Peyton to my benefit was remarkably calm, and seemed to have a plan. Still shell shocked from seeing literal monsters, and being at the cusp of death, I was being dragged along with no questions asked. Flames still terrified me, an upturned car having exploded after leaking gasoline having set the street we were running down aflame, and Peyton charged us straight through it, and I felt the remarkable confusion return as licking flames crossed bar flesh from where my pants leg had burned, yet I didn’t feel pain. I wondered if it was adrenaline muting the hurt, and with no time to check I assumed that was the case.

“Just a few more blocks Charlie, we’ve got this alright? Don’t stop, don’t look at anything, keep your eyes closed.” Her voice was all I could hear over the ringing of my ears. My blood pressure was up, stars were in my eyes, yet my lungs didn’t burn with the need for oxygen, and my leg’s didn’t hurt.

My legs.

They were maybe the fifth biggest mystery I’d have to deal with today, and I was having a hard time coping. Just twenty-four hours prior they were useless slabs of meat, there for aesthetic and to get in my way. Now they moved with no trouble.

As strange as it was, it meant I was grieving, as my penance was apparently up, and I felt guilt at that fact.

The grip on my arm tightened, and I was hauled forward, stumbling harder as we moved faster, and I felt a crash behind me. Something had tried to cut off our way, and we had passed by it with a narrow margin to spare. We turned sharp into an alleyway as I didn’t dare look back, and moved down it with haste.

Peyton went first, and seemed to phase through solid concrete ground, trash bags, empty cans, and syringes. I paused and boggled at the sight, confused on what exactly I was staring at, before her pale arm reached up and through the ground to drag me forward.

One moment there was nothing, and the next there were stairs there, an entire recess in the alley appearing in my vision the moment I was touched by her hand. It had a safety guard rail, and was cleaner than the past six alley’s combined, going down deep alongside a building to a bright red door embedded into the concrete wall.

“Okay, we’re good.” Peyton leaned against the wall of the staircase, steps down, and I felt my weight sag as my legs finally gave out. I crashed onto the first step to sit there, not necessarily physically exhausted, yet the emotional strain had found me, and a phantom ache I couldn’t explain had surfaced. I needed a good cry. Peyton observed me, before walking over as I felt myself start choking on a sob, my eyes watering and obscuring my vision.

Her arms wrapped under my legs, and to my back, and she lifted me as I broke down into the fit of heavy crying. She didn’t seem to mind, and walked the stairs with my weight as I put my face in her shirt.

It took her longer than just a moment to get me into the door, it seemed that strength that could be put through a slab of living meat didn’t translate to being able to carry a girl and open a door at the same time, but she managed. I kept my face in her shoulder, and was expecting the worst.

When I braved a peek, it wasn’t the worst, but I may have though so a week ago.

The room was cast in red and purple fluorescent glows, with the heavy smell of alcohol and faint smell of cigarette smoke, and another musty tang that I couldn’t place. To our right as she carried me was a long bar, filled to the brim with bottles on the wall, with a black sheen of dark marble making up the length of the entire counter that surely fit more than forty people on a good day. The left side of the gigantic room was a sitting area, with rounded black leather seats to match the bar counter, and tables in various states of damage, chipped on the edges, one with a crack down to the middle, and each with empty cigarette trays, and where the leather seats weren’t available chairs had been flipped and onto the tables.

The middle of the room, directly in front of us, was a large stage, with more smaller tables surrounding it, and a long length of poles that extended from the floor to the ceiling, rotating in place. She’d brought me to an empty strip club.

I boggled at that fact, momentarily stunned that Peyton would know about a place like this, or even maybe frequent it as a little voice nagged my mind about that idea, and then I found myself confused on it even having power. With the explosions and chaos, the city had to be in the midst of a large blackout, but everything here was still functional.

It also didn’t feel as charged as the entire city had.

With a soft grunt, Peyton would sit me down, and wander over to the bar, hopping it’s length with her ever so fluid grace, and begin gathering glasses.

“Peyton, where are we?” I muttered now, finally coming out of my sob struck state. Few hiccups still found their way to my throat, and my whole mouth felt thick with saliva and the taste of smoke, so I was thankful when she brought over water for me to drink in a comically large beer glass.

“One of my dad’s investments. We try to keep a money flow here on Terra, and depravity sells.” She sat down across from me, seeming to sense that I needed my space. I did need that space. The image of her inhuman appearance was still burned into my brain. I was also relieved that this didn’t seem to be one of her regular haunts, for some stupid reason that I couldn’t come to terms with.

