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Just after nine PM, the knock. Elizabeth was out on her nightly "date," and Phillip had dropped by to keep Cynthia company in lieu of a patient. She had been asking herself whether he wanted free counseling, though it did not really matter; he seemed like he didn't really need any, at least at the moment, and they were mostly being quiet, every once in a while offering an innocuous phrase or question.
Then the knock came, seeming far louder than it was, followed by a voice. "Open up in there, let me in." A man's voice, desperate, hoarse. Cynthia went to the door, Phillip following her. As she opened the door he seemed to be standing guard on her protectively. She glanced at him then to the man standing in the open doorway. He looked at her, then at Phillip, then past them. "Where is she?"
"Where is who?" Phillip asked, giving nothing to this possible threat of a stranger.
"Where is Elizabeth," he said, scowling for a moment, then shifting to a more pleading look. "Isn't she here?"
"She's gone out," Cynthia said, sensing the real desperation on the visitor, seeing the color of his aura shifting through the spectrum of his emotion.
"I have to see her. I know she said it'd be a month, but I can't wait that long, it's impossible. I have to." The man put a hand on Cynthia's arm, and Phillip moved in closer. The ex-gang member wrapped a hand around the stranger's arm and pressed his thumb into the flesh, forcing him to let go of Cynthia with a pained sound. Phillip let go as soon as the other man did, and the visitor rubbed the damaged arm gingerly.
Cynthia flashed a warning glance at Phillip. She didn't want him hurting one of Elizabeth's pets, partly out of concern for Phillip and partly out of pity for the herd members themselves. The man couldn't help his obsession with the Harpy. "She won't see you until the time she told you. I know her, she won't. And if she did you wouldn't like it."
"I know she'll be angry, but I have to see her," the man insisted. He seemed about to start into the litany of Elizabeth's virtues that Cynthia could predict from the other herd members she'd met, though none in these circumstances.
"She won't. Now GO AWAY." Cynthia emphasized the last two words with her power of presence, and the man retreated in sudden fright.
Phillip looked at her with an inscrutable smile. When she noticed it, Cynthia shrugged, mildly embarassed. "I hate having to do that," she told him.
"You do it so well, though," he said.
She thought of offering to teach him how, but she didn't. Instead she said, "I hate them in general, you know."
"Hate who?" Phillip wasn't sure who Cynthia was talking about.
"Them... Elizabeth's groupies. That guy, the one she's out with tonight, all 38 of them. Approximately." Cynthia tilted her chin downward in what would have been a sigh had she still been breathing. "It's how she earns her nightly blood."
Phillip nodded. "Is that how you do it too?"
"Yes... no... I don't know. I don't have a real way yet. I keep trying things... but I hate it." She paused and looked at him. "I know I have to learn to provide for myself. Elizabeth isn't going to always just provide when I can't bring myself to, but it's tough." Cynthia knew Phillip would understand, being like herself a new and unwilling hemovore.
Phillip nodded his agreement, thinking of the things he'd done both with the Steel Fangs and especially afterward, on his own. "Yeah. You know, I have one tonight. Come with me." A spur of the moment thing but he did not regret it. Maybe he could figure this woman out after all. Give her something, not a thing, but a new outlook, new technique, and just maybe. Stranger things had happened, that was sure.
"Have one what?" Cynthia was curious. "Sure, I'll go, I don't have any plans."
"One scheduled victim, dinner's on me." He gave her a fanged grin.
Cynthia was hesitant, but the thought of the man who'd just come looking for Elizabeth steeled her. That was not going to be someone looking for her in a decade, she promised herself rashly. Then she held out a hand to Phillip. "I'd be delighted. Lead the way."
"Find the guy's car," Phillip whispered back. "It'll be around here somewhere." He spotted the car in the lot of the nightclub next door, a silver two-door Mitsubishi. "Here, this one." He quickly jimmied the lock on the passenger side door, so practiced even Cynthia didn't see him doing it. He opened the door, slid into the back seat and held the front seat pushed down for Cynthia to get in beside him. Once she was in, he said, "Close the door and lock it."
Cynthia complied. "What now?" she asked.
"Now we wait for the guy. It won't be long. Couple hours at most. Stay down." They crouched in the darkness together. The cramped position would have quickly become uncomfortable for living bodies, sweaty, fetid with their breaths. Undead creatures that they were, it was nothing to them to remain still for nearly an hour, speaking only in faint whispers.
