“Please let me come with you,” Irwin begged. “I’ll be real good. I won’t nag you. I’ll just sit in the cart. Please let me come!”

Dagwood reached for his patience, though he was having to reach slightly deeper each day because his supply was waning. Irwin was just past his third month of pregnancy now, having worked his way through the whole morning sickness period with flying colors. He glowed with vibrant life, color in his cheeks that had never been there before. His stomach was showing quite proudly by this point, though that might only have been because of how thin he had been at the start of all this. A heavier person might yet get away with hiding their bump.

As it was, there wasn’t much reason for Irwin to hide his pregnancy when he never left the apartment unless it was to visit his obstetrician. That was what he was bargaining for right now, begging for the chance to get outside and experience the world again.

Each time this happened, Dagwood came closer and closer to allowing it. He knew he couldn’t, but it hurt his heart to see Irwin pining after him in such a pathetic manner. It didn’t hurt enough to overrule what he knew was best, but it didn’t make the whole situation any more fun.

“Irwin, that would just be way too much for you. I know you’re pretty sure you can handle it but what if you can’t?”

“It’s not like we’re going across country! The grocery store is only a few blocks away!”

“Right, which is why I’m going to walk there to pick up some things for dinner and you’re just going to wait here like an adult who understands their own limitations.”

“Fuck limitations,” Irwin muttered.

“Well, you have them. You’re still healing, baby.”

Though every day was easier, normal activities were still very hard for Irwin. Being shot around the core of his person meant that everything he did moved those muscles, which caused pain. That was if he wasn’t so stiff that he couldn’t make that particular movement at all.

“Fine. But if you’re going to be buying dinner shit, you had better bring me back some dessert.”

“Ice cream?”

“Yeah and brownie stuff.”

Dagwood frowned at him. “That’s a little too much sugar.”

“I’m the one who’s pregnant here, and I say it’s fine. Ice cream and brownies won’t hurt me but they’ll hurt you if you don’t get them for me.”

I have created an entitled monster.

But since there was no other way out of this situation, Dagwood surrendered. In all honesty, he was more than happy to do so. “Fine. If you stay here, I’ll get you ice cream and I’ll buy a box of brownie mix. Okay?”

“The kind with the frosting on top.”

“Got it.” He grabbed up his keys from the counter and headed to the front door, where his shoes awaited him.

“And buy sprinkles.”

“Yes, Irwin.”

“Rainbow. The little circle kind. I hate those long ones.”

“Mhmm.” Dagwood paused in the doorway, waiting for a continuation of very specific demands, but it seemed Irwin had finally run out of requests.

“What are you just standing around for?” Irwin came up behind him and whacked Dagwood’s butt with his grabber. “Get going!”

Rubbing his rear, Dagwood stuck his tongue out at Irwin and then set off on his mission. The grabber was an adult version of those dinosaur grabber toys, with the jaws that opened and closed. Meant to assist the elderly or obese, the grabber had given Irwin a mobility boost. Picking things up and putting them down again was less of a strain when he didn’t have to bend to do it.

Then, somewhere along the way, it had gone from a useful tool to a weapon, a scepter that Irwin carried around to punctuate his demands.

Most pregnant people turned into hormonal messes with strange food cravings. Irwin had turned into a queen with a sweet tooth.

But Dagwood was smiling as he went out through the apartment, emerging outside into the heat and humidity. Fall had officially begun, but the weather had yet to get the memo. Nevertheless, he enjoyed the feeling of the sun on his hair as he set off down the block to the nearest grocery store.

Every hour he and Irwin spent together was an hour that would never be wasted.

Humming softly, Dagwood picked up his pace a little. Even with as much as he loved Irwin, it was nice to get outside for a while, to be back in his own company. He figured he needed to get in as much alone time as possible, since after the baby was born he would never be alone again.

News of Kevin Leery had finally died away. The man hadn’t been caught, however. There were simply more important things to discuss, such as the wars brewing overseas and the ever-rising tensions within America’s own borders. With no sign of Kevin, it was assumed that he had either escaped or was dead. Either way, life carried on.