“Why here?” I asked, between sips of water.

“It’s warded, essentially. You saw the staircase was invisible right? If we don’t want people to find it, they won’t find it. Same applies to Demon’s, unless they’re on another level, in which case there’s no where we could hide honestly.” She spoke, and didn’t sip her water, resting cheek in her hand as she stared across the table at me. It was all so matter of fact.

“Warded…. Demon’s. The…. Horse-man?”

“Centaur.”

“Centaur, and the frog-people?”

“Toalins.”

“Uh-huh.” I muttered, staring at her. She smiled, toothy and amused, and I looked away.

“You have a lot of questions, so ask them, we’re safe for now. This place runs off of a generator of sorts, keeps the light cost down, and the wards will last a few days.” Peyton said, as reassuring as ever, and it did nothing to calm my nerves.

“What are you?” I blurted out. For a moment I stared at her, before my face flushed hot, as I realized what I had said. It wasn’t planned, I was hoping to avoid that topic all together, but it slipped out and now was in the air. She stared at me, seeming stern or more seriously, before she tapped a finger on the table.

My gaze followed it, and I gasped. The index finger across her hand had turned back into pale bone, with its talon like finger scarring the table with each tap.

“Striges is what we call ourselves - Vampires, is what you’d call us these days. Hunters of the night, irresistible undead, baby eaters, stealer of husbands and wives.” It was with that she spoke, and I saw through it despite my startle. She was picking on me a bit, but it was all in jest, except for that first part. That part was deadly seriously.

“Vampire.”

“Mhm.”

“You drink blood?”

“To an extent.” She said, reclining back in her seat. Noticing I was done with my water during our conversation, she slid hers across to me, as if to say she didn’t need it, yes she drank blood. “Blood can be used in place of sustenance, but we drink the mana from blood, essentially. It’s in the bodily fluids and organs that the concentration of mana is highest, stored power, you dig?” She asked, and I nodded, feeling numb. I certainly did not dig.

“You’d be surprised how much that applies to demon’s, but also human’s. Succubi and Incubi that elope for those concentrations, they’re essentially Striges also but different dynamic, human’s that cannibalize each other sometimes without realizing that it’s that very mana they’re hungry for after that first taste, and you even get trace amounts from animals, and I think some cultures even drink bird spit because of it, without knowing.” Peyton drummed her fingers on the table as she explained, mercifully all digits back to their fleshy normal selves. “It’s historically been too low in quantity to be important for Human’s though, but now you probably have enough that I’d get the equivalent to a sugar rush if I sipped on one of your kind.”

I flushed at the thought, and dipped my head to drink more from my mug. I’d regret it later, but dehydration was worse than a full bladder.

All the talk of death, the sight of death, the scent of blood still fresh in my nostrils, and the knowledge that hundreds of thousands were dying left me to an obvious conclusion, even if my cheeks were still tinged with red.

“So what now, do you kill me?” I muttered while staring down at my mug, expecting the worst. If I thought with the darker, pessimistic, side of my brain, I found myself imagining Peyton hunched over my lifeless body, eating flesh and muscle alike in that stretched out, altered state of hers. When I glanced up however, I felt ashamed that I had considered the fact. She looked hurt.

“No, I don’t wanna kill you. I want you to live, Charlie.” She reached out, and pressed her hand over mine, and I did my best not to flinch away. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings more, with my future hanging by razor wire. “Nobody knows what’s going to come of this. This…. Invasion. Our world, Gehenna, is essentially unlivable…. Demon-kind are here because Earth is our last resort.”

“If the invasion just started, how’ve you been here for weeks now? I’ve went to school with you, and your parents own…. Businesses.” I flailed, gesturing at the room. It was a convenient excuse to slip my hand from hers.

“Some of our kind can come through the gate, so long as we’re willing to lose a chunk of our power. Your world has been bereft of mana, so coming here means we have to leave most of it behind. Still means we’re stronger than your kind, just not as strong as we would be otherwise. My parent’s came over, and started a new life several hundred years ago.” Peyton said, in a matter-of-fact isn’t it obvious kind of way.

“How old are you then?” I asked, curiosity eating at me.

“Same as you, I’m very young for my kind. We were lucky that Centaur seemed to be weakened, as hopefully most things are, had he been full powered I think he would’ve killed both of us.” She laughed, and I flinched at the thought. The image of the creature mowing through so many humans was enough to send a chill down my spin, the thought of that being a creature weakened was terrifying. I wanted to never meet one on his best day.

