind. It was simultaneously liberating and distressing...
She waited until they had re-entered the house and crept away into the forest. She had plans now. She knew what she would do.
The next night, she returned to the house and tossed a note through the window, tied to a large stone. Hopefully it hit one, she thought grimly. The Lisa scampered off into the darkness. It would have been fun to see their reactions, but that might have endangered her more than she already was...
Lisa had spent a great deal of time composing the note, although it had been hard writing it entirely in the dark. Dear Julian, please forgive the way this letter reaches you, it read. I'm afraid I can't see you ever again. I hate you. I hate your kind and because of this I hate myself. I must leave, so I can find a way of destroying all of you for what you have done to me and my family. Goodbye Julian. Maybe next time I see you it will be in the hell I create for you. Lisa.
After that, she ran away. They didn't follow her, whether through luck on her part or a belief on their part that she would return one day Lisa didn't know, but it was enough. She spent the next few nights wandering Springfield, perhaps saying goodbye to her old life, always wary of the danger just around the corner. She could smell them, she realised. It was an odd sensation...
Eventually she left the city and trekked north, out of the state. It was the only way she would be able to survive, running away from them before they had a chance to act against her. Lisa's new life, if you could call it that, began.
September 3 2006
"I don't think I'll get a day job anywhere, not with my qualifications."
"You can't have a night job now. Night-time is when they come out, you'd be in danger."
"More danger than I am here?" Mark knocked back the last dregs of his lager and sat back. He looked ill, Lisa thought, and he was drinking far too much. "Look, there's nothing I can get."
"What about your uncle? He's practically offering you that job on a plate..." Lisa was standing near the door, holding her coat and waiting for the sun to go down. It shouldn't be long now... She had business.
"Eh, maybe. I just don't want to be a cook," he moped. "I wanted to be a pilot..."
"Fat chance." She moved toward him slightly, but he backed away and turned into the kitchen. "Look, I have to go out again. I'm locking you in, so don't answer the door for anybody."
"How will you get in?"
"Duh, I have a key," she said, jangling a bunch in front of his face. "It is my apartment."
"Yeah well, what if I want to order a pizza or something?"
"I bought food while you were sleeping." Lisa walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge door. "Plenty enough to last quite a while, although I wasn't quite sure what to get..."
"Don't go shopping that often, right?" Mark forced a smile as he looked through the contents of the fridge. His hand came to rest on one of the door shelves, on a special medical container. He opened it. "What the hell?"
"Like I said." Lisa reached out and pushed the lid of the container back into place, sealing up the vials within. "You wouldn't like it..."
"You got that right. Oh well, junk food is food I guess." He pulled out a box of cheeses. "Nifty."
Lisa stepped back out of the kitchen, leaving Mark mulling over the food as she made her way out of the apartment. The door locked with a loud click. Wouldn't be enough to keep them away if they came, but she doubted that would happen tonight.
The lock-up was a dilapidated, run down old warehouse near the railroad, so dark and brooding it almost made Lisa laugh at the cliché. Almost. She walked around it twice before entering, looking for anything unusual. Years of surviving in dumps like this had taught her a thing or two about caution, and she wasn't about to change that.
Fortunately there was no apparent danger. Lisa let herself relax just a little and wandered back to the front door, trying to look like a passer-by to whoever might be watching. A single police cruiser passed by but that was it.
I front of the lock-up, a grey van stood gathering ice in the cold night, the same one that had carried Enrico the thief away from her before. The police were probably waiting for a tow truck. She was closer. Lisa opened the door and looked inside.
The van reeked of fear, a tang of iron adding a familiar flavour to the air within, and underneath all of that the sense of others. Them. Lisa stepped inside the van and looked around. The van seemed clean, but... yes, in the corner she spotted a few rusted flecks on the floor.
She didn't feel sorry for Rico. Pity was an emotion she lacked, either through hard experience or perhaps as a side-effect of her affliction. She knew, however, that he was now probably dead or one of them; for his sake, she hoped it was the former as she climbed from the van and investigated the lock-up door.
