I opened my eyes and looked at my alarm clock. Evening already, which meant I'd slept without incident. Still in my previous clothes, I sat up on the bed. Might be best to skip the shower today, with some strange guy around. It's not like my clothes were sweaty. How could they be. I clicked my holster into my belt and took the gun from my night stand, sliding it in the holster.

"Yo girl, sleep well?" LJ greeted me from behind my computer.

"I slept," I responded. Wasn't much to say. You didn't sleep well or badly or anything. You just stopped being conscious and became it again the next evening. "Nothing happened here?"

"Notta thing." He was absorbed in whatever he was doing on the computer. An empty, grease-stained pizza box lay on the coffee table, two drained cans of coke next to it. 'Ain't no one comin' in here' clearly didn't count when it was the pizza delivery guy. Ah well. I supposed the guy didn't have to starve.

"Alright, thanks for lookin' out. Tomorrow morning, same time?"

"Fo sho. Just lemme finish this up."

"Take your time. And write down your number somewhere, in case I need you."

He grinned, still watching the screen. "Awready done. Coffee table."

The guy had, indeed, already written down his phone number. On a Domino's Pizza napkin. Stay classy.

I waited for another minute or two, until he was done with his game, then let him out. He didn't have the key card to my apartment, and as long as he didn't absolutely need it, there was no need to give him the spare either.

A cab was waiting across the street, conveniently enough, and I walked straight for it, intent on going back to the Asp Hole and learning more about the faux hawk guy, since the bartender had acknowledged him in a way that made me suspect he might be a regular, or at least known at the place. It might be a tenuous lead (for all I knew Chastity or whatever her real name was had simply paid him to come onto me and lure me into the toilets), but it was all I had, really. And it was no longer a case of biding my time. I needed to act, because she's already moved on me, and dropping the search was no longer an option, not that it ever had been.

I'd crossed half the street already, but then there was the sound of shrieking brakes, and bright headlights blinding me. The next thing I knew, an enormous force struck me, first impacting my knees, breaking them both with indescribable pain, and then my torso was smashed into the same huge and heavy object, breaking my ribcage and shredding the now useless organs inside me, catapulting me first up, then sideways, so I landed hard on the asphalt, on the passenger side of the car that had hit me.

Every bone in my body was broken, and pain pounded through my entire self, so hard I didn't feel it anymore. Reflexively, I burned as much blood as I could to set the bones again. They straightened and mended themselves with excruciatingly painful cracks and snaps, and a high-pitched yelp of pain escaped me.

"Oh my God oh my God oh my God I killed someone I killed someone!"

Burning the last I had in me, I made the cracks in my skull and jaw snap closed, restoring my body to working order, though the pain was simply brutal.

"Calm down, god dammit, let me go, we gotta go see, it might not be too late."

"Oh my God oh my God oh my God!"

"Hey! Snap out of it."

There was the sound of skin slapping against skin, and the whimpering of the female voice was cut short. More composed, the female said, "You're… you're right… Oh God."

"Come on, we gotta go check."

The owners of both voices came around the car, where I was trying to get to my feet, still in horrible pain, but at least I wasn't a sack of broken bones and shredded organs anymore.

"Holy shit, don't move, miss," the male voice said, exasperated. There was the sound of a phone clapping open. "I'm calling 911. Stay still."

"Oh thank God, I thought you were dead for sure," the woman panted.

"No ambulance," I managed to groan through my pain, supporting myself on the wheel house and trying to stand up. "Please. No ambulance."

"What?" the man shouted incredulously, "Why?"

I used the line I'd prepared for such an event. "No health insurance. I'm okay."

"But – "

"No ambulance, man," the woman shouted, still panicked, seizing the opportunity to keep human law enforcement out of it and avoid trouble. "She said so herself."

The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but my back was still turned. Turning around proved insanely painful.

"Shit, you sure, miss?"

"Yeah, I'm... sure," I croaked. "I'll be alright."

"Oh thank God you're okay," the woman breathed in relief. "I hit you so hard I thought you'd be stone dead. You must be some kind of supernatural to survive that."

Supernatural? Shit! Of course. It wasn't the first time she'd used a car as a weapon. Biting the terrible pain in my torso and crushed knees, I swerved around and found myself face to face with the Hunter.

"Oh my God! Oh my God it's you!"

Wait, not the Hunter. This was… holy shit! "Sammie?"

"Whoa," the taxi driver asked. "You know each other?"