Dagwood popped into the grocery store and bought what he had originally set out for, as well as Irwin’s requested items. As he was paying, waiting for the ancient machine to accept his card, he avoided the gaze of the equally-ancient cashier who seemed to be silently judging his long hair. As he was looking out the window at the front of the little store, watching the cars and the people pass by, he noticed someone in particular.

He wouldn’t have noticed her at all had he not thought her to be a skeleton at first. In fact, his initial thought was that it was Halloween decoration. He’d certainly seen weirder decorations on sale and the holiday itself was only a week or so away, so it made perfect sense.

But the skeleton was dressed oddly, and really wasn’t a skeleton at all. It was a woman with very, very short hair and a wide mouth. She leaned back against the front of a bank as though she had every right to be there, ignoring everyone who passed by. And the strangest thing was that no one even seemed to be looking at her. It was as if she didn’t exist, as if she was merely a figment of Dagwood’s imagination.

A very, very familiar figment.

“Sir? Can you please sign?”

Dagwood hardly looked at his signature as he scrawled it across the screen. It always looked terrible anyway. Damn things weren’t calibrated worth shit. He couldn’t stop staring at that woman across the street, who looked very much like the viper he’d fought with.

Why was her presence inviting no adverse comments, no sideways glances, or stares of fear? It seemed as though people weren’t even noticing her in the same way they normally saw other people. She just wasn’t there.

But she was.

Dagwood picked up his purchases and muttered his thanks to the old cashier, who scowled at him as if her life depended on how nasty of a look she could give him. He went outside and the viper—Miss Hemlock, surely—was gone.

I’m losing my mind, he thought, and shook his head. He’d already been delayed too long. Irwin was no doubt putting up a fuss back home at this unfair treatment.

However, before he could go further than ten feet, the woman stepped out of the alley to greet one man in particular. Everything about him was indistinct except for his beard, which was wild and untamed and, in Dagwood’s opinion, disgusting.

He would be damned if he didn’t know that man, too.

And now no one was paying any attention at all to the unusual pair, which was very strange indeed. Why? What was happening here? Some sort of power he didn’t understand must have been at work.

And that was it. Suddenly, a missing puzzle piece was right in front of his eyes, and he had no idea how he hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t she told him herself that she had dealings with the vampires, that she was no stranger to using the ways of lust to get what she wanted?

What if she had other abilities which hadn’t been revealed to him at the time?

Her dealings with Kevin might very well be…supernatural in nature.

Dagwood hesitated, watching them speak together. It certainly seemed like they were getting along nicely. Kevin nodded constantly, staring up into the purple eyes of the viper. There was an odd sort of slouch to his posture whenever he moved, as if he wasn’t quite in control of himself.

She’s got him under her control. But why? To what end?

Perhaps they had been all wrong from the start. Maybe the entire investigation was fucked up. They had been going after Kevin…when it seemed as if he might not be entirely in control of his own actions. But they hadn’t known. There was no way they could have known.

After another few moments of conversation, Miss Hemlock turned around and headed back into the shadows. Kevin wandered after her with that slack-yet-attentive look on his face, never more than a step away.

He needed to call the police. He needed to alert them to this situation, that Kevin was alive, still in Portsmouth, and apparently a slave to the whims of a horny snake.

He stopped just short of pushing the emergency dial button on his phone. Reality arrived back to him like a punch in the stomach. The cops all across America must be beyond overwhelmed, even now, with rumors and false sightings. They couldn’t treat each one like a priority, when time and time again these tips turned out to be nothing. There was nothing Dagwood could do or say to get the cops to listen, especially after throwing in a new element like that. He might as well have declared that Kevin was abducted by aliens. At least some people believed in those. But vampiric snake women? Not likely.

Instead of calling the police, Dagwood called Irwin.

“Hi!” Irwin chirped brightly into the phone. “You better not be calling to tell me they’re out of my favorite anything or else I’m going to need another foot rub!”

Dagwood laughed softly, though the sound felt stiff and garbled in his throat. Really, he didn’t mind giving Irwin a massage. He just pretended to hate it because Irwin enjoyed it when he was successful at getting someone to do something they didn’t want to. If this success caused the other person discomfort, that was even better. God, he loved the other wolf’s quirks. They made everything so much more interesting.

