It's strange really. Back in the days, when I was untouched by her, this place would have been just a police office. Drunkards in the tank, officers going about their day. Occasional tension might pop up when some looney started arguing about a ticket they got while they were alone on the road.

Now, it's different. The texture is different. I can see the texture of the concrete walls as if I was up close, yet I stand far away. People's smells cling to the inside of my nose, as if I were standing next to them. Their thoughts dance through my mind, thinking of everything and nothing, from hope to fear, from lust to revulsion.

The pattern has repeated itself more times than I can fathom, but this pattern must be broken. I scan the room and find an officer looking at me. His brow furrows and his eyes squint, highlighting the dark circles of sleeplessness nights. I hear his thoughts putting things together. I know him. He's been around. It's his personal mission to catch me.

I walk up to him, grab a seat from an empty nearby desk and sit down. Three officers are paying attention to me. I can smell the stench of the sweat from the lot of them, mixed with cheap tylenol, a hint of gunpowder and the sad stale aura of depression and a life lived too intensely. Though maybe, that's just me.

"Hello officer. I'm here to surrender myself to your custody. We need to talk. Now."

The officer's eyes widen. Two more cops pay attention. An old lady, whose cancer is nearly killing her yet she's unaware of it, turns her head.

"Wow there, slow down. Your name, please?"

"Patrick Mayhew Donovan. You know me as The Stripper. I killed fifteen men over the past three years in this state. If you need names, I remember all of them. Details too."

The entire police station grew silent, besides a fan rotating on its axle, attempting to freshen up the air in here. Several officers clench their jaws, I can hear the grinding of their poorly maintained teeth, as well as the release of several clasps of holsters.

From my coat pocket, I pull out a set of polaroids. Pictures of crime scenes as I left them. Victims when they were alive and after she and I killed them, stripping them of their flesh, draining their blood. The pictures came down on the desk, and he saw them. His eyes went wide like a dear in headlights. The heart in his chest that is bound to fail in two years starts beating twice as fast as he sees the pictures. He stands up immediately, the chair he rested on falling backwards, clanging on the stone floor. The pistol in his holster is drawn with damn near expertise and is pointed at my head.

I have been seated in this room for about three hours now. It's strange, but I'm sure they need time to put it all together. They don't know what I know. What they have, what they found when they searched me, as puzzle pieces that are incomplete. They won't like what they'll see if they put the whole thing together.

My strange friend, the police officer named Daniel Lofter, stands behind the glass, along with a federal agent and a detective. They've been discussing things such as evidence, motive, probably cause, the case they've built over the years. It's mind-numbingly boring chit chat, for which I don't have time.

"I suggest you ask your questions quickly. My time is limited. Before long, my partner will now I went to the police and will come here to kill me. If she finds you standing between me and her, she'll wipe you off the face of the planet. I know you only found 11 bodies. I will tell you where the other 4 are, if you send someone here."

I realized I came across as a bit desperate. Now that I'm not near her anymore, I'm starting to feel something. An impending sense of doom, like people who suffer heart attacks do. She helped suppress the fear. But the thoughts behind the mirror were also starting to get harder to decipher. My power is waning. She knows. She'll be coming. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

The detective, after some quick dialogue, retreats from the room, walks around the walls and enters the room, holding a rather thick folder. A woman with an aged complexion, dark, well maintain long curls and the body language of determination and confidence. I respect that.

She considers slamming the file on the table, but maintains her composure and gently sets it down. Now that she's closer, I can tell her basic thoughts. Diana. That's her name. The very face of professionality and discipline. Cool and calm, collected. But I can smell the fury in her breath. The seething disappointment. In her head, she imagines brutalizing me, beating me to a pulp with her fists and a chair. Kicking me, slamming my heard through the one-way mirror and grinding my neck across the broken glass, tearing my neck to pieces. But she doesn't.

"I'm here. Things align with what you've said so far. We have more questions."

"I have some things to say first. About my partner. She is coming."

"So you weren't acting alone?"

"No. No I wasn't."

"Well, I'd prefer we start from the beginning here, so if we can put a narrative of sorts together."

