i hear a click of metal. sissy has pulled the dart gun off her back, jacked back the trigger. she points the gun at me, her eyes fixed warily on the drool splattering down my bare chest.

"we re-turn now," she says. "you first."

"no, wait." the words sloshing in my mouth, drowning in my saliva.

her head snaps. "no. now." her words coming out lispy, mired in wet bands of saliva in her mouth. "i dart you. then i'll turn the gun around, dart myself."

the floor starts to tremble, the walls shake. i gaze outside quickly. they're almost upon us, the millions from the metropolis.

"wait," i say, lifting my arms. "just wait."

the dart gun trembles. because she's feeling it, too. the conflict. the equivocation.

"i'm going to shoot you now," she says. "don't move."

"wait."

she stares into my eyes, past the drab, unreadable expression of my face. and in my eyes she sees something i'm trying to hide, and it is the very thing she's trying to deny.

we don't want to be re-turned. we don't want to be squeezed into the confines of heper nature again.

hands trembling, the smallest flash of fear breaking through the plane of her face, she raises the dart gun, points it at my neck. "never forget who you are," she says, and starts pulling the trigger.

a flash of movement. from behind her. a mere blur, a flash of white, whorls of flaming red.

ashley june, a bullet of ferocity and velocity, smacks into sissy's side. sissy goes flying, the dart gun skittering across the floor. ashley june pounces, her body looping right across the suite, landing on the dart gun. she spins around, the gun pointing at sissy.

fifty-five

ashley june is a pyre of savage beauty. the dusk sun has descended into her hair, and the stars become imprisoned in her eyes. i'm seeing her not through the scope of a sniper rifle or the tinted glass of the panic room. nor, most of all, through heper eyes. but in the flesh, in dusker flesh, with dusker eyes. and it is as if i'm seeing her for the first time. and when her gaze falls on me, my lungs grow hot because i have forgotten to breathe.

"you," she says. a huskiness scraping her monotone voice. her face shines with the alabaster white glow of a corona. "you did it. you turned. i knew you would." her tongue licks out. "it feels perfect, doesn't it?"

"what have you done?" sissy says. "what have you unleashed here?"

ashley june's face flicks back to sissy. "i did what anyone would have done in my position. what you would have done." she turns to me again. "i used my knowledge to my advantage. i stole in here, hunted down as many hepers as i could. it was easy. they were all in the basement, like food served up on a platter. then all the palace staffers wanted in on it, started hunting down the remaining hepers. it was an all-out binge. better than advertised."

a pained wistfulness flares in her eyes. "it was supposed to be just me and you, gene. to celebrate your turning. how awesome would that have been. all that heper blood and flesh and bone you missed out on . . ." she stares outside, at the approaching masses of people. "and now look, you're just like those latecomers. not a heper left. except one."

my eyes swing to the tanks, to david floating, eyes still closed.

"not that one," she says.

"then who-"

"her," she says, keeping the muzzle pointed at sissy. "once we re-turn her."

"stop. you don't understand," sissy says. "we can help you. we can re-turn-"

"sorry, but we've already had this conversation."

"you don't get it," sissy continues. "we'll dart ourselves with this origin serum and-"

"-it'll turn us back to heper?" ashley june finishes. "do you really want that? be honest now: do you really want that?" ashley june scratches her wrist. "because by now you've realized how much more comfortable you feel. everything simply flows better, doesn't it? feet and hands gliding and sliding in synch instead of crashing about like uncoordinated appendages."

sissy steps toward ashley june. "give me the dart gun."

but ashley june only shakes her head, raises the gun. "everything that has fallen apart is coming back together. everything is being restored. everything is going to be perfect. except there's one last thing to do." the temperature in the room suddenly plummets.

ashley june, keeping the muzzle pointed at sissy, places the stock of the gun firmly against her shoulder.

sissy falls into a crouch, lips pulled back, fangs jutting out.

ashley june hisses, her finger tightening around the trigger.

sissy kicks out with her legs, bounds toward ashley june. closing the distance by half, sissy leaps at ashley june. fangs bared, claws unsheathed.

ashley june pulls the trigger. a >twang, no louder than a rubber band stretched and released, so innocuous, i think the dart gun has misfired.

sissy spins sideways in the air, then falls to the ground, arms and legs splaying about. she stands up on her legs and blinks, quickly, rapidly. a dart is jutting out the base of her neck, right in the tender dip between collarbones. she pulls it out, throws it against the wall. "nothing's happening," she says, scratching her wrist. "it didn't work. you-" and then she is suddenly collapsing to the floor. reduced to a quivering heap of flesh.

i start to move toward sissy.

