"Open up! Come on, hurry up! I'm freezing my tits off out here!"

The words, accompanied by hammering on the door, woke Lewis from a dream he hadn't been enjoying. Like all dreams, though, the memory of it slipped away as he regained consciousness, leaving only a vague impression of sorrow.

He stretched out, arm accidentally hitting the vampire slumbering beside him—the woman he'd forgotten about. She grunted, grabbing a pillow and pulling it over her head. "Tell whoever to fuck off. It's too early."

The door knocker kept up her incessant hammering, sticking her finger on the buzzer and holding it there. How had she accessed the building? Lewis's factor fees—a fat whack of crypto coin every month—included enhanced security precisely to stop unwanted visitors.

"Come on, old man! I know you're in there. I've got, like, super- important news."

Next to him, the vampire removed her pillow, expression amused. "Old man? What age are you?"

A new convert to the joys of prowling the shadows and drinking blood, Greta had joined the vampires at the grand ol' age of thirty-five, so while she might look older than him—her eyes that bit more hooded and the beginnings of marionette lines from her mouth to chin, the years she had stacked up on earth were nowhere near Lewis's grand total, even if he didn't look a day over twenty-one.

He kissed her and switched on the screen next to his bed. It flickered into life—the feed from the camera positioned outside the flat's front door. The door knocker must have been expecting the scrutiny. She tipped her head up. Black, wavy hair brushed away from her face, round dark eyes and dressed in a black hoodie and jeans, a distinctive red and black logo on the hoodie. The tits—well, she had drawn attention to them herself, hadn't she, and Lewis had always been a boobs man—stuck out hinting at a substantial cup size.

Familiar, sure. Human too.

"Let me in," she said, "Maya sent me to talk to you."

At that, Lewis shot off the bed, Greta objecting as his movement sent her toppling to the floor. He grabbed the bathrobe hanging on the hook on the bedroom door and hurried out. Greta scrambled after him, her nose twitching the closer they got to the front door.

"Is she...?"

He turned on her. "If you touch her, I'll kill you myself, okay?"

Greta's eyes glittered, her mouth opening in a furious snarl as she flew at him. After the last disastrous encounter, Lewis had sworn off young vampires. That lack of self-control made them a pain in the arse. But Greta had slid up to him last night, whispering in his ear that every newly converted female vampire considered it a rite of passage to sleep with Lewis. A once-upon a time model, her hourglass figure, rippling hair and slanting cheekbones and her promises of what she could do with her tongue, proved impossible to resist.

He grabbed her throat now, slamming her against the wall. "Understand?"

When he'd been human all those years ago, such an assault on a woman would have been abhorrent. Vampires, eh? Known to rewrite the rule books on everything etiquette related. Greta's fingers pulled at his hands. Her eyes returned to normal. He let her go.

She turned the air blue with the names she called him.

"Sorry," he said, "but I need to know what she wants, and after a while you won't be tempted by every single human who crosses your path. You learn to control that instinct."

Greta, busy rubbing her throat, gave him a 'yeah, right' look. To be on the safe side, as he pressed the button that activated the door, the metal shutters rising slowly, he pecked Greta on the cheek, promised he would be in touch, booted her out and grabbed the woman on the other side, whisking her under the shutters before Greta could get her hands (and teeth) into her.

Greta shot the woman a predatory glare and ambled off, the studied nonchalance not fooling Lewis for a second.

"Not interrupting anything am I?" the woman asked, as she dusted off her clothes. Lewis might have promised Greta vampires got used to humans and didn't feel the need to pounce on their necks, but this one radiated temptation. That smooth, olive-skinned neck, the white, white eyes that would flare and then glaze over as he sunk his teeth into the arterial vein...

"Don't even think about it," the woman said, the corners of her mouth tilting upwards in amusement. "If I wanted to, y'know, I could persuade you to cut off your own head."

The logo on her hoodie showed she was an Argist Academy recruit. Vampire hunters extraordinaire. Most of the time, they left him alone. Something told him she wasn't here on official academy business.

"I'm Ilya, by the way." She stuck her hand out.

Lewis shook it. Formidable enemies entertained him. Life as an immortal had too many long, boring bits. It made you welcome any change from the norm with open arms. The last few years had teetered on and on in their endlessness, one day the same as any other.

He ushered her in. The flat, a standard new pod apartment specifically created for vampires, differed from the homes once offered to Lewis and his ilk. Long ago, the authorities provided vampires with places to live identical to those of humans—homes with kitchens and bathrooms, for instance. Pointless when you didn't need the purpose of either.

This apartment only contained rooms and furniture to lounge around on—beds, sofas and armchairs, all covered in dark velvet fabrics and the walls covered in a black print wallpaper, soft golden low lights stuck in the walls you activated by voice.

Ilya bumped into an armchair. Lewis, used to living in a state of perpetual gloom, asked his flat's smart central system for more illumination. The room brightened.

Ilya sank into the armchair and hooked her legs up. Lewis took the seat opposite her. She must be his age. He corrected himself. No, the age he'd been when the vampires converted him.