They had been here too. The door wasn't locked, so she pushed it open and peered into the gloom within. It was empty. Near the back of the warehouse a thing beam on moonlight thrust down from a hole in the roof of the warehouse, shining on a low trestle table. Lisa cautiously stepped into the building, noting any possible escape routes or hiding places, made her way across to the table and looked. The book was lying on it, open, with a name underlined. A note lay on the table next to it.
Lisa picked up the book and looked at the name. Parshivets. It was the name Vlad had used talking to Julian in the forest, the night she had realised...
And then there was the note. She closed the book and looked down at the handwritten piece of paper.
"I'm still waiting, do you dare to find me," Lisa read aloud. It was signed with a single 'J'. She crumpled the note and dropped it on the floor.
"Bastard."
September 4 2006
Mark was sleeping on the couch when Lisa finally arrived home sometime near six in the morning, the book wrapped in a blanket under her arm. He stirred when she dropped the book on the kitchen table, but didn't get up.
Lisa unwrapped the book and flipped it open to the marked page again. Parshivets. She knew a smattering of Russian, having spent some time learning other languages between jobs. Roughly translated it meant Brat... it had been a nickname for Bart.
When she thought of her brother Lisa suddenly felt a gut-wrenching cramp descend to just below her solar-plexus. She hadn't fed for two days almost, and with the smell of... of prey filling the apartment, it was all she could do to hold herself back. With an almost exhausting physical effort she dragged herself to the fridge and retrieved two of the vials within, swallowing the contents of both in a single mouthful.
"Lisa?" Her back had been to the door. Lisa turned slowly, hiding the vials behind her back.
"What is it Mark?"
"I... you sounded ill or something." He was peering at her face. "I just wondered... I'd better get back..."
Mark turned stiffly and left Lisa alone again. He saw something, she thought. Of course he knew what she was now, but still... withdrawing a hand from her face, not knowing she had even moved it there, Lisa felt something wet clinging to her fingertips. She wiped the gory dribble from the corner of her mouth and returned to the book.
Surprisingly, or perhaps not so, there was a phone number listed next to Julian's pseudonym where the majority seemed to be an address. Lisa recognised the code straight away. Her home state. Not only that...
He was in Springfield.
Lisa picked up the phone and dialled. There was a moment of silence for the connection, then the phone began to ring. After three, someone picked up.
"Hello?"
"Julian you bastard," Lisa whispered harshly.
"Why Lisa, how nice of you to call!" He sounded older, although not mature. "How's life in the big apple? I hope your friend Mark isn't causing too much trouble for you. Why yes, you see I know all about you Lisa. I've been following you ever since you threw that note through Vlad's window. Oh, you should see what I've done to the place now that he's gone, makes quite a wonderful nightclub out there in the middle of nowhere, despite the odd disappearance in the woods."
Lisa didn't say anything, deciding to let him do all the talking instead. His voice sounded almost the same, distorted as it was by the phone line.
"I assume you found me in that book by now," Julian continued smoothly. "Perhaps we should get together, talk about old times. How's the family by the way? Oh that's right, they're dead aren't they!"
"Shut up!" Lisa yelled. "Look, you sick freak, you-"
"If you're planning on accusing me of killing them Lisa, you have to remember it wasn't me that made the first ah-hah, bite."
"It wouldn't have happened if you had just left me human," Lisa retorted.
"You know, they say the Separation is caused by a latent hatred directed towards family members. You hate them, you kill them. It's that simple."
Lisa slammed the phone down with a sub-human growl and thumped the table. Hard. It collapsed. She looked up to see Mark standing in the door again.
"You know, you keep waking me up like this and I swear I'll get so mad..."
September 5 2006
"I don't care, I'm going with you." Mark folded his arms and tried to loom over Lisa, as if that would somehow change her mind. It didn't.
"You can't, it's too dangerous."
"Like hell it is."
"You just don't get it, do you?" Lisa dropped a suitcase on the bed and started throwing clothes into it. "He's been tracking me Mark, ever since I left. He knows where I've been, he knows what I've been doing. He even knows about you staying in the apartment for god's sake! If you come with me, you'll just end up dead like all the rest."
