This time Mel awoke, not with a great shuddering start, but simply opening her eyes. She had felt like one moment she was falling, and now she was awake again. Curiously, her right hand was tucked under the edge of the blanket from the bed. Somehow it was pulled down, halfway from the bed. Glancing up she saw an old bag, one of those reusable ones that you’d have for Aldi’s or something. A coarse blue linen bag, and something about it felt oddly familiar but she wasn’t sure how. 

She turned her nose to the air and took a gentle sniff. Something warm, floral, hint of blood, sweet and sharp. She knew that scent. 

Thalia! That was her perfume or perfume. Honeysuckle and vanilla. 

Her eyes scanned the room quickly, looking for her. She could detect her scent everywhere in the room. The bed sagged slightly, the blanket crumpled. Icy panic welled mixing with the burn in her throat. 

Was she here? 

Her eyes scanned the room and saw her barricade toppled into the room, the door slightly ajar. 

“Well, that’s just fantastic.” She hummed.

She ran her tongue over her fangs, probing and testing the waters as it were. It still felt so very wrong, yet also right in a way. It felt natural, it was her mind that rebelled against it, the thinking part of her. She sat for a time and just… listened to her body. Listened to the hunger coiling deep, cramping. Not yet on the cusp that it had been, like claws ripping out her belly, but it would get there. Soon maybe. The stillness in her chest, not rhythmic breathing, but a steady hum of energy coursing. An insatiable desire to… 

Something curled around her spine. An insatiable… need to act or move. A restlessness that was all encompassing, nearly as endless as the hunger, but without the haze. Sitting still made her fingers itch.

“Well, what now Mel? We can stay here… for now, disgusting as it is.” Her eyes flicked to the door ajar, “Or maybe not.”

So shelter was a thing still. She needed resources. She needed… what? A plan, but a plan for what? What did she do once she was past the immediate? Melody took a calming breath, grimacing at the discomfort, the way it rasped in her chest to inhale that deeply. Still it was grounding, so she stood up and stretched. 

I suppose one perk is not feeling like shit after rolling out of bed. I don’t hurt at all.

A text from Thalia, more from Danny, because of course. She still didn’t know how the fuck to handle that. Another text from Martinez, probably a job, not that she could do that right now. Or could she? She tilted her head in thought. Maybe she… could. Not tonight though, if that’s what it was. Ignoring the communications for now, she flipped through the news and flinched at the top article.

“Ironridge Officer, James Keegan, 34, found dead in Southern Riverside, by the old Willow Tools plant, on Holloway.”

“A cop… The fuck? I was murdered by a fucking cop? What the fuck is happening with these murders?”  

Her mind began racing a mile a minute. An icy chill poured down her. The moldy walls were closing in and the choking stench of the place smothered her. She had to get out. She ripped the old clothes off, discarding the tattered remains before slipping into the jeans and hoodie. The hoodie dark and baggy became her armor, her cloak that helped her wrap the darkness around her and hide. From what she did. From herself.

She wrapped her camera bag and satchel around herself once more and shoved the decrepit furniture aside, one piece at a time. Despite the guilt she was refusing to feel right now, she enjoyed her tiny self getting to hurl furniture around like it was nothing. Once done, she rolled her bike out and frowned. Now she had done that, she had to decide another course of action-- She felt a deep unsettling cold, the scent of rot, blood and soil carried on the wind. Something faint, something quiet. 

She was here.

“Before you start getting all cryptic and everything, you know, like you do, at least give me your name or something to address you with.” Her voice came out low and throaty, just a hint of a razor edge.

Melody turned her head to the left, not really sure how she knew where she would be. There she was, leaning casually against the brickwork of the wall. A single eyebrow raised and a sharp smile. She didn’t look as disturbing tonight, Mel thought with a frown. It deepened further as the two locked eyes and the red haze that colored everything settled warmly over her mind.

“Evora.” Her voice was calm, melodic and dangerous, and she held herself with a surety and confidence Mel hated.

“So Evora, why are you here?”

“To ask you this: What are you waiting for?”

Mel closed her eyes, irritation surged and heat flared in her bones. What kind of question was that? 

What WAS I waiting for? What was at the end of the wait?

“I hate you, you know that?” 

“Yes, for now. Later? Perhaps not.” Evora said with a slight shrug.

"What do you even want? You have to want something, you keep showing up.” 

“I might ask the same of you, for you keep speaking with me.”

Mel threw a leg over her bike. She was so. Fucking. Done. Mel turned the key and tried to kick her bike to life, and Evora shifted, one second on her left, the next blocking her path, one hand gently on hers.

“Listen.” She said, looking towards the street.

Mel locked eyes with hers once more, but eventually averted them.

“How can I not?”

This area wasn’t nearly as dilapidated as Riverside. There was life here, the steady, rhythmic thump-thump of dozens of heartbeats each to their own beat. Some fast, some slow, some weak, some strong, all dark delicious promises. 

