“Well, our clothes are ruined,” Harlan commented, pulling on what was left of his pants. “Damn goons,” he shook his fist, and Ruby had to laugh.

“Those bullets only ruined your shirt. The rest of this carnage is all on you,” she said, throwing a meaningful look at the ripped piece of red cloth that used to be her turtleneck.

“I regret nothing,” Harlan shrugged.

“Well, you might get away with running around shirtless, but I’m going to need some clothes. And I can’t exactly go back to my apartment to get some,” she replied, putting her bra back on and noticing the dried blood on her hands. “I could do with a shower, too.”

“I rented a house when I got here. We could go there,” Harlan said lightly.

Ruby could feel her eyes widen.

“Wait, hold up. You rented a house here? You couldn’t mention that when you insisted we both stay at my tiny apartment?”

Harlan remained unfazed at the shrill tone that crept into her voice.

“I didn’t think you’d be up for moving in with me,” he raised a brow at her. “Remaining on your turf seemed like the better play. I didn’t want to scare you off entirely, and have to explain how I was betrothed to a woman who didn’t want anything to do with me,” he replied.

“Now you’re going to have to explain this whole claiming me thing better than you have. Is this like some kind of green card marriage where the vampire government gets mad if you try to trick the system?” Ruby asked, her hair whipping around her face when Harlan suddenly disappeared from her side and reappeared behind the wheel.

I’ll never get used to that.

“That’s actually a pretty good analogy,” he nodded, starting the car and pulling out of the alley. “Now this might sound a little like some mystical mumbo-jumbo,” he warned glancing at her in the rearview mirror.

“I’ve had to come to terms with vampires existing among us, living off our blood,” Ruby quirked a brow at him. “I think I can handle it.”

“Alright,” Harlan grinned at her. “As I said, claiming humans goes back a long time. It is kind of like a marriage, but the end goal for the human in this deal is to be turned by the one that claimed them, so they can be together forever. It’s our version of courtship, I guess. And once a human has been claimed, others can sense it.

“There’s a rule among us, one of our most sacred ones, actually, that another vampire’s betrothed is off-limits. Now, don’t ask me how vampires know if a human has been claimed or not,” he said, catching the way she was frowning to herself. “I don’t have an answer for that.”

“Does being betrothed to a vampire always end in being turned into a vampire?” Ruby asked.

“It is expected. Marriage is about spending the rest of your life with someone, and there’s a pretty big discrepancy between human and vampire lifespans. It’s tough watching someone you care about grow old and die while you remain the same,” Harlan explained, and it wasn’t hard to hear the emotion in his voice.

“Do you speak from experience?” she carefully asked, studying his face.

“I do,” he admitted, keeping his eyes on the road for once. “And it’s not something I want to go through again.”

Ruby had never given much thought to how hard being a vampire could actually be. The world kept chugging along, changing and evolving, all the people you once knew dying around you. It had to become lonely after a while.

And if Lucinda was any indication of how bitchy vampires can be, then that’s a tough bunch to get along with.

She had a feeling she shouldn’t keep prodding, but she couldn’t help herself.

“Whoever this person was you cared about, they didn’t want to be turned by you?” she asked.

“No. And I would never turn someone who didn’t want it,” he replied, and there was a coldness to his tone Ruby found significant.

Something Harlan had once said popped back into her head, the way he’d phrased something suddenly becoming relevant.

“You said Julius decided to keep you around when you had been dying,” she said quietly, unsure if she should even be bringing it up.

“I didn’t know he was a vampire when I met him. We became friends, despite being in the middle of a war. He used to say he saw something in me… Anyway, I was part of the French army, and he was advisor to some general,” Harlan said, sounding far away.

“Which war?” she asked, hoping her question didn’t pull him out of the story.

“The Franco-Syrian War of 1920,” he said, and Ruby realized how different she and Harlan really were.

This was a man who had seen things she couldn’t even imagine, with many lifetimes of experience. That made her see him in a whole other light. From things he’d said, and from Lucinda’s remarks, it seemed he had focused on the fun side of life lately, with alcohol and women.

With his confident demeanor and undeniably good looks, she had thought that maybe that’s just who he was – someone trying to fill his days with simple pleasures. Now, it started to look more like he was using this carefree lifestyle to mask his pain and disappointment.