"Right." Mark slammed the suitcase shut, holding down the top with his hand and looked into Lisa's face, ignoring the malicious stare she gave him. "You left them behind and they ended up dead, did you ever think about that? I've got a better chance of surviving if I come with you than if I stay here."
Lisa let her head drop a little, realising that he was right, that in some perverse way she had been responsible for more than she was willing to admit. "all right, you can come."
"More than that, I can drive." Lisa stared at him again. "What, you don't actually think you could survive a plane trip all that way do you? Even with your alleged tolerance, you'd be exposed to a lot more sun than might be healthy."
"I guess... I didn't really think about it." I didn't think about any of it, she thought. What was I thinking anyway?
She realised she had let the monster take over and drive her, even if it was in just that small way. Irrationality frightened Lisa, because from there she would quickly descend into the chaos of the demon, and this time there might not be a way back out again...
She relented, and saw Mark smile for the first time since their date, only a few days previous, but already such a long time in the past.
"all right, you can come with me but I'm warning you," she forced his hand from the case and started packing again. "If you get yourself killed..."
"Whatever."
It was another day before they finally left. Mark, conscious of Lisa's aversion to sunlight, spent the time acquiring several tins of black paint, coating the windows of his car until they were completely opaque. Then he stocked up on food from his Uncle's business and, finally, they were on their way.
He drove during the day, whilst Lisa sheltered in the back. At night, he slept and Lisa drove. She found it relaxing, especially when she thought about how she would feel travelling by plane, or even by rail. All those people surrounding her, driving her over the edge, into the madness... it wouldn't be pretty. And then the sun... Lisa glanced up at the front window and saw the long shadows of telegraph poles stretching across the pavement, cast orange in the low evening sun.
"Lisa?" Three days had gone by now, with only two stops. It had been Mark's choice surprisingly and Lisa hadn't felt the need to protest. After all, she didn't need to stop that often...
"What?"
"Why are you doing this?" Mark looked over his shoulder into the darkened rear of the vehicle, making Lisa wonder if he was ever nervous sitting up front... she knew she would be.
"I already told you why," she replied, but it wasn't enough for Mark.
"You only told me why you ran away," he shot back. "It doesn't really explain why you're going back. So why? Revenge? That doesn't seem much like you, from what I know about you."
"What do you know about me?" Lisa leaned forward enough that Mark could see her face, but not so far to catch the sun.
"I know enough."
"I see..."
"So," he said after a short silence. "Why?"
Lisa considered her next move. She could tell him a lie, but he wouldn't be satisfied with that. She could tell him the truth, but that was something she had tried to forget for such a long time... "I loved him. I think he loved me too, but... I don't know..."
Was that true? Lisa had asked herself the same question over and over again. If it was, and Julian had loved her, he had a very strange way of showing it.
"Why are you so interested anyway?"
"I just like to know these things," Mark replied, returning his eyes to the road. "I guess you don't love him now, right? Considering... right?"
Lisa didn't answer. That was probably the worst part of it, knowing how she felt... did she? Do I still love him? It was terrifying... yet, that might be the reason she was going back, above all others. Love. Was that a valid reason?
"I guess..." Lisa said eventually. "But whatever I might feel, he was the one who made me like this. Look, can we pull over when it gets dark? I'm getting a little cramped..."
"Sure."
They drove for another hour as the sun sank toward the horizon, finally disappearing in a blaze of colour that would have amazed Lisa at one time in her life; now it worried her instead. All that light. Mark drove them to a gas station, the kind that seems to sprout out of nowhere in the desert, complete with ancient pumps and a small, dusty grill and bar full of grease and bad light fittings.
"I'm just going... uh... y'know." Mark stepped out and disappeared in the gloom. Lisa waited until he was gone and climbed out herself, making a beeline or the bar. She was hungry. More accurately, she felt a hunger... Mark didn't know, but she had run out of her supply yesterday.
