Author's Notes: Yes this is still alive.

Six Months Later

We were in a café. She was sitting across from me. It was one of those modern coffee places, with mismatching yet complimentary seats and tables of all shapes and sizes. There were multicolored modern lamps but they were all off – the light mainly came out of the windows. Even though the clouds outside promised rain, the light still was evident. I was drinking coffee, black and she, water.

I was looking at her curiously and she was staring at her water as if the ice floating around the drink was doing magic tricks. It wasn't. All it was doing was floating aimlessly above the water. We had been sitting here for almost ten minutes now and she had yet to utter a word.

It was mid-November and she was wearing a dark coat that matched her hair nicely. Danica Garnet was a dampyr which meant she was a half-blood, half a human and half a vampire. Yes, vampire; as in the living dead who suck people's blood, sleep in coffins, the works and I was hopelessly in love with one. Well half of one anyway.

"So how are you?" I asked after awhile. I decided I could live without this silence.

She raised her gaze from her water and looked up at me with her somewhat startled blue eyes. "Fine," she breathed out, her voice loaded.

I waited a second to see if she would say more, she obviously had more to say, but she stayed silent as if editing what she wanted to say to me in a more suitable version.

"Jamie's doing fine too in case your wondering," I narrated to fill up the silence. "She's just started at the local university here and she started to sleep with a gun – almost shot me once, when I was getting water in the middle of the night." I added as an afterthought.

My attempt to make her smile failed, as usual, and she just looked at me with a somewhat conflicted expression on her face. "Jason," she started. "I called you to meet me here because-" she dropped her voice slightly "-they're almost here."

"What doing you mean?" My lighthearted mood turned. "Here in the city? How did they know we were here?" This was supposed to be our last stop. No more moving we said. No more sleepless nights of waiting until they came. No more vampires.

She uttered anxious, "Look, you should move with Jamie tonight, you do have a plan if something happened like this, right?"

"Yeah, we've already got bags packed and ready to go," I reassured her. "But Jamie won't like this... I don't like this."

"I know." She replied with a pained voice, "I'm sorry you and Jamie got dragged into all of this – but don't worry after this they will stop."

"Why?" I asked exasperated, and the next thing I knew my anger was raising, "How do you know that? How do you know they just won't follow us as like they always do since we've escape? How do you - "

"Because this time, I'm staying behind," she said it quietly but I heard. I heard her loud and clear.

All my anger ebbed away immediately and I stared at her, astonished, "Danica, don't. We've already been over this." Then without realizing it I moved my hand on top of her hand resting on the table.

She snatched her hand away before I could touch her. "No," she said stubbornly. "This is why they keep on finding us. It's because of me."

I opened my mouth and before I could speak she beat me to it. "I was a fool to believe I could hide, hide from them – and now they are after all of you too."

"But they took us as well! They want us all!"

"No they just took you because of me, Jason, because they know without leverage of some sort they can't make me do anything, you and Jamie had nothing to do with us – if I wasn't here you wouldn't be in this mess. None of you will." She said this in her normal tone but there was an undertone of sorrow and regret in it.

"But Asher - they want him too!" I reasoned, trying to find any loopholes whatsoever.

She shook her head and stated firmly, "I am what they want. Goodbye Jason."

Before I could do anything else she stood up and was out of the door. I stood up just as quickly as I could and ran to catch up with her. The door was barely closed when I yanked it open. Outside the cold air hit me like an angry shout over a megaphone. I craned my neck to look for her and I spotted her advancing in the distance. I quickly speeded through a crowd of people and weaved my way through. Fortunately, I caught up with her as she turned a corner.

"Danica," I huffed, breathless and pleading. "Danica stop, please."

Thankfully, she stopped and she turned hesitantly to looked at me. She too was breathless, but something told me it wasn't from running. The wind was playing with her black hair gently. Her gaze was defiant.

"Please," I begged. "Don't go."

She sighed slowly, as if a parent trying to explain a fact of life to a child, and took a step towards me. "Jason," she said softly.

She was looking at me with anguish, pain and... something else I couldn't identify. All I could do was stare at her blue eyes. I only vaguely realized she was inching towards me. She raised her hand up to touch the side of my face. When I felt her soft hand gently feathered my cheek, I frozed on the spot; she never willingly touched anyone.

"Thank you for saving me," she continued her voice as quiet and as loud as the wind.

"But you should have left me when you all escaped," she whispered and she placed a soft kiss on my lips. I closed my eyes and deepened the kiss. Just as I was starting to take her in, to take all of her in, the way she sweet way she smelled, her soft lips, she started to pull back and as I opened my eyes, she was gone.

Author's Notes: I would love it very much if you'd review.