There was something about hate, the way it sat in your stomach. Not like a wound, exactly, because it didn't always hurt. More like a drug - something addictive, at any rate. For those who had lost their reason to live, hate more often than not made a fine substitute. It was like clay, in that way. It could take whatever shape you liked - and it would play along with you as long as you needed it to.

It had just started to get dark. Nathan was sat in the same position he'd been in for hours, staring out of his car window at the DeSuza Community Centre. It was usually fairly busy, but as the sun went down the usual visitors had retreated back to their homes. Now it was as quiet as the grave.

Nathan's earpiece crackled.

'Athena?' he said, quietly. Even if the streets were all but empty, you never could be too careful. Especially with the kind of prey he was hunting.

'Manager just went up to his hotel room,' came Athena's voice from the earpiece, just as cautious. 'How about you?'

'I haven't seen Rhodes go in - but there's a back entrance. She could have gone in that way.'

'It would have been better for you to stake out the back.' The slightest hint of admonishment - but for the older woman, that was the equivalent of a rant.

'Sorry. Should I check it out now?'

'No point. If she's already gone in, you'll have no way of knowing. She might have already left.'

Nathan's gaze went up at the sky - at the moon that was slowly starting to reveal itself. 'It's just getting dark. She couldn't have fed yet.'

'Well done.'

Nathan's eyes flicked to the community centre's front doors. It looked to be pitch-black inside, but that wouldn't matter to Calamity Rhodes. A thing like her could see just fine wherever she was.

'There's no more time to wait,' came Athena's voice through the earpiece. 'I'm going to kill her manager - you take her out if she's in there.'

'Roger. Good luck.'

There was no reply. After a second or two of waiting for one, Nathan opened the car door and stepped outside. St. Hester was a pretty big city, but the Family had it trained well. People knew not to go out at night, even if they didn't exactly know why.

The lock to the front doors wasn't anything special - lockpicking was one thing he hadn't had to learn from Athena, in any case, and Nathan liked to think he was pretty good at it. He'd certainly spent enough time doing it.

As casually as he could, on the off chance someone was watching him, Nathan patted his coat and felt the reassuring shape of his concealed shotgun - and the other side of his coat, of course, was his other weapon. That one would only come out at the end of the fight, however.

The door creaked as Nathan opened it. Of course it did. Nathan could practically feel the element of surprise disintegrate into the air around him. There was already a sound echoing through the building, however - a loud slurping noise. It seemed Calamity Rhodes was feeding quite greedily.

Nathan strode down the hall - from what he knew of Rhodes' kind, they wouldn't take their prey far from where they found it before feeding. The information Athena had given him let him know where the body was stashed for Calamity, so it was simply a matter of going there. That, and following the sounds of drinking. The walls of the hallway were painted brightly - in the daytime they probably looked pretty nice, but at night the contrast just made it plain creepy.

He reached the door to the main hall, where the sounds of feeding were coming from, and took a moment to collect himself. He had his shotgun, his pistol in a holster at his side - and of course, his stake, ready and sharpened. If all went well, he should walk out of this room without a scratch. If all went well.

The sounds of feeding stopped as Nathan opened the door. The room was big - bigger than he'd expected, at any rate - usually used to hold community meetings or presentations. There was a stage at the back of the room, but that wasn't where he was looking. His eyes were fixed firmly on Calamity Rhodes, who was knelt in the centre of the room, feeding off a corpse that was more viscera than solid object at this point.

'Oh?' she said, in a voice as clear as a bell. 'Are you one of my fans? Sorry, but I don't sign autographs while I'm out and about.'

Nathan could feel the smugness radiating off her. She knew that she'd been caught in the act, of course - but she probably believed there was nothing Nathan could do about it. Half a year ago, she'd have been right. It took a lot of preparation for a human to take on a vampire.

Calamity Rhodes - eighteen years old, and scheduled by the Family to begin the next big thing for impressionable teens. Presumably that's why she'd agreed to join their ranks. The promise of fame was a powerful motivator. But, Nathan thought - eyes flicking down to the corpse on the floor - you couldn't do that to someone without being fucked up a little beforehand.

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'You're disgusting,' said Nathan.

'Rude,' said Rhodes, rising to her feet. She licked some blood off her soaked hands, and turned to face Nathan. She had a face that was more cute than pretty, framed by a bob of platinum blonde hair - striking a stark contrast with the blood coating her mouth. She cocked her head. 'You don't look too surprised.'

'Nothing you things do can surprise me anymore.'

'Wow, that's pretty edgy,' said Rhodes, hands on her hips. Her eyes flicked up and down, scanning Nathan. 'You some kinda Van Helsing type, then?'

'If you want.' How long would it take him to draw his pistol and fire? He'd been stupid, not taking it out before he entered the room - what had he wanted? To hear the monster's voice, see it's face before he filled it full of holes? He'd practiced with Athena for months, so he was fairly confident in his drawing speed - but he knew that vampires were quick, as well. Inhumanly quick. By the time he got the pistol out of it's holster, there was a good chance Rhodes would have his arm out of it's socket.

Rhodes, her eyes fixed on Nathan's face, cocked her head the other way. A cat playing with it's food.