The smell hit her as she pushed through the door. An odd mixture of grease and human, with some onions in the background for flavour, burnt. It, Lisa reluctantly admitted to herself, was temptingly delicious. It was also the only sustenance she could expect between her and Springfield... she approached the bar.
"Whadda ya want kid?" The owner, a rough, balding man with an eye-patch glared at her though his single good eye.
"Uh... rare steak?"
"What you see is what you get kid," he said, waving a hand over a few plates under a row of heat lamps. "Was just closing up for the night when you came in."
"Well I'm... sorry for keeping you." Great, overcooked junk... "There's no chance of that steak then?"
"'Pends on how rare you want it," he said, glancing at the rear door. "Now back there I've got the juiciest steaks this side of the Rocky mountains, but they'll cost you this late at night."
Lisa noticed the glance... and then the sweat on his forehead. He was scared, and now she knew she could smell it almost dripping off him. The man reeked of fear... why hadn't she noticed it before? She started backing away from the counter.
"Look," she said to the man. "Uh... could you just come and help me with the telephone? I think it's broken."
The man seemed to sag visibly, a look of profound relief o his face as he spoke. "Yeah, sure I'll look. Let me just-"
The kitchen door burst open and something leapt out. Several somethings in fact. They swarmed around the room faster than most people could think and set upon the restaurateur. He fell without even a scream.
"Mark!" Lisa yelled at the top of her voice, turning, running from the building as fast as she could go. "MARK! Get back to the car!"
The windows burst open behind Lisa, showering glass over everything as one of them leapt out to stop her. She cried out in pain as the shards dug into her back, but didn't stop. Where's Mark?
"Lisa!" Mark came running around the back of the car, holding... a shotgun? "Quick, get in!"
The smell was building around her now. Them. They had followed her, or they had known where she was going... how they knew, she had no idea, but it didn't matter. Lisa knew of perhaps one other instance in the past of one of their kind turning 'good.' His death had been by all accounts incredibly brutal and slow.
She felt a hand on her shoulder, not friendly, trying to drag her back. She was almost there... it wasn't fair! A shot rang out. Both Lisa and her assailant were thrown backwards into the dirt by the blast. She felt something dragging at her legs, tried to crawl away, her fingers scrabbling uselessly through the dry dust.
She turned and lashed out with all her might, ripping at something with her fingers and feeling the satisfaction of hearing a scream. Lisa kicked out, rolled on to her side and was about to stand when something crashed into her skull. She fell back to the floor, heard one last cry from the gun and then finally blacked out.
RETURN
She was scared of the dark. She remembered it again, like the last time. Scared. Terrified. She knew if a light came she would leap and cling to it as if she were a child clinging to its mother. And the light came. And she ran to it, through the thick sludge of her mind, the pulsating rhythm of a heartbeat pounding into her skull, but there was something different. Someone different... someone standing, blocking her path. You have no right to be here!
She tried to push past him, to the light, but he stopped her. You will not pass! And yet, she could see someone in the light, beckoning to her...
"MOM!" Lisa shouted, waking with a start. There was a fire burning in the hearth in front of her, casting a flickering, orange light over her. An incessant thumping beat shocked through the floor into seat, the sounds of a party. She looked around, found her mind wandering back... "Mark?"
"He isn't here," a familiar voice said from the gloom. "But I am."
"Julian." It was a simple statement. She betrayed no malice, no anger... "What have you done with him?"
"Oh he's safe, for the time being. As are you if you co-operate."
"I don't like threats Julian." Lisa twisted in her seat, found her arms and legs bound to the chair with rope. "What do you want with me?"
"I could ask you the same question, Lisa." Julian stepped out of the darkness, so close Lisa could have grabbed him if she were free. He smiled. "Aren't you glad to see me, my love?"
"Don't make me laugh..." Lisa twisted her right arm a little and found the bonds loosening. Her left, though, was rather more tightly secured. She glared at Julian as he slowly circled her.
"Now Lisa," he said, leaning forward a little. "Why are you here?"
