This is the last chapter of the story. Love to hear any feedback, criticism, information, correction, or questions that you feel like sharing. I've loved writing this, and loved the way it's allowed me to engage with the world Toby Whithouse has created.

I'm so grateful to all the people, writers, actors, crew involved in creating Being Human for allowing me to spend this time with the wonderful characters and stories, and thank you to the wonderful people in the BH fandom, especially SunnyFla, for your support and patience as I learn how to do this. Love to you all.

xxx

-Fleem

Dancers learn that the body has laws of its own to be respected though tamed, that morality is a choice not only of conscience but of the body, for the body, by the body. - Toni Bentley

Electricity arcs like silk against tortoiseshell. Sparks sting behind my eyes.

We lie twined around each other, limp and slick and spent. Behind the half-raised window shade it's almost dark out, a stripe of golden-pink at the bottom edge of the sky, shading abruptly to deep purple-black above.

I bury my face in her tousled hair as she sleeps, her body warm against mine. I'd like to settle into this moment and stay here always, but something is wound tight inside me like a trap about to be sprung. It's not safe for her. I move away and sit at the edge of the bed.

"I have to go now."

"Why?"

"It's been several days since I last fed. The hunger is coming back. I don't want to hurt you."

She sits up and rakes her hair out of her eyes.

"So face the damned alternative, Mitchell. You don't want to go back to that life. We both know it."

I get up and pull on my trousers. This is not a conversation I want to be having naked. Josie is sitting up in bed cross-legged with the sheet tucked around her. I turn my back to her.

It's only a faint gnawing sensation at the moment, but it will get worse. Anxiously, I pace the room.

"I don't know what could happen. I won't be in my right mind. If I leave I may kill someone. If I stay I may kill you, or I may die. I just know if I don't feed I'll get very … unstable... and you shouldn't have to deal with it, so I should go. I'll find someplace safe."

"This is someplace safe. Don't go. Let me help you." Her tone is both pleading and irritated.

I can't put her through this. "It's too much to ask of you." I shake my head and turn away.

She throws off the sheet and comes to face me, naked. She puts her hand on my shoulder to stop me pacing and her dark blue eyes are stern and determined and trusting. It's cold enough in the room that her bare skin is covered in goosebumps.

"Look at me," she says. "Have you hurt me yet?"

"No."

"Do you want to?"

"No, of course I don't." It's true. This has nothing to do with her. I want her more than blood. "But do you have any idea how dangerous this is?"

Her mouth tightens. "I have some idea. You'll need to cooperate."

I say I'll stay. I don't know if it's the right thing to do.

Still shirtless, I sit on the little sofa with my forehead resting on my knees. She's in a long silky dark blue dressing gown, sitting beside me. I'm growing agitated and she is rubbing my back in an attempt to calm me down. I try to concentrate on the sensation of her fingers on my bare skin as they press in circles across the tense places between my shoulder blades and spine. I've never allowed anyone to touch me this way. It feels good, but it won't prevent what's about to happen.

The hallucinations begin before the pain does.

I see the old man from the bar, but he's young, in uniform, his walrus mustache and hair both light brown and full. He's limping and his hand is bleeding. He calls for help. Bullets whiz overhead and raise splashes of mud where they land. We both automatically hit the dirt. I clamber on knees and elbows over to him. My instinct is to go and patch him up and get him to a medic. When I get close to him the smell of blood is too much and I tear his throat out.

"Disgusting," he says as he dies.

I shake my head from side to side and rub my eyes to erase the sight of him.

"What's wrong?"

"It's nothing. I'll be all right."

"You're shaking."

"I'm okay."

"No you're not."

Body heat, a whiff of hash and violets. A pale purple glow in the air. I relax a little.

Stephanie, thin and pale, sits beside me on the sofa, going into a nod, her eyes half-closed. "Don't be sad, Johnny," she mumbles. Black fluid runs down her blouse. Her scarred bare arms are limp at her sides.

"It's time to move on, darling," I tell her. "Thank you so much for everything. I hope there's peace where you are."

We're curled on the sofa, drinking sherry, of all things. Waves of anxiety are starting to make me twitchy.

"Did you know the girls upstairs?" I ask.

"Not really. Jenna was a bit of a groupie, and we kept different hours. She wasn't home very much at any rate. I'd only seen her friend once or twice on the stairs. I don't know much about her at all."

"She was called Stephanie. It wasn't exactly true when I said I didn't know them. We gave them a ride home from a club in Bristol."

