This is another short story that I had to do for a creative writing course last year. This was acutally written before the one titled Miranda but it takes place after it. So if you've read that extremely short story, then you'll recognize two of the characters in this one.Johnny stared at Nicey Roland, who sat across from him at the table, with curious green eyes. She was of a higher class than he and it confused him; why would she want to treat him to a meal? He fidgeted in his seat nervously and averted his eyes from her when their order had arrived.

It's not too good, and I'll probably post it in two parts because the original file got corrupted and I had to look for this in my e-mail and the only thing in the original is the tail ending and you can't even read that; so I'll have to rewrite the ending...

But I hope you enjoy this; critism and reviews would be appreciated.

~Kitsune Eru

They sat in silence and he glanced at her with the same curious look every now and then. Nicey noticed and smiled at him. “What’s wrong, dear?”

Her melodious voice slightly frightened him and he stiffened in his seat. He didn’t answer her question and stared at her, his eyes relaying the slight fear her voice had ensued. He was unsure of how to answer her question.

“Well?”

Johnny fidgeted again and took a deep breath before forcing himself to answer her question this time, “What’s with dinner? Are you trying to abduct me off the streets?”

She laughed at the dusty brown haired teen and looked him square in the eyes. “You’re a smart boy, aren’t you, dear?”

“I can be when I want to. . .”

“You were close,” she stated. She stayed silent for a moment, picking her words carefully, and then continued, “I want you to come with me to my home.”

Johnny eyed her suspiciously. “Why?”

Nicey smiled at him again and he flinched away. There was something about her smile that he didn’t like. It gave him the feeling that she wasn’t the kind of person he needed to be associating with, and he believed it; he had a sense about these things. And that sense tended to be right about ninety-nine percent of the time.

“Nothing important really; I just want your body.”

He stared at her with confused eyes and eased out of his seat away from her. “You want my what?” he asked her in utter bewilderment.

“Not in a bad way, dear; it’s hard to explain. But I will pay you handsomely for it.”

“No; I need it. Why would I give it away for something I don’t know a damn thing about?”

Nicey continued to try and persuade Johnny into giving her his body and he kept turning her down. She moved onto bribery and blackmail and still he didn’t sway from his choice. Soon her patience ran thin with the teen and she tried one final time.

“No,” Johnny said curtly, “Find some other fifteen year old and ask for his.”

He left the building and ran towards the alley-way he knew as home. The evening’s conversation still filled his head and he didn’t understand what she meant; ‘I want your body.’ Was it some sort of insult? Or was she--

Johnny bumped into someone and looked up to apologize but froze where he was standing. He stared wide-eyed at the woman he had left barely a minute ago and noticed a slight change in her; her incisor teeth were twice the normal length. His mind scrambled for an explanation and he could only come up with one:

She was a vampire. . .

A genuine vampire, not some monster you read about in a child’s story-book. . .

He made to run but his legs didn’t respond; they were riveted in place by the sight of Nicey’s fangs. He tried and he tried but he still couldn’t move an inch; fear had paralyzed him and a thought had invaded his mind as she rounded on him quickly:

He was probably going to be killed. . .

Rain started to fall as Johnny stepped over the invisible boundary line and entered Roget City’s Hoary District. The smells of the city hit his sharp nose and it wrinkled instinctively as the new scents of death and urine flooded his nostrils. A small child to his side gagged at the city’s stench and nearly retched; obviously Miranda wasn’t used to Roget’s revolting odor yet. He felt a tinge of pity to her sensitive sense of smell, but nothing more.

It started to rain harder and a sharp pain on the back of his right hand drew his attention. Johnny looked to see the cause and saw that the rain had began to eat at his skin. He quickly pulled Miranda into a nearby bar for shelter, the warm air of the building engulfing them as they entered.

The inside of the bar smelt no better than the outside but it was an improvement. He led his companion to the front of the dusty room and took a seat, being sure to position himself in a way he could keep an eye on the door. His sight briefly flickered to a clock and took in the time. He grunted at the time-keeper and checked his surroundings.

The place wasn’t packed; just a few drunken inhabitants scattered here and there. They weren’t bulky in build, or intimidating in appearance, and didn’t appear to be an immediate threat to him nor the young female in his company. Just to be sure, he sized them up once more then nodded his satisfaction.

