It's funny the things that pop up in your mind after being battered into an unconscious state. The things you've experienced and the people you remember. For a fellow like me, that's an awfully long list to go through. And most of it, if I'm being honest with myself, was nightmarish.

I was lucky that night, though. Instead of recalling something horrific or tragic, I remembered a girl named Rose.

It was late nineteen eighty-three, and I was in a packed West End night club for the elite, and the affluent, called Memories, with my frontal lobe feeling half-dissolved due to all the cocaine-saturated blood I’d been draining from its dusted little yuppie denizens throughout the night. These horrid people had all been out celebrating another successful year for the nation. And why wouldn’t they be? The market was setting new records, profits were soaring, once again the kingdom abided. Truly, the prophets of Thatcherism had guided their faithful to the promised land.

It was a shame about all the little lives they’d ruined to get there. But was that really their fault? It wasn’t as though you could mine for diamonds in a poor man’s lungs. Only coal dust.

Earlier that day, I’d been in Germany on personal business, paying my respects to the Ossuary that housed the remains of my companions, Adelbert and Emmaline. Once more, the shade of Emma stood proudly at the entrance to the tomb, waiting to ward off my approach, magnificent as she always was.

Once again, we debated.

“I can bring him back,” I assured her. “I can bring you both back. We could all be reunited.”

“It wouldn’t truly be us, Kyler,” she gently replied. “Merely our shadows.”

“It wounds me to hear you say that,” I said.

“It was the wounds you left that stole our lives to begin with,” she reminded me.

“An error I could correct if only you’d let me.”

“The ending of a life well lived is never erroneous, no matter how tragic the circumstances of its conclusion,” she said with a faint smile. “I hope you understand that one day.”

“Will you ever forgive me?”

“Oh, Kyler,” she said compassionately, with her sweetest voice. “That will simply never happen. Begone from this place and never return, you evil bastard.”

“Another time then,” I said stiffly as I turned to leave.

“The answer will never change,” she said, tauntingly.

“Neither will I,” I vowed bitterly as I departed.

I should have gone home after that. Instead, I changed flights and somehow found myself in Soho. Was I there because I wanted to blow off some stress by partying or because I wanted to glut myself on blood without feeling guilty about the body count?

Who could really say? It was a long time ago.

Eventually, I ended up at Memories, and after enjoying a few initial cheap thrills, I began to grow listless and bored. Mostly, I was drowning in contempt for my fellow clubgoers. Goodness, just looking at those weak-willed little prats annoyed me.

The ruling elite of England had always been dominated by coldhearted bastards, so there was nothing new about the way the current generation behaved. But at least the old breed of snobs had a certain hardness to them that you could almost respect. At their core they were still opportunistic killers who’d gladly do the necessary work for themselves. Wet red hands clutching rich rewards. If there was a union to bust, they’d be the first of the crowd to swing the pipe.

But this new class of twa—twerps? No. Sheltered, miserable little cowards who used spreadsheets and computer monitors to tabulate and calculate their decision making for them. They acted without thought for the consequences and traded the future for the immediacy of now. And right now, they wanted to party.

I was strongly considering sealing the exits and creating a few ghouls. You know, doing my part to make London a safer place for ordinary people. Try being an unsung hero.

But that was when she walked in.

In came Rose like a siren from the alleyways, ignoring the cover fee to survey the room with the eyes of a predator who’d caught the scent of a wounded lamb. Stalking forth assertively as though she were a living personification of battered leather, and torn nylons, her domineering stance bore the volatile values of the street like a suit of armor that shielded her from the world. To me, she appeared crafted from marble; something of great beauty with no softness to it at all.

With my attention thoroughly captured, I watched from my table as she approached the center of the floor, pushing heedlessly past anyone in her way, and flipping them off without a backward glance when they protested her rudeness. Once she found the spot she wanted to claim, she threw off her jacket and began to dance.

It was a memorable sight.

From the moment she started, it was clear that the girl was blessed with a mesmerizing, almost primal talent that immediately drew in the gazes of all who witnessed it. Such serpentine grace was something that only a precious few are gifted with at birth and can never be taught. She easily commanded her body with a precision that professionals strove in futility to master their entire lives, and she did it with a cold indifference that would have driven Salieri to madness all over again.