"What were you doing there?"

"We live there."

She raises her eyebrows. "Oh?"

"Sorry I forgot to tell you before. All the vampires I associate with live in Bristol. You're the only person I know in London, and that's a good thing. Herrick might be able to find me here but no-one here will help him look.

"Anyway... it was Herrick who killed Jenna. I... took an interest in Stephanie."

"Is that what you call it?"

"Oh please. Honestly, I liked her. On some level we understood each other. "

"Do you usually like the people you kill?" She's using that tone she did the day we met. Interrogating. It makes me tense.

"I don't usually know them. She was kind to me. I didn't plan to kill her. She had a drug dealer boyfriend she was trying to get away from so she was staying with Jenna to get away from him and kick the smack at the same time."

"Was it working?"

"She wanted it to, but not really. We were both completely wasted when I lost control and killed her. Herrick got what he wanted that time. He expected me to do it. He would've given me hell if I hadn't."

"That's no excuse for killing the poor girl."

"You're right, it's not." My voice rises in frustration. "I thought we'd been over this. I'm not trying to make excuses. I'm only telling you what happened. It wasn't an unusual night for us."

Josie scowls. "What if that was me you were driving home from Bristol? Would I still be here?"

"I don't know. I told Herrick I killed you too." She looks down, half-closes her eyes, and inhales loudly. "Want to know something else?" I ask.

"I don't know. Probably not. What?" Her expression darkens. I hate this, but I don't want to keep secrets.

"She came back right away. As a ghost. "

"Ghosts are real too?" She shifts away from me, sitting cross-legged on the sofa, elbows on knees, head in hands, looking down, eyes wide with disbelief.

"Yes. You wouldn't be able to see them, but vampires can. If their deaths are somehow unresolved, they stay in the world until they find resolution."

"Are they still here?" She looks around nervously.

"No. They stayed for awhile because they didn't understand what happened."

"What do you do in a situation like that? Did you talk to them?"

I know how this is going to sound, but I plow ahead anyway. She needs to know. "Well, Stephanie'd had a fix and was so high at the end, she didn't realize I'd killed her. Jenna remembered Herrick killing her. She was really angry, understandably.

"There wasn't much I could do besides explain why we did it. I told them what happened, that it was for the blood, that it wasn't personal. I said I was sorry but only to be polite. An apology is pointless. It's too late. Really, what should I apologize for? We're vampires. It's what we do."

"Except … you used to be human. You look like a human. You talk to humans. You sleep with them. Don't you have any feelings about killing them? I mean, other than thinking it's sort of a drag?"

"I'm not proud of having killed so many people. But guilt? Remorse? We can't generally afford those. They make things harder for us. I try to avoid killing when I can, but that's caused me problems. Especially with Herrick."

Her eyes narrow with vexation. "I see," she says.

Now I'm feeling defensive. "I don't think you do. This is how vampires live. We don't choose to be predators, any more than sharks or lions choose it. It's natural to for us to drink blood."

"It's natural for fleas and bedbugs too." With a glare, she crosses her arms across her chest.

"Look, I'm telling you it wasn't up to me! What was I supposed to do? If I weren't a vampire - if I'd never done the things vampires do - I'd be dead. Instead I've spent the past fifty-odd years with that bastard breathing down my neck."

She thinks this over, nods, and sighs. Her shoulders sag a little. She touches my shoulder. "All right. You don't have to shout. So what happens now?"

"I'm going cold turkey. It will be hard, and it will take awhile. With luck, we'll both live through it."

"Okay. What can I do?"

"Keep us both safe. Make sure your little crucifix is nearby. There's a stake in my coat pocket. If I try to hurt you, kill me. "

A whiff of chemicals in a room under the stage.

I'm beginning to feel ill. I am resting on the bed and Josie is sitting in her bedroom chair reading a paperback book. She peeks over the cover.

"You're getting very pale. You look tired."

"Yes. And scared."

"What's happening to you?"

"There are voices. And smells. And faces. Sometimes they're momentary flashes, but sometimes they seem real. It's starting to hurt, too, pressure in my chest like I'm being crushed. And I'm freezing cold. It's only going to get worse."

Her brow furrows with concern. "I'll stay with you."

"This is going to be dangerous. I could lose control. Are you sure you want me here?"

"Enough of that," she says. "You're not going anywhere." She sets the book down, splayed open, on the chair, and comes to sit on the edge of the bed. She lays her open hand palm-down on my back and leaves it there, deliberate and motionless. Its energy radiates into me and I soak it up gratefully. Something about it blunts the piercing hunger. Another gift.