Finally they heard someone turning the key in the lock. A man in his late twenties slid the unconscious form of a woman into the front passenger seat, then went around the car and settled himself down, locking the door, putting the keys in the ignition.
As he reached back to fasten his seatbelt, Phillip grabbed his arm. The Brujah's other hand went over the man's mouth, stifling any immediate screams of startlement.
"Don't move, don't try to get away," Phillip said to the man. The man tried to answer, but Phillip's hand gagged him so that all that could be heard were incoherent muffled sounds. Phillip offered the wrist he held to Cynthia, stretching the man's arm painfully toward her. "Take what you want."
Cynthia wasn't sure what was going on, but she suspected carrying an unconscious woman to his car, that it was not an act of a good samaritan rescuing some unconscious stranger, or a husband taking care of a sick wife. The man's aura had showed self-satisfied lust and suppressed anger, then the anger had taken over along with fear when Phillip grabbed him. The Beast leaped inside her wanting the blood. She bit into the veins of the wrist, tasted hot sweet-salty vitae and drank.
The man slumped into the ecstasy of the vampire bite, and Phillip let go of his mouth. He watched Cynthia drink. Not quite a third of the guy's contents, he thought as she stopped. The man was lethargic but healthy enough when she stopped, a tiny droplet clinging to her chin. She rubbed it with her arm, smearing the blood a little. Phillip felt his own hunger grow in response. He held it off for a moment so he could talk to the guy. After he ate there wouldn't be anymore guy to talk to.
"You tried it one too many times, Dan the man," Phillip said.
The man drowsily focused on Phillip. Cynthia saw he felt only a faint fear now. "My name's not--" the man said.
"You're about to die, what do you care if I call you Harry Dick?" Phillip asked. Without waiting for an answer he went on. "You screwed with one too many girls, this one isn't going to wake up in your bed wondering how the hell she got there, you know? You're history." Just as the man was starting to feel some real fear again, Phillip leaned over the bloody wrist and began to drink.
Cynthia watched her fellow neonate devour the last drops of blood in a human being. She watched the man die, and she wondered how she felt about that. Strangely flat, and at the same time, there was an excitement like how adrenaline had felt when she was still breathing.
Phillip finished, licked the wound closed on the still-warm corpse, and dropped the arm. It flopped onto the gear shift. "He really did deserve to die," he told Cynthia with a sincere intensity. She certainly believed that he believed it. "You stay in back. We gotta get out of here and clean up." Phillip got out of the car, slid the drivers seat back as far as it went, and fastened the seat belt on the dead man. Then he sat in the man's lap and drove out of the nightclub parking lot.
The night before, he'd found the spot to stage the car accident. First he drove back to the first nightclub lot, where he dropped Cynthia and the unconscious girl off by his car. "Find her a spot to wake up in," he told Cynthia. "Maybe the ladies room? Somewhere she'll be safe." He trusted Cynthia to find the right place.
Then Phillip took the car to the park. There was a good downhill spot where if you didn't turn you'd hit the huge tree and total the car. He dumped some lighter fluid on the guy, some more in the back seat, and put the guy's foot on the pedal, leaving the vehicle on and in neutral, with the drivers side window open. Then bracing himself he threw in the match and shoved the car in neutral down the hill toward the tree. It plummeted faster and crashed very satisfyingly into the tree, the entire car going up in flames. He stayed far enough from the fire to be safe and watched it burn.
Cynthia set the woman carefully on one of the toilets in the ladies room. She locked the stall from the inside and crawled under the barrier to the empty stall next to it, then went out. There was a woman smoking a cigarette and looking in the mirror, fixing her makeup. Cynthia marveled at her coordination to be able to do both at once. She nodded to the woman and walked out.
She waited in Phillip's car till he returned, nearly an hour later. They didn't speak as he drove her back to Elizabeth's. Finally, as he pulled up in front to let her out, she said, "Thank you."
Phillip grinned at her. "Sure."
"How often do you do that?" Cynthia asked him.
"Maybe one a week. A guy's gotta live." He thought about it for a few minutes. "Happier with your lady's way of doing it now?"
"Well," said Cynthia thoughtfully, "no. But thank you." She felt oddly close to him, as though they'd shared something intimate. She leaned over and softly kissed his cheek. "Goodnight." Then quickly got out of his car and went inside, locking Elizabeth's door behind her.