When Maya fled the café, Justin had followed her out at a discreet distance. He hadn't got close enough to read her thoughts, but he got the gist. Her kid; and an emergency. Not good.

The taxi roared off. Presumably she could no longer hear his thoughts. He sent her good luck wishes anyway and headed for the underpass that would get him to Club Sapphire's ready for the lunchtime shift. He would leave it a few days and then check in with her. Make sure the kid was okay and that she still wished to work with him on finding that cure and urging vampires to take it up.

Fingers crossed... Because apart from their meeting's far too premature ending, today counted as one of the best days he'd lived through since his return to Dunrovia. And it was only just after eleven o'clock. When Maya entered the café, his nose picked her out first; the coconut body lotion, that apple-y shampoo she used to wash her hair, and the milkiness that must be because of the baby.

Then, every light in the cafe twisted to focus on her, or so it appeared. The place where his heart used to take up space in his chest spasmed.

Dark hair fastened in a neat French plait. Make-up immaculate, the usual jeans and sweater combo he remembered exchanged for smart slacks, a lilac cashmere sweater, its neckline low enough to make him need to shift in his seat, and a trench coat. Much more sophisticated, but there were enough traces of the old Maya—those eloquent eyes, that warm plump solidity—to fill him with joy.

His feet kept him pinned in place, as his body battled every impulse. Lunatic, she's married! You did this before. It didn't work. Letitia is the one for you. And the other bit of him that responded to that oh-to-rational inner voice—Fuck you.

Those thoughts he hid from Maya.

Above the underpass now, the roar of traffic deadened almost all other sound—except for the footsteps that echoed in the tunnel behind him.

He sped up; the footsteps did too. So-called vigilante gangs often followed vampires out and about in public places, attempting to intimidate them with their crude wooden stakes. The tunnel's graffiti suggested this was a popular place for such gangs to gather.

The writing on the crumbling brick walls read, Stake 'em, stake 'em, stake 'em! Death to all vampires! Someone had spray-painted a crude cartoon figure he took to be Cheryl Balci on her knees in front of a too-gleeful vampire, giving him a blow job.

The Liberal Life Party sucks up to vampires, the caption read. At YOUR expense.

Lovely.

The footsteps got closer. He pivoted round. No-one, and nowhere to hide in the tunnel either. Was his imagination playing tricks on him? He resumed walking, cursing himself for choosing the shortcut when taking the principal route through the city would only have added ten minutes to his journey.

Sure, he might be able to throw off a few of them, but an armed gang, vitriol all-too close to the surface, was a different matter altogether. He turned again. Nothing. Right, onward and—

He crashed into the man. Solid muscle and that icky smell people who ate too much animal protein gave off. He stepped back. The man grabbed him in an arm-lock, twisting him to face away.

A woman stepped out in front of them. "Hello, Justin."

Fucking great.

The goon holding him let him go, stepping forward next to the woman.

"Dude, long time no see. Hope you didn't mind the friendly hug."

Fucking great times two.

"I thought they'd locked you up," Justin said, determined to keep his voice breezy. No way was he letting this creep think he scared him.

"Let out on appeal. A technicality. My lawyer proved that one piece of evidence was inadmissible, so the case had to be thrown out."

Justice, eh? A system ripe for manipulation. Ryan Hannah, the onetime Vampire Security guard, flung into jail more than a year ago, partly thanks to evidence Justin provided for the case against him. The guy had taken payments from vampires in exchange for being let into buildings where unvaccinated humans lived.

Now here he was. Respectable too, by the looks of it. Dressed in an expensive suit, the buttons of the shirt straining against his over-pumped chest muscles.

The woman next to him watched the exchange expressionless. Ryan might be the nasty thug; she was far more terrifying. Carly Wang. Onetime head of Vampire Security for Dunrovia, since sacked for overstepping the rules on far too many occasions.

Who did she work for now?

"That was a cosy little reunion," she said, "you and your ex-girlfriend. She's a proper pillar of the establishment now, isn't she? Although, I'm not sure how her husband would feel about your meet up. What were you chatting about?"

"And that's your business, why?" Justin snapped at her.