After a while she get up and brings her book back to bed, where she props herself up on her elbows beside me and reads.

The real pain starts as a dull ache in my chest, like an old wound that flares up before it rains. There's a dry ache behind my eyes. Nausea. Soon I'm doubled over with the hurt of it sucking at my ribs so hard they feel like they're cracking. My field of vision darkens around the edges.

She brings me hot milky tea with lots of sugar. It helps a little, but I'm still losing it.

Trance of anticipation. Cacophony. Shock and hurt. Predatory quiet. Tearing and shattering. Bruised blue eyes. Twitching feet. Wails. Tears. A hand rising and lying still. Curly red hair matted redder with blood. Shock, surprise and disappointment. Perfume and smoke. Shit and piss. Bile, sweat, brains, skulls, earlobes, necks, wrists. Pulsation and quiet.

Humans nearly corpses. Bloody sheets and towels, mop water. Whispers. A touch on the back. Teeth piercing skin. Hunger and thirst. Stalking and pouncing. Seducing and betraying. Kissing and fucking. Attacking from the front, from the side, from behind, awake, asleep.

No gentleness no joy no laughter no love no comfort no peace no friendship.

Howling emptiness.

Nothing at all.

I shudder awake. The room is dark.

"Your face changed and you were growling like an animal," she says. "You were starting to scare me. Good thing you woke up."

I am ashamed, but then the pain twists into me, corkscrewing upward from the base of my spine. I wince and shiver and try not to make a sound.

"Are you cold? I'll run you a bath."

When it's ready, she helps me into the tub and I'm borne upward by warm water. The bathroom is lit only with candles because the overhead lights hurt my eyes. I drift there staring at the candle flames until the water is cold.

I emerge from the bath, and somehow she's right there with a warm towel. I stand obediently as she rubs me down and bundles me back to bed. My hair dampens the pillow and the heat dissipates into the cool sheets. I'm sinking into delirium.

Wires ratchet tighter and tighter across my skin, a series of long straight cuts.

Sticky cold wet and muddy, dripping and oozing. Stiffened cloth drying stiffer still. Rough whiskered faces smelling of whiskey, eyes bulging hands scrabbling uselessly. Labored breathing, whistling through holes that don't belong there. Gurgling and retching. Farting and squelching and gasping. Glistening eyes and viscera. Red yellow white purple blue grey. Freckles, spots, carbuncles, scabs, scratches, scars, moles, open sores.

Shells bursting. Mutilated limbs and unanswered cries for help. Shrapnel. Gas. Mud. Bayonets. Barbed wire. Morphine. Cigarettes. Rum. Chocolate. Hardtack. Rotted meat. Naked tree trunks on cratered wasteland. Smell of mildewed wool, gangrenous toes, unwashed arses, decayed teeth. Cordite and splinters and flashes of white light. Black fingernails.

A slash at the vein. Steady pulsating flow ebbing and ebbing. Sucking harder and harder. Lapping blood from skin. Fixed pupils. A vulture picking gristle from a corpse. Blood coursing upward and downward, disappearing into a hollow coil, transmitting stolen life.

Nails rake my skin. Screams in my ears. A trickle down my chin sliding under my jaw and dripping to the ground. A smear on the back of my hand. A trail down my white shirt from my collar to the middle of my back. A rivulet slides into my ear as I lie on the floor. My eyelashes stuck together with drying blood. Ruined waistcoats. Clotted flakes sprinkle the floor as I peel the socks from my feet.

Iron copper salt sugar. Plasma and corpuscles and platelets. Bacon and smoke. Metal silk jelly custard sausage soup wine. Oblivion.

I'm back crouching at the toilet, dry-heaving. So cold. Boneless and clammy. My skin collapsing on itself. Her warm hands hold back my hair as I retch but bring up nothing, and then she helps me back to bed again.

My teeth chatter. She props a hot water bottle on either side of me and wraps an afghan around my shoulders. Dry lips stuck to extended fangs. Eyelids cold and heavy over my eyes like damp rags. The light is painful.

My hands shake so much I can't hold the cup of hot salty bouillon. She holds it to my mouth and I swallow gratefully.

"Why are you doing this?"

Her voice comes from far away. "In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess."

A glowing white haze around her like smoke. I don't know how long its been. A day? A week? More?

White haze turns red. Jagged wires cut all the way through laying me open and black spews into the room. I hear a heartbeat and reach for it.