"You know exactly why," she growled, baring her teeth. It was animalistic, she knew, but it was also her nature.
"Refresh me."
"Bastard..." Lisa tensed her arm and pulled, hard, tearing through the ropes like cotton. She kept lifting, bring her closed fist into his chest in a blow that would kill any normal man outright. Julian barely winced, even as his ribs cracked. His hand clamped down on Lisa's other arm and held it there.
"Lisa, Lisa... I thought you always said violence never solved anything?"
"I'm a lot more cynical now." She grabbed Julian's wrist and tried to pull it away. "Get- ow! What the...?"
Julian let go of her arm and backed away slightly, still smiling. Lisa's bonds fell away and she was able to lift her arm, feeling a needle withdraw as she did so. "What is this, a sedative?"
"Why no, nothing of the sort." He leant a little closer, and Lisa could almost taste the stench of is breath. "You might find your senses becoming somewhat more... alert. You've been injected with a sensory enhancer, freely available from most drug stores and quite harmless in most respects."
"What purpose?" Lisa was slurring a little. She could smell something inviting wafting through the floorboards from the club below. The demon liked it. "What..."
"You have to stop denying what you are Lisa, or you'll never be happy."
"I'm a monster," she said. "Just like you."
"Monster? Oh, nothing of the sort... we are simply superior, and once you accept that you can feel at home again." He knelt down next to her. "Think about it Lisa, never having to run again, having somewhere to stay. Having friends, a life to live. You want that don't you?"
She spat in his face. Julian stood up, wiping the spittle from his cheek and eye. "I never told you what actually happened to Vlad, did I? He went like you in fact. 'Teetotal,' or something... I suppose the thought that he had driven you away from our little group sent him over the edge."
"So you killed him?"
"Eventually."
Lisa huffed and turned away. She could almost feel the heat of the throng below, taste them in the air, the mixed scents and aromas driving her to an internal frenzy that was so hard to resist... Mark...
"You can feel it can't you?" Julian said beside her ear. "Hungry?"
"Leave. Me. Alone." Lisa spoke through gritted teeth. There was another, closer scent now, stronger, seductive... She felt someone turning her head, and found herself looking at a door.
"There's a good 'meal' through that door, Lisa, if you want it." Lisa said no, but the demon said yes... and stood her up. She was through the door before she knew what was happening, unable to stop, unable to even see anything except the huddled shape on the floor. Julian stood at the door behind her. "I'll see you in a while, Lisa."
The door closed. Darkness. Only smell to guide her, overpowering, nauseatingly strong... she circled slowly, trying to fight, but already she was animal. The prey whimpered. She pounced, clawing at flesh, dragging its head back, biting. There was a scream.
It was Mark. Lisa fell back on her haunches.
"Oh god Mark! No!" The hunger was gone now, banished, as an overwhelming sense of dread overtook her. She gingerly touched Mark's neck, felt a warm sticky ooze... and a pulse. She took him in her arms. "Mark, wake up! Wake up!"
His eyes flickered open.
"L... Lisa? Aaah..." a feeble hand reached for the gaping wound on his neck. "What happened?"
"I'm sorry Mark I..."
"You bit me! God that hurt..." His strength returning, Mark pushed himself upright and nursed the wound. "I can't believe you bit me!"
"I... couldn't help it. You're not mad are you?" Lisa flinched as mark stood up, batting her arms away. They lost each other in the dark.
"What in hell kinda stupid question is that? Where are the lights in this shithole!" Mark walked into a wall, yelling obscenities. "I suppose you're going to go back to your 'boyfriend' now aren't you? Is that's why you're here isn't it? For him?"
"No you don't understand! I-" Lisa jumped when a hand covered her mouth.
"Shh..." Mark was whispering in her ear. "Sorry Lisa, just play along..."
He let go of her again and backed away. "Lisa don't do this! NOO!"
There was a crash, which made Lisa jump despite herself. She ran forward, arms out, tripped over something... Mark, lying face down by a broken chair. She leant down to him, heard a whisper.