“No, they, uh, they had it. But I’m thinking maybe you should just heat up one of the frozen pizzas in the freezer instead. Use your grabber and don’t bend over too much, okay? I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

Though he couldn’t see Irwin, he could feel the humorous light dying away, draining out to be replaced by fear. “Dagwood, what’s going on?”

“It’s nothing bad,” Dagwood said, cheerfully. “I’ve just…got to be a good Samaritan for a little bit, okay? I know you understand.”

“A good Samaritan? Who are you helping? Dagwood?”

“I’ll tell you later, I promise. Every excruciating detail. Every time I breathe. But for right now, I’ve really got to get going, okay?”

“Okay.” There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. “You know, if you really wanted time away from me so badly, you didn’t have to make up a story.”

“Irwin, I’m not…”

“Lighten up! I’m kidding! You go do your thing, and I’ll be over here trying to take my pizza out of the oven before it burns, okay? I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

As he hung up the phone, he silently added, and I’m going to need you to lend me your strength, here. Help me make it through this, because it’s about to get real damn risky.

Looking around, Dagwood spotted a young mother pushing a stroller nearby and headed towards her. She saw him coming and started to walk slightly faster. Though she smiled in his direction, it was of the sort that said, sorry, not interested.

“Excuse me,” he said.

She didn’t stop. “What?”

The child in the stroller, a little boy in a blue jumpsuit and a baseball cap, stared at Dagwood. He couldn’t help but to smile at him, then turned his attention back to the mother and held up his bag of groceries.

“I was buying things for dinner and dessert with my…uh, wife. But I just got some bad news and our plans have changed. Wouldn’t want to see this go to waste, so…it’s yours if you want it.”

The woman had stopped now and was looking at him with a more open expression. She clearly hadn’t expected this.

“She, uh, she’s pregnant. So. It’s brownies and ice cream, and then we were going to have spaghetti so there’s salad things, too. Do you want it?”

“Well,” she said, a little hesitantly, “I wouldn’t want your money to go to waste. But are you sure?”

“Very sure.”

“We were heading home anyway, so…all right.” Dagwood handed the groceries to her and waved as she walked off. As soon as she was far enough away that she wouldn’t be able to hear it, he took off running as fast as he could.

Sprinting out directly across the street, he ducked through traffic. Once he was on the other side, he bolted in the direction of the alleyway near where Miss Hemlock had been idling. There was nothing extraordinary about it. It was just an alley. Yet, as he stepped foot between those dingy walls, he couldn’t shake the dreadful feelings that he was walking into some sort of trap. It was preposterous, as neither Kevin nor the viper woman had taken any notice of him, yet his spine still crawled.

Dagwood lifted his nose to the air and breathed in. The familiar smells of trash and decay and mildew flooded into his nostrils, along with the acrid ammonia notes of urine and other things that didn’t bear thinking about. Beneath the stronger scents, there was something so subtle that he wouldn’t have been able to detect it if he hadn’t been looking for it. It was a cold scent, with a dry edge. The scent of a reptile. A snake.

He followed the scent down the alley and to the right, where he ran into an overflowing dumpster which blocked much of the path. Growling low to himself, frustrated, he tried to pick up the scent again and couldn’t.

Though he was loathe to shift when there was a crowded main street only a short distance away, he had no choice. His senses were strong, but they would be even stronger in animal form.

Dropping down to his paws, Dagwood started to wade his way through the clumps of garbage. Most of it was harmless enough, but then he put his paw in something squishy, and disgust nearly sent him leaping backwards. Instead, he tucked his head down and pushed through the muck to the other side, following the faint trail. At some points, the smell turned even colder, more like frost or metal than reptile. Dagwood could only assume this was because of her vampiric tendencies.

He had to turn into a human to cross a street where the alley ended and then he paused, because the trail had once again disappeared. “What the hell?” he grunted. Someone passing by shot him an odd look and then hurried on past with their head down, clearly figuring that it would be best not to bother him. He lingered on the sidewalk, trying to be as discreet about his scenting as possible, but people were still looking at him weirdly.

