It isn’t until they’ve actually gone upstairs that Kieran realises he didn’t quite prepare for his niece’s arrival. As he trudges through the corridor, keys spun lazily around his finger, a small nagging thought at the back of his head begs for his desk to be clean and his notes to be neatly piled. Unfortunately, many a time his kitchen will tend to be littered with various hitman paraphernalia that include, but are not limited to, lighters, various indiscernible fluids in conical flasks, the beginnings of a molotov cocktail (because you’d never finish one inside the house, obviously), his Glock, his rope, and a prized set of green knuckle dusters Kieran had passed by one day in the window of one of those dingy vintage shops run by middle-aged hipsters.

He dashes forward in a sudden burst of speed, motivated by an image of Alta wielding his sniper rifle. On no accounts must a sniper rifle be wielded, he thinks suddenly, by the fifteen-year-old niece that my sister has so carefully placed in my very responsible hands.

With a swift and steady flick of the wrist he slots his key into the door’s keyhole, turns it, and swings open the door to his apartment.

“Do you have any water?” A voice asks timidly behind him. He whips his head around - Alta stares back at him, her head tilted, curious but not overly demanding. 


“Yes.” He frowns, perturbed by her speed. She had caught up to him so quickly that it took a moment more to register the wheels of her suitcase currently rolling over his feet and towards a couch littered in notecards.

“Could I get some water?” She asks again.

Kieran blinks. The apartment is clean, and he sighs with relief.

— -

The first thing he asks her when they sit down at his dinner table is - well, something a vampire must always consider when taking in minors to their shelter.


“Are you human?” For the briefest of moments, her eyes flash with alarm and Kieran wonders if the question has ever caused her trouble before. Perhaps up north where Miranda had been living people sent those snide remarks through unspoken words of text, and a pang of understanding shoots through his core as unpleasant memories flood to his head. He too understands the pain of being an outcast: at once Kieran recalls being tied to a crudely cut stake (honestly it’s wasn’t even sophisticated woodcutting, Kieran sniffs) and being thrown gallons of holy water at. If only the Catholics of his time knew what holy water actually consisted of - the salty tears of priest Gabe, really? - then perhaps, the church wouldn’t be in such an awfully laughable state as it was now. If he hadn’t been nailed to the ground oozing with blood and pus during the several days that the Holy Church of Saint Gabriel carried out their quote on quote “Holy Crusade” against the “demonic kind of Beelzebub” he would've laughed out his entrails.

On second thought, the image repulses him. He likes his intestines.

“Don’t worry,” He sighs, waving away the distant memory. “Should you be mortal I will arrange for some room arrangements and extra locks if I get consumed by monthly bloodlust. I'm on medication but sometimes it can get out of hand.”

Alta nods slowly, taking it all in with surprisingly calm manner. She seems unperturbed by his vampiric bloodline, which perhaps suggests…

“I think I’m a mix.” she takes a sip of water.

“… Ah.” That is unhelpful.

An important thing to note about having a vampire and a human live together is that the entire notion of two different species inhabiting the same quaint little habitat - when one is clearly a predator and the other prey - is preposterous.

Putting aside the fact that vampires and humans now coexist in a relatively peaceful society, this should by no means disregard a vampire’s unfortunate thirst for blood.

This is probably why,  Kieran notes as he observes Alta sipping at her water, her father is nowhere to be seen.


“I’ll ask you straight.” he sniffs. “Do you suck on your wounds?”


“Oh, what?” she wrinkles her nose in distaste, “No way.” She looks absolutely aghast - as if the mere thought of a simple bloodsucking procedure offended her human-oriented brain, pure blasphemy, to have to lick injuries and retrieve blood in bestial fashion. Kieran almost frowns, affronted by her grimace, before reminding himself carefully not to get off on the wrong foot with his sister’s daughter.

“You look uncomfortable,” He continues, brow furrowed in austerity, “but I do not jest. When I was a foetus like you I had to suck the blood out of my own hands as a source of nutrition. My mother never had the time to deliver ample blood sacks to our home.”

“What?” She blinks.
 

Kieran grumbles. “She was out working or something.”


“Um, okay.” Alta coughs. “So… How old are you?” Kieran catches in her eye a glimpse of curiosity that was not there when she was trundling towards him outside his apartment building, zombified through the hypnotic tune of her iTunes playlist.

The question, focus on the question- oh,  and he thinks, rapping his nails against the table harshly once the numbers do not come to him.

“I had recorded it once somewhere.” He frowns. “Over half a millennium. I remember watching Joanne D'Arc burn on a stake when I was reaching a hundred.”

“Can we convert that into human years?”


He shrugs. “Approximately thirty-three.”

“Oh.” She blinks. “Okay.”

They sit in awkward silence for a while, Alta staring into the emptiness of her cup like a dark abyss and Kieran staring at her, hawk-like in presence. She hasn’t done anything offensive yet, nor edgy, and he wonders if she bears any resemblance towards Miranda at all besides simply looking like her. Perhaps, of course, this is only because Alta is hiding something from him that he has yet to know about, but Kieran finds he is unable to sniff out the slightest touch of faked emotion.

“Where is your pretentiousness.” He says, deadpan irritated.

Alta swallows. “Um. Was that a question?”


“You are not pretentious.” He stares. “Or edgy. Would you like to use your phone?”


“Uncle Kieran,” she hesitates, “I don’t think you really meet a lot of fifteen-year-olds, do you?”