Johnny’s eyes flinted back to the clock and took in the time again. Five sharp; if he was lucky, his informant would walk into this particular bar so he wouldn’t have to go back out into the rain. Again, that was if he was lucky. But his luck wasn’t exactly on the good side.

Deciding it best to get comfortable while he waited, Johnny ordered a cup of coffee and a meal for Miranda. They settled in with their order and he kept a close eye on the door, twitching every time it opened.

After an hour of waiting, he sighed and lit a cigarette. His informer was late and he couldn’t sit around on his ass waiting all evening, or go looking for him in damn acidic rain; he had to continue his hunt for Nicey Roland.

Just as Johnny went to stand up, the door to the bar opened and an elderly man came in. He was dressed like a low class aristocrat from the Neo District, and bore an askew comb-over on the top of his head. From where he stood, the man appeared to be short and pudgy; he stuck out in the dusty old bar like a sore thumb.

The man peered around with squinty blue eyes and soon picked Johnny out of the few occupants. “Ah, Johnny!” he called out to him. He waddled over to him and rustled his dusty brown hair. “It’s been a long time, my boy! How’s Roget been treating you?”

“Alright, I would guess,’ Johnny replied in a curt manner, “But catching up isn’t why we’re here, Rogan, and you know it; what do you know about Nicey Roland?”

Rogan’s eyes sharpened at the mention of Nicey’s name and took a seat next to the taller male. He looked around the bar once more with a careful eye before turning his attention to Miranda at the younger man’s side, eyeing the white haired girl suspiciously.

Johnny took notice of this and spoke in her defense, “Miranda won’t repeat a word you say, Rogan; she’s ‘dumb,’ if you know what I mean.”

Rogan nodded understandingly. “A mute,” he stated. He turned his aged eyes back to the lean man and gave him a stern look. “I’m not telling you a thing, Johnny. Not until I know what you want with a woman like Nicey Roland.”

Johnny tensed in his seat and Rogan stared curiously at his reaction. He glared at the table’s rusted top as he remembered an incident from seven years earlier; how Nicey Roland damned his life. The memory absorbed and consumed his mind.

A tug on his sleeve brought Johnny back to the present and he glanced down at Miranda. The look on her face told him she had seen the memory playing in his head and he grunted his disappointment at her. Didn’t she know it was rude to spy on others and their thoughts?

He turned his attention to Rogan. “The reason is mine, and mine alone, Rogan,” he said curtly to the older man, “All you need to know is that I’m in search of her and that your information is valuable to me at this time.”

Rogan appeared to be dissatisfied with the brunette’s response and shifted irritably in his seat, pulling a cloth from his pocket and mopping his brow. “You’re probably already aware that she’s part of the upper class; an aristocrat to be precise,” he began, watching Johnny intently, “But she’s also apart of Neo District’s science division.”

“The science division?”

He nodded. “She works mainly for Nano Corp and their research of nanotechnology, the same nanotechnology that damned Roget with acidic rain.”

Johnny grunted at the information, putting out his half smoked cigarette. "So she plays around with the weather?"

"Technically, yes. But she's got this . . . habit. . ."

He quirked an eyebrow at the older man and interest filled his gaze. “What sort of habit?” he inquired of him.

Rogan shifted in his seat with discomfort and once more peered around the bar. The few inhabitants had thinned down to only two or three now and he relaxed a little were he sat. His eyes rounded on Miranda for the second time that night and threw out the notion of her repeating what he was about to say.

“Nicey works in her spare time with illegal drug testing,” he said in a voice so low that Johnny had to strain his highly sensitive ears to hear, “She lures people who live on the streets, roughly fourteen to twenty-five in age, to her home. She tells them she wants to help them, like for charity, but in exchange for one thing--”

“Their bodies. . .”

“Precisely; she uses their bodies to test these illegal drugs; lab rats if you would. Most of the time these people become seriously ill, few have even died because of these experiments. There have been some lucky individuals who just get off with minute brain damage or total loss of basic motor skills.”

“What about those that turn her offer down?” he asked.

“Usually she kills them on the spot,” Rogan stated, giving Johnny a suspicious look, “Why?”

Johnny didn’t answer and got to his feet. “We’re leaving, Miranda,” he grunted to the pink eyed girl.

Miranda got to her feet and quietly looked at Rogan with a hollow-eyed look, shaking the elderly man to the core. She smiled in thanks at him, shaking him even more before following closely after Johnny.