The woman stood before me, her mouth moving but no words coming out. It was her alright, the light brown hair in ringlets, the narrow nose and the dark brown eyes, still with that same dark blue eye shadow, still wearing that black turtleneck and the belted-in-the-waist black latex jacket, tight jeans and heeled boots. Samantha Cavelli. Probably a nice enough person in itself, but loathed by the entire department, not just for abbreviating everyone's name into a cutesy diminutive (including her own and insisting to be addressed by it), but mostly for trying to get inside officers' heads and declare them unfit for duty on psychological grounds. The stereotype of the hated police psiquiatra was a tenacious one in crime films and series, and in this case, it was entirely justified. When she wasn't trying to make you say things that could be misinterpreted and lead to 'time off', she was putting on a caring big sister act, her favourite phrase being, "my door's always open to you, and to all your problems."

Fucking shit. I'd always been successful in avoiding people from my past – L.A. was a huge city and easy to disappear in – but fuck, who could have possibly foreseen this? Getting hit by a car, and against a million-to-one odds, the driver being that police psychiatrist you hated so much.

"They told… they told me you were dead," Sammie gasped. "And don't tell me you're not Tannie, 'cause you recognized me!"

Shit, there went that plan. "Sammie, look, I can't explain right now, I'm – "

"Dead," Samantha interrupted. "Dead, you and Caffery. Three years ago." Then her face betrayed a realization. "His coffin was open, yours was closed. Oh my God!"

They'd never recovered my body, of course, but I'd been given a state burial. Killed in the line of duty. Like Jon Caffery, only his death had been real. Poor Caf. I still thought of him sometimes, on his back, his eyes open, a bloody hole in his thigh and in his torso. What had happened couldn't have been stopped, even though I often blamed myself for not preventing it.

"Hey um, I'm gonna let you two ladies deal with this on your own," the cabbie said, not understanding and backing away. Neither of us had actually heard him.

"Look, Sammie, you can't tell anyone ab –"

"I want an explanation right now," Samantha protested. "Whatever it is, I can help, okay?"

I'd forgotten her other trademark phrase. 'I can help, okay?'. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw several people had already stopped to gawk. Dammit, I needed to cut this short. And knowing Samantha she wouldn't stop hounding me until I agreed to let her 'help' me. "Sammie, let's not talk about this here. I live here. Come on, let's... just go to my place, okay?" The look in her eyes briefly shifted to triumph.

I'd mostly recovered, but I let her support me as we made our way back across the street, just so it wouldn't be too obvious that I could regenerate just about everything the car had broken, torn or squashed.

The elevator ride was silent and horribly uncomfortable, Samantha's judging, punitive gaze on me, those eyes completely destroying whatever credibility she thought she had when she became all caring and let-me-help-you.

"Sit down," I said, dropping myself in one of the sofas. God dammit that car had done a number on me. And, well, I'd done the same to the old Ford Taunus TC1 XL she so loved. I'd briefly looked back and seen the front all bent and leaking various liquids, and the windshield so badly smashed and criss-crossed with white cracks it had become completely opaque. "Sorry 'bout your car."

"Never mind the car," she said, flapping her hand. Her face betrayed an entirely different sentiment. She'd loved that car, and the time some dickbag had keyed it in the parking lot had been the only time I'd ever seen her lose her temper, shouting in the station hallways that she'd find the person responsible and, in her own words, 'do bloody murder on him'. It hadn't been any of us, of course, so the threat had been pretty useless, but it had been good to see composed, snooty Samantha get all dramatic and furious. "So, Tanira, what's going on?"

"You've got to promise me not to tell anyone, okay?" I said, stalling for time while I thought of an explanation, but dammit, nothing came to mind.

"I won't tell anyone what's wrong with you, whatever it is, but I can't keep it a secret that you're still alive." Figured she wouldn't be able to keep her mouth shut. "It's just... people deserve to know you're not dead."

"Promise me, or I don't tell you anything and you're left with a story that no one will believe."

"What went wrong, Tannie?" Samantha asked, her concerned side taking the upper hand again. Gravely, she asked, "Is it… is it drugs?" Then she nodded, assured of it. "Yeah, it must have been. You… you can't just get up after being hit by a car unless you're full of drugs. I can help you, okay?"

"Sammie – "

She took out her cellphone and began scrolling through her contact list. "I'll call a colleague of mine, he works with drug addicts and he can help you out, there's no need to be ashamed, okay? We've all had times wh – "

"Put the phone down." I ordered her. "Right now, Samantha."

"Tannie, this guy works miracles, he can – "

"Put the fucking phone down or I'm taking it from your dead fingers!" I growled at her. If she finished dialling that number, and managed to tell anyone I was still alive, I would be in so much trouble even my Master would have to contain himself not to rip me in two. "I mean it, Samantha!"