“Oh my,” Kieran snorts. “You wouldn’t know the number of times I’ve been commissioned to kill parents.” A small part of him screams, no, Uncle Kieran!, and as her eyes widen he hastily changes his tone.

“Of course, I have never taken a commission to kill a parent who didn’t deserve it I mean, I have never really killed a parent, per se, more like the fact that they were a parent was unimportant to the reason for the commission.”

There's nothing but silence on Alta's part.

Forgive me, Miranda, - he places his hands over his heart and telepathically sends a message to his sister - I think I just failed you.


“Actually,” the girl suddenly speaks up, “From the way you originally phrased your answer I’m getting the feeling that that was exactly their reasoning for the commission."

Oh. Kieran blinks. 

"Also, my mom said you were mad because someone ruined your commission to assassinate JFK and because of that you’re sitting in a trash dump instead of a mansion, right? He had kids. He was a parent. You were going for his head.”


So not only is she unfazed by her uncle’s unconventional occupation, but Alta Oculus-Fair (was it Fair? That damned husband of his sister’s never showed up to any family gatherings) seems to also know about the terribly, terribly unfortunate tragedy that is the commission that never happened. And suddenly the surprise to her indifferent reaction becomes a bubbling irritation in his throat, that damned arch-nemesis, which culminates into a semi-angry retort.

“I told her Kilgrave cheated!” He nearly spits, “and also, my apartment is not a trash dump. It’s clean and affordable, and I have kitten magnets for my refrigerator that I didn’t need to buy, which is an obvious indication of my  wealth-” He spreads an arm, motioning to the pristine kitchen that, if Alta turns her head 45 degrees to the right, she can just see through the crack of a door ajar. The water-pitcher invites a second glass of fresh water, and her fingers throb at the thought. “And just look at my kitchen. It's perfect.”


“I’m sorry,” she says. "It looks nice."

“You don’t sound like you’re sorry.”

“Ah- well,” she scratches her head, “I wouldn’t want my uncle to be the one who killed the prez, you know? It’d be weird for our family and school would probably be awkward.”


“We’re have been a dysfunctional family tree for many years now.” He snorts. "If school is not already awkward for you, then colour me impressed." 

The room is silent once again, with Alta’s eyes almost despondently set on her empty glass. 

“Hey,” she hesitates, biting her lip on a silent question until it is forced from her mouth with a shaky breath, “why do you kill people?”


There are a lot of answers to that. And Kieran would gladly tell her if he knew her to be a friend - not that he had many of those anymore - or an accomplice, or even of age. To answer a question like this, spilling from the mouth of a teenaged child, seems almost like allowing her to drink alcohol under the age of eighteen. Kieran knows that doesn't make sense, but the analogy alone is a comforting reminder that he still has limits, and so he formulates the most coherent answer he can currently come up with.

“It makes me money,” is all he has to say.

— -

A few twenty minutes later after she’s settled into one of two identical guest rooms along a narrow path of floorboards between walls that could barely be described as a hallway, Alta falls asleep haphazardly sideways onto a makeshift bed. The door is closed; she sleeps as soundly as one would after a long and arduous day and with a sigh of relief Kieran wonders if Miranda has ever felt the same kind of accomplishment he is feeling now. She must have.

The vibrating buzz of a cell phone awakens him from dozing off from fatigue - strange, Kieran thinks, that I should even use the word - and he picks up the phone once he plunks himself on his couch.

“It’s Oculus.” He drones, switching on the TV. “Pay it to my offshore bank account that was listed. I’ll check my email in five and we can discuss further pricing negotiations if needed.”

“Vampire hitman? Thought you fucking retired. I guess I got the wrong number off that website.”


Oh, lord. Kieran instantly recognises the nasal voice and a flash of imagery conveys to him a weathered purse, a balding skull, and the eyes of a woman who peers across the room looking for a glass of scotch too far away to reach and grab for.

“We said no to Selena Bovy.” He snaps. “You barely have the funds, Grace. I’m actually doing you a favour of not accepting this commission.”

“You said no. I said yes because she’s a stupid bitch who doesn’t see the money my book could make off of her fat ass if she just published the goddamn thing, and because of that I want her fucking head on my pike.”

“You’re being figurative, right?”

“She’s a prude!” His customer screeches, the volume cranks to eleven as he winces and pulls the phone away from his ear, and following on from that on the other side of the receiving end glass shatters and a baby starts to cry. “A prude and she hurt my pride.”


“What’s the book called?” There’s a beat of silence, followed by almost no hesitation.


“Experimenting with the Hot Cock.”
 

Kieran forces down projectile vomit before the acid can burn up his throat and tear up his eyes. 

“Jesus Christ, that sounds unreal.” 


“-As if she’s never published erotica before!” The baby on the other end stops whining. His customer pants, shallow hiccups slowly merging into a deep breath, and the vampire can almost hear her sigh of near defeat.

“Look, Oculus, I can pay you in full now. I’ve racked up more money. I can pay you even more than that if you just shoot her through the skull and call it a day.”

Hm.

“I’ll take half first,” He answers. “Full if I complete it.”

“That’s fucking disgusting. Maybe I should call your arch nemesis instead.”

“Then why’d you ask for me?”

He can hear a lighter’s flick and poof as she lights her cigarette. “Better sense of propriety and a nicer looking corpse. He fucks up his kills now, you know that?”


“I don’t want to know.” 


“I give you five hundred now. You kill her and I pay your next month’s rent and the month after.”

Kieran switches channels. Cartoon Network blinds him in pink, fluorescent colours.

“Okay.”