"There's not time for that. You don't get it, detective, and I envy your ignorance. I have seen what she does. I know what she can make people do. She walks in human form, but that thing is not human. She is beyond you, beyond me. I simply got too close to her, got infected by her very presence."

"I did not prepare myself for a comic book villain breakdown, so try to keep your cool, here. An interrogator is on the way."

"Detective Matthews. He's flying in from Houston. 43 years old, a wife and two kids. Worked in different positions of the force over the last 15 years, from patrol officer all the way to his current position. His wife feels lonely when he isn't around, because he's a workaholic. When he dies, he will be the kind of person to regret not having spent as much time with his children as he could. He feels guilty over it already, and drinks to make it go away. Well, that and some of the other experiences he's had. Stellar record with the force, though. A good choice. If my partner doesn't rip the plane out of the sky, just to let us know that she's coming because now that I know, so does she."

I can feel the anxiety in her head, crawling from the bottom of her brains, around the outside, to the top. As if skeletal hands cradle her brains and give it a squeeze. She looks back at the mirror. My friend Daniel seems confused, but the federal agent's face turn white as a sheet. He pulls out a phone and starts calling his superior.

"Listen to me, Diana."

"I never told you my name."

"Of all the ridiculous things I just said, that shouldn't be the worst. The reason why I'm involving you and everyone here is because I'm trying to expose my partner in crime. The more people know about her, the harder it is for her to erase her tracks and disappear. Will you listen?"

"You have my undivided attention."

"Thank you, detective."

"What can you tell me about this partner of yours?"

"Her preferred targets are men. She takes them, simply for the pleasure of tearing out of happiness in their hearts with her razor sharp teeth. I've seen her instill nightmares in men, leaving them weeping, gasping for air, making them call out her name. In her eyes, I see the ground and sky on fire, with no mercy at the end of days which she will bring. The blood of gods, fresh on her hands, with flaming wings and more eyes than I can count."

"This is hard to follow, Patrick."

"Fine. You want a description? She's beautiful. One look will take away your innocence, opening your mind to things you never could dream of before meeting her. She's a muse to anyone whose mind she breaks. Her hair is like fire, her skin like the porcelain of my grandmother's china set. Her eyes are greener than the leaves of summer. One look, and you'll know her name."

The federal agent returns to the room, phone still in hand, shocked. With a tremble in his hand and numbness in his mind, he tells Daniel of a plane crash just outside George Bush International. They both look at me.

"Her name is Jolene."

We all have our ups and downs. High highs, low lows. Barely anything in the middle.

Vampires gets high when they feed. With mortal blood in their veins, they feel as if for a second, they have all the power of a vampire and the happiness only mortals could achieve. They are as close to living in that moment as they ever could be. A state of utter euphoria. Like a drug. In this state, they take risks they never would. Get into fights they'd never dare to start sober. Commit acts of love and happiness they wish they could. They even look alive.

When they don't feed, the connection to the dark powers that bind them, enslave them, sucking this happiness out of them. Their minds turn bitter, turn to despair. When they are like this, there is no positive emotion within them of any kind. They simply cannot feel it, and their souls know that this kind of existence is simply wrong, and unnatural. They gaze into the abyss from whence their power came, feeling themselves drawn to this void that will consume all life, in the end. They are dead, but even they fear this entropy despite the tightrope of power. Immeasurable mobility, strength, regeneration and awareness of their surroundings on one end. On the other, an infinite life barely lived as they crave to feed on their kind and kin, weaknesses of all kinds placed upon them by the abyss that forged their new selves. And all know that if the cold void in their dreams touch them, they are lost forever. And so they feed, to keep away from this void.

Many vampires draw from the power of this void to stave off their deaths. Their desire for immortality fulfilled, at the cost of knowing that they can only extend that existence at the costs of others. Many lose themselves to the cycle of euphoria and despair. They live in the moment, craving one feeding after the next, running from boogey who come to wipe them from the face of the earth.

But not all live like that. Some pick the road less travelled by.

A heavy set man sat down in a chair, unbuttoning his suit jacket. The rains were not merciful this night, as the gentle clattering on the windows surged with the winds. In the reflection, only a single light remained on, behind him, with the gentle glow of a mother's caress. His own reflection was barely visible. A silhouette, dark and broad, stared back at him.

