I don't know if anyone even remembers this story. It's been an awful long time since the last time I published, but I just can't leave this story unfinished.

Because of the long hiatus I'm posting a long chapter and I should be posting the next soon (it's almost ready).

Please, if you still want to see this story to the end, send me a message or leave a review. I need to be shamed about letting so much time to go by.

I want to thank you all who have supported this story in the past. It's because of you that I won't let it die unfinished.

All characters belong to Toby and you know the rest.

Mitchell had left the house in a blinding rage, ready to kill the first being that crossed him and fate had pointed its dark finger at Lou.

'Some people are just dealt the worst cards time and again,' Mitchell thought snickering in his mind.

He had grabbed her by the neck at the entrance of the funeral home and he was ready to grant her the death she had craved, Lou had looked at him in panic and barely moaned "Gabriel..."

Mitchell remembered then that Caine had gone abroad. He had vowed never to curse anyone else after Bernie.

Today he would give her death, but he wouldn't give her a cursed afterlife.

'Yes,' he thought, 'there are some truly unlucky bastards in this world.'

She struggled once her survival instinct kicked in but it was too little too late. His self-hatred was only trumped by the desires of those like her, 'suicide by vampire'; he thought with disdain, and suddenly the true death was too little for the likes of her. It wasn't enough to sate his need of destruction. Big bad John was reawakened with his twisted need to humiliate and torture. He pulled at the grey cardigan that she still wore as a uniform for taunting him. With a sardonic smile, black eyes and bloody fangs, he devised a new and improved way to torture: He wouldn't kill her today.

He would bring her close, time and again, without ever delivering the satisfaction of death.

A cat with the proverbial mouse.

Days have come and gone. Annie still couldn't bring herself to look at George in the eye, but she found little ways to manifest herself: in a steaming cup of tea next to his hand while he read the paper, and a hand on his shoulder. George would hold on to that hand without turning, they would stay like that for a while, until he couldn't take it anymore and he would half turn his face with a sob and a gentle kiss to her hand. Annie would let the veil of her curls down over him and anoint him with her own kiss and her tears, before leaving again.

Every day George would congratulate himself for shedding fewer tears. He hoped that one day he could go through that ritual without crying, and that day he may trust his voice to be steady enough to call her name.

The story was different with Nina, despite the animosity she felt for Mitchell both women had declared an armistice: Nina didn't ask anymore about what had happened 'that night' and Annie didn't mention his name.

"You really don't need to come to the shops with me Nina. I am perfectly capable of doing the shop on my own," she said one afternoon when she thought they almost mastered the art of pretending everything was fine.

"I know you can sweetie, but it's safer this way. You know? Safety in numbers?" She stated with a pathetic smile and a lift of her shoulders.

"Are you afraid of me being dragged to a door or me running into a vampire in a leather jacket?"

Annie asked trying to be funny but knowing as soon as the words left her mouth that she had failed miserably.

"I promised George."

"You must think I'm a punching bag," she finally said stopping on her way to look at her friend in the eye. "Just don't tell me you told me so."

"Oh Annie. No. Believe me, I'm not the one to say I told you so," Nina wondered when she had turned into the person she was right then and there. For long she had thought of Annie as a much younger version of herself. She felt like laughing. She had been so self-righteous and naïve, "…and," she continued in an uncharacteristically quiet voice, "I have the scars to prove it."

"Nina?" Annie asked concerned.

"Nothing. I'm sorry. I'm just babbling."

'This is it' Nina thought. She thought that the time to tell her ghost friend something that she had only confided in George had come. 'If Annie only knew we are all haunted by ghosts'. But an eerie sight ahead interrupted her thoughts.

They had turned to an empty street, but when Nina had looked back ahead she was startled by the figure waiting for them.

"You have got to be kidding me!" Nina said looking at the girl.

If this was a bad joke Nina had an idea of whom to thank for it. She had pieced together what she could from Annie and George's behaviour and the tell-tale scars of the pink house from that fatidic night. It hadn't required a sleuth really. 'Abuse' she had thought to herself, 'is a catchy tune. No matter how much you try to get rid of it, it is always playing in your mind.'