Her phone still in her hand, Samantha's jaw fell. She looked genuinely flat-footed. "Tannie, I..."

"Stop calling me by that retarded name and put the phone away."

But she didn't, getting up and stammering, "Okay... this is... um, clearly the drugs talking. I'll go home and come back when you're um... feeling better."

"Sit down."

"No, Tanira, I'm going to – "

"Sit the fuck down, bitch."

Looking briefly wounded at my language, she quickly composed herself and decided to look brave. "I will not sit down. I'm going home, and we can talk tomorrow. And that's final." Then she turned her back on me, her nose in the air.

I don't know if it was her turning her back, or simply refusing to listen to me that did it. Maybe it was both. Combined with my hunger, it set me off. Something snapped inside me and I launched myself over the coffee table, taking Sammie down. She didn't even struggle, just protected her head with her hands, whining inarticulately. Frenzy had taken control of me now, and with one hand, I lifted her into the air by the collar of her stupid latex jacket, and hearing myself roar, I swung her body over my head in a wide arc and made her come down head-first on the coffee table, shattering the glass and sending her face through it, smack into the ground. All I could do was see it happen.

I lifted her up again, her lacerated face streaming with blood. "Tannie..." she begged quietly during the brief moment she hung still in my grasp. "Please..."

But through a haze of red, I saw my hand shift to her lower jaw, and my other hand clamp over her upper teeth, the fingers going into her mouth. Then the Beast roared again inside me, and I pulled, tearing her mouth open as she kicked and shrieked in my grasp, still pulling until first the sides of her mouth, and then her entire cheeks split with a wet tearing sound. She was gurgling now, her kicks growing feeble, her hands clawing at mine, hooked around her face in an iron grip. With another howl of the Beast inside me, I pulled further until her spine crunched and her skull was torn all the way back, so the top half of her head hung upside down from her back, only the lower jaw remaining in place. Abruptly, entire body stopped moving, the legs and arms falling limp.

As suddenly as it had appeared, the red haze of frenzy vanished again and my hands opened, letting Sammie's body crumple to the ground.

Oh shit.

Oh God dammit what had I done.

Sammie lay on the ground between the shattered glass and broken wood of the coffee table, her legs at awkward angles and her neck folded over backwards, her mouth torn open in a terrible face-splitting grin.

The Beast was quiet, but I knew it laughed.

Shit, shit, shit.

They'd seen her come inside with me. She was a police psychiatrist so you better believe she'd be missed, and people would come looking for her. I could ditch the body, sure, but if cops came to search the place, no way they wouldn't find the blood soaked into the carpet. And what to say of the destroyed coffee table?

Or of the occupant of the apartment being an ex-colleague who should have been fucking dead?

God dammit God dammit God dammit! I killed her in my own apartment of all places! The one place I'd always known I had to keep clean. Fucking shit! What to fucking do now? God dammit!

LJ! The guy couldn't be far already. I took out my phone, searched for the napkin between the shards of glass, splinters of wood, and bloody clumps of hair, and dialled the number written on it.

"Yo, girl. You lonely?"

"LJ, turn your car around and come back here, hurry."

"Whoa, whoa, what'd I do?"

"Just get back here right now." I didn't await a response, just clapped the phone closed.

I pulled Sammie's body to the bathroom, the heels of her boots dragging over the floor, and stuffed her in the tub for the time being. Her head dangled down her back like a marionette's. Damn it Sammie, why didn't you just leave it alone? You should have just fucking kept driving after hitting me.

After stuffing her clothes in a trash bag, I rifled through her bag to find her car keys and cell phone. Right. The car had to be moved to wherever-the-fuck, and the cell phone might be useful. Delay people searching for her. I scrolled through her contact list and found "Mom". Who was no longer a mother.

HEY MOM I'M GOING TO STAY WITH A FRIEND GOT SOME STRESS TAKING A FEW DAYS OFF CALL WORK FOR ME OK? LOVE SAMMIE

I knew she always typed her bullshit texts in all caps and ended them with 'love Sammie', so hopefully they'd be enough to fool her mother. Buy me a small bit of time.

The intercom beeped.

"LJ?"

"Yo girl, what up?"

"Get up here."

I let him in after he rapped on the door and I stuck the trash bag in his face, along with the car keys. "Take this bag downstairs, use that car key on the Taunus across the street. Ditch the car somewhere and stuff the bag in the trunk. Make sure they're not fucking found."