There was no place for the two of them to have gone. None at all. It was as if they had simply vanished into thin air.

Suddenly, Dagwood looked at the street. There was a round manhole cover in the middle of the busy road, presumably leading down to a sewer. That would explain why he had lost the trail, if they went down there. The reek of car exhaust and oil and hot asphalt covered up everything else, no matter how hard he might try to ignore them.

The question now remained of exactly how the two of them had gotten down there without being seen or run over. Miss Hemlock must have had quite a bag of tricks up her sleeve that he wasn’t aware of, if she could manage this sort of trickery.

He could try to find another entrance to the sewer, but he was no maintenance worker. There was no telling how any of these tunnels connected. If he went somewhere else, he could very easily get lost and die down there. They would find his body in a year, possibly never. The longer he lingered out here, trying to make this impossible decision, the more distance was being put between him and the people he wanted answers from. If they got far enough away, he might very well end up getting lost after all.

Pulling in a deep breath, Dagwood prepared to face his greatest challenge yet. He walked up to the side of the road and waited for a sufficient gap in traffic. Someone driving by flipped him the bird, as if they somehow derived pleasure from refusing to stop for him.

Someone tugged on Dagwood’s jacket sleeve. He turned to see an old woman looking up at him, diminutive and harmless; nevertheless, his heart hammered wildly in his chest from having been startled out of his deep concentration. “Yes, ma’am?” he said, voice hoarse. “What can I do for you?”

“You can’t cross the street here, dearie. It’s much too busy. The crosswalk is up that way.” She pointed. Her finger trembled, wavering wildly in a vague direction.

“Oh, thanks. But I’m not trying to cross the street.”

“Oh? Do you need a ride? I can call my grandson…”

He smiled at her. The elderly and the newly-born were some of the sweetest things on the face of the planet, it seemed. So innocent and willing. “Thanks, but no. I’m trying to get to that manhole.”

“Oh, you want to go down into the sewer like those other two. Oh, my, she was a frightful sight, wasn’t she!” The old woman fluttered her hands in distress and then held them over her heart. She didn’t stay in that position for long however, dropping one hand down to grip her standing cane.

“I bet she…” The smile slid off Dagwood’s lips. He looked more closely at the old woman. Round face, round glasses, round white hair. She peered back at him with an earnest expression.

If she said what I thought she said…

“A scary woman, you said?”

“Like a snake,” she hissed. “She walked through the street with cars coming either way. But let me tell you, young man, they parted around her like the Red Sea around Moses. I think she might be the devil in disguise. Why do you want to go down there, too? Is it Hell? I’ll call my Pastor!”

He held up his hands. “It’s okay, ma’am. I’m a…hunter.”

She seemed to accept this fact without needing to know exactly what it was he hunted. Nodding emphatically, she crossed herself and then touched his arm. “Go bravely. Don’t trust the lies on a serpent’s tongue.”

“Trust me, I won’t.”

“I’ll stand guard,” she offered.

“No, no, you probably shouldn’t do that! Just, leave this to a professional, okay?”

Still nodding and crossing herself, she lurched away, leaning heavily against her cane. As he watched her walk away, Dagwood wondered just how wrong he’d been about that whole sweet and innocent thing.

But those were inconsequential thoughts. He still needed to take his first step into the road. Every way he looked, there seemed to be no openings. Just car after car. If one lane was clear, the others were packed.

Rather than wait another second and risk the trail going cold entirely, he stepped into the street. A truck was barreling towards him, showing no signs of stopping. Instead, it swerved and missed him by inches. The force of wind from its passage nearly knocked him over, but he caught himself by tightening his core muscles to restore his balance. Breathless, he started to walk and just kept walking no matter what came his way or how close he was to being hit. Tires squealed as people hit their brakes, horns blared, and windows were lowered so that the passengers within could shout obscenities at him. He ignored it all and reached the manhole cover.

“Hey, fucker, what are you doing?”

“That’s trespassing, man!”

Some woman was insisting that the cops be called because he was clearly an escaped mental patient. Dagwood heaved upwards on the cover and it slid reluctantly out of place, though not as reluctantly as it might have had it not been shifted very recently. The grime which had attached it to its place like glue was disturbed and crumbled away, scattering over his arms.