But she had to give him points for creativity. The girl waiting for them was made up to look like Annie, if Annie was reduced to a cartoon. Her skin had a sickly hue, 'a junkie' Nina's professional inner voice announced. He arms were covered in a raggedy grey cardigan two sizes too big for her, but she would bet good money on finding needle marks on them. The girl smoked compulsively while she observed them. Once she could see Nina's judgement the ends of her mouth pulled up in a sardonic smile.

It was when she turned to exhale that she noticed the red marks on her neck.

'He's getting sloppy,' she thought.

"So this is you," the girl said breaking Nina's inner monologue, as she went pass her to where Annie stood.

"I'm sorry, do I know you?" Annie asked without moving. Nina dropped the empty canvas bag she was holding, planning on ushering her friend back to the sanctuary where they could keep the monsters outside.

"No. But I know someone you obviously know," the girl replied, amused to see the distress in her face "quite well actually."

The last words were a poisoned dart, disguised in singsong.

Nina grabbed Annie's hand and tried to pull her back, but she wasn't budging.

"Annie," she said trying to get her attention.

But the girl continued her taunts, "…tall, dark, cute accent… doesn't seem to wash his hair often, but boy can he bite."

That was enough for Nina.

"I'm sorry, is this some kind of bad joke or something? I've heard that plagiarism is just a form of flattery but this is ridiculous," she said addressing the girl.

"Sorry, I want to talk to the owner of the circus, not one of the dwarves," the girl said dropping the smile.

"That's it, you're asking for it and I've been dying to beat up one of you sodding vampires!" Nina yelled enraged.

"Nina!" Annie interrupted her to get her attention to a fact that she had missed "she's not a vampire," she said making Nina turn back and notice all the weaknesses that were badly covered.

"They bleed you," Annie said turning back to the rude girl.

"They?" She asked to make a point, "you know who it was."

"This just keeps getting lovelier," Nina said looking around.

Annie remained in silence.

"So, how does it make you feel? To know that my blood courses through his veins?" The girl asked knowing she had, once more, the upper hand.

"Is there any real purpose for this? Or do you just get off speaking like a twat?" Nina asked.

"I wanted to see you. I thought the grey thing was a joke but it's not, is it? I dress like this for him. It really does it for him, doesn't it?"

Annie just shook her head.

"Did he send you?" Nina asked with disgust. 'Oh, this level of cruelty must have taken ages to master' she thought.

But as if she could tell what she as thinking Annie interrupted her.

"Nina, it's okay. I've got this."

"I don't know why he's so interested in you. He speaks of you like you were some kind of a powerful thing but I only see a pathetic girl who just can't get the message and leave."

The rude girl lashed once more feeling neglected.

"You're not talking about Mitchell and me anymore are you?" Annie said stoically, "what did they do for you to chase death like this."

"You don't know nothing," She said looking away.

Nina thought of those girls she had to patch up in the wee hours of the night every weekend. Purple eyes and split lips; pumped stomachs and cartography maps on their wrists. This girl in front of her didn't look like a teenager but she spoke like one.

'None of them ever do' Nina thought sadly.

"It's you. You're… yelling it. It's all in your aura." Annie explained in response to an implicit question. She always did that.

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"He drank your blood," she continued, Nina could sense the hurt in the pronoun 'he', "many times. But there is someone else who scares you more. Someone you lo-"

"It's none of your business!" The girl interrupted her clearly hurt, "your only business is that he drank my blood, over and over, and every time he broke my skin I was dressed like you," she bared her neck and arms "he really has a talent for pain, doesn't he? He knows how to torture, how to humiliate. And all of those times I wore your clothes and he turned my face away. Who do you think he was thinking about? Who do you think I was a stand-in for? I don't know what you did to him sweetie, but he really wants to hurt you, real bad."

Nina looked around trying to spy people staring. She saw no one, but she thought that if someone happened to witness the drama in front of her, they would surely take it for a tasteless encounter between two women quarrelling for the attention of one man. Annie was clearly playing the role of the cheated wife, and the rude girl was the second rate mistress.

"Death is not what you think it is. And you're not going to find what you hope for beyond your door. I've been there." Annie said collected.

"You deserve each other. On and on about how you wished you had my life. Being able to bleed is not as good as you make it sound." She said exasperated.

"Oh no. They have made you bleed a lot. Before him even. I can see it. I'm sorry. But you are still alive. Yes, Mitchell and I are the same. You're standing right at the edge of the precipice and we have already fallen down."