"Awh, shit!" LJ exclaimed when he took the bag, wrinkling his nose. "The fuck is this, man? Something you fished outta your septic tank or sumthin'?"

"Don't ask questions," I ordered him. "Just take the damn bag, stuff it in the trunk, and get rid of the car."

Still grimacing from the smell of the clothes, he asked, "Hey yo, where am I s'posed to dump a car around here, girl?"

"Wherever, God dammit! Drive it off the damn Santa Monica pier for all I care," I snapped, feeling the panic intensifying, but determined not to show it. "Just make sure it's gone."

"Shee-it," he cursed, still holding the bag away from him, eyeing it suspiciously. "Yo' boss better be payin' me damn good for all this boolsheet."

"I'll pay you extra if that's what it takes, now get going." I was calm outwardly, but m mind was working furiously while trying to keep the panic at bay.

He nodded. "Got a homie, works at the Brothers Salvage, he can turn that shitty Ford into a fuckin' sugar cube."

"Good. Now go."

If the car was gone, and the clothes, that was one thing already. But those weren't the most important. The dead woman in my bath tub was. And there was no way I could get rid of a dead body, all the DNA on it, and the blood and other mess in the living room. Shit, there was nothing else I could do but take my cell phone again. Three calls in three nights. An embarrassing hat trick.

"Yes, Tanira? Any progress?"

"Uh, not… not really."

"You sound nervous, is everything alright?"

As rotten as it was, there was no point denying or sugar-coating it. "Master, I… I kinda screwed up big time."

"You didn't kill LJ, did you?" he asked, sounding somewhat amused.

"No, no… but I killed someone else. In my apartment."

"Then you of all people should know better than to call me using your own cell." No trace of amusement this time.

Shit, yeah. Another rule broken. Don't kill anyone in your Haven. Always use a burn phone when calling someone after you've killed someone in your Haven.

"I'm… sorry, Master." I hated saying I was sorry, but right that moment, I felt like a grotesque fracasada.

He ignored the apology. "I assume you need clean-up?"

"Uh… yes, Master, I do."

"I'll send someone. Stay there until they arrive." There was a beep, and a busy tone. No 'take care' or 'be safe', as he always said before hanging up. Yeah, he was pissed alright. God dammit.

I spent the rest of the night cleaning up the destroyed coffee table and getting the pieces into a trash bag as well as I could, and scrubbing the carpets on my knees. I rinsed off Samantha's body with the showerhead, so the clean-up guy would at least have a semi-clean body to strategically dismember. I simply shut off my brain while I did it. Should have left it alone, Samantha.

It was a quarter to two already when the intercom buzzed. Gingerly, I pressed the button, part of me thinking it would be the cops coming to arrest me. But that was being paranoid, they couldn't possibly know she was dead in my bath tub at two in the morning.

"Yeah?"

"Good evening," a cheerful male voice called through the intercom. "Nighttime cleaning service. You spilled some coffee on your carpet?"

Yeah, coffee, exactly. "Come on up."

There were two of them. One was male, wearing grey overalls and carrying a large sports bag. He had a cheerful grin from ear to ear, a wild dark blond haircut and his skin had the fleshy colour of a living person's. Probably a ghoul. He immediately saw the blood stains, that I'd only managed to wash out to a pink smear. "Ooh, yeah. Nothing gets coffee out, unless you're a pro. Where's the pot?"

"Mm?"

"The coffee pot."

I was so confused I didn't follow his little allegory. "The what?"

Then he rolled his eyes. "The body, slowbrain."

"Oh! Uh… bathroom."

"Bath tub?" The man's eyes lit up and his grin widened. "Classic! Can't beat the charm of a dead body crammed in a bath tub. It's the classic place to stow it in, and also the most dramatic. I tell you, seeing a dead guy stuffed in a bath tub never gets old."

"I'm… glad you're so upbeat about it?" His good cheer was putting me somewhat at ease. I hoped it stemmed from confidence in his ability to make dead bodies disappear.

"It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta have fun doing it." Then he pointed to the bathroom. "Be back in a bit." On the way there, he shamelessly opened the fridge and took out a beer.

