The leaden sky spilled open overhead as his body toppled backward, headed for the concrete far, far below. Everything started to slow, dragging slower and slower still, until he could hear the crunch of each piece of gravel leaving off contact with the soles of his shoes, each spaced-out beat of his heart, could feel the splash of each raindrop striking his cheeks, and the smooth plastic of the gun clamped in his fingers, as if it could save him now.

A hand was moving toward him, opening with exaggerated torpidity, each finger extending, tensing, curling—an incredible pressure seized his wrist. His arm was yanked against its socket, hurling him bodily sideways, across the roof—he staggered and spun—his back hit the side of a vent with a wobbling reverberation of metal. Jared slid to the ground.

Gasping for breath, he looked up—the vampire stood before him.

For an instant they held each other's eyes, then Keen dove forward. Jared thrust out the Seal, making him blanch, driving him back with a hiss. He tried to stand, but found his shaking legs not yet equal to the task.

"What...what the fuck!"

"You're welcome," Keen replied, his countenance settling back to humanity.

"Why...didja...?"

The vampire stared at him a few seconds more, a sharp look in his eye. Then he flashed a cocky grin. "I don't eat pancakes."

"Fuck you!"

"It wouldn't kill you to show a little gratitude."

"Given y'mean to kill me, you're not getting any gratitude."

Keen took a step forward, biting his lip. Jared leveled the gun at him. The vampire raised a palm, his head tilted in a look of sideways appraisal.

"Hold," he said, his voice suddenly soft. "Before you start shooting me again, I...wanted to say I'm...considering...keeping you around."

Jared wiped the rain from his eyes, his other hand tense on the trigger. "Uh, what, like not killing me?"

"What? No. No, not like that at all."

He tested his legs again, but they wouldn't hold his weight. "Then...what?"

"Oh give it a think," Keen murmured. "You're a smart fellow."

Keeping around...but still killing...?

Jared felt a chill prick down him, tingling under his wet shirt to the base of his spine. "Y'mean...turn me into a vampire?"

"Precisely. Give yourself over to me, and I'll grant you that which most men only dream of."

"No."

The vampire's eyes glinted in the near-dark. "This is not an offer I extend lightly."

"And why the hell do ya? We hate each other."

He raised his brows. "I don't hate you. Oh I've no doubt," he continued, settling himself on the building's edge, "that you have reservations about me, but for my part, this is the most fun I've had in decades."

Jared swallowed. "And so, what, you wanna keep it up?"

The vampire regarded him over steepled fingers. "I think it would be mutually enjoyable. Not to mention mutually safer. Once we get your death out of the way, that is."

"I'm not gonna give you my life."

"Why? You don't seem to be enjoying it."

"Fuck you!"

"Oh come now! You die, protecting my secret, and you get to live, free from all human constraints! Two birds, one stone."

Jared tested his legs again. Not quite stable.

Keep him talking.

"Tiny problem, if you're anything to go by. Wouldn't I also be free of my conscience?"

"Three birds!"

"You can take your French hens and stuff 'em."

"Now look here, you cannot seriously have me believe this has not even occurred to you. Don't you find it has a certain illicit appeal? Don't you realize what I'm offering you?"

"Eternal hell on earth...?"

The vampire rose, sweeping his arms wide. "Eternal life, freedom from worldly cares, sickness, and decay. An unconflicted mind, floating from one pleasure to the next in the endless night—honestly, Red, I don't usually have to sell this—"

"I said no."

He presented a picture of befuddlement. "Is it the conscience that's the issue?"

"There's that...and the whole drinking people's blood thing, with accompanying murder."

"Well you won't mind that without the conscience."

"That's the problem."

Keen frowned, considering him. At last, he grinned. "Ah well. I wasn't really going to turn you anyway. If you had surrendered yourself, I'd just have killed you."

"You disgusting sonuvabitch!"

The vampire laughed. "Then have at thee!"

Jared fired. Keen leaped sideways out of range, retrieving his fallen umbrella.

The rain had picked up, and it was coming down in sheets. Jared struggled to his feet. Swiping dripping hair from his eyes, he shot off another pulse from the gun, getting the vampire in the side before he could raise his shield.

Or at least, he thought he had. Keen turned a grin on him.

"Not so effective, in all this dirty water. How I do love pollution."

He started forward. Jared stumbled back around the vent, shooting him again, and again through the driving rain. Some of the hits splashed past the umbrella onto his face, pricking spots of red, but the vampire steadily advanced on him.

"And here I'd been concerned it was the big one..."

The water pistol spritzed a few times and shot nothing but air.

Out of ammunition.

Jared raised the scroll to blast the vampire back. Keen tensed a half-second—then his grin returned. With a sudden, sick foreboding, Jared turned his eyes down to the Seal of Solomon.

It was a mess of damp smudges and smears.

"Oh god... Oh God..."

The vampire cast it a contemptuous smile. "He won't answer you now..."

Flinging aside his umbrella, he pounced. Jared flinched back—too late. Keen caught his arm in one hand and found his neck with the other. He fought the grip for all he was worth, but the more he moved the harder the fingers squeezed. He went limp while he could still breathe.

"Dear me..." Keen murmured, baring human teeth at him. "Rayn, rayn, everywhere, yet nary a drop to drink."

Struggling for air, Jared reached for his injured side, pulling back the bandage and rubbing the wound open. He shoved bloodied fingers under the vampire's nose.