From that moment on, the club belonged to her; conquered in mere moments by her presence alone. Her fellow dancers were naught but captivated serfs, begging for a moment’s indulgence from their new gutter punk liege, but this manic monarch had nothing to offer her admirers. She wasn’t there for their sake. They were mere accoutrements, existing for her entertainment.

Any who approached her, man or woman, she pushed away or ignored. When some tried too forcefully, she hurt them, sneering contemptuously at these would-be suiters as they lay tearfully on the floor, bleeding from the wounds she was quick to inflict. The message was easily understood.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Do not approach.

Hands off.

Her reign continued for what seemed an eternity. A kingdom of one, where her admirers could only stare at her with lust and longing, as she continued to reject them. It seemed no one was good enough to stand alongside her and she wanted everyone to know it, as though she were forcing them to marinate in their personal inadequacies until desperation to prove otherwise drove them to their breaking points.

I liked her attitude.

After snatching away a beer from some random prick and scaring him away when he got cheeky over it, I took a long swallow as I approached her. She glared at me as I drew nearer, and I paused to bask in such wonderfully uninhibited hostility. Then I finished my drink, threw the empty bottle behind me, and stepped forth.

She sneered at the sight of me but said nothing else. That was fine with me. I didn’t want to talk either. Instead, I took up her unspoken challenge, and began moving in rhythm with her.

Poorly.

You were expecting differently, weren’t you? I know, I know, this would have been a great story if I lied and said that all vampires can dance beautifully. Some of us actually can! But sadly, I wasn’t one of them. At my best, I moved like an inflatable prop at a used car lot.

I could feel the eyes of everyone around us staring in bewilderment as I danced, disbelieving the evidence of their senses. It didn’t seem possible that a man could move without using any of the joints in his limbs, but my performance proved them wrong. Many of the onlookers even began laughing and jeering, calling for me to get lost. But I didn’t care. It’s easy to ignore mockery when the simple fact of the matter is that my hecklers were background fodder who were less substantive to my daily reality than a discarded Kleenex.

Eventually, I said: “This place sucks. Wanna go?”

She said, “Sure,” so we did.

Take note, everyone. If you want impress someone with a punk rock attitude, try not giving a damn about impressing them. It’s kind of Zen but it works wonders. I normally can’t pull that sort of thing off, but remember, at that moment, I was really high.

That was why I was the one who walked out of the club alongside her. Not because of vampiric mysticism or dark allure, but because I was too high to die, and thus dripping with false confidence.

We spent the rest of the night hanging out and stealing stuff. Some guys tried messing with us, but I knocked them around easily enough and she gleefully kicked them while they were down. Then we had to run from the police for a bit, but we still had a good time. Just before dawn, she gave me the hardest kiss I’d enjoyed in years. Then we said our goodbyes.

That was the last I’d see of her for a while. Fifteen years after that night, I ran into her in Toronto of all places, at a fundraiser where her husband was campaigning for a seat in Parliament on a conservative ticket.

If she was shocked at my appearance not having changed in a decade and a half, then I was shocked at the sight of her in a white pantsuit with sensible shoes. Johnny Rotten playing golf with Prince William couldn’t have disillusioned me more. I needn’t have worried, though. Rose was still Rose beneath it all. While I stood brooding in a corner of the room, she approached me with a smile and whispered, “This place sucks. Want to go?”

Without a moment’s hesitation, I said, “Sure.”

And we left. We didn’t steal anything or run from any cops, but we did fornicate for like half a day, and that was cool, too. Before we said our goodbyes, I asked her if she wanted to live forever. She gave it a moment’s thought and then shook her head.

“How come?” I asked, disappointed by her choice.

“Wouldn’t I eventually get bored?” she said.

Before I could think of a reply, she kissed me again and left.

Punk rock will never die.

__

“All right, wake up, stupid,” Pankratz said before giving me a few slaps on the cheek. “We’ve got questions to ask.”

After I drearily regained consciousness, I took a look at my surroundings and was surprised to see that I was back in Jamie’s tavern. These brats had carried me all the way back to the Narrows. I’d have been grateful to them for that if they weren’t the reason I’d needed to be carried to begin with.