There was a knock at the door about five minutes later. It was Julian. Lisa stood up from where she had curled herself, walked over and let him in.
"Ah, Lisa," he said, leering at her. He spied Mark lying in the corner, a raging wound on his neck. "I see you have re-acquainted yourself with your pernicious little 'friend'."
She shot him a vicious glare but said nothing.
"Oh come now Lisa, don't be so downhearted. You still have your health."
"I don't want my health! Not if it means I end up losing everything I cared for."
"Ah, your family." Julian stepped into the room, flipping a light-switch by the door. His smile remained fixed. "It would be nice to say they were here to see you, like in that film... but no, that wasn't the plan."
Lisa turned, watching him almost incredulously as he sauntered around the room and eventually ended up admiring sword on the wall. Any feeling she might have had for him were quickly dissipating. And yet...
"So what was the plan?"
"I thought you might have guess by now Lisa." He turned to face her. "You know I loved you, don't you? I still do. And you love me don't you."
"I..." she spied a movement out of the corner of her eye. "Will you leave me alone if I said yes?"
Julian smiled again, a fuller, perhaps happier smile and was about to speak when a chair crashed into him, knocking him off balance just long enough for Mark to beat him to the ground with a chair leg.
"Rat-faced snake-skinned son of a bitch!" he yelled, beating Julian a few more times. "I don't know what the hell pernicious means but if you ever call me that again I'll-"
"You'll what?" Julian flipped himself upright without any effort and punched "Beat me to a bloody pulp? Kill me? I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm a bit tougher than even you New York scumbags!"
He didn't hit Mark, so much as propelling him across the room with his fist. Mark landed in a heap in the corner, groaning.
"And as for you!" Julian turned and grabbed Lisa's shoulder, dragging her around in a macabre dance. "It's obvious you were planning something, or he'd be dead. And he will be dead..."
"Not if I can help it." She kicked him, hard, in a place most people care not to think about, and let him drop to the floor. "Mark?"
"Whaahaaa..." he groaned. "... I think I cracked a rib."
"I think you cracked more than that," Lisa said shortly, as she ran to help him, glancing up at the sword on the wall above them. She leant down and helped him up. "Come on, we'd better get out of here before he recovers."
"Sheeit..." Mark paused as they ran past the prone body of Julian. "What did you do to him?"
"You don't want to know. Come on!" Lisa tugged at Mark's arm to drag him from the room. There were stairs, although she didn't know where they went, and once they were on them the sound of dancing and beat music got a lot louder.
"Are we ever going to get away from him?" Mark yelled over the music.
"I doubt it! But... we'll have to see!"
Lisa kicked down a door and they ran through a crowded nightclub, pushing mindless dancers out of their path. There was a door, one that Lisa remembered from all those years ago. Now, where there had been a bookshelf and a clock, two heavy looking bouncers were standing, guarding the door.
Lisa tried to look nonchalant, leading Mark to the door, but it was hard to blend in when you were bleeding and limping. The bouncers quickly took note; even more quickly Lisa realised they weren't entirely human either. One was already pushing through the crowd to Lisa, the other was speaking into a radio, waving his arm urgently. Lisa turned, dragging mark in a circle and plunged back into the crowd.
"What?"
"Wrong exit." Lisa looked around. There were no windows left unsealed, no other exits. The bouncers were closing behind them... "We'll have to get out upstairs. Come on!"
"But... Lisa, that guy is still up there!" Mark tried to resist Lisa's hold on his arm, but she was too strong for her.
"There's also a way out up there."
There was a scream behind them. One of their pursuers, frustrated, had bodily thrown a clubber out of the way in his haste to reach Lisa and Mark. People started shouting and yelling, pushing past them in a bid to escape. The music stopped just as Lisa reached the stairs again.
It was clear, and the bouncers were still some distance behind. Almost dragging Mark now, she ran up the stairs and back into the room where Julian had been. He was gone.
"Okay, way out way out..."
"There," Mark shouted, pointing at an open window. "Looks like a fire escape."
