Santa Monica seemed to be sliding down the tubes deeper and deeper every day. The streets were littered with papers, wrappers, cans, drug paraphernalia, and every other imaginable type of trash. Houses and buildings were in disrepair, and the weather seemed to join in the atmosphere by letting rain fall down in a lazy, dejected drizzle. The whorehouse Malcolm had spoken of lay deep in the seedy heart of the town, between a sex shop and a very suspicious looking hotel. It was a run-down three-storey apartment with above the door, red neon that blinked and said simply 'XXXX'. As if three X'es weren't hardcore enough. Did this damn woman have to associate every aspect of her cover with sex? Then again, it wasn't bad thinking, I realized. One of the last places you'd find a Vampire would be the ones that catered to carnal desires. Even for blood, because we all knew better than to drink from meth whores and other sluts carrying God-knows-how-many diseases. We Kindred didn't get sick, usually, but the blood itself was often spiked with drugs, which definitely wasn't desirable, and even though we were immune to most illnesses, there existed vampiric diseases that humans could unknowingly carry, and of which the worst ones could kill Kindred within days.

"So this were it at," LJ remarked without much enthusiasm as I hung up my cell phone. I'd had to call someone and ask him a very special question.

"Yeah. She'll probably know we're coming, so she probably won't even be there, but if she's not, we can search the place at least."

"Hope she is tho. That bitch fuckin' broke my skull."

"Yeah, well, you're only here as protection, alright?" I told him. "Unless you have to, you do nothing else than watch my back."

"Shee-it."

I felt my skin crawl as I came in, LJ by my side. The lights were a uniform red, and generic droning bass music was pumping through the speakers. The bar itself was empty, apart from the three girls in lingerie that stood at the bar, flaunting the goods.

"Now this is what I like to see," the bartender called out, an overweight 30-something year old guy wearing a T-shirt with an arrow on the chest pointing upwards and an arrow on the gut pointing downwards. The upward arrow was marked 'THE MAN', and the downward one 'THE LEGEND'. How quaint. "Black and white, racial harmony. I got some Asian pussy for ya if ya wanna complete the tricolour?"

LJ chuckled at the man's idiocy, but I wasn't that amused. "We're not a couple. And we don't want your walking bags of STDs either."

"Whoa," the bartender protested. "You five-oh or something? This place is totally legit."

I felt a short stab of regret at that. "No. We're not cops."

"Then what's with all the hate, woman?"

That put LJ in motion. Conspiratorially, he said to the bartender, "See, that's what I been tellin' her the whole time, man. Hate's exhaustin', gotta let some love in. If we all start talkin' smack at one another, man, can't get anythin' done anymore. You gotta – "

"LJ!"

He seemed to suddenly remember why we were there. "Aight. Imma shut up."

"Thanks."

The bartender seemed unimpressed by the entire exchange. "Well, whatever the fuck y'are then, if y'ain't here to shop, then I'll have to ask ya to leave."

"Wish I could," I said. It was the truth, the place made me feel dirty, "but I need some information first."

He rolled his eyes. "Another dipshit that needs information."

I'd had enough of his bullshit. Taking out my pistol, I whipped him across the face with the barrel in one quick move. There was a short thud and his nose was broken, gushing blood as he clapped his hands over it. The whores chirped among themselves, surprised and scared. LJ pulled his .45 and aimed it at the women, holding it sideways. He really did watch too much TV. "Gotta keep calm, ladies. Just a friendly convo, talkin' out a diff'rence in opinion, y'feel me?"

At least that had been a good reflex of him. I boosted myself over the counter and grabbed the ailing bartender's collar. "Sorry," I apologized, not meaning a bit of it. "I meant to hit you a lot harder."

"What do ya want, god dammit?" Some broke quickly.

"Blonde woman with a broken heart tramp stamp. What apartment?"

Still holding his nose, blood gushing between his fingers, he growled, "Could have just fuckin' asked me that."

"Yeah, but this is more fun." The smell of his blood reminded me of my hunger.

"Apartment 2b."

"Key?"

He fished in his pocket and took out a bloody piece of metal. "Master key."

"A master key to the apartments? Naughty."

"What? Ya gonna break my nose again?"

I had a better idea. "No. LJ, send these ladies to the back room or wherever it is they go to let themselves get humped."

The bartender's eyes became panicked. "Whoa, hey, come on! Don't kill me man, that ain't right!"

"Relax. You're not going to die," I assured him. Better that he didn't panic. It made blood go sour, or maybe that was just my imagination.

He hadn't heard it apparently, "You want money? Take it, just don't kill me."

From the corner of my eye, I saw LJ going into the back room with the whores. He better not get any funny ideas. "Shh, relax. I have to tell you something."

I drank until my hunger was satisfied, taking care not to let him bleed to death. I was even kind enough to pack tissues into his broken nose while he stood dazed, and then to lower him onto a chair. If he reported any of it to the cops, they'd probably just nod their heads and then think to themselves he shouldn't have gotten so drunk and crashed down the stairs.

To my surprise, LJ calmly sat on a chair, his pistol still pointed at the three whores, who had huddled together in bed. "Let's go, LJ." Then I told the women, "your pimp isn't dead, he'll be alright, but if you dare call him an ambulance, I'll come back on all of you."

