Kiera had declared that they were going to steal a car.

More specifically, after running about three blocks, her lungs had given out, and she’d said, ‘Fuck it, Greg, if I have to run one more step, I’m never going to get up again, driving has got to be much faster than this’, so they were going to steal a car.

“I’ve never stolen a car before,” said Kiera, still breathing heavily from a combination of exertion and alcohol withdrawal. She looked out over the parking lot before them with no small amount of apprehension. “Which one should we take?”

Greg shrugged. The taste of his master’s blood was still lingering in his mouth, and he had the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach which rabbits get when they know they’ve been spotted by foxes.

His master knew. His blood was in Greg’s system now, and that was like sending up a continuous signal flare into the night to display his location to the entire world.

At least you didn’t drink more of it, whispered his thoughts.

Kiera, oblivious to what was going on inside his head, rolled her eyes. “Great. You’re a lot of help, Greg.”

“Thanks.”

“Sarcasm, kid.” Kiera walked over to a brown truck and inspected it. “Can you drive?”

“No.”

“Okay. We’ll need a stick shift, I used to drive one of those.” Kiera authoritatively moved to the next vehicle, which was a boxy red sedan. “This’ll do nicely.”

Greg stared at it. There was a sticker on the back window which proudly displayed the words ‘OUR FAMILY’ in spindly lettering beneath three caricatures of children standing next to two other caricatures of a man and a woman. They were smiling and waving. “Uh, okay. How are we going to steal it?”

“We can hotwire the car or something,” mused Kiera, tapping on the glass of the car. “It’s how they do it in the movies, right?”

“Modern cars can’t be hotwired,” said Greg, who leaned over and gave the car a long, long sniff. “You have to hack the immobiliser chip to trick it into mimicking the signal from your key.”

Kiera gave him a strange look. “I’m not going to ask how you know that. And what are you doi—”

Time slowed down, then stopped. Greg felt the roar of blood rushing through his body, surging, burning, and knew that this would require careful timing.

The scent on the car was that of hair grease and sushi, which was a deeply unpleasant combination that rankled his senses in all the worst ways. Fortunately, it was also very distinctive, and as Greg took off through a world that was now in perpetual freefall, it was easy to track the smell to its source.

The blood in his veins boiled and curdled and seethed. Greg closed his eyes and willed more of it to go, feeling his legs cranking up to even higher speeds in the process. One could only maintain this amount of sanguine expenditure for about thirty seconds before complete depletion threatened to consume them utterly, and Greg was nearing his tipping point. It had been a long time since he’d burned so much blood at once. The speed at which he was travelling made him blink away tears from the sharpness of the wind cutting into his eyes, and he pursued the trailing ribbon scent of the car owners like a crazed bloodhound.

He was vaguely aware of bursting into a restaurant without bothering to pull the glass doors open (were those fragments of glass scattering in his wake?). Hair grease, sushi. Where was the smell coming from? There—a couple sitting at a table. He materialised from the air as a blur, swaying from the sudden whiplash, and hissed, “Your car keys. Now.”

Theodore Dooley was a lucky man. He had a loving wife and three equally loving children. He owned an unmortgaged home and had a mildly successful side business as a freelance photographer, where he spent most of his spare time capturing snapshots of country life. Today was the thirteenth anniversary of his marriage, and he and his wife were having a relaxing dinner of spaghetti and soup to celebrate…

…or had been having, anyways.

Theodore knew about vampires. That was a given, even for somebody as insular as he was. But they were isolated anomalies, statistical strangers, mythical stories—anything other than the very real, slavering, and above all monstrous predator standing before him with its fangs fully extended, ready to pounce. You could perhaps forgive Theodore for failing to come up with an adequate response in the moment.

"Um," he said, rather lamely.

His wife, Dorothy, screamed and threw a fork at the vampire. It bounced off and hit the floor with a small clang.

