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“Guess you’ll be moving in here.”

“Guess so.”

Guess I’ll be saying goodbye to another part of my life.

Two hours later,Valtu and I are standing on the hill outside my apartment building, the mid-day sun casting harsh shadows on the façade that had once felt like home. The building seems different now—a reminder of a life I can no longer return to, of a career that might be over.

“Stay behind me,” Valtu says quietly as we enter the lobby, his aristocratic features tensing. “Just in case.”

We climb the stairs silently, Valtu moving with the fluid grace of centuries of predatory experience. At my door, he pauses, nostrils flaring slightly as he seems to listen.

There’s someone inside, he projects inside my mind. At least two of them. They’re looking through your things.

I nod, stepping back as Valtu places his hand on the doorknob.

Try not to break the door down, I quickly tell him, thinking of Callahan’s damage. I had to pay my landlord through the nose to replace it.

He nods and with a swift, controlled motion, he breaks the lock and pushes the door open in one smooth movement. Least it stays on the hinges.

Two men in grey suits spin around from where they’ve been ransacking my living room. One reaches for his gun, but Valtu is already across the room, moving with supernatural speed that makes even other vampires look sluggish. He grabs the first man by the throat, lifting him off his feet with one hand while the other disarms him.

The second man manages to fire a single shot before Valtu is on him too. The bullet grazes Valtu’s shoulder, barely drawing blood, nothing that won’t heal in minutes. With efficient brutality that speaks of countless battles across centuries, Valtu slams the man’s head against the wall, leaving a crack in the plaster and the man unconscious.

The first man struggles in Valtu’s grasp, eyes bulging, face purpling.

“What are you?” he gasps, terror replacing the tough-guy façade.

Valtu smiles, revealing extended fangs. “The monster under your bed.” His voice carries the weight of ages, of the very legend that inspired his literary counterpart, before he buries his teeth in the man’s neck.

Meanwhile, I close the door behind us, surveying the damage to my apartment. They’ve been thorough—drawers emptied, furniture overturned, even floorboards pried up where I once hid Elizabeth’s diary. Goes to show they weren’t the ones who stole it in the first place.

“They were looking for something,” I say as Valtu finishes drinking from the man’s neck, the man slowly losing consciousness, before he drags the body toward the bathroom.

I grab the man’s feet, helping Valtu maneuver him into the bathtub. Then Valtu returns for the first man he killed, bringing the body into the bathroom as well, blood smearing the hardwood floors. I was smart enough to not have a carpet—I’d never get my insurance deposit back after that. But after the crack in the plaster, and the broken locks, I think that money is long gone.

With both men bunched up in the tub, Valtu pulls their arms over the side and bites into their wrists, tearing open flesh until blood starts flowing out. He places a bucket beneath to catch the red rivers. Suddenly I flashback to my hallucination from the other night, the blood running under the door. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had a premonition.

“We don’t know if anyone heard that gunshot, and obviously we can’t leave bodies for the police to find,” Valtu explains, collecting the blood. “And this…” he gestures to the flowing crimson, “this is survival. We can’t let any blood go to waste.”

I watch with a mixture of practicality and revulsion. This is who we are at the heart of it all, predators who feed on humans. Yet seeing it performed by Valtu, with the casual expertise of someone who has done this countless times across centuries, drives home the reality in a way that my own feeding never has, even after killing that child murderer the other week.

“We’ll need to dispose of them,” I say, focusing on the logistics to avoid dwelling on the gruesome scene.

Valtu nods. “The bathtub will contain the mess. I’ll drain them completely, then dismember the bodies. The pieces will fit in your freezer until we can arrange proper disposal.”

He says this so simply I nearly laugh. As if he hacks up people and puts them in his freezer on a daily basis. Perhaps he’s more like Dracula than I thought.

I give him all the knives he asks for, and then turn away, moving back to my bedroom to pack what I need into two suitcases: Clothes, jewelry, cash I’ve kept hidden. Photographs and keepsakes I can’t bear to leave behind. As I work, I can hear Valtu in the bathroom—the soft splash of blood, the sick thump of meat, the occasional crack of breaking bones. He’s even humming a tune. Bach, I think.

By the time I’ve finished packing and cleaned the floors, Valtu has completed his grim task. The bathroom is spotless, no evidence remaining of what transpired. The freezer in my kitchen is now full, stuffed with carefully wrapped packages I try not to dwell on.

“We should hurry,” Valtu says, wiping his hands on a towel. “More may come looking for these two.”

I nod, taking one last look around the apartment that had been my home for the past two years. All the hopes and dreams I’d come here with feels like another life, one I have to leave in the dust.

“Ready?” Valtu asks, picking up my suitcases while I take a bucket of blood, the lid firmly in place.

“Yes,” I say, straightening my shoulders. “Let’s go.”