Adam hesitated, stared at the sky and looked throughly uncertain.  With a heavy sigh he said, "This is where I normally tell you that this is immortal business and mortals stay out of it or die."  He looked at her and lowered his voice.  "Frankly, I don't know what to tell you.  In my long life, I've never met a vampire."  They continued walking, with Adam speaking in a low voice.  Eliza listened raptly, almost as if her life depended on it.  Maybe it did. 

Sitting in the coffee shop near the park, Eliza did not like Adam fighting her battles.  She didn't really care that Kristo had stumbled onto her because he'd been hunting Adam.  She still felt it was her fight, but Adam had a way of making his opinion sound so reasonable you just couldn't disagree.  She tapped her foot in irritation and tossed back the still too hot coffee.  As the scalding liquid scorched its way down her throat, she realized what she had just done.  She unceremoniously grabbed a glass of water from the man at the table next to her and gulped the cool relief.  The amused expression on his face clearly indicated that he understood and was not objecting to the pretty lady seeking relief.  Eliza blushed, thanked him, and left feeling quite foolish.  Leaving the coffee house, "gotta stick to brandy," she muttered.

Outside, she stopped and tried to sense anything, danger, Adam, Kristo, anything.  There was nothing.  She could have been in the midst of total wilderness.  The night was young.  It was far too early to go home, but she really felt at loose ends.  She didn't feel like going clubbing, too many memories she didn't want to face tonight.  "Maybe I should just find a good-looking guy and play with him for awhile."  She grinned thinking of t he things she could have him do, then she wondered if Adam was all right.  He seemed quite competent and totally unconcerned but that Kristo fellow, even though she'd suckered him, was probably no slouch himself.  The fact that he was still alive and stalking them must prove something.  She shivered and realized it probably proved that Adam was telling her the truth and the guys were every bit as hard to kill as she was.  "What a freaky world," she mused.  "What a totally freaky world.   Where was my head for 32 years?"

She slowly walked back toward the park, not quite sure what to do with herself.  She sighed.  Not too long ago, she'd have been hard at work at the library, doing internet searches for vampire references.  Now, she was one.  She listlessly wandered into the park.  "What the hell," she figured.  What else could happen?  The moon was waning, but it was mostly full.  She tingled pleasantly and began to think more seriously about finding a snack.  Adam had been generous but, this was another day and a girl needs nourishment.  Suddenly she was tingling with a totally different sensation - danger.  She put her back to a tree and froze.

Kristo stepped out of the darkness and pointed that big sword at her.  "Well now, it would appear that we are destined to meet again in spite of that little obstacle I had to overcome."

Eliza felt a sinking sensation in her stomach.  She knew the obstacle he mentioned was Adam.  Damn!  She did not want to lose another friend.  She felt a blinding rage rush through her body and her senses focused on him as the object of her hatred.  She wanted to kill him.  She wanted to rip out his throat and feel his hot blood wash over her body.  She wanted to watch and feel his agony and terror as life left his body.  Kristo lunged forward as if to skewer her against the tree. 

She swivelled but felt the razor sharp blade cut her breasts.  She'd drawn her knife from the cape and slashed his face.  He briefly struggled with the sword that had become embedded into the tree as she dropped to her knees and slashed the tendons in the back of his knees.  She rolled clear as he dropped, pulling the sword free.

He rolled and rose to his knees, he was unable to stand, but used the sword to prevent her from continuing her attack.  For all the pain he had to be experiencing, oddly, he actually smiled.  Slowly, carefully, he rose to his feet.  He laughed.   "You can't keep a good man down, sweety.  You can't keep a good man down!"  He slashed low and she jumped over the sword and cut his forearm but he reversed stroked and the blade was accelerating toward her from the opposite direction.  She dropped to her belly and rolled away from him.  She felt a pain in her hip and knew she'd been cut.  She looked up and saw him standing over her grinning.  He raised the sword and began the downward thrust that would impale her.

She blinked and was on her feet behind him.  Staggering for her wound, she lunged, stabbing him in the kidneys.  His body stiffened and he froze, the sword dropping from nerveless fingers.  He took a staggering step forward and turned to face her.  He saw long fangs flying toward his throat.  Reflexively, he raised her hands but her superior strength brushed them aside as if they weren't even there.  Like any creature fighting for life, he pounded on her body with futile fists but rapidly weakened as she bit firmly, tearing arteries, veins and crushing his wind pipe.  The necessary equipment to support life had been destroyed.

Eliza relaxed and looked around.  She was alone with the dead body.  She smiled and began to drain his body.  Straightening, she sighed and hoped Adam was ok.  Kristo jerked and sat up!  His throat had healed.  He took a gasping breath and rolled toward his sword.  Eliza, with the speed only a vampire could manage got to the sword before him.  The stood facing each other, she holding the sword in a reasonably competent manner, him unarmed facing an enraged, bloody vampire with a sword.  He did the sensible thing, he turned and ran.  And he ran full speed into his own sword.   Eliza had used her speed to get in front of him and he had impaled himself. 