"Maya sent you?" he asked, and she nodded, the half-amused smile vanishing.

"So... I've got to tell you this thing that's like really majorly dreadful, though sort of not because any rational guy would expect it, but it still sucks, big-style."

Wow. Who taught young people these days? Not those who valued the beauty of the English language.

"Fuck off, old man. I'm trying, right?"

He stared at her. No-one read his thoughts these days and yet she'd managed it twice. He focused his mind on hers, trying to decipher what was going on in there and why she had come here today. The force field—that one those highly skilled in mind reading and counter techniques to stop others doing it to you—sprung up between them.

She swung her legs back around to sit upright and gave him a bland smile; a recognition that she knew what he was trying.

"I'm sorry," he said, "for the rudeness. What do you want to tell me?"

She took a deep breath. "Maya's my great-grandmother and we all call her Madge. It's a joke, yeah? So, my great-grand-father—not my great-grandfather, he's my step-great-grandfather, really, he—"

The place where Lewis's heart once pumped the blood around his body spasmed painfully. This morning's dream flashed back to him—that sorrow and the bleakness amplifying, at the same time as the rational part of him recognised Ilya's news as long overdue.

Didn't stop it hurting like hell.

"Justin's dead, isn't he?"

*****

The flat lighting, tuned into Lewis's emotions and wants, dimmed once more. Guilt, grief and the urge to howl about unfairness combined.

"Yes. Super-sorry about that," Ilya said, her eyes shifting away from him. A recognition, perhaps, of how inadequate a word sorry was, even if you added a super.

"Granpy—we all used to call him that—had been ill for ages. Madge said she was relieved in the end. She didn't want him to suffer. He was, like, a hundred and fifteen. Two years above the national life expectancy average for guys."

Ilya tipped her head to one side. Vampires might be immortal, but young people always thought themselves so. Could not imagine what it might feel like when a person close to you died. She had no idea how to deliver news like this, nor what someone's reaction to it might be.

"Sorry, again," Ilya said, her shifting about on the seat conveying her discomfort. What did young people know about grief and despair? 'Sorry' a useless, far too inadequate word.

"Great-granny wants to know if you'll come to the funeral," Ilya added. "It's on Friday. Seven pm."

Funerals usually took place much earlier in the day. Bless Maya. She'd arranged it for a time that would suit a vampire.

"Fine," he said. "How is your great-grandmother?"

Ilya, he'd finally worked out, must be the granddaughter of Mirac, Maya stroke Madge's first child. Unrelated to him. God knows why that seemed important to note, but it did.

"Okay," Ilya replied, "though, like, totally sad about great-granddad. Crying heaps."

He asked her other questions, all a distraction thing. Maya might be crying heaps; Lewis wanted to howl at the moon. Ilya and her inane chat might stop him doing so.

"Yeah, so Granpy is now in charge of the Argist Academy," she replied in response to his question about Mirac, "and my other great-grandfather"—she must mean that fuck-wit Kyle—"died ten years ago."

Now that he recognised her, Ilya's similarity to her great-grandfather was striking. Kyle had Turkish ancestry, Ilya's inherited genes.

"And Joe?" he asked, uttering the name lightly. Maya's second son. His nephew, and the boy he'd kept a close eye on for years. A long-ago memory surfaced—the baby dangled on his knee, giggling, as Lewis bounced him up and down on his leg, his little head tipping backwards exposing that throat, and Lewis safe in the knowledge that this human might or might not be immunised against vampires, but his uncle would never attack him in a million years.

Ilya's face clouded over. "No-one's seen Papa Joe for ages. Great-granny Maya's devastated that she can't get in touch with him and telling him his dad's, like, dead."

At that, she shifted in her seat, twisting around to face him. "I think that's why she sent me here. She's hoping you might be able to find him because you were super-close once upon a time."

"Friday's only two days away," he said. "I'm not a miracle worker."

Ilya wrinkled her nose. "Sure? Madge always bangs on about how you're the strongest of all the vampires that are left."

"Who," he said.

"What?"

"It's who, not that."

She glared at him afresh. "Seriously, dude? You're correcting my English? Madge also says you're this arrogant tosser lost up his own arsehole most of the time."

The silence stretched out. If he broke it with laughter, Lewis sensed Ilya might storm out. But the Maya comments tickled him—strongest vampire of all time, and an arsehole to boot. The old woman was right on both counts. The only thing she'd got wrong was that these days, he led a quiet life. Wine, women and song. The odd kill here and there, but only those humans who deserved it.

"Sorry," he said. Must be his morning for offending and then having to apologise to women. Ninety-odd years of living with the opposite sex hadn't given him any further insight into how to behave with them.

Strongest of the vampires; shite at relationships.

But all of this was a distraction. Ilya's step great-grandfather now dead.

"Are you crying?" Ilya asked. Her hands fluttered in the air. "Oh. Like, sorry, sorry. I guess you guys were super close years ago. It must suck—no, sorry, stupid word, forget I said it. Do you need a tissue or something?"

She looked about her, almost as if she expected a box of Kleenex to materialise out of thin air. Lewis stifled the urge to laugh once more—grief and ridiculousness combining to produce hysteria.