On the thirty-fifth floor, the penthouse, he had been cooped up by orders of his superiors. Word had leaked on the streets of his arrival to those who knew of what haunted the scum of this city. Over the last month or so, gang associated murders have skyrocketed. Patterns stuck out so blatantly that it didn't feel a mob war of any kind. This was a calling card. Someone was looking for attention. The visceral and violent deaths now ran up to thirty-four as of yesterday, the number spread across three months with a rising amount over the last one.

While a deep cleaning of the streets was not something regrettable in and of itself, the issue was that it was unsanctioned. Unsanctioned murders on the streets are unacceptable. The aggro a story like this could accumulate would blow open a tidal wave of misery the world had never faced, from which it couldn't recover.

By itself, this sounded like an exaggeration. If only it simply was.

The man had committed the thirty-fifth murder, same as the others. Painstaking details were replicated and no expenses were spared. The tearing wounds in the neck, in the middle of the night at the center of its territory. No cameras, no witnesses. Just a quick call, a gurgling gasp and the ripping of flesh. No blood on the scene. Last but not least, an invitation to the current location of the man who sat patiently.

As he was about to check his watch, a knocking on the glass balcony door disturbed this. Outside stood a drenched woman in a raincoat, gazing through the door. The man got up, unlocked the door and held it open. She did not move in.

"So," She almost yelled with a raised voice, making herself heard as the winds swept the lashing rain without a care, "this was you, right?"

He gestured for her to enter, which she quickly did. As he closed the door, with one fell swoop, she unbuttoned her raincoat and moved to the door to hang it there. A braided ponytail came away from the hood, a leather jacket and jeans from under it. A stark contrast to the man's three piece suit.

After leaving her coat on the rack, she looked him up and down.

"I don't appreciate people trying to take my gig."

"The Conclave does not appreciate your activities in this city, Miss..."

"Call me Jean."

"Jean. Sure. Then I'm Logan."

"Subtle."

"Jean, you have the attention of those whose attention you don't want."

"Good. Took you guys long enough. Though I wouldn't have minded if you dropped by a little later."

"That would have gathered even more attention."

"As if the invitation wouldn't."

"We figured you were proud of your handiwork."

"Not really. Just a matter of convenience."

"Convenience? That's what blood banks are for."

"Listen, jar-head. Blood banks are for people who need that stuff in surgeries. I'm not taking blood from those who willingly give it. I'm taking it from those who don't deserve it."

"Who gave you the right to play judge, jury and executioner?"

"Who gave you the right to intervene? Who watches the watcher?"

"Those who understand the order of how things are better than you."

"I suppose so. No one ever really 'explained' any of this stuff. This whole mess only happened pretty recently. I'm new to all of it."

"Quite the mess, indeed. You have gained the attention of the masses. You target selection has left you in their good graces."

"I did more about the gang problem in one month than the police that's supposed to protect and serve us did in over a decade. Heh. I've done more noticeable and useful things for the place I was raised in in death than I did in life. I don't really plan on stopping."

"Very altruistic. The crusader who bloodies their hands so that others may stay clean. You're not the first to start out this way. I've seen it time and time again."

"Oh? How does it end?"

The man pulled open his jacket on both sides. Dozens of tiny vials of holy water on one side and three stakes, one of iron, one of silver and one of wood on the other.

"Speaking of judge, jury and executioner."

"You know what these do?" The man asked.

"I'm aware." The woman said, now a little more shaken.

"You're a recent convert. That's good. It means you can be reasoned with. For now. But your link to the void is strengthening. Soon, the hunger will consume you."

"The void?"

"The darkness in your dreams that seeks to consume you. It stays its distance when you drink blood."

"What do you know about this?"

"This 'Tobias' didn't tell you much about what you are, did he?"

"No."

"Then I will take on a new role, tonight. And if you take to the lessons I'm willing to teach you, we can discuss the mess you made and how to handle it."

"And if I don't?"

"I'll handle you. You get two minutes to decide. That's more mercy than you gave the people you killed."

"Why do you get to decide who lives and who dies? What have you done to get to do that?"

"I will explain, if you accept my offer."

"This doesn't feel fair."