Annie picked up the canvas bag from where Nina had dropped it and she went pass the girl. Nina followed her friend and none of them turned back to look at Lou.

They would have seen her seething and trying to reign in the tears threatening to fall, followed by her putting out her cigarette on the back on her hand.

They had done the shop in silence. It was unusual for Nina to find it difficult to broach a subject but she felt like a voyeur. It was something she didn't feel entitled to discuss. Maybe George would be better approaching the subject of girl from whom Mitchell had been drinking. 'How would that conversation go?' Nina thought to herself, 'Honey, you would never guess who Annie and I run into today on our way to the shops!' the idea was just too ridiculous.

'And! The slag had the nerve to try to pass for Annie's pathetic doppelganger!'

She must have smiled at the thought for Annie said: "Don't tell him", while they picked up George's Weetabix.

Back home Annie had been putting away the groceries with Nina when George arrived. She could sense his surprise when he came into the kitchen and found her there in front of him, even before she turned to face him.

Annie walked to him and hugged him in silence. George held her for dear life, repeating thank you's like a mantra until he looked up to see Nina leaning on the sink in silence. He mouthed one more 'thank you' just for girlfriend as Annie let go of him, kissed him on the cheek and went upstairs to her room to ruminate all the words that the girl had thrown at her like knives.

Sitting on her armchair she remember the marks on the girl's neck while she idly traced the same spots on her own skin. If she closed her eyes she could feel his lips in the same places. In her mind's eye she could see him, with the tired and gentle eyes he had just for her. The seed of the idea planted by the girl was quickening and she wondered how he looked when he had been playing with that girl. The memory came quickly to her mind and her body, of dark eyes and sharp fangs cutting her and digging for ghost blood. That one time, before everything, the night when everything had started, assaulted her. She wondered if all those times Mitchell had hurt and drained the nameless girl he had thought of that night and of her. She could almost imagine it, and she felt sorry for the bleeding girl whose face was turned to the side by Mitchell's hard and angry hands. She had taken all the rage directed at herself.

But the girl had tried to hurt her with her words undoubtedly trying to channel all the hurt inflicted by Annie's own lover. She surely had tried to make Annie feel bad because Mitchell could touch another woman the way he had touched Annie; but the sad joke was on the girl for Annie couldn't give Mitchell what the girl could. Even that first night, the only night when he had broken her skin there had been no blood; and never again, after that night, had Mitchell been anything but gentle with her, not until the last night, the night George had pulled him from her.

The thought was still powerful.

It ignited in Annie's mind: George had pulled Mitchell from her that night, before he had been able to sate all his rage. What had transpired between the three of them had been so intimately horrifying that George had kicked him out of her home, their home.

But Annie hadn't thought about it before: Mitchell had been let loose on the streets where there were others who could do what Annie couldn't: bleed and die.

The girl's pain had been her doing, Annie realised in horror.

She wondered, flagellating herself, how many more souls she had condemned.

"I saw that sad grey girl of yours today," Lou said to Mitchell when she arrived to the funeral home and he ignored her, "what is her name? Amy? Anne? Ally?"

His face looked up immediately at the mention of Annie. He looked confused for a second, but the feeling was quickly replaced by fury. His eyes went black and with a snarl he unveiled his sharp fangs.

An inner voice immediately chastised her for not taking advantage of the fact that he seemed to be distracted by some papers on the desk.

'You had to poke the bear, didn't you?' The voice admonished her.

He got up quickly and walked to her menacingly.

"Do you want me to tell you how she looked? How sad her eyes looked when she saw her clothes on me and your love bites on my skin?"

Mitchell laughed coldly giving Lou goose bumps.

"'Love bites'? Really? Don't flatter yourself Lou. Don't get confused with what goes on around here sweetheart. You're no more than a cigarette, a bottle, a hit."

"Oh, but she knows what being hurt by you looks like, doesn't she? I could see it in her eyes. You've hurt her bad… recently."

That did it for Mitchell. He was going to kill her and this time he wasn't even going to drink from her. The girl's annoying immaturity was putting him off. In one swift move he had her in a choke hold and he was about to twist her weak little neck.