Someone came up behind him. From where, he didn’t exactly know. Maybe he’d effectively stopped traffic. But now they tugged on his arm, trying to grapple him up out of the sewer even as his strength overpowered theirs. First his legs went into the hole and then his torso. Now several people were grappling for him, grabbing his arms, but he pushed them all away and grabbed the cover to shove it back into place. From the sounds of the cries of pain, one of them got their fingers caught.

Dagwood mentally apologized but didn’t actually slow down. Even as he was dropping down the ladder as fast as he could do, the people behind him were opening the lid and shouting down after him. Their voices melded and echoed strangely.

He dropped down into his wolf form and took off running as fast as his legs could carry him. Beneath the dank odors of the sewer, there was that distinctly cold smell. He swung his head as he ran off through the dark, very aware of water rushing nearby only a short distance away. His steps echoed as rapidly as his heart was beating, and the steady dripping of water formed a metronome which all other sounds seemed to align with.

The scent took an abrupt turn and he followed it, away from the filthy water. Rats skittered away from his approach, and he heard larger, less identifiable movements as well. Not daring to dwell upon the origins of those, he kept going.

Then there was a light ahead of him, so faint that human eyes couldn’t have detected it. Only his superior wolf senses could pick up on it, that little glimmer of gray in the dark. The scent was heading straight for it, so he pushed himself from a run into a sprint, stretching out his legs as far in front of him as he could.

Then, one of his leaping bounds landed him directly in a greasy patch of water. He saw it as he was coming down, but it was too late for him to do anything. His paws hit the grease, slipped, skidded, and he fell to the side. He twisted, trying to catch himself, but his hind legs were coming down almost exactly where his front paws had. He fell, hitting his chest hard on the concrete.

Don’t go in the water. Don’t go in the water.

He scrabbled desperately, trying to prevent himself from tumbling right over the edge into a nearby canal, and he came to a natural stop several feet away anyway. Panting, feeling embarrassed, he rose up onto his paws and shook out his fur. His pelt felt sticky and damp now that he’d slid through a puddle, but he was otherwise no worse for wear.

Growling softly, Dagwood lifted his nose into the air and continued more cautiously after the reek of cold. The scent was stronger now for some reason, making him feel as if he must be getting closer. The light, too, was more powerful. Another turn and the glow was almost blinding. Straight down this way was the source of the light, though he couldn’t exactly tell what he was looking at.

Sure was painful, though. He squinted his eyes, narrowing them until they were nearly shut, but the glow seemed to penetrate even through his furry eyelids.

Closer and closer, like he was approaching the sun. Close enough to feel the heat from all that night. Pain in his eyes, spots dancing in his brain. Just too much.

Then, somehow, he was through the light and yet inside it. Stopping, panting, Dagwood stared around to try and figure out what the hell this was. Beneath the reek of mildew, the foul scent of cold silver was everywhere in here.

The room was very large but astonishingly vacant, lacking all but stains where machinery once stood. Now that empty space had been filled with a circle of high-powered photography lights, all of which were angled in different directions. The effect was annoying, dazzling, terrifying, and many other things. Light clashed against light. Shadows ran in places where there should have been none, unnaturally stark. And the closer he looked, the more detail he could make out of the room behind the light stands.

Or, more accurately, what the room held.

Shadowy figures stood in the dark, black silhouettes rendered indistinct by flowing clothes and chaotic lighting. There were at least fifty, perhaps more. He couldn’t really tell if they were all looking at him but he could feel the intense heat of their gazes burning into his pelt.

Some sort of cult, was all he could think. Some cult or perhaps something even worse. Vampires, all around. He knew that in the old days, vampires lived in colonies, but they had adapted to the human world and existed more in family groups composed of sires, children, and thralls. To have so many in one place meant there was a particularly powerful and well-to-do master at the head of them all, or several groups had joined forces for…whatever this was.

“So,” a soft, seductive voice murmured. “Here we are. All of us in one spot. After such a long chase, don’t you feel gratified?”