"Mitchell! Stop it!"

Josie's face resolves through the red, her eyes horrified and enormous. My hands are twisted into her hair, pulling her toward me. No no no no no no.

I push away from her. My fangs won't retract. "See, I have to leave. It's not safe."

She takes my hand and kisses the back of it, but doesn't let go. "You can't go anywhere like this."

A strap constricts around my wrist. I twist painfully to see Josie pulling a red leather belt tight around my hand, securing it to the bed.

Okay. She's got nerve, I'll grant her that.

When she's done, I offer her my other hand. She nods grimly and gets to work. Then she does my feet too.

"Just until we get through this," she says. "And turnabout's fair play." Touché, sweetheart.

She disappears and reappears with fresh hot water bottles, which she lays at my sides, then tucks the blanket back over me. She sits on the bed beside my feet, far away from the teeth. The stake is in her hand.

"You can do this," she says, but her voice is shaky, and no wonder. There's a brutal monster in here. And also a prisoner who watches, and howls with despair, and gasps in horror and begs for it to stop. Kill the monster and the prisoner dies too.

It hurts. A tangle of black wire pulling tighter and tighter, the hollow spirals twisting over and over on themselves clenching into spasm. Snaky black strands work their way from the center to the outside, sucking, searing, burrowing through hips legs shoulders head eyes. Hollow tunnels cave inward. Structure undermined and crumbling.

I lie on wet ground as a dark eyed young man kisses me and his rough skin smells of dust. he looks up and his face is reptilian, with glossy empty black eyes and lips drawn back to reveal venomous looking fangs. "Sorry mate, you're done for," he says, and my head is yanked back by the hair and his teeth rip at my throat. I try to scream but the breath escapes below the place my voice should be. My head lies in a pool of mud with rain splashing loudly beside my ear. My eyes aren't shut but they don't work anymore.

Someone's forearm presses across my neck. I can't breathe. My chest tight and burning as I struggle for air. My eyes are swollen shut and teeth broken. A searing pain at the top of my leg then warm dampness across my belly quickly chills into a sticky glaze. Twisted concertina wire slowly being pulled out of my body, one jagged barb by one, tearing at my skin a little more each time. The last sight before my vision goes is the crown of a dark head below my waist, sucking the strength from me and drawing in the searing cold.

I die in agony again and again. My fingers and toes go numb. The world expands and contracts from blinding whiteness to a black pinpoint and back to white. My lungs burn and my throat aches from screaming.

Another daytime. We're through the worst of it. There are no smells or sights or people that don't belong here. I am exhausted and raw, but I seem to have all my wits about me.

The hot water bottles are gone. I spit a rolled tea towel from my mouth but some of the threads are stuck between my teeth. My lips are cracked and dry.

She smiles wryly, picks up the towel, and brushes my hair out of my face. "Sorry, but I gave that to you to bite on. Helped quiet you down. You were going to wake the neighbors. I know it works better if you soak it with whiskey first, but I'm clean out.

There are circles under her eyes. "You said you were dangerous. Christ. I won't joke about that anymore. I think I spent two days just watching you thrash, and your face go from all demonic and snaky to normal and back. I told them at work that I was caring for a sick friend.

"I wanted to stay in here with you but after a while it was too dangerous. It looked awful. I tried to sleep on the sofa, but had to keeping coming in to check on you. Are you feeling better now?"

I wish I could cover my face because I don't want her to see me weeping. My tongue is like a dry stone. I deserve none of this, but I would endure the same ordeal a hundred times if I knew I could be here with her afterward. "Thank you," I manage to say.

"You do know how to make a girl feel appreciated," she says. She lies down next to me and her body heat warms me through the covers.

"I think I'm okay," I whisper. She nods, and undoes the straps: a flowered pink belt, a turquoise one, a red one, a braided black one.

It's a relief to have the sensation return to my fingers and toes. I sit up and look around at the room, the morning light, the empty mugs, water bottles, and discarded clothes on the floor, the tangle of sheets and blankets wrapped around me. She sits beside me. I take her into my arms and listen to her breathing and to the lovely sound of her beating heart.

"Welcome to the land of the living," she says. "You look a sight, you know. Go on, a little hot water won't hurt you." She nods in the direction of the bathroom.

There's a razor in the small bag of clothes I've brought from Bristol. The heat from the shower feels incredible. I wash and shave and emerge from the bathroom in jeans and pullover. I'm overwhelmed with the strangeness of it all - standing freshly showered in a girl's flat with no place else to be, feeling grateful and glad, and also like I've just stepped off a cliff. There's nothing holding me up. I've got no place to be but right here. I like that.