"Why didn't I see it before?" Lisa leaned out and looked around. The dark emptiness of the forest looked back at her. She looked down. There wasn't a ladder, but there was something else..."
"Because," a third voice said behind them. "I didn't want you to."
Julian stepped out of the shadows, limping slightly.
"Thought you could get away Lisa?" He waved to the bouncers who had just stormed in, dismissing them.
"Yes, actually, I did."
Julian snorted and strode across the room toward them. "Such naiveté. It's rather cute, in a way."
"You keep your hands off me," Lisa said, batting his fingers away from her face when he tried to touch her. "You know I thought I loved you once."
"I thought as much. Oh well... it's obvious now you're too set in your ways to ever change back, no matter how strong the temptation," he said, eyeing the wound on Mark's neck. "A pity."
Julian turned and retrieved something from a desk by the far wall. It was a small box, which he spent some time fussing over before opening.
"Mark," Lisa whispered. "When I tell you, run to the window and jump out."
"Are you kiddin me?"
"Just... trust me." Lisa straightened up as Julian came back to them, her eyes narrowing at what he was carrying. "You're actually going to use that?"
"Eventually," he said, turning the stake over in his hands. "I thought I'd just show you what was in store if you don't change."
"Nice." Lisa kicked out at Julian again, but he dodged.
"I was expecting that," he sneered.
"I know. Mark, run!" Lisa leapt across the room as Mark ran for the window, giving Julian targets. He chose Lisa, who by this time had landed across the room and was slowly turning to face him.
Mark paused by the window. "Lisa?"
"Get out of here!"
He leapt, leaving Julian and Lisa alone. They circled slowly.
"You know there's still a chance for you Lisa. Come back to us. We can give you the world."
"Sure you can Julian... all you ever gave me was a stupid badge," she took the brooch from her pocket, where it had rested for the last seven years, and threw it on the floor. "I want my soul back."
Julian laughed. He stepped back and kept laughing, taking his eyes off Lisa. She turned and, with lightening speed, ripped the sword she had seen earlier from the wall and swung it at Julian. It was blunt from years of neglect, but it did the job, breaking a huge gash in his side and knocking him to the floor.
Julian screamed as she came at him again. She screamed too, roared, a primal noise that struck terror into her own heart, making her drop the sword inches from Julian's neck.
"What, aren't you going to finish me off?" he yelled, holding his side. Lisa stepped back, retrieving the sword, and looked down at him.
"No, I'm not. I was going to, when I thought I loved you," She leant down, making sure the sword-tip was resting on his neck. "You see, I thought about putting you out of your misery because it was the best thing, because I thought I was in love wit you. But I'm not in love wit you. The best part is, you want me to do it don't you? You want me to kill you, because you didn't realise what you were getting into did you?"
She stood up again. "You thought it would be cool to be like this, didn't you? And when you realised it wasn't as fun as it seemed, you wanted to share your misery. So you chose me. That in itself would be enough to make me kill you, if I were any other person. But I'm not any other person. Despite everything that's happened, I'm still me, and I don't kill, Julian, not if I can help it."
She turned and walked to the window, still carrying the sword.
"So that's it? You're just going to leave me here?"
"Yes."
"But... you can't! What if I come after you?"
"It won't matter if you do," she replied. Lisa climbed on to the windowsill and jumped to the ground, landing in a thick pile of leaves. Mark was sitting nearby, smoking a cigarette and watching the trees.
"Why aren't you hiding?" she asked, throwing the sword into the undergrowth.
"No point, not when they're so busy trying to control that mob over there." He pointed at the doors, where several burly men were trying to hold back a group of clubbers from getting back into the building. "I guess that's that?"
"Yeah..."
Mark stood up awkwardly, still nursing his side, and the wandered away from the club. No one followed them. They found the car around the back of the building, stripped of everything except the paint, although the keys were still in the ignition. Mark remarked that they must have thought it was worth something...
"So where to?" he said when they were safely away from the old house. Forest whipped by on either side of them.
"Home, I think."
"New York it is then!"
"No..." Lisa placed a hand on his arm. "My home."