There was dead silence in the restaurant. All eyes were on the vampire, and the looks on everyone’s faces were the looks you got when a very large group of people was collectively trying to work out whether to fight or flee.

Greg swallowed. The last of the taste of tulips had evaporated from his system, but the depletion of his blood had created a new problem: he was very, very hungry.

And the people in the restaurant all smelled delicious.

His starved cells suggested savagely decapitating every single one of them and then piling their bodies in the middle of the restaurant to create a blood fondue fountain.

"I don't want to kill you," he said, which was a lie. "Give me your car keys. Please."

Somebody near the back screamed. It was like firing off a gunshot in a pen full of turkeys. People scattered in fluttering flocks, and Greg belatedly realised that perhaps this had not been his finest moment.

Theodore made a cross with his chopsticks. “Begone!” he bellowed, his voice somehow managing to rise above the din in an impressive feat of shouting. Greg’s urge to snap his neck increased a hundredfold. “I abjure thee, foul demon!”

“I… don’t even think that works on demons, actually.” Greg cleared his throat, trying to sound reasonable. “You have three children. If you and your wife want to see them again tonight, I’d suggest giving me your car keys.”

(Suffice to say, he did not sound very reasonable at all.)

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Theodore blanched, and Dorothy grabbed her husband’s hand. “Fucking hell. Just do it, Theo!”

Moving like a man in a trance, Theodore’s hand moved into his jacket pocket and brought out a dangling keychain. There were multicoloured pom poms stuck to it.

Greg pocketed it. “Thank you,” he said, flashing his teeth at them, and then he ran before the consequences of his actions could catch up to him.

It wasn’t the full-fledged speed of his first sprint. He couldn’t manage something like that, for the same reason that lending without expecting returns was unsustainable—cash too many cheques, and they’d start bouncing eventually regardless of your good intentions. He could still run at a reasonable sprint, though, and that was alright.

Or was it? There was a faint scent on the wind, a whistling in his ear, a whisper in his mind, and it was saying, Gregory, Gregory, Gregory.

He could feel an array of shadowy, hostile figures closing in on his location in the far distance, but he didn’t know whether it was just stemming from the paranoia blooming within his brain or if it was because his master had finally found him for certain…

Greg gritted his teeth and kept running for his unlife.

—

“What are you doi—”

Whoosh. And Greg was gone.

“—ng?” Kiera finished, and sighed. The kid had gone off to who-knows-where, and Kiera was too old to stand around wondering where he might have gone. It was too late to hope that he wasn’t doing anything reckless or stupid, so Kiera didn’t bother.

She only realised that her feet had gone wandering away of their own volition when she found herself pushing open the glass door to a nearby convenience store. The automatic doorbell chimed as she stepped over the threshold. It was mostly empty, except for a tired man manning the till at the front with all the enthusiasm of a deflated pufferfish. Kiera approached him and cleared her throat meaningfully. “Got any drinks?”

He didn’t blink. “What kind, and how many?”

“Your strongest. As many as possible.”

The man stared at her through dull eyes. “The newest shipment is in the back,” he said. “I’ll go get it.”

“Thanks.”

He turned around and traipsed off.

Kiera’s eyes wandered over to the concessions stand. There was a stack of newspapers sitting at the top. She picked one up and let it drop open to the headline, which read: PSYCHOPOMP KILLER ESCAPES FROM FAIRCHILD PRISON.

An outside observer watching Kiera from outside the shop probably wouldn’t have noticed anything wrong with her. To them, she simply folded up the newspaper and replaced it on the stand, then went back to waiting. Somebody standing right next to her, though, might have noted the way that her hands balled up into fists and started trembling slightly. Somebody really observant might even have heard her breathing quickening into a harsh staccato, though anybody close enough to notice that by then would have already been subjected to the beatdown of a lifetime.

“These good enough for you?” The tired man reappeared with four packs of mead cans in his arms. “Strongest thing I could find.”