"Life is unfair. Why does undeath have to be any different? The ones you put in the morgue didn't have a fair chance either. The scales will be balanced. One minute and thirty seconds. Choose, before a decision is made for you."

"Four fives."

I eyed Egart as hard as I could. He leaned back into his chair, smug and satisfied, and turned his head towards to Dara. My own dice, a four and two threes weren't going to match up with that. A total of fourteen dice on the table, three of which aren't fives, leaves a total of eleven. Odds were generally about forty percent-ish for dice to match up to a called total, so he was safe-ish. But Dunston and Gynk both called fours. His switch to fives might very well be a vote of confidence in himself. He has three dice under them. If he has at least two dice that are fives, it's a good bet to make. Which is why he'd probably lying his ass off. Egart is smart, but not as smart as he thinks he is.

I take a drag from the good old cig' and push it in the ashtray while giving Dara a doubtful look. That'll put some pressure on her. If she knows I doubt it, then if she raises, I'll call her bluff. Unless she raises to fours.

"Come on, princess." Donovan mumbles, tossing fuel on the fire and he knew it. "One good guess away from calling this brat a fuckin' liar."

"You're just salty that your bones are creaking, old man." Egart shot back.

Gynk's pulled a lever on his torso and held his mask closer to his face, inhaled, then sighed. "Dara can make her own decisions, Don."

Donovan scratches he great black and peppered beard as his cheek. "She's about as capable of making decisions under pressure as she is capable of keeping a boyfriend for longer than a week, hehe."

"Hey!" Dara yelled.

Most of us couldn't hold back more than a stifled grunt. Poor Dara.

"Fuck you, guys."

"No thanks, I'd rather not be added to the list." Egart responded, then let out a scrawny howl. Donovan could keep it together and roared with him. Poor Gynk damn near blew a ventilation valve. I couldn't hold it in either.

"You're a lying piece of shit, Egart. Show me!"

Egart knocked over his cup, showing three fives. And yet, no one else on the table had fives or ones.

"Oh come on! Fucking hell, you guys."

"Maybe ask the girl nicer next time." Dara muses as she scoops up one of Egarts dice on puts them on a pile at the center of the table.

The bell starts ringing. No one's laughing now.

"Seriously? A heist out here?" Donovan asks himself more than anyone in particular.

"Imagine being in this blasted dry heat for days waiting for this to come by, you've got to be mad with thirst or well supplied." Egart said as everyone left the table and scooted the seats back.

Gynk already lumbered towards his station, the heavy gears thumping away as he does. Probably to man the turret that cost him half his body so far. Donovan hit his gauntlet, and a suit of hissing and clicking armor spread all over his body, finalizing with a heavy looking helmet. Egart and Dara sped to the locomotive.

"You idiots better not get yourself killed out there, otherwise I'd have to go get other dice players and teach them how to play all over!" I holler at them as Donovan and I head for the main wagon for a sitrep.

"They can barely play as is." Donovan replies, his voice deepened even further in his suit.

"Yeah, well, it's a start."

The speakers on the walls come to life with a whirl and a whine, Captain Valignat blares through them: "DRAGONS! All hands to stations immediately! This is not a drill, repeat, this is not a drill!"

Donovan and I look at each other for a split second, before racing through the cart with me up front. Dragons? You're shitting me. Out here? They never left their continent.

"We might end up needing new players after all." Donovan drones through his helmet. As we speed by, we see Gynk hauling himself up the ladder.

"Give 'em hell, Ironarm!" I call out, though I'm not sure he hears me. Passing by the turret wagon, we enter the barracks. It's chaos out here. Late night guards are hauling themselves into their breeches, snatching whatever rifles they have and barking orders. They hesitate to move out of the way until Donovan shows up and almost ends up crushing one or two of them while moving on. I fall behind him and let him lead, while loading my pistols one by one. Let's hope is ends up being just a plane looking like dragons.

A massive shadow falls over the wagon just before we reach command. A quick peek shows some huge, something white, and something fast outracing the wagon. I stop in my tracks. What the fuck was that? I drop a bullet in the moment, slipped through my finger.

"Cressel, save the staring for the strip clubs, let's go!" Donovan roars over the gasps of the crew. Fuck the bullet. I go with him.