The female sat down in my sofa, every movement coldly graceful, calculated and sensuous. She had jet-black hair going straight down, then wreathing her shoulders in coal black curls, contrasting with the pallor of her skin, which was even more white than most vampires'. Thin black eyebrows stood above big, ice blue eyes, set in a narrow face, one possessing a cold, deathly beauty. She wasn't wearing overalls, but a black velvet gothic type dress with gold trim, and a blue-trimmed corset around her waist, making her look even more slender than she already was. Her breasts were so small they were almost nonexistent, and she looked to have been Embraced around her sixteenth, but I felt great power emanate from her, a feeling reinforced by the slight confident curl of one corner of her mouth. She was at least an Elder, and definitely much more powerful than the mere Ancilla I was. "Forgive Dmitri," she said in a voice which was rather nasal, but not at all unpleasant. "In his enthusiasm, he doesn't always keep the gravity of the situation in mind."

"It's… alright," I could only say. If he got rid of Sammie's remains without a trace, then he could be as obnoxious as he wanted. The other woman said nothing, merely looking at me with her big blue amused eyes, her arms spread over the back of the sofa. "Uh, so, um, thanks for the help?"

"That's entirely our pleasure."

"I'd… offer you something but I'm starving myself."

She giggled slightly. "At least you didn't stoop to sucking the blood out of the carpet."

From the bathroom came the sound of a portable electric saw being turned on. I simply assured myself that Sammie didn't feel a thing anymore. "So uh, you and Dmitri been doing this long?"

"Depends what you mean by 'long'."

"I'm Tanira, by the way."

"Pleasure." It sounded sincere enough, but she didn't give her own name. Her eyes stayed the same, carrying that mixture of intrigued and amused.

"So, Dmitri gets rid of the body, and what do you do?"' I asked it more to make conversation than anything else.

"Normally I just send Dmitri or one of his colleagues, but your Master insisted I see to this personally. I'm hideously expensive, but my powers are worth every cent."

"That… doesn't answer my question."

She smiled a thin smile. "People like Dmitri remove bodies, I remove something much more subtle." Without explanation, she rose, extended her hands and closed her eyes. Several seconds passed, there was a very faint, almost unnoticeable change in the atmosphere, and then she opened her eyes again and sat down. "My apologies if you were expecting something spectacular."

"So… what was it you did?"

An amused eyebrow became slightly raised. "When a person dies, especially in the case of a violent death, a faint, barely perceptible energy remains. Humans don't realize they detect it, it is far too subtle, but some will subconsciously register it and feel that something is suspect, though they can't rightly say why." She swept her hair back. "What they usually describe as a 'gut feeling'."

I knew exactly what she meant. Back in my days as a narc, I'd had that feeling sometimes too. When everything rationally seems to be perfectly alright, but you know there's something off, something wrong. A feeling that was impossible to explain, you just… felt it in your gut.

"There are more subtle energies like it, but I can only disperse those that remain after a person dies," she finished her explanation. "Clearing that energy away will make the police think this is just a normal apartment instead of getting their so-called 'gut feeling'." She said it was a hint of disgust, as if she was indignant at the fact that humans so carelessly labelled those precious energies as their own gut instinct.

I opened my mouth to ask another question, but I was interrupted by Dmitri. "Well, it's all chopped up, dissolved into sludge, and washed down the drain."

That was it for Sammie, then. Chopped up, dissolved into sludge, and washed down the drain. She'd been annoying as Hell, but the dismissive way he announced it made me feel a sharp, quick stab of regret at her fate regardless. "Thanks, I guess."

"Glad to help, and thanks for washing her down a bit in advance. Not sure why you went so overboard during the killing though," he continued, then to the goth girl, "Should've seen the way she looked. Head pulled open like an oyster. Interesting, definitely, but also a testament to poor impulse control on the customer's behalf."

"Yeah, alright," I stopped him. "That's enough."

"Dmitri was never the most subtle," the pale woman apologized. "As soon as he gets the vitae out of the carpet, we'll leave you be. Dawn will soon be on us."

Dmitri had a loud and annoying mouth, but he was a miracle worker when it came to scrubbing carpets. Or maybe he was only good when it involved blood. I don't know what he did, but in a quarter of an hour, the blood stains were out of the carpet. I'd cleaned the spatters on the walls easily enough, but the carpet, no way I could've cleaned that so fast and so thoroughly. "That's it, all done." At the same time, the intercom buzzed. I looked out to see LJ's Discovery parked across the street. As soon as these two were out the door and LJ had come up, I'd let myself go into torpor. This night couldn't end soon enough.

"Thank you, Dmitri," the pale girl said, and rose. "We'll settle the financial aspect with the Archon."

"Thanks," I could only say.

The girl smiled thinly. "I'm part of the Camarilla even when my clan is not, and among the many things we do, this is one of our ways of upholding the Masquerade. It's one of our… least glamorous tasks, but necessary nonetheless. Now, Dmitri, we shall depart."

"As you say, Lady Serena."