“Yeah, those look great.” Kiera fumbled in her pockets, searching for the last of her money, and drew out the fifty that Greg had given to her the day before. She looked at it. For a moment, a flicker of doubt flew across her features, but it disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared. She slapped the note down on the counter. “I’ll take all of them.”

The doorbell chimed again as Kiera staggered outside with the four packs in her arms, huffing with effort. Finally, she set them down next to their to-be-stolen car and pulled the ring on one of the cans, inhaling the sudden and sweet medicinal scent of alcohol. Her arms trembled as she poured half its contents down her throat in one go. She swallowed, wiping the back of her mouth on her sleeve, and slowly slid to the tarmac, leaning against the back of the car.

Her unseeing eyes were aimed upwards at the clouds. The drink was already starting to numb her aching brain, which was wildly gyrating between feelings of pure fury and blind resignation. You knew this was going to happen. You knew he was going to get out somehow.

She closed her eyes and took another swig from the can.

“Kiera!”

She blearily sat up and rubbed her eyes, squinting to get a better look at what she was seeing. Greg was frantically running down the road towards her, and his arms were pumping up and down like pistons. “Kiera! Kiera, I got the keys!”

Keys? Oh. Kiera looked up at the car she was leaning on. Right. Keys. She took another drink from the can, savouring the alcohol, which burned slightly as it went down.

He finally reached her and slowed down, wobbling slightly. The keys in his hand jangled as he lifted them up for her to see. “Can we leave? Right now?”

“Where did you get those?”

“A restaurant.” Greg hesitated. “Are… are you drinking?”

Kiera rolled her eyes. “Yes.” She took a swig to prove her point. “And?”

“Are you okay?”

“Fuck, yes. Absolutely fine.” She got to her feet, downed the rest of her drink, then chucked the empty can into a nearby trash receptacle. “You driving?”

“I don’t know how to drive.”

“Why am I not surprised? Toss me the keys.”

—

Their car ride was uncomfortably quiet. Kiera’s head was starting to get fuzzy, and she was on her third or fourth can of mead. Greg hadn’t said anything since climbing into the backseat. He was hunched over like a sullen cat. It was getting rather unbearable.

Finally, Kiera broke the silence. “What?”

Greg lifted his head and blinked at her. “What?”

“You’re not talking to me.” Kiera reached for another can, trying to keep her eyes on the road. It was getting more and more difficult. “Something on your mind?”

“No! No.”

“Really.” Kiera popped the little tab on the can. Tssss. “You’re covered in blood and I’m drunk and we’re on the lam. You, Greg, are a liar.”

Greg squirmed uncomfortably. “I’m hungry.”

Kiera looked into the rearview mirror and saw Greg’s anguished eyes. “Didn’t you just eat? You pretty much turned that vampire into a breakfast smoothie.”

“Yes. Only…” Greg looked down at his knees. “I burned most of it trying to get the keys.”

“And how do you burn blood, exactly?”

Greg seemed to be searching for an adequate explanation. “I’m a car,” he said, finally. “I guzzle gas, except it’s blood, and I just drove two hundred kilometres in a road race.”

“Oh.”

There was another one of those awkward silences that seemed to stretch on forever.

“See, when you say stuff like that, it makes me wonder why you don’t know how to drive a car,” muttered Kiera. She was trying not to collapse in the driver’s seat. “Do you need my blood, kid?”

Greg’s expression instantly changed to one of horror. “No! Of course not.” But he was a horrible liar, and Kiera could detect just the faintest edge of longing in his tone. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Where are you going to get it from, then?”

“If we can stop somewhere near some woods, I can hunt some deer. I have enough blood left to do that.”

Kiera looked down at the road map on the dashboard. “Where are you going to find woods in the middle of the city?”

“Is there anything close by? Anything at all?”

Kiera squinted. God, her head was killing her. “There’s a strawberry farm. Family-owned, apparently. Red Delights.”

“Can we go there? Please?”

Kiera grinned and hit the gas. She felt like absolute dogshit. “Aye aye, captain.”