Dagwood turned back into a human, feeling a hundred eyes following his movements. He turned in what he thought was the direction of the voice, though there was so much echoing it was hard to tell. “Viper,” he said. “Or should I call you Miss Hemlock? Is that your stage name still or do you have a new identity these days?”

Sensual laughter. A chill went down his spine, not because of the effect it was having on him, but because he was disgusted that she was even trying. Her charms didn’t seem to work on people who weren’t inclined to be attracted to beautiful women, such as himself and that old woman. That at least was an advantage he had, though it sickened him to think of all those people forced to do things against their will. Though nothing unethical happened, it just went to show how something of that manner could be possible.

“I prefer the name Nightshade these days, but I do love the classics. Those were joyful times for me. The prime of my life.”

She hadn’t seemed terribly old to him, but now he recalled that the panther he had spoken to was very old. It should have stood to reason that the viper was around the same age, yet she didn’t show it. More vampiric influence, perhaps.

“Of course, I hope to extend this life of mine for as long as possible.”

“So then is this the part where you tell me all your plans through a cliched villainous speech?” Dagwood snorted. He didn’t used to do that, but the habit rubbed off on him after being around Irwin so much. There was something just right about a short, haughty sound of derision, as if something didn’t even deserve a full response.

One of the shadows moved, slightly to his left. It wasn’t Nightshade, but was instead Kevin. Stumbling forward with that lovestruck puppy expression, he stared at his feet.

This wasn’t the posture of a confident killer. This was the way a broken person might act, one who had seen and done too much.

Dagwood reached out for the younger man. “Kevin? Kevin Leery?”

Kevin moved but it wasn’t to accept his gesture. He grabbed for his pocket and whipped out something that glistened dark and light at the same time. Clearly a weapon, though it made no sound upon emerging from where he had hidden it.

Reacting on instinct, Dagwood threw his arm into the air to catch and deflect the blow. The lights playing with his eyesight meant that he was a little bit off, and wet metal glanced across his palm.

He hissed and drew back after shoving Kevin away. It was an easy thing to do, much easier than it should have been. The man was practically skin and bones, wasted and wan when the light fell on him.

“Tell me what’s going on,” Dagwood said. He spoke not to anyone in particular, addressing the entire circle of vampires. “No dumbass speeches. No grand hyperbole. Give me the fucking facts.”

“You think you have any right to demand such things of us?” Nightshade laughed.

No one else laughed. In fact, the atmosphere in the room seemed to somehow grow even colder. Something was off here, but he didn’t quite know exactly what it was to be able to take advantage of it. Some sort of power imbalance, perhaps.

“I don’t know what all these vampires are doing here, but I seem to remember stabbing you in the fucking lung so you’d give me information. Which turned out to be wrong. So why don’t we try again?” Dagwood bared his fangs in what he assumed to be Nightshade’s direction. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to go through my champion this time.”

As if this was a signal, Kevin lurched forward. Dagwood could hardly see him, but he could feel the movement and twisted around to the side. Grabbing Kevin’s wrist, he twisted until the younger man shrieked with pain. The knife clattered to the ground. Twisting his entire body into the motion, Dagwood shoved his shoulder against Kevin and sent him sprawling. He grabbed up the knife and stood again, waiting for the next attack.

Kevin just lay on his back, breathing heavily, looking winded. Dagwood looked at the knife in his hand. It was covered in some sort of sticky black substance to prevent the light from catching on it, thus making for attacks that were harder to deflect.

“That wasn’t very difficult,” Dagwood said.

Nightshade laughed. “But that was only the beginning!”

Now Kevin was up, shuffling towards him like a zombie. He looked anything but threatening. He looked sick. Drained.

Drained.

Chills crawled up Dagwood’s back. That was a key word in this situation, jostling his mind so that an idea spilled from the confused chaos of his thoughts. As Kevin approached, Dagwood kept taking steps backwards. He was searching for a strong beam of light at a particular angle and once he found it, he backed up past it so that Kevin would have to go through it as well.