"don't," ashley june says. she cocks the dart gun. fires again at sissy, hits her in the thigh.

"what are you doing?" i say in a loud voice.

"giving her what she wants. she wanted to become a heper again, didn't she? so i'm just helping her."

with the two origin darts injected into her, sissy is re-turning rapidly. her head snaps back. her hands smack against the ground in quick, jerky pats. an anguished groan escapes her mouth.

"why are you doing this?" i shout.

ashley june turns to me. her eyes, a shattering softness in them. "because i know everything. the whole truth. and it's not what you think. it's not what you think at all."

"what are you talking about?"

"sometimes the truth doesn't set you free. sometimes it haunts you. sometimes you wish you never found out."

a horrific yell issues from sissy. her back severely bent, concaving her stiffening body. i start moving toward her. and that's when i smell it. a whiff of the decadently delicious. the fragrance of heper, blooming and ripening by the second.

"shissy!" i say. her designation odd on my tongue, slushing out, snared in saliva. i turn to ashley june. "she's re-turning." my jaw starts vibrating uncontrollably.

ashley june wipes drool from her lips. "that's the idea."

heper fragrance is flowing out of the pores of sissy's skin, an irresistible velvet seduction. she moans in pain, but all i can think of is the flow of her bloodstream, swishing and pulsating so very near.

i fight my impulses. take two steps away from her, every centimeter a tug against the grain of my craving. to lick her, to taste her.

to eat and drink it.

i smash my hand against the window. it cracks, first in a single line, then, as i pound it again and again, into an expanding web.

"don't fight it," ashley june says. "you will understand later when i explain. but she has to die." she lifts the dart gun at sissy, readying to fire off the last dart.

"stop!" i shout. the odor, so much thicker, so much more luxurious, now. i curl my claws into the marble floor, trying to hold myself in place.

"better that she dies," ashley june says. "better for us. for everyone. you will come to understand. go on," she says to me, flicking her chin in sissy's direction. "you get first dibs, poor baby." tilting her head, she howls with pleasure. and her voice is joined by another, a harmonizing howl that takes me a second to realize is coming from my own mouth. ashley june shudders; i shudder.

a heper. right in front of us. virginal and tasty and irresistible.

"don't fight it," ashley june says. "don't resist it."

my tongue, red and thick, laps out. i can almost lick up the odor in the air, it is so thick and tantalizing. the flesh of the heper quivers suggestively, and i am about to leap at it, on the soft, wondrous flesh, on the lava of blood that is mine with the slightest prick of my fangs. the desire so pure, so overwhelming, even the succumbing to it will be an exquisite pleasure in itself.

"gene!" its face is twisted in an effluence of emotion. fear humming off it, sweat dripping off its chin, a tornado of ungainly excitements tiding off its body.

i hunch my body down, preparing to pounce. i can almost feel the warm melt of supple flesh on my lips, its blood gushing into my mouth, its body squirming under my paws.

"gene." it's spoken again. its voice is calmer, though still tinged with fear. but there's a different look in its eyes. not fear. not panic. something different. it holds me in place, glues my hands and feet to the ground. "gene," it says again, and this time all fear is erased from its voice and its eyes are filled with strength and softness both.

i stop, head cocking to the side. and then i see. a brief moment of clarity of a different kind. of a watermark imprinted on my mind, my heart.

it's sissy.

and then i am remembering; then i am reseeing her. who she is, what she means to me.

there's only one way out of this.

i pull the strap of the shotgun over my head, touch its long, cold length. and press the muzzle against the bottom of my chin.

"no!" shouts ashley june. "what are you doing?"

"i can't, i can't," i say, and even now my saliva is running down my chin and sliding down the long shaft of the gun.

"don't!" ashley june says, her hands white against the cold steel of the dart gun.