I tried to ignore that thought. I had other questions that I needed answered.

“My legs.” I choked out now, and caught her attention more than I ever had before. “How can I walk?”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“That one is…. Peculiar. Demon-kind was warned that magic was being returned to you all, so it may be that? Enough magic, in sufficient quantities, can create miracles. Enough magic and you can create life in an instant, or cause mass death in that same instant. Suffice to say you’re probably not the only one dealing with side effects, both positive and negative.” Peyton was doing her best to explain to me, and it seemed like she was trying to fill in the gaps of what she didn’t know with well educated guesses, judging by the way her tone changed. “You probably noticed before, in the diner right? You were…. Seeing things more clearly, hearing and feeling? Magic. Mana.” That matter of fact way of speaking again.

“So I’m like a Witch now?” I grumbled, unhappy with how ridiculous it all sounded.

Peyton laughed, loud, and it made my face turn red and my ears grow hot too. To be so in the dark left me constantly flailing in equal parts embarrassment, and fear.

“I guess you could say that? Really it’s a little more simple than that. There are uh- incantations, some people do sacrificing, but magic is a lot less of a rule and more of a constant. You can break some parts of it down to a science, sure, but you can’t properly quantify it, and it effects everyone differently.” She tried her best to explain that part as well.

“For example, one man may be great with conjuring fire, but you could be complete ass at it. He could show you the step by step of making flame, but that might not be how magic works for you, you could require a different channeling method all together. Bloodline plays a big factor, but most humans are starting fresh, but don’t be surprised if your brother for instance shares a similar affinity as you do.” Peyton explained, and I quickly was getting lost. It was all too confusing, and she wasn’t a very good teacher I noted.

The mention of my brother was now dwelling on my mind, and hot tears started to fill my eyes.

“My mom and brother were at home.” I spoke, choking on the words.

Peyton frowned, and gave me a nod, glancing away. It was unspoken what may have come of them, and even more so with my context.

“My mom is vegetative…. Her mind crumbled. Maybe she, like how my legs?” I seemed hopeful, and looked across to her, receiving a pained smile and nod.

Maybe. Maybe like how my legs were fixed, maybe with how this whole thing was working, my mother was back to normal, and escaped the chaos with Noah. Maybe they were alive now, and hiding, safe and secure. Did she feel as guilty as I was to be cured? I wondered that, but didn’t say that to Peyton, as I stared down past the table’s edge at my legs.

I was so very tired, and was now noticing that fatigue as my adrenaline left me. My head nodded off, and I looked to Peyton, who smiled my way.

“Get some sleep, we’re safe here for a while. There’s a bathroom in the back if you need it, it’s for the performers so you have showers and stuff.” Peyton spoke, and I nodded as I put my head down on the table.

It wasn’t the outside I was scared of, I was still weary of being in the presence of a Vampire. The fatigue was stronger than my will to stay awake and alert in the end, and I dozed without much of concern, and my thoughts were on my father as I did so. Losing him had been the worst day of my life up until now, and somehow this whole day still stood at a firm second place in comparison. At least I had hope my mother and brother were alive, however slim.

Hope was something I was always bankrupt of, I realized. Sleep took me not long as tears started to roll down my cheeks at those troubling thoughts.

☽

Sleep may have been the easiest thing I’d done in my life, in this instance. It went unnoticed before, through all the chaos, confusion, and shattering of my normal human life - but I was sore. Sore in a place I didn’t understand, not necessarily in my sternum but that’s where my mind placed it. To say it was my core wouldn’t have been incorrect, as it felt like something a surgeon couldn’t reach with a scalpel and a saw. The chaos had drained something immeasurable, and left me weak, and that’s why I slept.

I somehow rationalized that as I slept. There were no dreams, and I certainly wasn’t lucid, but the awareness of that new place in my body made me aware of myself in general, and my thoughts that felt like they floated on the edge of my consciousness, muted and grayed by the need to sleep, but something that I could focus on and make out in the fog. Emotionally disconnected they were too. Those thoughts were on Peyton, and I didn’t feel the affection, neither fear, that I held for the girl. Instead it was all rational, clean, and filtered through the haze.

I thought of my father too. That awareness made me feel my legs as I thought of him, the two intrinsically connected. I remembered laying upside down in the car, with glass and who knew what else all over me. There was smoke, there was fire, and the entire front of the car was caved in. I remember seeing what was left of my dad.

