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We're four years on and he never returned.

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The night creeps over the world and stares at it with dubious eyes. The petrol station is the only light for miles around; it glows dim in the black world, its flickering orange light shaking pathetically over the road. Rust patterns the building, and signs hang off it at odd angles; you have to turn your head to read them. A fat man is visible through the store window, pressing buttons on his phone and eating a candy bar. A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips, his mum used to say. He never paid her any attention and now the cost pools under his shirt. He shifts and flicks the page of a magazine he has not bought.

The wolf-man stands in the carpark, petrol chugging into his car through a huge vibrating tube. He should have been home an hour ago now, but he's been at the jewellers checking prices and sizes and colours and his mind is full of gold and white gold and three hundred and eighty dollars, sir, low as I'll go, you can pay in monthly instalments if you like.

The wind plays with the night world, flirting with the leaves of the trees which line the road as far as the eye, human or otherwise, can see. It is raining, the sort of half-rain that you barely notice until it dribbles down your forehead and falls into your eyes. He runs his hands through his hair and checks his watch. He hopes she isn't worried.

And then he smells it, on the wind. He smells it and he freezes and anger shoots through him like a lightning bolt. It sets fire to every particle of his body and he spins around, wild eyes searching the hidden world of the night, listening, waiting. The wind breathes onto his face and the scent is laced into the air. His eyebrows slowly lower and cast dark shadows over his eyes.

The vampire is running. He is always running, but he never knows where he is going or why he is going there; his feet lead and the rest of him merely follows. His brows are set and dark eyes hide a darker soul.

That bitter, wet-dog smell hits him; wriggles up his nose, seeps into his mind, and he snarls, turns, running so fast he is no more than a whisper in the night. He wants nothing more than to attack, rip, tear; he is so angry. He has been angry for such a very long time. He does not know who this wolf is but it does not matter. Maybe if he had known the significance of this particular enemy he would not have been so quick to make his mistake. Maybe.

But probably not.

The wolf sees him coming and shivers, bracing himself, but he does not transform; he isn't stupid. The veil of night is not a veil of invisibility. Inside the store the fat man turns his head, small watery eyes widening, chins dropping as though someone has filled them all with lead. Half-chewed chocolate is displayed to the world as he reaches out a lumpy finger and presses three buttons. Hello, he says slowly, hello, is that the police, yes, I'm at the garage, we've got a situation here please.

The vampire throws an air-cracking punch and the wolf holds it back. Hatred poisons their faces and sets their hearts alight. The russet skinned face burns red with fury; the deadly pale one gleams in the fake light of the station. Breath falls fast and furious, and they move liquidly, sharply, the impacts so loud that they send shocks through the fat man; with each hit his chest wobbles. The vampire fights because he is desperate for release, escape. The wolf fights because he knows exactly who this is and he wants him to suffer for what he did; suffer and then go the fuck away.

The siren throws itself into the silent night and then reels itself back in. The two lock eyes and spring apart, fists shaking, a long thin gash dribbling blood down the arm of the wolf. The vampire's eyes slide down to it, and he looks quickly away. His irises are blacker than the night which sits content and quiet around them. The fat man chews slowly, wondering how he can say all this in a hundred and forty characters or less.

The car slides sharply into the garage and the door opens, closes, and angry footsteps smack against the tarmac. What is this, demands the tall, reedy, handcuff-toting cop, what is this, this is a public place, what are you thinking, this means arrest, I hope you realise we don't take this sort of thing lightly. No indeed, we take it real serious.

He doesn't know that they both could have killed him with their little fingers.

It was me, spits the werewolf, anger heaving up his throat and contaminating his words. It was me, he said, I started it and he tried to run away. He tried to run away because that's what he does, he's a bastard, a heartbreaking life-ruining undeserving tail-turning bastard.

The werewolf is carefully blocking his thoughts, but his words expand the vampire's eyes, and a black gaze turns and stares and searches a mind which has been purposefully clouded. He doesn't argue.

And the cause of all this trouble? She is sat at home, head on elbow and eyes on the driveway.

This story has lain dormant for four years. But now it's bubbling, quietly heating, building, growing. We're counting down to the explosion.

Well.

Shall we begin?

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