Malcolm Donald, sick with guilt, bellowed orders into his headset. “Make a corridor to the hotel! Someone is always living there so the hotel is a home. Defenders! Make a human corridor! People! Stay calm, we’ll have you inside in just a few minutes.”

Charity felt terror threaten to choke her, just like it had on that night a year ago. The edges of the crowd pushed toward the center and squeezed her so she could barely breathe.

Malcolm knew he was losing them. There’s a physical sensation a leader gets when a crowd surges to the edge of chaos. He could feel it like a pull on his own skin: one more bloodcurdling shriek would break them loose. They would trample each other to death just to get safely into a home again.

Into a home…

Light burst on him. He opened his mouth to save them all, just as the pulsing crowd freed Charity for an instant. She dragged in a ragged breath… and stuffed her fist into her mouth to stop herself from giving that bloodcurdling shriek.

Malcolm never saw it. “Listen up, people!” he roared. “This here is my home! I hereby declare my intention to live in this plaza for the next year! I will camp out here day and night, this is my home, right here! And you all are welcome in my home!” Quickly he added, “All you humans, all you living humans are welcome in my home!”

For an endless moment, the mob pulsed on the very edge of panicked stampede. Then Malcolm’s intent got through to some people. “He’s going to live here. This is a home. We’re safe, we don’t have to go inside,” voices started babbling.

Sally, holding Lavinia’s body in her arms, felt the claws stop scrabbling at her, heard the silence as the vampires were whisked beyond the edge of the invisible line that demarked Malcolm’s plaza “home.”

She registered that she could stop fighting and gave it no more thought.

People made space for her and she sat down on the grillwork which surrounded a sad city tree like a line of spikes, Lavinia cradled against her. Someone asked “how is she” and Sally snarled something incoherent without ever realizing she’d heard or answered.

It was quiet enough now that she could feel for a heartbeat.

There are moments when two futures lie in front of you and nothing has been said to choose one of them yet. The doctor’s soft shoes on the glaring floor as he walks in with the HIV test results after you’ve been raped. The moment when the polls close and results start coming in but you don’t know whether the next four years will be a joy or a nightmare. You dread the actual word which will seal in the future.

Her hand approached Lavinia’s heart for a long time. Long enough for Sally to remember that just months ago she hadn’t met Lavinia. Long enough to remember arguments and doubts. Lavinia couldn’t possibly mean this much to her.

Tenderly she unzipped the leather jacket with the crow emblem. Willing Lavinia to be alive, she put her hand on her lover’s heart. The soft breast was warm but there was no heartbeat.

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She refused to give up hope. She’d been trained in CPR. She knew there was a newer acronym but she still remembered the one she’d learned: ABC, airways, breathing, circulation. Fuck them for changing it anyway. And also fuck trying not to talk like the woman she loved.

Lay the beloved down, stretch her head back to open the airways. For the first time she really looked at Lavinia’s throat. It was bloody but it wasn’t ripped open. That was a good sign.

Sweep your finger in the throat to remove any blockage. Well of fucking course there wasn’t any blockage, Lavinia hadn’t choked on a chicken bone. She’d been drained of blood.

Sally looked dazedly at the milling crowd. “Blood!” she called. “She needs blood!”

People backed away. In seconds she was at the center of a ring of hostile, frightened faces. What was wrong with these monsters?

Then she understood. Lavinia was the first person in years to be killed – bitten, not killed! – by a vampire, and left intact. The minute she died, she would rise as undead.

“Bastards!” she snarled and started doing CPR properly. Tilt the head back, cradle the neck, four quick breaths down the throat, listen for breathing. Move to the victim’s side. Hands on the still-warm chest, just like she’d learned in that class so long ago. Hands on the breastbone or off to the side? She was pretty sure it was “on the breastbone.”

Left hand down, right hand on top of it at a 90-degree angle. Push push push push with real weight. Feel for heartbeat. None.

Don’t give up. Four quick breaths, puff puff puff puff.

Lavinia’s body heaved, like her breathing was about to restart.

Oh my god, it did restart! Lavinia’s breath was slow, ragged, but it was breath.

Sally felt her own heart pound again. Tears and snot dripped off her face. “Baby, baby, come back to me, come on, come back, I’m here,” she chanted.

“She’s rising, she’s coming back,” voices whispered, then yammered. They thought Lavinia was rising as a vampire!

She gave four more quick pumps to the chest, not sure whether you were supposed to do that once breathing started again. Did she feel a heartbeat? Did she?

There was still no heartbeat.

The breath grew stronger and the heart did not beat and Lavinia’s body got colder. Sobbing, Sally felt precious hope slip away.

Lavinia’s eyes snapped open. They were still that deep violet blue; that was good because weren’t vampire eyes blood red? It felt like a simple fact that she should know.

Sounds of panic built. “Get a stake, kill her quick, oh my God there’s a vampire in here!”

Sally looked at the face she had loved more than any other in twenty-seven years of life, and her hope died.

That face was inhabited by a stranger.

It was not evil, or at least not yet. It looked lost and hopeless and starved more than anything else, and she wanted nothing more than to kiss Lavinia and say, you’re still welcome in my home, love.

In a thin tremor, nothing like her bluff hearty ironic tone, Lavinia said, “…we had a home…” Her hand moved weakly toward her own breast.

Then as Sally strained to hear, she said something which sounded like “…fly time her robin…”

The next instant she was swept out of Sally’s arms.

Sally screamed, “You bastards, you couldn’t give me one second, one fucking second, you cunts, you shit-asses, I’ll kill you, I’ll…” She trailed off. The faces around were as confused as she was. A gently spoken young man said quietly, “It warn’t us ma’am. She just flew over our heads, we ‘us as surprised as you.”

Sally rose in one motion, as though invisible strings pulled her. Had Lavinia been, what, chanting a spell which made her fly? Understanding hung just over her head as she looked where people pointed.

The thing that had been Lavinia stood with hundreds of other vampires at the invisible barrier, looking hungrily in at the crowd.

The plaza had been declared a home and she had been pushed out with all the rest. Those words, her very last from Lavinia, were nothing, delirium. Lavinia was lost to Sally.

Sally swiped a sleeve across her dripping face, sure that if she put her hands on her own chest, she’d feel no heartbeat there either.