Black pulsed in Keen's eyes.

The grip at his throat loosened.

Then the vampire gritted his teeth in a ferocious grin, and the fangs slid back in. "Valiant effort," he sneered, fingers clamping back around Jared's neck, pinching his veins closed, "but you shan't catch me with that to-night."

Blood pooled in Jared's head, building pressure behind his eyes. His free hand fumbled for his satchel.

"Now then, the only difficulty is that infernal string." The vampire set his tongue to his lips. "Of course I could just kill you..."

The grip tightened.

"...drain you afterwards..."

Heat and pressure spread to his cheeks. His fingers scraped at the papers crumpled in the bottom of his bag.

"...but perchance..."

The papers came free. He thrust them in the vampire's face.

Keen blinked in bewilderment, his grip slipping loose as black billowed in his eyes.

"What...?"

Jared wrenched his wrist free and pulled back, the papers held high in a trembling hand.

The vampire turned to the leftmost, fangs bared. "What is that?"

Jared wasn't sure, and he didn't care. He lurched forward, talismans fanned at arm's length, angled under his palm against the rain.

Keen stepped back, both hands clutching his heart. "What are you doing to me?"

Jared didn't wait to find out. He darted around him, sneakers crunching gravel as he pounded for the door. He slammed through it, nearly slipping at the top step. One hand scraping the wall for support, he half-ran, half tripped down the stairs. Not until he'd hit the bottom floor did he glance back over his shoulder.

The vampire was nowhere to be seen.

Jared burst out into the sidewalk, slowing to a jog, his breaths hard and painful. Keeping an eye out behind him, he traced his steps back through the dark. The car lights bled twin streaks of red in the wet streets.

He found his way to a subway staircase, and down onto a populated platform, where he leaned against a support column, taking a minute to catch his breath. Flattening out the papers he'd been clutching to his chest, he wiped the streaks of rain from the backs and examined the leftmost.

It was a piece of parchment, though not as crisp and worn as the Seal had been, and it bore a simple drawing of a little demon, its body formed from ribbons of letters. According to Judy, the names of angels. He frowned, pulling out her book to check.

This one's the Lilith warding.

Jared thought back to the stories Judy had told him. Something about Solomon. A class of demons known as "liliths." A mother of demons.

What...is a vampire, exactly? A demon?

His fingers rubbed at his sore throat.

If he was serious...a human. Without a conscience.

He frowned down at the garbage littering the train tracks.

But he was lying about his "offer." So maybe he is a demon.

Across the tracks, an advertisement on the tunnel wall caught his eye. He'd seen it without seeing it earlier in the day, but now a certain word focused his attention.

Demons. A special exhibit on at the art museum—"Myths, Magic, and Demons of the Near East."

Just art... Might not be useful, but...

He turned the scroll over in his hands. There was nothing on the back, and not a word he could read in any case.

I guess this is art.

With a sudden sense that he was being watched, he looked up and around. There were no familiar faces on the platform. Jared tucked the talisman carefully back into his bag, keeping one hand in contact with it, and got on the next train for home.

✶✞

He'd felt naked on the subway ride and the walk back through the dark. Wide open to attack, without the Seal of Solomon in his pocket, and with only a scroll of uncertain effect and the small gun refilled at a drinking fountain. No sooner was he up on Sunday morning, then Jared headed straight down to the lobby to call Judy.

She greeted him warmly, talking of dinner and of how he was missed. He fidgeted with a few loose quarters. In the absence of any good lead-in, he got to the point.

"Do, uh, d'ya have another Seal of Solomon?"

"What?"

"You gave me a scroll, with the Seal of Solomon? D'ya have another one?"

"Well, no, I don't think so."

His heart sank. "Then, um...could you find another one, maybe?"

There was a short pause. "Why do you need another one?"

"I uh, I lost the one you gave me."

"Yared! I asked you to be careful with that!"

"I know, I'm sorry! But I...could really use another one."

"What on earth for?"

"Um..." He'd thought about this, but it was still hard to say. "I felt safer with it. In my apartment. Y'know, that got broken into."

Judy's voice was tense. "Well...alright, I mean, I'll ask around. But I can't promise you."

"Thanks. Oh, thanks. If you could...by next Friday..."

"I'll see what I can do."

He thanked her again and hung up, flushing.

I am such a fucking idiot.

In the meantime, Jared kept the demon scroll and the water pistols close at hand, and stayed behind the mezuzah after dark. As little as he enjoyed his job, he was glad of the intense focus needed to edit Sue's work. It was nice to spend a little time not constantly running over how he was going to handle things on Saturday.

As he was packing up to leave one afternoon, Lou stopped him.

"Got an assignment for ya, Stern."

"What? But it's closing time."

"Catch-up," Lou grunted, "from your dentist appointment."

"My what? ...oh. Right."

His fake dentist appointment, that had almost gotten him killed in a lawyer's office.

"Go get an interview with the Rosses," Lou said, laying a palm on Jared's desk and leaning over him.

"Are you kidding?"

"No."

"Why can't Sue go?"

"Suzanne's already tried."

"So've I."

"Or you could help Fox with delivery."

Jared grimaced. It was hard to say which employee of Lou's Paper he liked least, but between trying to get an interview and hanging out with Fox, he'd take the former, even if it meant paying his own way on the subway. As he reached for his bag, anxiety clamped his stomach. By the time he'd be headed back to the office, it was going to be a close thing to make it home before sunset.