That too, didn’t hurt in my sleep. I’d normally wake from night terrors, the fear of suffocation, the need to get to him and somehow pull him out of the metal, the feeling that my legs were neither there, yet still connected and still pinning me in the wreckage. That I decided was still my worst day.

This was my second worse.

In sleep I was nourished, and that pit in my chest seemed to fill up with warmth. Bubbly, energizing, reviving me, and my brain said it was blue, but I had a feeling that warmth was another color entirely. Something else I couldn’t rationalize. My monkey brain simply wasn’t capable of figuring out anything on my own. Occasionally in dreams I heard talking. Someone else had entered the room, and that warmth seemed to bounce inside of its bodily recess, trying to reach the new threat. I heard Peyton coo at me, and touch my hair, and that made the warmth calm down.

I didn’t hear any voices after that, and slept for what had to be another three hours, or ten years, or four minutes. My brain couldn’t decide.

The peripheral of my thoughts continued to buzz, until they landed on an unfortunate thought that ruined sleep for me and startled that warmth again. My mother and brother were still out there.

I was able to open my eyes and wake up without trouble.

The room was dimmer than it had been before, cast in a different shade of green. It wasn’t like the glow outside, fortunately, just lights strung up or stapled into the walls and ceiling to give the club some sort of ambiance. Much to my panic, and relief, Peyton wasn’t in the room either.

She was both safe and dangerous to me now. She’d mercifully left me a glass of water, and a change of clothing, the water of which I quickly downed. Still thirsty. My throat was raw from the fire and smoke, and while I didn’t know how long I slept, I was able to figure that it was long enough for that pain to settle and my mouth to dry, so a few hours at the least.

My hands placed on either side of the seat, and I slid down it, reaching for a wheel chair that wasn’t there. For a moment, I was confused and defeated, before remembering that I could walk.

Walk.

Something that had been entirely out of my future. I hadn’t ever bothered with the particulars, because they didn’t matter, and I was too numb to listen to doctors or my mother back then, but I’d known that my legs were saved from the wreckage at the cost of my mobility. Amputation had been on the table back then, just after the accident, but mercifully it hadn’t happened. For some reason I doubted my legs would’ve grown back today if that had been the outcome.

I climbed out of the bench and admired my legs. I flexed the muscle, and reached down to touch the calf of my left leg. The fire we ran through had burned through my pants entirely, leaving large holes that reached up to the knee. No visible burns, and only the already existing scars of gnarled flesh and stitching.

Whatever had given me my movement back hadn’t spared me that indignity, and I was glad for that. I’d always worn my scars proudly since the accident, and didn’t want to lose them now. My attention turned to the change of clothes as I stood back up.

Not my style.

Peyton had left me a tank-top with the clubs logo, a fish with bright red lipstick, and a pair of jogging pants with the same logo cheaply plastered on the side leg. It was better than nothing.

By the time I had changed and kicked my old charred clothes into a heap under the table, Peyton had returned. She too had changed since our run, and was wearing clothing that I couldn’t find a particular style towards. The pants were bright yellow, and not quite fabric, with bars of pink and black running down the sides, while her shirt was a pink that matched the stripes, tight on her form, and it too was made of a strange fabric. The jacket she wore was denim, and her boots were a mismatched black that only matched the stripes of the pants, and the bow she wore in her now pinned up hair.

It reminded me of when I was very young and tried to dress myself, and somehow Peyton made it work. There was a confidence to how she walked, sunglasses on over that toothy grin of hers, and she lifted those glasses to rest on top of her head.

“Morning sleepy head, you look better. Your hair is kind of uhm….” She gestured at her head, and the gestures didn’t tell me much.

I checked myself with a hand, and found that not only was my hair messy, but it was charred in a lot of places as my clothes had been, and still smelled with smoke. I put on a scowl, and that made Peyton laugh, which immediately made me self conscious of myself. The end of the world could often times pale in comparison to a pretty girls attention, I was quickly finding.

“The girls probably have some scissors and make up in the back if you want to do a touch up.” Peyton stopped near me, and leaned on the table with one hand as she admired my outfit. I flushed in the cheeks, and felt even more embarrassed. The jogging pants, sure, a mercy. The tank top however was meant for women who could fill out the top more than I could, like Peyton could, and that thought made everything just a little worse for me.