'You look nervous,' she giggled, a grin on her face. 'I'll tell you what. How about you turn around and walk back out that door, and we both forget this ever happened? It's a win-win deal, yeah?'

'You'll rip my spine out the second I turn around.'

Her grin widened. 'You don't know that.'

A noise cut through the tense silence - the sound of a car going past outside. It seemed like someone wasn't scared of going out at night in this town, at least. After a moment or two, it faded away.

Rhodes licked some of the blood off her fingers. 'Well, how about this,' she began, and then Nathan shot her in the face. A new spray of blood, somewhat darker than her victims, spread out onto the floor behind her.

It seemed like he really was fast enough. Rhodes dropped to the floor like a puppet with it's strings cut. Nathan charged over, reaching into his jacket and frantically pulling out the steel stake - specially crafted by Athena for piercing a vampire's core. He had to be fast - it would only take a few seconds for her brain to regenerate.

Rhodes' eyes flicked back open, and they were full of fury.

Shit. Shit. Shit. He wouldn't get a chance like that again - the only reason he'd been able to shoot her in the first place was because she was distracted. With her attention firmly on him, she'd be able to dodge any of his attacks with those inhuman reflexes of hers. Nathan stopped running - but the floor was smooth and slick with blood, and as he tried to stop himself he continued sliding towards her. She jumped to her feet in less than a second and thrust her arm towards him, fingernails bared like claws.

Burst T20Q! The spell Athena had first taught him activated as he focused on it in his mind. The word, the code and the image - electricity flowing through a tree. It was a fairly unorthodox activation procedure for magic, but it was one Athena used for all her spells. Nathan's reflexes, suddenly just as fast as Rhodes, acted automatically - and before he could really process what he was doing, he'd ducked under her swipe. The spell's power faded away almost instantly. It was only really useful if you used it right before you'd take a hit.

Rhodes' face twisted in confusion for a moment, then her eyes flicked down to see where Nathan had gone. Her eyes were pure black now, and her teeth long and sharp, like those of some ocean predator. Her human guise was falling - and the shape of her soul, which had been warped when she became a vampire, was starting to show itself.

She lunged at him again, this time with her teeth, but Nathan was ready. He thrust his shotgun, which he'd whipped out of his jacket, into Rhodes' stomach and pulled the trigger once, twice. She went flying backwards again, her stomach a gaping hole, and crashed down onto the floor.

This exchange, from the time Nathan first shot Rhodes with his pistol to the time she went flying through the air, took about ten seconds.

Nathan didn't go after her this time - it wouldn't work. She'd regenerate before he reached her, and right now he needed to reload more than anything else. The second he ran out of bullets, he'd be dead. Bullets couldn't kill a vampire - unless a specially crafted one hit them in the heart, of course - but they could damn well hurt them just as well as a normal person. Rhodes would keep her distance now, and that gave Nathan time to think of a way to kill her.

She was fast, sure, but not as fast as he'd expected. She'd only recently become a vampire - maybe she was still getting used to her new body. Her regeneration, on the other hand, was infuriatingly fast. Shooting her in the head then going for the stake wouldn't work.

Rhodes' stomach closed back up after maybe five seconds, and she rose calmly to her feet. Had he tried to go for the stake there, she'd have run him through on one of her arms, most likely. Getting within arms-reach of her was a death sentence at this point.

'I'm going to rip you to pieces, you know,' growled Rhodes from the other side of the room, pacing like a caged animal. 'Limbs first, then I'll start on the guts, tear them up and show you them.'

If he could destroy her entire body at once, that would give him enough time to go for her heart. But that was easier said than done. There weren't exactly a great deal of combat options in a community centre.

'I have an idea,' said Rhodes, putting on some of her assumed sweetness again. 'Why don't you just take that pistol and shoot yourself? That way, I can't kill you.'

'Yeah, good idea,' said Nathan, putting the gun to his head.

Watch out for her Blood Drive, came Athena's voice in his head. From what I've heard, it's some kind of hypnosis. Don't let her get to you.

Well, that was annoying. He was supposed to be shooting himself, but Athena's voice was distracting him. He couldn't kill himself with this kind of - oh, shit. Oh, shit shit shit. He'd forgotten about her Blood Drive.

He'd forgotten about her fucking Blood Drive.

Every vampire had their own little power, as if the super speed and super strength weren't enough. If the vampire had been a magic-user, it was usually some mutation of their preferred spell - but in cases like Calamity Rhodes, who had been a normal human being, it came from the vampire's personality. It seemed she was used to people doing what she told them.

'Weren't you listening?' said Rhodes, cocking her head. She'd returned to her human form, confident that she'd already won. 'I said to shoot yourself. Go ahead.'

Well, now that Nathan thought about it, shooting himself did seem like a - no, nonono! Bad idea. Bad idea. He couldn't win against her like this. He couldn't even fight against her like this. His hand holding the pistol was still trying to move towards his head, so Nathan grabbed and restrained it with his other hand.

Rhodes rolled her eyes, apparently getting sick of the theatrics. 'Shoot yourself shoot yourself shoot yourself shoot yourself,' she repeated in a cold monotone as she began walking towards Nathan. As long as he was busy trying to restrain himself, she had nothing to fear from him.

There was only one thing to do.

Nathan pulled the pistol up next to his head and pulled the trigger.