I was sitting in the middle of the serving room, tied by rope to a chair, staring at Pankratz and a familiar looking girl with black hair. I knew I’d seen her before, but remembering her name in my human form was surprisingly difficult. As a vampire, I could recall a name instantly if I knew who I was looking at. As a human, it took a little time.

“Cassie?” I asked after it finally came back to me. “You’re Cassie, right? The healer? What are you doing here?”

Cassie looked at me, puzzled. I hadn’t noticed it when we first met on that ill-fated school trip, but she was quite the looker; a real doe-eyed beauty with lustrous black hair. Yeah, my male gaze was thoroughly engaged by the sight of her, which caused me to cheer up despite my unfavorable circumstances.

Why stay negative when you had a good view?

Unfortunately, Pankratz was quick to pick up on my sudden interest. “Hey. Keep your eyes level when you talk to her,” he warned me.

“Where's the fun in that?” I wondered.

In response, he hit me again.

“Oh, calm down,” I said with a frown after my ears stopped ringing. “I’m flirtatious by nature, big man. I don’t mean anything by it.”

“You haven’t flirted with me, yet,” he replied. “Double standards, much?”

“Try buying me flowers first,” I suggested.

“Bandits don’t deserve flowers,” he replied.

“Well, then you don’t deserve me,” I informed him.

“I really am going to hit you again,” he warned me.

“Knock it off, Nick,” Cassie said with annoyance as she stepped to my position and placed her hands at each side of my head. “If you keep scrambling his skull with those big hands of yours, he won’t be able to tell us anything.”

“I’m just watching out for my little sister,” Pankratz said amiably as he leaned back against a table. “I’m a tank. We defend against creeps too.”

“Wait, did I hear that right?” I said with surprise. “You two are siblings?”

“Nick is adopted,” Cassie corrected me as she continued her examination of my head. “My family took him in after his mother passed away.”

“You didn’t mention that before!” I said accusingly to Pankratz.

“Why would I mention anything to a bandit?” he asked me in confusion. “And why do you know Cassie’s name, anyway? When did you meet her?"

I was about to point out that he was the one who told me her name, when I realized that I no longer resembled or sounded like the Kyler Evans that he remembered. Maybe the changes this body had gone through were more drastic than I’d realized. He still hadn’t recognized me despite our proximity.

Hmm. Interesting.

“Weird,” Cassie said softly, before stepping away from me.

“Got him all patched up?” Pankratz asked her.

“No. I didn’t do a thing for him. His body healed on its own,” she said. “It’s as though he has a healing skill. But that can’t be possible! We gave him a scan, didn’t we? He isn’t ascended.”

In response, Pankratz removed a strange looking blue cube from one of his belt’s many pouches and waved it over my head. After a few moments, it glowed with a sickly green light before fading back to blue.

“If he has any talent, it’s extremely minor,” he said. “This dude barely has enough juice to function as a porter.”

“Rude,” I said defensively.

“I’m just telling it like it is, bandit,” Pankratz said indifferently.

“I’m not a bandit, you dolt,” I replied.

“Said the perv who kidnapped the two half-dressed girls,” he shot back.

“Who I was taking back to town for treatment after rescuing them!” I countered.

“It looked more like you were dragging them away from town to your nasty little hideout,” Pankratz said as he began to squeeze his fists. “But it also looked like you were pausing to have a little fun with them first, weren’t you, asshole? And then, even knowing we caught you red-handed, you're tossing looks at my sister?”

Suddenly, Pankratz hit me again. It wasn’t a gentle slap either. It was a whistling haymaker delivered with full force that knocked my chair to the side, and me with it.

“I gotta admit, I didn’t like that,” he said as he blew over his reddened knuckles.

“Don’t do it. Keep calm,” I said.

“Fuck you, bandit,” he snorted.

“I’m not talking to you, imbecile,” I replied.

“Then who?”

The entrance to the tavern exploded open as the door flew off its hinges. In the doorway, snarling at Pankratz with his white sharp teeth dripping saliva, and his body hunched and ready to explode into violent action, was my dog, Schulz.

Man’s best friend in general.

But not this one.