As the light shone on the younger man, the truth of his situation was revealed. Dagwood thought he seemed thin, wasted, beaten down, but this was a level of emaciation which bordered on ghastly. Kevin’s face was sallow and all of his bones seemed to jut out from beneath his skin. His arms and neck were covered in dotted scars, but they were odd scars that resembled uncountable pockmarks. They raised his skin almost like a scale pattern, overlapping and protruding. Some of the marks weren’t scars at all but were wounds in various stages of healing. Some of them still had fresh, blackened scabs.

Kevin was a thrall.

Some vampire, or perhaps a viper who desperately wanted to be a vampire, had been biting him, drinking his blood, wearing him down to this pathetic excuse of a man. He looked like death warmed over, as if a weaker man would already have succumbed to the constant abuse. No doubt he hadn’t had a bit of rest ever since Nightshade got him in her clutches, whenever that was.

Dagwood slid into a defensive posture and started to move in a slow circle, making Kevin pivot with him. The man clearly wasn’t in control of himself, making Dagwood more and more certain that someone else was somehow in control of him.

They moved together like a dance, but it was the saddest dance in the history of the universe, with two clearly-mismatched partners. Kevin breathed raggedly, his eyes glazed. Dagwood looked deep into that hazy gaze, searching for some remnant of the real man inside, but there was no light to be found, no hope. Not yet.

“You’re a monster, you snake,” Dagwood said. He shoved the knife into his belt. He damn sure wasn’t going to use it. “I don’t know how you can live with yourself.”

As if in response to his taunting, though none of it had been aimed at him, Kevin lurched forward and threw out his arm. His hand formed into a weak fist, the fingers in all the wrong positions. Though most martial arts didn’t deal with punching, Dagwood knew all about the basics of a variety of fighting skills. The thumb needed to curve outside the fingers instead of being pressed in towards the palm, or else it was likely to break. And the blow itself needed to come from the knuckles, not the flat of the fingers.

Kevin’s attack ran counter to all those common rules, which made him think that whoever was controlling him didn’t actually know much about fighting. If Nightshade had ever lifted a finger to do her own dirty work, it probably hadn’t been for a very long time. If she knew the vampiric technique of commanding others to her will, she would just get others to do everything for her.

Dagwood held up his hand and caught the fist coming his way. It hardly made a sound, hardly felt like anything. He twisted hard to the side, feeling tendons and muscles strain beneath his grip. The pain hardly seemed to register for Kevin however, and Dagwood had to stop before he broke a bone. The last thing he wanted to do was punish someone who didn’t really deserve it.

That made the whole situation much more complicated, however. How was he going to stop Kevin unless he hurt him?

Kevin struck out at him again and Dagwood caught his fist again, then twisted away as Kevin reached for the knife stuck in his belt.

“Tricky,” Dagwood called out, pacing around the ring of lights just outside of Kevin’s reach. “But not tricky enough. What else do you have up your sleeve, you old bitch?”

The very air seemed to be charged with something that he couldn’t quite explain, as if all the shadowed figures were feeling the same emotion so strongly that it carried over into reality. It wasn’t a scent so much as it was a sensation of something pointed and focused. Interest? But laced with something lighter. Amusement, perhaps. Were they laughing at him, or Kevin, or Nightshade? But an even more important question was why they laughed. What about this could be funny to them?

Kevin rushed at him, and there was even less finesse in his movements this time. His arms were pinwheels, churning madly, and his fingers were hooked into claws to rip and scratch. Ducking and twisting, Dagwood easily avoided the entire onslaught.

“Maybe,” he said, “if you wanted your thrall to last, you shouldn’t have been so greedy.”

A frustrated snarl broke through the eerie silence outside the ring of lights. Dagwood’s blood was up and his body was in perfect rhythm, so this time he easily pinpointed where the sound was coming from. To his left and back slightly. Staring in that direction, completely ignoring Kevin as the man grabbed for his knife again, he could see one shadow that didn’t match the others. Thin, a little crooked, with a distinctly rounded skull where the others seemed to be wearing cloaks to hide their features.

“I see you,” Dagwood taunted softly. He made the words come singsong-y, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Everything in his entire being was tensing, his thoughts racing, his muscles preparing for what he was about to do. It seemed to be the only way to stop this stupid dance. “Do you think you’re beautiful, snake? Everyone must tell you that because you make them, but what would they say if they saw you for real?”