“No shot you have an overlarge t-shirt back there?” I spoke, and found my voice was gravelly still.

“Not unless you want the fish to have a pair of tits hanging out, no.” Peyton smirked, and I shot her a look and shook my head.

“So what’s the plan here? Where are we going now? Out of the city? Surely the military is here by now…. Or they’re going to be here, soon.” I asked. It didn’t slip by me that on the second question, she winced just a bit, which made my heart drop. I realized it before she said it.

“You have two weeks worth of food here at minimum, and there’s a manual for keeping the generator running with mana. I’ll try to come back through before it runs out, but no promises.” She spoke, and kept her eyes away from me.

“Peyton!” My voice was an immediate shrill as panic set in. She flinched again, and looked toward the ground at my feet, but still not at me. “You’re going to leave me?!”

“Leave is a strong word, you’ll be safe here.”

“You can’t!” I stepped forward despite myself. That warmth in my chest was bouncing around in its cavity again, trying to escape.

“She can and she will.”

I halted. The voice wasn’t Peyton’s. It was still a woman’s, more feminine than not, though it carried a tone I didn’t often hear. Regal was the word that sprung to mine. I let my gaze dart to the direction of the voice, and saw Peyton tense as I looked past her.

Another woman, taller than us both, was standing at the door. Orange hair just like Peyton’s spread out around her shoulders and form, with the same patterns of striped back black that ran through, with eyes that were just as orange, but beady and slitted at the center unlike the wide puppy dog eyes of Peyton's own. Her face wasn’t stretched back, and she was remarkably Human, and stunningly beautiful, but I saw right through it in a way I hadn’t with Peyton, that the flesh she wore was closer to the fabric on her shoulders than her true self. The woman’s sense of style wasn’t as chaotic as Peyton’s, wearing all black except for accessories like a belt, a choker, rings and a bracelet that were golden, a turtle neck and pair of pants, of similar unknown fabric to Peyton’s own, hugging a form that was very shapely in a way that gave her a sense of power, and not allure.

I’d stared down a Centaur, yet had never seen something so inhuman. She moved with grace, and created a momentum that made every step seem too easy, as she approached with that glowering stare of what my brain registered as malice and disgust.

“You’d do well to listen to her child, this is the safest place in your city now. Maybe it’s not so safe though, if you keep standing so close to her.” The woman stopped next to Peyton, towering above her by at least an entire foot, and was able to stare down at me with a glower. I instinctively took a step back, and then another.

I recognized the voice as the one I heard while sleeping. She’d been here since I’d slept, and it explained why that sensation in my chest had been on guard. It was similarly on guard now, ready to attack, yet there was no Peyton to calm it.

She seemed as concerned and as scared as I felt.

“Good, you seem to understand your situation.” The woman, who I had under good authority now was Peyton’s mother, stared at me for a moment longer. I didn’t dare speak. “Peyton, we’re leaving now. Say goodbye to your friend, then we leave. Typhon will not be kept waiting. He is in a good mood thanks to this invasion, so let's keep it that way." She lost all interest in me, and was now staring down her daughter.

“Yes mother.” Peyton spoke, and kept her head down.

The figure of doom left, and gave me and Peyton a fleeting sense of peace from her presence. I’d been holding my breath, sucking in a need for it after the moment of tension, and each inhale was a shaky and somewhat choked sob.

“Listen, you’ll be okay - just uhm, stay here. Typhon’s holding a meeting, your world is pretty big, so the city will maybe empty out.” She spoke, quick and without pause for questions, and gave me a quick hug. I was limp in her grasp as she did so, unable to return it.

Part of me knew that if I did, I may not let go. Another part heeded the warning of her mother, and didn’t put it past the woman to have eyes in the back of her head. As Peyton let go, I choked back another sob, and gave her a nod. She’d come back.

I wouldn’t be here. The unfortunate truth was that I simply couldn’t wait for her, with my mother and brother out and about, and didn’t put it past her or her mother to lock me inside if I made that clear. I instead smiled despite myself, for her sake as well as my own.

“Okay. I’ll be waiting.” I spoke, and didn’t do well at convincing myself, but Peyton seemed to be. She nodded, and gave me that heart wrenching full toothed smile once more, and ran to follow her mother.

Not so much as a fleeting glance as the two closed the door on the way out.

“Just hold out a little longer Noah, I’m coming to get you both.” I spoke out loud to no-one, and turned to gather what I could to get ready for a suicide mission.