Josie's eyes widen when she sees me. Suddenly she's nervous and shy. "Let's have some breakfast, shall we? I'm famished. You must be too." She's talking a little too fast. She pulls the blue dressing gown more tightly around her and adjusts the sash.

I'm torpid and dizzy and achy and uncomfortably empty. I sit at the small table while she busies herself in the kitchen, taking out dishes, warming things on the stove, occasionally dropping something and cursing quietly to herself.

After a few minutes of this, she slides in front of me a plate of beans on toast and a cup of coffee. I sit there for a long second looking at it as the knob of butter she's put on top melts and runs toward the edge of the plate. She watches me across the table.

I pick up the coffee, which smells wonderful, and let the heat from the cup warm my hands.

"Is it too hot?" she asks.

"No, it's perfect."

Once I start eating, I can't stop. Certainly it's not the ideal thing for me, but it will have to do. Before I realize it I've eaten three plates full, and had two cups of coffee. I'm feeling a bit less faint. Maybe I can live on just food. Sighing with relief, I say, "This is amazing. You're amazing. I can't thank you enough."

"Yes you can. Just stay good, okay?" Her voice sounds strained. I've frightened her. "I'm going to have a shower, so make yourself at home." She disappears into the bathroom.

After finishing the washing up, I sit at the table sipping my third cup of coffee and reading the morning paper, idly scanning the crime reports for anything that smacks of vampire activity. I am relieved to find absolutely nothing. The London vampires are thorough. They must have tidied our earlier cockup too.

Hunger, not for food, is nagging at me, causing a dull ache behind my eyes and a chilly arthritic stiffness in my hands and feet. No amount of coffee, beans and toast will make the bitter gnawing in the pit of my stomach go away.

When she finally emerges, I'm looking out the window at the traffic passing by. It's mid-afternoon, with the light just starting to go golden and sideways. She stands beside me and touches my arm.

"Mitchell? Are you okay?"

"The craving's not gone," I say. "I can still feel it, like an open sore that won't heal."

"You'll have to ignore it then."

"Guess so. I don't expect it to get better. I'll have to get used to feeling like shit."

She sits on the sofa, elegantly folding one leg over the other, and takes out a cigarette. She offers me one and I sit beside her and give her a light.

"I've studied ballet since I was a girl," she says. "If you want to learn how to live with pain and hunger, ask a dancer. We learn to silence our bodies. If some extra weight keeps us from looking right in a costume, which happens all the time, we ignore the need to eat.

"Dancing en pointe looks beautiful and graceful, but it utterly destroys your feet. You get blisters and torn tendons and deformities and broken bones. There were times I wanted to kill myself because it hurt so much. You dance anyway, because you have to.

She gestures at a small brass sculpture on her bookshelf. "See Buddha here? I keep him here to remind me. The only way I could get through it all was to think about what he said, that life is suffering and suffering is craving or attachment. It's being attached to the idea of how we want things to be instead of how they are. Once I accepted that hunger and pain were part of the performance, it got easier.

"I don't know if that helps you, but it helped me."

"I'll keep that in mind," I say.

She takes a last drag on her cigarette and stubs it out. "Let's get some air," she says.

We step out into the crisp afternoon. She smiles at my oversized sunglasses. "Survival gear," I explain.

Holding hands like any young lovers, we walk, with no particular destination in mind.

After awhile, I notice her gait is uneven and she's favoring her left foot slightly. "You okay?"

"I'm fine, just a little footsore."

We stop into a pub she says she's never been in before, and sit at a table in a corner. We order pints and rest our feet. This is a date, I realize. We're on a date. I laugh, thinking of the normalness of it. The last time I sat somewhere having a drink, it was with Seth and Marco in Bristol - another world, another life.

"What's funny?" Josie asks.

"Just thinking about where I've been and where I am now. It's a lot different."

"I can only imagine."

"You don't have to," I say. "This is better."

When we get back to the flat, all I want to do is kiss her. We undress each other slowly and deliberately, with the lights on. I am learning her and she is learning me. I notice I am drawn to the pulse at her neck. There's no avoiding it. I kiss, and feel the blood moving beneath the skin. I close my eyes and do not bite. I roll onto my back and pull her to me. It's different this time. We're not afraid.

She is wise and fragile and precious. She has saved me, is saving me, will save me.