“Kill him,” Nightshade hissed.

Kevin made another desperate grab for the knife in an attempt to appease his mistress, but he only failed again as Dagwood dodged him. The other man was breathing heavily now, wearing himself down to nothing. With all the blood and substance that had been taken from him, it was a wonder that he’d been able to do even this much.

“Your charms don’t work on me. And I think you’re an ugly, stupid bitch.”

Whirling around, Dagwood grabbed Kevin and wrenched him up into the air with both hands wrapped in his shirt. Kevin struggled, kicking Dagwood in the stomach, but the blows were too flimsy to even cause damage to tissue paper.

Sorry, buddy.

Dagwood dropped him.

Kevin landed hard on his own two feet, stumbled, and then fell on his back. All the breath rushed out of his lungs in a great gust of air, and all he could do was lie there, stunned. Hating it, knowing he had to do it, Dagwood bent down and grabbed him up again, then charged for the wall of lights with Kevin thrust out in front of him.

The shadowy watchers slid out of the way as Dagwood pushed Kevin hard against the wall, whamming even more air from his chest. Choking, Kevin collapsed on the ground and gripped at his throat. For a long moment it seemed as though he wouldn’t be able to breathe on his own but then he wheezed.

Satisfied that Kevin would live, at least for now, Dagwood turned and grabbed one of the photography lights. Spinning back around, he dropped it on top of Kevin.

The atmosphere in the odd room turned to one of bemusement as Dagwood continued to bring heavy lights over to Kevin, burying him in them. They would have posed no dilemma to someone stronger, but Kevin was only growing weaker as the seconds passed. If he even tried to get up, these would keep him busy for a time. Plus, shifting all those lights would be a noisy affair; there was no way he could quietly retract himself from them and sneak up on Dagwood.

As he was bringing over yet another light, movement came from behind him. There were footsteps, yet they seemed to slither across the ground instead of simply stepping. Twisting around, Dagwood swung the light and smashed it across Nightshade’s torso as she lunged at him.

A cry of pain left her lips and she staggered back, but otherwise she seemed unharmed.

Too strong. How many people has she used and abused? Kevin isn’t the first if she’s this good. Must have been more to practice on, hone her talents.

In the play of a hundred beams of light, Nightshade looked like she might actually be a demon. Her eyes glowed with serpentine hate.

Dagwood knew what she was going to do before she did it. She shifted, dropping down to the ground as a coil of snake. Her scales shimmered, resplendent, and then her body undulated and she disappeared very quickly into the dark.

Dagwood shifted as well, holding his breath. His ears pricked up as he listened to the slick sound of a viper sliding around the room, taunting him. She wanted him to panic, to jump at a shadow so that she could emerge from elsewhere and deliver a bite; this time, she probably wouldn’t hold back with her venom.

Though he felt as wound up as a man could ever be, only centimeters away from losing his mind to tension, he held onto his practiced calm and just waited. The sounds came closer, then drifted away again. Back and forth, taunting him, letting the seconds pass.

There were sounds elsewhere in the sewers, the sounds of something bigger than a rat moving about, but he couldn’t devote any time to thinking of such things. Every fiber of his being was trained on the snake.

There.

A distinct shuffle, as if a sinuous body was being drawn in tight on itself. Dagwood twisted around, opening his jaws as the viper lunged for him with her fangs out and dripping with poison. He intended to meet her head on, to crush her skull, sending his fangs right into her brain.

He didn’t count on her having control over her trajectory. It was unlike anything he had ever seen. A muscle twitched somewhere along Nightshade’s body and then she was not coming straight for his face, but was about to hit his shoulder. Nothing he could do could prevent this. She had moved too fast. Quick as he was, there was no time left for him to counter.

Despair shot through his body, clouding his thoughts. His heart seemed to collapse in on itself. Images flashed through his mind of all the things he would never get to experience now because of this one mistake. Irwin would be alone with their child, raising her all by himself, and…

The instant before those fangs pierced his skin, someone very small, furry and red dashed between them.

“Irwin!” Dagwood shrieked, voice erupting from his lupine throat.

And Nightshade struck.