He fell to his knees trying to pull the sword from his stomach when Eliza grabbed his hair and forced his head back.  Again she tore out his throat.  Again she held him close and sucked the life from his struggling, twitching body.  Again she fed, sucking all that he was. 

He twitched and jerked, struggling to his knees.  He was alive again, but the sword was still impaling him and he vainly struggled to remove it.  The handle was slippery with his blood and muscles, when penetrated this way, constrict and cause withdrawing the blade to be very difficult.  Especially if the blade is in your body.  He moaned and struggled with the offending blade. The fact that Eliza was watching him finally penetrated his pain wracked body.  A look of horror crossed his face as she stepped forward, and with her very sharp knife and her strength, severed his right hand.  She forced the spurting stump into his range of vision and drank from it as if it was a fountain. 

She stepped back to enjoy the fruits of her labor.  He could not die, but with only one hand, he could not pull the sword from his body.  He fell to his side and curled into a fetal ball, making wet, sticky, mewling sounds.  Eliza leaned forward and sucked him dry again.  She sat back and waited for him to recover.  He twitched, and again, he was alive.  Mightily, he struggled with the sword with his left hand.  Slowly, inch by agonizing inch, he worked the blade out. 

Eliza sighed and crawled to him.  Taking his hand in a firm grip, she smiled at him and said, "Let's make this a little more fun," and cut his left hand off!  The horror in his face made her laugh.  "How many pieces do I have to cut off of you before you die forever?" she asked, smiling.  She pushed the sword, hilt deep, back into his body.  His mutilated throat would not yet support a scream but he could whimper and moan.  Minutes passed and he gained strength.  He glared at her with an insane hatred in his eyes.  He struggled to his elbows and knees and finally managed to struggle to a kneeling position. 

Eliza stared at him and smiled.  She opened her bloody, slashed blouse, revealing her blood soaked breasts.  "See?" she asked.  "You see?  I heal rather quickly too, and in a real fight, you just don't have what it takes."  She grinned and walked to him.  On his knees, her breasts were right in his face.  "All this blood and guts stuff turns me on," she said huskily.  "I think I want sex."  She grabbed his head with both hands and pulled him to her breasts.  She pulled him so tightly that she heard his neck vertebra crack and she was preventing him from breathing.  She wasn’t sure he had died from suffocation or the broken neck, but he slumped again and appeared to be dead. 

She took this opportunity to pull the sword from his body an roll him onto his back.  She stuck the sword back into him, and with a rock she found, she hammered it into the ground, impaling him firmly, like a bug on a pin.  He jerked and gasped.  Life had returned.  He tried to sit up but the sword had him tightly pinned and the excruciating pain stopped any such attempt.  He held up his arms and stared at the stumps, where hands should be. He looked at the sword protruding from his body and realized how he was pinned.  For the first time total fear showed in his eyes.  He waved his arms and made funny sounds.  It would seem that his vocal cords had not yet regenerated.

Eliza stood astraddle him.  "I'm not hungry any more.  I'm horny," she told him, pouting her cutest pout.  He made more gurgling sounds and she smiled and kneeled.  She lifted her skirt so she could straddle him and since she wasn't wearing any panties, the view of her with her blouse open and skirt hiked up would have normally been an enticing sight.  The fangs, a bloody knife in her hand, and the fact she'd cut his hands off and impaled him on a sword made her less attractive. 

She moved forward, covering his mouth and nose with her body, again suffocating him.  He beat vainly on her back with his mutilated hands and twisted he head one way and the other trying to escape the suffocating presence of her hot body.  Eliza gasped.  His thrashing, twisting and turning were actually supplying more stimulation that she'd expected.  She'd been torturing him when she'd claimed to be horny, now in torturing him, she was getting very, very excited.  Time passed, sensation built, and was released.  She slumped forward, exhausted.  She wanted to sleep, as his limp form relaxed in death. 

He jerked.  He pounded on her back, moaning, and she awakened.  She sat up and smiled at him.  "Was it as good for you as it was for me?"  She smiled sweetly and saw insanity in his eyes.  She leaned forward and whispered in his ear.  "We can do this a long time, you know." 

"I . . . kill . . . you," he croaked. 

Eliza stood.  Looking down at him, "I doubt that.  You're just not good enough," she sneered.  She pulled the sword from his gut and watched as his remarkable body healed.  He struggled to his knees and she stepped forward, smiled at him and cut off his head.  There was a flash of lightening and a bitter cold rain began to fall.  He'd seen it coming.  In the last few seconds of his life, he'd known what she was going to do. 

The blood had squirted from his neck.  She'd never seen anything like it.  It was a squirting stream at least three feet high and the body toppled forward, drenching her in the warm sticky fluid.  Her mostly bare body was heated and washed by the blood.  She was transfixed and realized that she was having a bone shaking, shuddering orgasm.  She fell to her knees and clutched clumps of blood soaked grass in her fists.  As the electric waves passed, she raised her head and looked into the eyes of the bodyless head.  The rigor of death had twisted his mouth into an ugly sneer. 

