by Marie Lomax

Created on: April 12, 2008

She should have known better, she had never allowed herself to be caught in a situation like this, had never been that careless, or stupid. She had been living among them far too long, her emotions had got the better of her and she had reacted, without control, without thinking. This would not go unnoticed, whether by the authorities or her own people.

The body lay before her, the head at an unnatural angle, the neck snapped. The kid's eyes were still open, a slightly surprised look on his face. Bet he never saw that one coming. He must have been all of twenty-two, twenty-three tops, though you would never know by looking at him now. Young enough to be stupidly brave, old enough to know deep down it never works; old enough to die.

So what next? Make it look like an accident? That would be difficult, how do you make a desiccated corpse look like an accident? It would draw the attention of some of the more secretive human agencies, then they would come across her own DNA, it would read as a mistake, as it always did; too close to human but not quite, surely it had to be a mistake. Her own people however, would make the connection quicker should they get wind of it and these days they seemed to have an information network the Security Services would be proud of and cause of death would certainly not be a mystery.

She looked back down at the body while she tried to untangle the thoughts in her head, why the hell had he not backed down? Why had she lost her temper?

Lucia had been estranged from her own people for over a century, living among humans unnoticed, being her own daughter and then granddaughter as time passed and she failed to age. Time, an astute mind and cunning had allowed her to amass a small fortune in human terms, although she had kept herself pretty low key, not wanting to draw attention to herself. She employed a number of financial specialists to invest her money for her, citing this as her main income, a neat explanation for the taxman should he get too inquisitive.

Now she was in danger of losing it all, just because of one dumb mistake, one lapse of concentration but for all her confusion, the rush of fresh life force sure felt good. She knew now was not the best time to make decisions, the fresh energy would make her buzz for quite a while, especially in such quantity, making it difficult to concentrate, she should wait until it settled but she knew she did not have that luxury.

She called her little excursions into the darker parts of the city,

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