She couldn’t help but stare at Harlan, hanging off his every word as he continued on, all the while speeding down the streets of New York.

“I fell on the battlefield one day. They got me to a nearby village but I was beyond help, especially with the level of medicine at that time. Julius asked me if I was ready to die, and I said no, not knowing what he was really asking. How was I supposed to know?

“I awoke as a vampire the next day, confused and hungry, with no one but Julius to show me the way in this new undead life. He is part of what we call the Royal Family, a group of very old and very powerful vampires that enforce our rules – only use vampire bars to feed, don’t harm humans unless you have to, keep the secret of our existence, that sort of thing.

“Julius is part of an elite few that hunt down vampires who break these rules, and for a time, I was his protégé, so to speak. I was too new to everything to strike out on my own, so I followed him. Probably longer than I should have,” he said, as he sat eerily still, only his hands moving when the turned the wheel.

“And then you had your falling out,” Ruby muttered under her breath, recalling Lucinda’s words.

A betrayal, she’d called it.

“You could say that,” Harlan chuckled, his voice sounding hollow. “One thing about Julius, he’s a stickler for the rules. Loves to follow orders, that one. But one day, the vampire we were supposed to bring in for drinking dry some bar maiden happened to be an old friend of Julius’. A man named Samuel.

“I guess Julius thought he owed Samuel for something or another, he wouldn’t tell me what had happened between them exactly. And Samuel claimed draining that woman was an accident. I didn’t buy it. We actually don’t need a lot of blood to survive, and there’s no way he couldn’t tell the woman he was feeding on was dying in his arms.

“Julius insisted we let Samuel go. Since he is my Maker, after all, I was inclined to let it slide, distasteful as I found it. But looking into things, I quickly learned that bar maiden was not the first suspicious death around those parts.

“It became evident killing his donors had become somewhat of a habit for Samuel. So I ended his undead life, right then and there. Julius thought I had too little proof and that I acted rashly. I thought he was blinded by his friendship, and that he was a hypocrite. The rules were sacred, unless they came to his friends?” Harlan scoffed.

“We couldn’t trust each other after that, so we went our separate ways. The story spread, that’s why Lucinda knew all about it. I wasn’t the most popular vampire in a lot of circles after that.”

“Now that’s some heavy stuff,” Ruby muttered to herself, forgetting for a moment Harlan could hear her every heartbeat and breath, so her mumbling was probably clear as day to him.

“It’s a lot to take in, I get that,” Harlan agreed, as they pulled up to a little piece of suburbia just outside of town.

Ruby appreciated his honesty, and the insight his story gave her. She couldn’t imagine being put in a situation like that – turned into a vampire without his consent, and spending who knows how many years following Julius around, killing vampires who had strayed from the rules.

Harlan’s respect for human life was clear, made remarkable by the fact it seemed many of his kind saw themselves as above regular people. And she realized, aside from being freakishly fast and strong, and drinking blood to survive, Harlan was just a man, trying to get through life while staying true to himself.

It sent an ache through her to think of him wandering around alone, feeling cut off from both vampires and humans, and filling his time with one distraction after another. Yet despite his rocky history with Julius, here he still was, in New York trying to catch Grant at his Maker’s request, so the man couldn’t hurt any more people.

“I’m sorry for everything you’ve had to go through,” she said, feeling like the words weren’t enough to convey what she felt, but not knowing what else to say.

“You don’t need to feel sorry for me,” Harlan smiled at her as he pulled up to a well-kept, two-story house. “Many would kill for the gift of immortality, and the powers that come with it.”

“What I meant was,” Ruby said, shaking her head, “I think you’re a better man than you give yourself credit for.”

Harlan turned silent for a moment as he looked at her. There was an expression on his face she couldn’t quite decipher, but it was gone in an instant as he grinned at her.

“Are you complimenting me, Ruby Danvers?” he asked.

“Oh, shut up,” she rolled her eyes at him, getting out of the car.

Harlan appeared at her side as she started walking up the driveway, but stopped halfway there, muttering something under his breath.

“What is it?” Ruby asked, her head on a swivel.

I don’t think I can take any more ambushes today.

“We have a visitor,” he replied, sounding none too happy about it. “Time to meet my Maker,” he sighed, taking her hand as he led her to the house.