Ryan grabbed him before he could say anything else, catching him in a choke hold too tight for him to do anything, his body shoved up against the wall preventing him from moving.

"We're the ones who ask the questions, pal."

Justin's mind raced. Who would employ a sacked security chief known for heavy-handed treatment of vampires and an ex-Vampire Security guard who'd ended up in court on corruption charges?

The answer? Powerful people with too much to lose. The owners, say, of vaccination and health insurance companies, whose customers would vanish if a cure for vampirism surfaced.

Carly moved in front of him, her face centimetres from his. She needed to visit a dental hygienist asap. Her breath stank. "Did Maya mention anything about stolen goods?"

The conversational turn took Justin by surprise. Something as major as a cure for vampires was bound to attract information leaks, but stolen goods? What did they think Maya knew or had nicked?

"What's been stolen?" Justin asked.

Ryan's grip on his neck tightened. "As I said. We're the ones who ask the questions. Answer the lady, there's a good boy."

"No, she didn't talk about stolen property. We met up because we wanted to see each other again. Old times' sake and all that."

The vampire cure had been an excuse, anyway. While the prospect of becoming human once more might thrill him, the opportunity to see his ex-girlfriend once more had been the big appeal.

"The people I work with," Carly said, "are missing something. A consignment they suspect has been stolen from them. My colleague and I are doing our best to locate this stolen something."

The cure. It must be the cure. Sunshine Health produced not only the vaccine for vampirism but fake blood. The company had laboratories everywhere and employed hundreds of scientists and medical researchers. What if one of them had come up with a cure and had gone rogue, realising that Sunshine Health would go out of its way to suppress the discovery?

The company's main headquarters was down south, and hadn't Janette said she'd been cured there?

He'd told Carly the truth. Maya said nothing about stolen consignments, so she didn't know even if Carly suspected otherwise.

Carly grabbed his balls. "So, I'll ask again. What did you and your ex-girlfriend talk about?"

See, that was the deal with the pain threshold. A vampire's one might differ from that of humans, but if someone seized you by the testicles and dug long fingernails in, all bets were off. Justin grunted, and tried his best to twist away from Ryan, who must have spent the months he was in remand in the prison jail pumping serious iron. And scarfing illegal steroids. Escape proved impossible. He'd have to give them something, even if it was made up.

"What did you and your ex-girlfriend talk about?"

"Nothing interesting, I told you! I begged her to leave that husband of hers and she refused. You saw her. While we were in there, he phoned, and she dashed off to get away from me."

Carly's expression changed. A smirk spread across her features. "Aw, poor broken-hearted Justin. Is that what you think happened? Let him go, Ryan."

Ryan loosened his grip. Justin fell back against the wall; the release making him light-headed.

Carly handed him her phone. "Watch this."

The film puzzled him at first. A woman pulling up her hood, so it hid her eyes and picking the lock on a door. She let herself into the building, and wandered the small labyrinth of rooms, their walls decorated with bright pictures, balloons and banners. In what looked like a kitchen, she opened a cupboard door that displayed neat boxes all labelled with individual names and reached for one of them.

Mirac Braganzi.

Clean baby bottles nestled in the small box. The woman picked one up and took the top off. She pulled a small dark brown bottle out of her pocket, unscrewed the lid and took out the pipette, using it to insert five droplets into the baby bottle.

Unable to watch any more, Justin thrust the phone back.

"Was that you," he croaked. Carly smiled blandly, the inoffensiveness of it offending Justin even so. How dare she look so unbothered by what she had done? Once upon a time, Griffin had described human actions to him—those that led to their fellow humans being trafficked for blood. Who do you think the true monsters are, he'd asked at the time.

"The next time you arrange an encounter with your ex-girlfriend, you ask her what she knows about any stolen property. And then you contact me straight afterwards, okay?"

She stuck her hand in his jeans pocket and drew out his phone, touching her screen to his to sync the contact.

"Otherwise," that bland smile back in place, "who knows what might happen to Maya and her family next time?"

She patted his shoulder. "We'll pop into Club Sapphire's next week. Make sure you have news for us."

AUTHOR'S NOTE - thanks for reading! The next update is on Friday, 30 April 2021.