“Well, yeah,” she looks around at everyone else filing out, “but I’m your partner.”

Caleb leans over and mock whispers: “Now is when you’re going to learn why no one else likes being my partner cause you see: I don’t care.”

Sophie frowns and feels genuinely hurt at his coldness towards her. Caleb had found out real quick when he joined the police force that even though he was supposed to be on the same team as everyone else he really couldn’t be because of the secretive nature of vampires.

“Come on.” Andrew taps her on the shoulder and gestures for her to leave. She stands up and hesitantly begins to leave all the while casting back sad looks at them.

“And you?” Caleb looks over at Andrew.

“I’ll take the mind wipe. Captain would have my head if he knew that I left you unsupervised.”

Caleb shrugs his shoulder. To a degree he trusts Lieutenant Andrew almost as much as Captain Fredrick. He knows that Andrew, while being rough around the edges is a fair man who wouldn’t go blabbing his mouth to other officers or reporters.

Without any further ado Caleb reaches forward and pulls back the victim’s t-shirt to reveal her hard, pale stomach and purposely stabs the knife into her upper abdomen and pulls it down towards her waist.

“What the fuck!” Andrew tries to grab Caleb’s arm to stop him, but Caleb easily brushes him off.

“Shush or I’ll kick you out.” He warns before he rolls up his sleeves and plunges his hands into the woman’s womb. There’s a moment of squelching noises as he grasps at the fetus’s

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body and pulls it out. The woman had been in the final stages of her pregnancy so the child is fully formed.

“Caleb, please explain why you’ve decided to perform a c-section on a corpse.”

“Because the baby is still alive.” Caleb informs him as he cuts the umbilical cord and clears the baby’s airways. When he’s finished he hands the baby, who still looks very dead, to Andrew who grudgingly accepts it. Caleb finishes by taking the knife and cutting Andrew’s index finger until blood starts to bead around the blade.

“Ow!” He grumbles and tries to jerk back but Caleb with a firm grip sticks Andrew’s finger into the baby’s mouth.

“You were wondering about what happened to the blood?” Caleb asks. “The little parasite there drank it. It’s a vampire.”

Andrew is shocked to feel the baby respond to the introduction of his blood. It’s hands begin to twitch and jerk and now with it cradled to his chest Andrew can feel the slow heartbeat.

“It’s a girl.” he manages out still in shock, but as the shock begins to fade questions begin to formulate, “How did an unborn baby become a vampire?”

“Isn’t that a great question? And none of your business.” Caleb stands up. He stares at his bloodied hands in disgust, but then not having anything to clean them with grudgingly sticks his hand in his pocket and pulls out his phone leaving blood stains on his pants and the screen of his phone.

“Hey!” Andrew angrily gets up and follows him. “I don’t appreciate being left in the dark on this especially while I’m holding a baby of your species.”

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Caleb while waiting for someone to pick up his call turns to Andrew, “Don’t flatter the thing, however it was conceived it’s definitely not a purebred so don’t lump us in the same category.”

“That is such pretentious, elitist bullshit. What the fuck even? She’s not as good as you because she has a human mom or something?”

“Or something.” Caleb refuses to elaborate and is conveniently saved from Andrew’s incoming inquisition by the sound of a woman’s voice greeting him.

“Good morning Callippus, what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Morning mother.” Caleb forces a polite voice, “I was just calling you to tell you that I have a baby.”

“…I’m sorry what?” The politeness now drops and the tone becomes more business like.

Caleb sighs, “I’m at some warehouses working a case and the victim was pregnant with a half breed baby/thing.”

“I see. I’ll send a cleanup crew. What’s your exact location?”

“Tucked away behind Porter street, you can’t miss it there’s a bunch of police officers outside.” There’s an audible click as the line between them closes.

“What are you planning to do with this baby?” Andrew glares at him.

“None of your business. You’ll forget about it eventually anyway so I don’t know why you’re even worrying about it.”

“I’m worrying about her because knowing you and your kind you’ll put her in some kind of cage. Probably make her a slave or something.”

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“Wow. Really, you hit right on the mark. That’s what we do with infants usually, we just toss them into cages and raise them into slaves.” Caleb is not mad because Andrew has come to this conclusion, he’s mad because vampires have given Andrew a reason to come to this conclusion.

Story tellers for centuries have painted vampires as blood sucking monsters, but it’s only been in the last century that historians have proved it to be true. But like the humans vampires have changed through the course of history, a fact that humans like to ignore.

“What are you going to do with her than?” Andrew asks with a dark look. His hand gripping the child tighter to his chest.

“You want to know the truth: I don’t know what’s going to happen to it. I don’t know if you notice, but I’m not exactly close with my family and I don’t concern myself with their business.”

“Can you swear though that nothing bad is going to happen to her?”

Caleb groans at Andrew’s naiveness, “It is too early in the morning for this stupid conversation.” He mumbles. He looks around at the empty warehouse and thinks about how much simpler his life would be if he had a different job. Outside he can hear the sound of the other officers waiting for the okay to come back inside.

Lieutenant Andrew can’t even begin to comprehend the amount of problems this baby is going to cause. The most pressing problem is wether or not the child is really a halfling or not because half breed vampires unlike their purebred counterparts don’t age. If the baby is a halfling than it will never mature past it’s current 9 month state. Caleb can’t even decide what will be worse if that comes to be true, killing it or keeping it alive.