One of them, a blonde, began talking gibberish, something Slavic sounding.

"Shee-it," LJ remarked. "God damn Euro whores."

I simply pointed my thumb back at the bar, then gave the women a thumbs-up. They seemed to understand, and so I pointed at them, "You," and made a cross over my mouth with my finger. "Or," I drew a finger across my throat. "Okay?"

They nodded furiously, scared to death.

"Good."

We went up the stairs to apartment 2b. I turned the key in the lock, and it clacked open. The inside looked like any other seedy shit apartment, only the bible on the table and the cross hung to the wall made it clear that this was the right apartment. We both had our guns out, sweeping them across the place, LJ still holding his sideways, the buffoon.

Lauren the Huntress was sitting in a sofa in the living room, obviously expecting us. "Sit down. Let's talk first."

"What's there to say?" I said, not sitting.

She shrugged. "Not much, I suppose. I knew you'd come. I guess it's safe to conclude 'mission failed' now." She was holding a glass of wine, but didn't drink.

"I think so, yeah."

"Got a call from the Cardinal. I'm being declared psychologically unfit for duty, and all support towards me is being retracted. In other words, he's leaving me high and dry."

"Bummer."

"Yeah." She rose from her sofa, prompting a jerk of sharpened attention from LJ and me. "It's alright, the fight's out of me." I'd believe that when she was dead. What the Hell was she planning? She went to the wall and slowly took a katana and matching wakizashi. Was she going to challenge me to a duel, to go out fighting? But when she sat down on her knees and laid out the wakizashi in front of her, I understood what her intention was.

"Whoa, easy, girl," LJ warned as she lifted the katana. "Or I'm blowin' a hole in yo' fake blonde dome."

"It's okay, LJ. I'm pretty sure I know what she wants."

Lauren held out the sheathed katana, hilt-first, towards me. "I know something's wrong with me, you know, in my head. Even Malcolm's turned his back on me now." She sighed, still holding the curved sword. "I've always loved the whole samurai culture. Tried to live by its code as long as I could, while I was still right in the head. So it makes sense I'd try to at least end things that way."

"Whoa," LJ breathed, "You gonna do like, hara-kiri?"

"Seppuku's the non-vulgar term to describe it," she corrected him, slightly indignant. "But yes." Then she turned her blue-green eyes to me again. They were clear, without the slightest trace of insanity. "I've done too many awful things to make right in this lifetime. It's only right that I take my own life, with the help of my vanquisher. You've earned that honour."

"Bitch is crazy, man," LJ remarked. I didn't think he was wrong either. For Vampires, suicide was simply unthinkable. The will to exist was stronger than anything, and the Beast rode on its back.

"Lauren, this is insane," I said. "Besides, no matter how honourable you think it is, running from the bad things you've done is still running."

"Oh don't worry," she said, with an accepting smile, unsheathing the wakizashi. "I'm just giving myself a horribly painful ticket to Hell. I want nothing else than to pay for my sins there. You know what to do?"

I'd heard of seppuku, apparently it involved cutting oneself across the abdomen, but I had no idea what I was supposed to do with the katana. "Uh… not really. But – "

"I need to bear it in complete quiet. So if I falter, one sweep, as hard as you can, taking my head off. That's all."

"Lauren, listen…"

She looked up at me again, her eyes sad and filled with tears. "Please… as soon as I make a sound, bring the blade down. Do it fast and clean."

"You don't have to do this, Lauren. Hell's a fairy tale, you can't kill yourself and hope you'll repent after that. Do you truly want to make right what you've done wrong? Do you truly want to pay for what you've done?"

Tears ran down her face now. "I wish I could, after all I've done. I don't know why it took me so long to realize. I actually thought I was doing the right thing, you know? But even Malcolm's turned away from me now, and only now I realize." She brought the wakizashi up, aimed at her belly, ready to plunge it down.

In the second her arms tensed to disembowel herself, my mind raced, trying to decide whether to let her go through with her plan, or whether to stop her from killing herself in a gruesome and painful manner. On the one hand, having to disembowel oneself with a short sword was terribly painful and nothing any human or supernatural being deserved. On the other hand, this woman had done terrible things – I doubted that what she'd intended to do to me had been the worst of the things she'd perpetrated in her ever more insane crusade to destroy anything that wasn't holy. If her own superiors, not exactly people who shied away from brutal torture either, had dropped her like a stone, it meant she really had gone badly over the edge, and deserved to feel the cold iron of the blade slicing through her skin and inside, the intestines exposed to the air and shrieking in pain as they bulged out of her. On the other hand, if she truly wanted to repent, she deserved the chance. This pain, no matter how terrible it would be, would be short and fleeting, and then she'd get to rest, because there was no Hell. At least not when you died a human death.

As the wakizashi flashed down, I caught her wrist, stopping the blade from impaling her abdomen. Tears still running freely, she looked up at me. "What are you…"

"Do you want to repent?"

"Yes, so let me – "

"Do you want to go to Hell instead of getting off easy?"

"Yes, let me go."

I wrenched the wakizashi from her hand and let it clatter to the ground. "There's only one Hell, and that's the one I'm about to take you to."