No-one else was around by the time Justin and Lewis arrived back at Club Sapphire. They were both due to start shifts in an hour's time. A hardcore of protestors had more or less camped outside there ever since the attack on Janette, rattling their banners and yelling at any vampire coming in or out of the building.

They didn't know about the back entrance to the kitchens, however, allowing Justin and Lewis to slip in unnoticed, as the protestors saved up their most vitriolic abuse for vampires they spotted late at night, convinced every one of them was ready to murder innocent children in their beds.

As he was still coming down from an adrenaline rush, Justin paused outside door. He leant against the back wall and lit two cigarettes, handing the second one to his twin. Lewis's shift in allegiances still bothered Justin, who searched himself occasionally, wondering if he could fully trust him.

But the night had convinced him of one thing—that he would do everything possible to help Dorothy bring her cure to vampires far and wide, and that he'd be taking it. Time to find out for sure if he could persuade Lewis to do the same.

"Can I talk to you?" he asked, as they blew out smoke post that first satisfying inhalation.

"Sure."

Where to start? It seemed an illogical place, but he went back to their origins. The days before they'd been turned into vampires and the experience of growing up stuck in that compound. Nicer when they'd been able to afford the more expensive places, but he remembered how stifling it had felt to live within such a restricted place day after day.

Did Lewis recall that? His brother shrugged. Lewis coped with their 'before' life by never speaking of it, except to make the odd disparaging remark about their two mothers and how useless they'd proved.

"Why didn't you sign up to the state licensing programme right away? Or when you saw that I'd signed up?" For whatever reasons, they hadn't had that conversation before, Justin too afraid to upset the applecart by asking. He'd been so relieved when Lewis came over to the 'right' side, he hadn't questioned it.

"Why d'you think?"

"I dunno. You said chasing after humans gave you such a kick, but I never believed that was the only reason."

Marty wandered out, sticking a cigarette in his mouth the second the door shut behind him. The tunic hung off him, excess bunches of material dangling off pointed shoulders. His eyes kept flickering to the spot on the ground where his mother had fallen when attacked by Letitia. Dorian had found someone to scrub the cobbles clean, but if you stared long enough, traces of ash and black slime remained. Marty still apologised to Justin every time, while Justin reassured him he bore no grudge.

And he didn't. Yes, Letitia's end disturbed him. Just nowhere near as much as it should have done.

He waited until Marty returned inside. Lewis put his phone away. They faced each other. Reflections in a mirror, literally this evening, as once again they'd chosen the same outfit. Baggy jeans, tight T-shirt and moss-green hoodie, the shade the almost perfect match to the tips of their dreads.

"I was better than you for the first time."

"What?" Justin stared at him. "Better than me? We've always been the same..."

Lewis gave him a half-smile. Think about it, bro.

With that, Justin was in Lewis's head, as a series of memories played out. Alice, one of their mothers, asking Justin if he wanted to go shopping with her, Lewis offering to come too and her shaking head. "Stay with Grania, Lewis!" Justin making everyone banoffee pie as he practised his cooking skills, and Alice and Grania oohing and ah-ing as they dug in, while Lewis asked if anyone wanted to listen to some grime track he'd re-mixed and everyone saying, "Yeah, not just now, Lewis."

The two of them in the compound, aged 14, as two other kids picked their choices for basketball teams. One chose Justin first, the other selecting almost every other teenager there before Lewis, his twin ending up on Justin's team because Justin whispered to the team captain he'd only play if he picked his brother.

An ex-girlfriend of Lewis, one Justin didn't remember—her watching Justin outside as he shot hoops. "God, he's amazing, your brother. Like, you are too but he's..."

"I didn't know," Justin said. "I'm sorry."

Lewis clapped him on the back. "Not your fault. I had this one chance where I got to be fucking awesome, so I took it. And I regret it. Nell worked it out for me last year."

"Nell?"

Lewis smiled. "Nell. When she persuaded me to come over to the other side, the first thing she said was, 'I'm sorry your mothers made your brother their favourite. That must have hurt so much. No wonder you felt the need to prove yourself.' I cried like a baby when she said that."

Something in the air shifted. Years ago stuff lifting off someone's chest. If they glanced up, they would see it fluttering off into the night.

"You always thought you were right," Lewis added, "about everything. About how to be vampire too, and I didn't always agree."

Justin reached for his brother's hand. In the old days, long, long ago, they'd once slept in a cot, hands clasped together. They grasped each other's right hand. The movement brought them almost face to face, breath blowing out as it warmed the other.

"God, no," Justin said. "I've messed up so many times. I lost the love of my life." Lewis squinted at him, the obvious question there in the raised eyebrows. Letitia or Maya? "My brother disappeared, and I didn't do enough to find him, and I keep hiding the truth from him—my twin, the guy I should trust more than any other... thing."

Lewis's mouth twitched. The outside world did its thing—continuing to operate while life-changing conversations took place. Sirens sounded in the distance. Traffic revved, then slowed on the main motorway streets away. A fox shrieked as something metallic tumbled to the ground. Two people having an argument as they walked past on the other side of the high wall. One convinced the Liberal Life Party knew what it was doing, the other sure all politicians had their heads up their arses.

Justin told him everything, allowing the words to tumble from his mouth. Griffin, the encounters with Carly Wang and Ryan Hannah, his lack of reaction to Letitia's destruction, what he had seen tonight, his reaction to Rhys and his determination to press ahead.

"There's something else too," he added, explaining the contents of the film he'd watched where James Hamilton revealed humans created the vampire over-population problem in the first place.

"So, humans were the bad guys all along?" Lewis asked.

"Some of them, yeah. You've got to admire it in a way. Imagine coming up with a plan where you and your mates can profit from vampires. The rest of the world suffers, but you're alright. Lewis... I want that cure so bad."

Lewis finished his second cigarette. "You wouldn't be able to do this anymore," he waved the butt in the air, "if you end up human."

"I'll cope. But there's so many things I'll be able to do again. Taste the food I make. Shiver in the cold."

He waved his hand in the air. Tonight's temperature hovered around freezing, and yet he and Lewis stood outside, unaffected as that spiteful wind found every gap in their clothing and whistled through it.

Lewis closed his eyes.

"Sweat in the heat. Walk down the street without people spitting at me. Drink too much whisky and end up projectile vomiting. Worry that my heart might explode out of my chest when I'm inside a woman as she squeezes her pelvis in a certain way, and I know I'm seconds off coming hard. Sail too close to death a few times and value my life more for it. Live for decades, not centuries and try my best to do worthwhile things in my three score and ten time on earth..."

Sometime between saying 'explode out of my chest' and 'value my life', Justin switched to projecting his thoughts into Lewis's mind, the sound of them hypnotic to his ear. Maybe he was trying to convince them both of the righteousness of this path. But when Lewis opened his eyes, the black glitteryness Justin saw there convinced him otherwise.

"No," Lewis said, rocking on the ball of his feet, propelling him forward. "I'll do whatever you need to help you and that scientist cure vampires, and if you go ahead, fine. But I won't be."

He headed off, tossing the two finished cigarette butts in the bin. 

AUTHOR'S NOTE - thanks for reading! Next update, Tuesday 27 July, 2021.