She hated it. 

She loved it.

“Feel it; How the world has opened to you. Each heartbeat, a possibility.” The way she spoke, the revenant gentleness unnerved Melody. She didn’t know how to feel about having... that view of the world.

“I feel chained to it.” Mel said with a scoff.

“Only if you let it be your chains.” Her lips twitched in something not quite a smile. 

“You say that as if I have a choice?” Mel seethed, her voice raising, her muscles growing taut.

“Do you not—”

“NO! I… I didn’t choose this-- I don’t know how I became… this.” Mel shouted over her, its echo lost to the night breeze.

“No. But you have a choice going forward. What do you feel when you hear them?” She gestured toward the street, tilting her head and curious glint to her eye.

“The need to rip my skin from my bones, to tear the hair from my scalp.” She hissed through gritted teeth, that hunger, that terrible haze flaring. 

“Why is that?” Evora laughs. A quiet laugh. Not with malice, but with something else. Amusement?

“Because… I don’t want this, whatever this is?” 

“And yet, here you are. Do you resist because you don’t want it? Or do you not want to want it.”

At this Mel finally ran out of quips, out of any response. What should she say? What could she even say? The truth? She didn’t know what that was. As always this… Evora seemed to maddeningly cut to the heart of-- all of it.

“You think you are fighting hunger,” Evora continues, “But it is not hunger, it is your will.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Her fists curling, itching to take a swing at this insufferable creature. 

“You need to decide who you are now.”Evora paused with a slow exhale, “What we are, Melody, no one tells you. You decide, you become.

“How,” Melody pauses, eyes narrowing, “How do you know my name?” 

“You tell me, Melody.” Her eyes glittered, wide, expectant.

That alone told Melody everything she needed to know. In hindsight it was obvious. It's not like she had seen any others like… her. No others except for Evora. 

“You made me this thing?” She hated how calm her voice was. 

“I saved you.”

Melody didn’t have an answer to that. Once again the insufferable creature was right. 

"And… if I don’t want this?”

“You starve,” She paused, giving Melody a long piercing look, “You die.”

Melody hated those words. She hated those choices, and hated Evora for them. She didn’t want to die. Even at her worst, she strove for something, even if it was… dark things, like her photography. She even loved even the morbid shots. Of bodies and fires and misery, of discovering all the angles of reality both good and bad. Of learning how to tell a story and shape stories and all the intricacies that came with such a thing. To give up, to just… die, that was something foreign, alien, even more alien than everything else so far. 

Lost in her thoughts she watched as Evora disappeared in a pale blur, there one second, gone the next. She could almost think… she knew how she did it. Like the flicker of a long forgotten memory, but she refused to dwell on it. Not now, when the red haze continued to burn at her mind. She hated it, she loved it, but she made a choice. She was done with Evora’s Yoda bullshit anyway.

Letting herself slide from her motorcycle she closed her eyes, listening to the orchestral symphony of the city's life blood all around her. She studied each note, just observing, and she pinned on one-- no two nearby. She let her feet follow of their own accord. She… surrendered, she let instinct take center stage, but she still held the reins.

It was easier in a way, finding herself sliding from shadow to shadow, a blur just out of sight of other passersby. She found herself rounding behind a gas station, one of those older styles, the ones with the detached bathrooms. She could hear muffled sounds, a keening and grunt. She could smell the still water, the alcohol and sweat of one and acrid fear of another. Her eyes widened, she understood.

With a swift kick, the door to the women’s bathroom swung open, the lock breaking through the wooden frame. He was grotesque hunched over whoever this woman was and a deep, darkening urge settled over her. Faster than they could react, she pulled her camera and took two shots. With a growl she wrenched the man off of the woman, tossing him into the lot and stalked towards him. I won’t regret this one. Oh no, not this one.

His face, the pain as the bat hit her over and over again. The sickening crunch and the snap she felt in her arm. If she hadn't protected her head, it would have been her skull. His snarling face, the curl of his lip and malice in his eyes. All she could think of was him, of that moment. Elliott. He couldn’t hurt her now.

She took a slow and steady gait, watching his confusion. She aimed her camera, and took a shot. She watched the man's face turn to embarrassment and anger, another shot. She rushed forward until she stood over him and let the fear show, and she took yet another photo. That cop, Keegan’s face blurred over his, and Elliot’s, flickering double negatives of rage and powerlessness. She bit-- hard into his throat and tore, taking one final photo.

As she took her last swallow, she pulled back feeling the rush along her veins, the electric hum along her limbs. Slowly stood back to her feet and stared down at the dead man, the rapist, the abuser. Did one sin cancel another? Melody didn’t know, but she knew that with this one, she wouldn’t feel guilty. She took a last angled shot, the carcass desiccated, pale, ripped at the throat.