She struggled to her knees and allowed the rain to wash the blood from her body. 

Slowly standing, she continued to let the rain cleanse her.  Regaining strength, she slowly became aware of the absolute quiet surrounding her.  Looking around slowly, she sensed several other presences.  Trying to remain as if weakened, but quickly regaining strength, her danger signals hadn’t gone off.  She didn’t feel as though she were in any immediate danger.  It paid to be aware though, she’d learned that from experience.

Suddenly, she heard a familiar voice in her head.  Looking around more quickly, she spied a form standing behind a tree.  Just barely visible to her even with her exceptional eyesight, she knew exactly who it was.

Smiling slightly, she called softly, “Come out Christa, it's over.” 

Christa emerged from behind the tree with a large smile on her face.  “Ok girly, you’ve become on nasty little package since I left, haven’t you?” she grinned.  “That was some fight.  You thoroughly enjoyed tormenting him, didn’t you,” she asked.

Eliza looked at her with a serious expression and said heatedly, “It was him or me this time Christa.  He’s been stalking me for several days now and this time it had to be one of us.  But, yes, as you say, I surely did enjoy tormenting him,” she answered with a smirk.  “I felt the need to play with my food.”

Again, Eliza’s head raised and she looked quickly around.  “There is still someone here, Christa, I can feel the person.  Still no harm meant, but I don’t need someone to go telling what went down here tonight,” she explained.  Standing quietly, casting out her thoughts, she again smiled.

“All right Adam, you may as well join us too.  Come meet my friend Christa.  Maybe I can add another new experience for you,” she called quietly.  Sending her thoughts to him at the same time.  She knew he’d caught them, as he emerged from the shadows.  Slowly, he returned the long sword to under his coat.

“Eliza, Eliza, you have surprised me yet again.  Remind me never to get on the bad side of you.  I’d never stand the sweet torture,” he teased.

Looking at Christa, he said that he could see they were close friends.  Laughing, he asked what possible way Eliza could surprise him more.  He thought he’d been surprised enough for one night.

Laughing at him, Eliza said, “all right then I won’t bother telling you about my friend Christa, I’ll let you find out about her on your own.”

With a wink at Christa, she turned away.  Bending down to pick up the dagger from the ground, she replaced it under her cloak.  Now thoroughly soaked from the rain, all she wanted was to make her way home and make up for lost time with Christa.  She knew they had a lot to talk about.  So much catching up to do.  The six months since Christa had been gone had been filled with change.

Turning, Eliza started walking back the way she had come.  As she passed Adam, he gently grabbed her arm.  Looking down at his hand on her arm, she looked up with a look that made him remove the hand.  Christa, fell in beside her and she nodded to Adam to join them if he wished. 

Pulling the hood up over her soaking hair, she drew the cape around her and pulled it tight.  This was different from the aftermath of any of the fights, hunting or anything else she’d been involved with since becoming a vampire.  She was exhausted, yet absolutely charged.  She knew her fangs were still deployed and her nails were still long, clawlike, pointed weapons. 

Adam looked at her knowingly and slowly followed slightly behind, but alongside as they walked to the entrance of the park.   Resting a hand gently on Eliza’s shoulder, he murmured that they would have to talk.  There were things she would now have to know, since she’d taken on the energies of Kristo.  Now wasn’t the time and he would leave them to their catching up.  “But, please Eliza, make time for me to fill you in on what you are going to need to know.”

Looking at Adam, Eliza replied that she would talk to him tomorrow evening, if he wished to come to her apartment.  He knew where it was and anytime after dusk was fine with her.  She’d be waiting for him.

As they came to the entrance of the park, Eliza and Christa turned one way and Adam turned another.  He was lost from view quickly in the rainy night.  They continued on their way back to Eliza’s apartment.

As they went in, Eliza made her way to her bedroom, grabbed some clean clothing and a robe.  Returning to the kitchen where Christa had gone, she saw that she had started water for tea.  Smiling at the old habit, she handed Christa the robe and told her to change.  She’d be back as soon as she’d cleaned up and changed clothes.

Returning to the kitchen after a quick shower, Eliza saw the tea was ready and Christa had changed. 

“Do you want a quick shower too?” she asked.

“No Eliza, I’m fine, sit down and have your tea, I’ve added some plum brandy instead of sugar and milk.”  She grinned.  "Makes an interesting hot drink.”

Eliza settled at the table looking at Christa.  She said softly, “I’m glad you’re back.”

They talked long into the night, each telling the other what had been happening in the time they’d been apart.  Yawning, Eliza looked at the clock and rose from the table.  Almost dawn, Christa.  I must get some sleep.  We’ll talk later. 

Knowing Christa had not kept her place in the city, she drew her with her to the bedroom.  Climbing into bed, they lay side by side, and in each other's arms, drifted off to sleep.