We barge into the command wagon, things are unusually calm. No windows. They mustn't have seen whatever that was.

"Donovan, I don't want to hear you excuses! Get back to the locomotive!" Captain Valignat orders without hesitation, "If these flying lizards have any brains, they'll wreck our primary means of moving forward. If they try anything, I need the best engineers on it to keep moving, but I only have you. Now git!"

Donovan wasted no time questioning her orders, not even bothering to say goodbye.

"Cressel, call went out already for backup, but that will take half a day. I know what I'm seeing on the slides, but I'm hardly believing it. Get topside in the sniper tower, take your rifle and start putting holes in it. Don't extend it all the way, you'll be a sitting duck." Some young officer came to me with an anti-tank rifle and a pouch of some of the nastiest ammo this thing can handle. I didn't even know we had this stuff on hand.

"Gynk on the turret?"

"Aye."

"Good. Stay in touch with him, he'll provide cover fire. Now get out there, before I kick your sorry ass out the back!"

A bestial roar shook the wagon, and some ungodly noise followed up to it, like a high pressure spraying something sizzling. Something large and heavy spoke, or something, followed by something smashing into the wagon. The ceiling didn't come down, but it dented, and the sudden weight placement shook everything and everyone.

"I didn't tell you maggots to stop! That's over a foot of titanium over our heads, it can handle an avalanche, it'll handle these scalies. Get to it, go, go, go!"

I made my way through the command cabin, taking one last look at the captain. A tiny woman with the voice of battle-queen. Her face red from yelling, her eyes wide in rage...or fear. I moved on through the masses, made my way to the other end of the cabin to one of the sentry towers installed in the side of the next cart.

I took my place in it, buckled up the harness and loaded the rifle as the rigging of the tower raised me to the side and up so I could peek around.

I took one look to the left and looked at a humongous, black, digitigrade lizard leg thrice my size, bundled up on the cart I just came from. Its tail stretched on over my wagon, leather wings folded up on its back. As I looked, it slammed its right arm into the side of the command wagon, clawing at it and trying to rip it apart with its sheer strength. The deafening blasts of Gynk turret started battering at my ears, but whatever this dragon was, it wasn't affected.

It wasn't until I got a look beyond the black dragon that I saw why. Gynk was firing at a white dragon, flying overhead. Small clusters of explosions traced the white dragon, but it was outflying the turret's rounds with a grace I didn't know such a gigantic creature could muster. For a second I jus take it in. Gynk, the mad cripple, the mechanized monster of Dorninor, it currently dogfighting with a fucking dragon.

No way I was going to let him take all the credit. The black dragon digs his claws in the command wagon again. I wait for him to raise his arm before I mount this ridiculous rifle on a rail, line up a shot at its elbow, and fire. The blast from the rifle blows steam and fire across its recoil dampeners as it nearly knocks me back. It impacts something, and the dragon twitches as a small blast hit it where I aimed. It doesn't scream, or thrash, or move. It's still for a second, before it turns its elbow towards its face.

Its stretched out, skull like, bull horned face. A good look shows that he's inspecting the spike on its arm that now gone. I hit it. It knows. It moves its long neck to the right, scan the area where the blast came from and make eye contact with me. I feel caught in its gaze. It's looking at me. It sees me. And if looks could kill, I'd drop dead on the spot. It is intelligent, and it is fucking pissed.

"Shit." I say to myself as I disengage the tower and unhook the harness. "Shit. Shit. Shit. Shitshitshitshitshitshiiiiiii-" I mutter to myself as the tower lowers, but as fast as I'd like. The dragon unfolds it wings and beats them once, taking to the air. It coils with a barrel roll and a flip midair, slamming its weight back on the command wagon, bending it the top of it down further. Seeing it from the front like this is much, much more bone-chilling. Every single nerve in my brain is screaming at me to get the fuck out of here.

Something catches the dragons attention. I take the moment to get back inside and unhook the rifle, turning back to the hallway. People are streaming out of the command wagon into this one in a sheer panic. I get slammed back into the now folded tower by the masses, unable to leave. Something falls from the ceiling. Something liquid, black and sizzling. I look up to the ceiling. Holes are starting to form and that stuff is leaking through. It's coming from the dragon's mouth.