"No, I don't need a tissue. But thanks." He made it sound grave, sincere. For whatever reasons, her clumsy approach appealed to him. Perhaps he'd spent too long with vampires in the past few years and had forgotten how bumbling humans could be.

"The funeral," he asked, "where's it taking place?"

She named a crematorium in Strathaven, Dunrovia's capital city.

"And you want me to find Joe before then?"

"Yeah. If you can. We haven't seen him in five, no, six years."

"If I can't, can I still come to the funeral?"

Ilya nodded, her mood solemn once more. "Yeah. Course. But it would make Madge super happy if you did."

She let that hang there. He hadn't seen the old woman in years, but she was one of those people who influenced the space around her. Happy Maya, and the room sank into relaxation. Discontented, everyone around her nudged themselves, asked each other, what do we need to do to make her smile?

"I'll do my best," he said.

Ilya stood up. "D'you think that vampire chick will be waiting for me outside the door when you let me out?"

Lewis got to his feet too. "She's a young vampire so she might be. Their instinct control skills need a lot of work. I better see you out."

Ilya gave him a cheek-splitting grin, the corners of her mouth stretching to her ears. "No need, old man. I can take care of myself."

He followed her to the door anyway. This might prove entertaining. He pointed to the screen above the door that linked to a camera feed on the corridor outside. While mirrors, camera and CCTV didn't usually pick up vampire images, advanced technology CGI operated software did.

"Do you want to check if she's there?"

Ilya gave him another of those wide smiles. "Like, no? Much more fun if she pounces on me the minute I step outside, right?"

"Do you need a codeword for when I have to rescue you? 'Help' always works."

"Piss off." She hit the switch that operated the door, the metal shutters gliding up in double quick time. Not fast enough for Ilya though, as she ducked under them, straightening herself up on the other side. "Bye, great-great uncle Lewis! See you on Friday!"

He squatted. All the better to witness what was about to happen.

Greta flew at Ilya, arms outstretched, and teeth bared. Ilya flattened herself against the wall, and kicked out, her foot soaring way above what Lewis thought human flexibility allowed and catching Greta's jaw, so hard she dislocated it. The vampire fell to one side, the disjointed second half of her face hanging to one side.

She hoisted herself up anyway; the fury ratcheted up to a thousand percent and flung herself at Ilya once more.

"Are you sure you don't need that codeword? Say 'help' at any time," Lewis called out. Ilya, pinned against the wall as Greta tipped up her neck, shook her head, the movement slight thanks to Greta's grip.

Lewis watched her take deep breaths. Argists channelled deep breathing meditation techniques to allow them to access others' brains. Greta's head swooped, her mouth wide open and teeth bared.

She dropped to the floor, out cold, limbs sprawling messily to touch the walls either side.

"Well done," Lewis said, as Ilya rubbed her neck and delivered a vicious kick to the body at her feet. It shuddered.

"I timed you. One point three two seconds. Never seen it done that quickly."

"Told you, old dude. Super-sorry if your vampire buddy never wants to see you again."

Even without mind-reading powers, Lewis recognised insincerity a mile away. And never was a relative term. A vampire might sulk for a hundred years, but then forgive the guy who'd allowed a human to beat her up and turn up at his door bearing flowers and wine and promises of nights to remember. Ilya high-fived him, part sorry, part not.

"D'you want to see Granpy at the funeral home?" she asked, and he nodded. "Fine. Meet me, like, two hours before the funeral and I'll take you there."

She bade him goodbye. Lewis allowed the shutters to drop once more. Greta still laid sprawled out immediately outside, her eyes wide open and teeth too prominent. The building's security patrols would have plenty of legitimate reasons to kill her.

He stopped the shutter stop and ducked under, grabbing Greta by the feet. His neighbours, a vampire couple called Adrian and Andrew making their way along the corridor, stopped.

"Do you need some help there?" Their expressions made it clear they wanted him to say no. He shook his head. They skipped ahead of him, desperation to reach their flat all too apparent. Adrian, or was it Andrew, turned to wave at him briefly as they let themselves into their home. The door bolted—a wham-whack sound that that signalled fuck off and hadn't changed in a thousand years.

"Have a nice night, folks!" he called out anyway, dragging Greta in under that descending door. He shoved her up against the sofa and pulled the mock sheepskin cover over her.

The walls of his flat pressed in on him. He sat on an armchair, as the ceiling above hovered above his head. Any second now, it would drop on him. That crushing weight of grief.

He gave in, folding his body over his knees and howling at a volume fit to wake the dead. The unconscious Greta stirred, only to turn to push her face up against the sofa, her teeth fastening against the upholstered covering.

Oh, Justin... Justin... His twin brother dead, having lived ten years beyond the national average for human males—the median lifespan having increased by two decades in the last eighty years.

Far, far too soon.

AUTHOR'S NOTE - thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it... I like Lewis so much, I wanted to give him his own story to star in. Sorry for killing off Justin, but I think you can agree 115 is a good innings. The story is called Too Good to Die, and you can find it on Wattpad.