"Gabriel!" She moaned once more. Mitchell was no stranger to other names being called in moments of heightened passion, but Lou's penchant for calling Caine's name every time he would take her close to the real death was getting to be a big turn off.

"Mitchell!" Caine's low voice called from the door.

He let go of Lou.

"It is rude to snap little Miss Louisa's neck when she has so kindly given us her blood my dear boy."

The notion angered Lou, like she had offered her blood to Mitchell out of the good of her heart.

"Don't speak to me like I'm six Caine!"

"Then don't act like you are bloody six when you hear that someone's been playing with your toys," he said collected. He turned back to Lou and continued, "anyway. I trust John here has been a good little boy and drank his blood daily."

The use of the possessive "his" had rubbed Lou the wrong way but she knew better than to make her discomfort show. She simply nodded to Caine.

"Very well then, I trust you'll start looking for your meals elsewhere soon."

The daily diet of Lou's blood had kept Mitchell drunk and enraged, but the edge was wearing off and Lou's stupidity had killed the mood. The haze of the blood was waning and Mitchell was sobering with guilt. The memory of his last time at Windsor Terrace was lurking on the back of his mind but he struggled to keep it buried. He knew the time would come to face his actions and he would have to pay the piper but he still had enough blood in his system to help him ignore his conscience; though not enough to keep him in a drunken daze.

He needed a cigarette badly.

He needed many things as well: blood, oblivion, numbness, sex, death… Annie.

Inside him Caine's and Lou's blood raged against the shred of humanity still left. Annie was the toxicity that repelled their blood, the burning under his skin.

He needed many things right then: to hurt somebody badly until the red would seep into everything grey, but he doubted he would be able to find enough blood to quiet her voice in his mind, that voice saying his name over and over in disappointment.

He badly needed a cigarette…

…or a hundred.

Mitchell had left without drinking from Lou, but Caine wasn't going to let her go to waste.

Caine pulled his fangs in and he wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his expensive suit while Lou closed her eyes trying to stop the world from spinning rapidly. 'I should have eaten something' she thought.

"Care to explain yourself?" Gabriel asked her in the same voice of a school prefect, admonishing her like she was a grammar school girl who hadn't done her homework.

"He didn't take well to news of me meeting his stupid ghost"

"I told you to follow her, not to confront her; and I definitely didn't tell you to let our friend John know."

"I just didn't get what the big fuzz was. She's so… common."

"Are we jealous my dear?"

"Of that girl? For Christ's sake, she was wearing leggings and Uggs!"

"And yet he was happy to break that pretty neck of yours when he heard you were bothering his little pet."

"Oh, sod off Gabriel!"

"She is nothing fancy, that girl of his, but don't underestimate her dear, she's anything but common."

Mitchell had wandered the streets of Bristol. A couple of times he got close to draining a poor soul from the drunken pub crawlers but something kept putting him off.

He came back late to the room where he had been staying, he had sobered up quite well from Lou's blood and he could feel the heavy hangover lurking. Annie's voice was getting louder. Perhaps he should go out and find fresh blood or find Lou. He wasn't particularly excited about the last prospect but he needed blood now for he knew what was coming.

Perhaps he could find one of the weirdoes Caine kept around to drink from. There were some staying in the funeral parlour, he knew, he could get blood as long as he didn't kill them and with some, as long as he was happy to give a little sex in return.

He didn't feel keen on either rule.

Instead he tried to go to sleep thinking of Annie, of sleepless nights in his bed.

He dreamt of the times when he was learning every mound and valley of her body, when he undertook the rigorous task of learning every sound he could elicit from her.

Of the times he learnt that his name could have infinite intonations and meanings, based on every nuanced tone and breath. He was transported to the time and the feel of his ruffled sheets made deliciously cool by her skin.

Of the softness of her legs against the coarseness of his.

He had her hands trapped above her head in his, one of her thighs cradling his hip, the tips of her breasts like ice chips ploughing through his downy chest, and his cock snugly buried in his woman.

Her little whimpers and moans punctuated his thrusts and he felt empowered by them. He increased his tempo and he smiled when her face showed a mix of surprise and wanton abandon.

The lust was spreading like wildfire, like hot blood rushing through his old veins and so he gave into the need to seek his own pleasure, he unbridled his lust and his force, and paid no mind to the change in her sounds.

He closed his eyes to avoid her confusion and then her fear. She called his name in panic, but he took one hand from hers and used the remaining one to restrain her, while with the other he covered her mouth. He was drunk on her like he would on blood and he peaked with a growl.

When he opened his eyes he saw the panic in her eyes and he felt the tears she had shed. Guilt sobered him and forced him to close his eyes. When he opened them again Annie's eyes were calm and stripped of reproachful tears.

He liked it better that way.

He took his hand from her mouth and waited for the smile that never came. Panic was gone from her eyes, along with everything else. He blinked and her eyes were void, her face pale as the moon crowned by her dark curls with a halo of dark red blood growing from under her. They weren't on his bed anymore, he felt himself float away from her until he was a top of the stairs and he could see her slumped at the bottom in her grey clothes and broken limbs.

He took a couple of steps back until he turned to see himself in a mirror. His face was there where Owen's should have been.

He yelled in horror and he turned back to see a door at the end of the hallway illuminated by a soft blue haze. He ran to it and he opened it. Behind the door there was a long white hallway with closed doors on either side. He stood right there, petrified until a terrible wail pierced the silence.

There was no doubt on the identity of the owner of that voice, he started running calling her name, while he heard her cry and plead, and call his name. He tried doors and yelled for her.

He threw his body against them to no avail.

Her cries continued until there were no more, and finally he saw one door ajar ahead. He ran to it and he swung it open to find a pristine hospital ward. Everything was white linens and sharp silver instruments. A nurse decked in white was busy tidying up the instruments with millimetric precision, facing away from him. In front of her there was a curtain pulled around one bed, the only bed that appeared to be occupied.

He heard her then. She no longer cried.

With a sad exhale she tried to say his name.

Nothing more than silence now.

He cried her name then, and the nurse turned around to reveal it to be Nina. 'Great' he thought with disdain. Her hair was impossibly proper and her watch pinned to her uniform looked more old-fashion than usual.

"Where is Annie?" He yelled.

But Nina looked through him without recognition, slowly lifting a gloved finger to her lips to signal him to be quiet.

Mitchell felt frozen with fear when he saw the blood dripping down from the hand used to chastise him for yelling.

He ran past her and he tore the curtain down to see George dressed like the physicians of his own old time. He had a white shirt covered by a dark grey vest showing the chain of an old watch. His sleeves where rolled back and his hands and forearms where covered with dried blood.

"You did quite a number on this one Mr. Mitchell," he said moving away to reveal the white metal frame of a bed, "you have made a butcher out of me." he said nonchalantly.

Mitchell went to the bed where a body lied covered by a white sheet, with only dark curls peeking out.

With a trembling hand Mitchell pulled it back to reveal Annie's body, she wore a grey gown, the only thing in the room not white besides the blood. There were two coins covering her eyes.

"We've paid the boatman handsomely for her Mr. Mitchell. No need to fret."

He saw red and he was ready to break both their necks. He didn't care if they were his friends. He stopped once he noticed George doing tending to a bundle in a white bowl on a table.

"You did this to her. This is the fruit of your lust."

At first he had thought the word had been 'love', but the grimace on this false George showed him better.

Mitchell wanted to look at this horrible thing he had done to Annie. He looked back to her dead body and he saw no wounds, her beautiful neck was clean, and so were her arms. He pulled the sheet down more to find her bare thighs, but instead of a bloody mess, he found her clean and untouched.

He turned back to the table and he noticed that the doctor was leaving, gallantly ushering the nurse out.

The bloody bundle was still on the bowl just outside of his sight.

He slowly approached it until he could reach it.

A white napkin, rapidly tinting itself red, covered it.

Before leaving the ward for good, the doctor yelled something back to Mitchell.

"Pity it is also dead."

Mitchell felt the blow and he ripped the napkin off to reveal the result of his deeds.

A lifeless heart.

Her lifeless heart.

Mitchell awoke in a sweaty panic. His body convulsed for the non needed air.

The sad whimpers of Annie were still fresh in his ears, but he knew better now, they weren't the sounds she had made in his dream, they were the sounds she had made when he had hurt her the last time she saw her.

He raised form bed and he left in a hurry.

He needed to forget.

He needed blood.

He needed Lou.

Or Caine.

Or any hopeless life he could find.

Anyone would do.