Once upon a time, Kieran had a life.

A real one. A life that didn’t feel like he’d eventually grow to be over a thousand years old, or lose feeling in his fingers, or dull the taste of food against a palate that had distinguished centuries of traditional dishes against modern KFC. Once upon a time, Kieran had gotten up and out of bed, felt the stain of dried drool taint the corners of his mouth and followed a pathway of smells to a kitchen table he actually liked.

Once upon a time.

Because it took him one only one instance to realise he had been living two hundred years in a fairy tale, and the rest-

(“Hey, Kieran? There’s someone at the door.”)

- the rest was human history.

— -

He opens his eyes.

Alta stares down at him, orange tie stretched across her neck as she pulls it into shape. In a moment she is gone, the soft pattering of her footsteps fading out of earshot.

“Niece.” He jolts upright, eyes wide. “Are you alright?” And only then does he notice himself sprawled across the floor, directly in front of her room and stinking of dried blood. The day is quiet, with the faint twitter of birds hiding in the trees, and light spills into the room in elongated, conical rays as the notes on his dining table are set aglow.

“I’m okay.” She says faintly in the living room. A pause - she passes the doorframe like a fleeting silhouette and her hand settles on the flaking paint. 

“I’m okay.”


If her voice wavers, he doesn’t question it. Instead, the smell of burnt toast and a startling blare of a toaster overwhelms his nose, and he stumbles hastily into the kitchen.

They sit across from each other silent, tired, hungry. In his daze, Kieran finds that he doesn’t have the will to cook breakfast with Alta staring him down across the table like a lioness hunting her prey. He can’t tell anything from her eyes; not that he ever could but the way they stare, once again as wary as they were from their very first meeting, sends a chill down his spine. It is as if she’s only just remembered what her mother once told her.

Did it hurt her pride, to find out Kieran had heard her crying? He doesn’t know, but she says nothing, and she doesn’t waver like she did last night.

“No jokes today.” He tries.

“No.” She replies. The toast crunches in her mouth as she bites into it with pearly teeth. Burnt edges crumble into ash around her chapped lips. She downs it with milk.

“Is it okay if I ask a few questions?”


“Only if I can refuse to answer.” Kieran straightens his back, attempting to adjust his collar- and it comes away shredded and drenched in stale red and brown shades. With a sigh, he rips the shirt clean off and it tears at his shoulders, tossed to the ground.

“First one,” she pops a piece of toast in her mouth. “Judas-”

“No.” He declines. It’s almost too blunt, too sharp, but he’s not looking to break down like the girl she was yesterday. Kieran knows better.

“Okay.” Alta inhales sharply and her eyelashes flutter - flutter in the way that one’s would when holding tears back. “I’m sorry.” 


The toast crunches again. “First one.” And this time she breathes a slow, unsteady breath. “What happened yesterday?”

Ah. This he can answer.


“I met Kilgrave.” He says. “and we fought until he had his fill.”

“Why?”
 

Kieran sighs. “When I am being stalked by my arch-nemesis, who mutilates the corpses of his kills in terribly unprofessional manner, naturally I feel I must go along with what I know he wants to do. Which is spar. Like the vampires we are, destructively, in unequivocally cruel and terrible ways.”

“Okay.” Alta nods. “So the building that got totally wrecked on TV this morning was you.” 


“Yes.” She bites her lip, and the toast in her hand bursts into crumbly black powder. Her voice strains, on the verge of breaking.

“Please don’t do that again.” 


“I don’t intend to,” Kieran replies, hands hovering over hers before they hesitate and settle between them instead. “You are safe. There is a method to his madness, he doesn’t care for anyone else.” 


“Sure.” Alta’s voice wobbles, and her fingers scrap over her cup of milk, hand coming away wet from the condensation on her cold, slippery glass. “I think I can take the bus today. We woke up early.”


“Okay.” Kieran rakes in a harsh breath, air dragged across his bruised lip as he nods slowly.


“You’re fine, right?” She says as she twists, getting up from her seat. “Uncle Kieran?”


“Yes, I…” the bruises on his hands have faded. There’s still a sharp throbbing in his chest, but he lives to feel the pain and leans back in his chair. His right arm is still numb from last night’s broken bones but he can feel the radius of his forearm already back into shape. “I healed overnight.”


Alta’s backpack is heavier than he thought- Kieran holds it in his hands, rests the weight on his palms before he passes it to her without question. Her eyes are unfocused when she thanks him; there are no quirky remarks, she doesn’t smile, and it only hits him later why that hurts. Only a quiet exchange of words suffices before the lock to his front door clicks and the entrance swings wide open.

“Niece.” He calls to her at the doorway, unsure of what he’s about to say. She turns.

“You don’t have to be strong,” comes his reply, and he scratches the back of his neck at his own words, confused. “Miranda may be busy but… surely we can call one of her friends. Moving out wouldn’t be difficult to arrange.”

She tilts her head, still indifferent, but with every paused second that she considers her reply her mouth sets a firm line and her eyes harden.

“Sure,” Alta says. “But I want to try.” 


— -

Selena Bovy doesn’t seem to be the pompous bitch like Grace said, or a selfish woman with the standards of an arrogant European princess stuck in a traditional monarchy.

Kieran kind of wishes she was though, because as he scrolls through her LinkedIn and company affiliations, peering through rimmed glasses (which, he prays, he will only continue to use for aesthetic purposes) for employers and previous jobs, there is nothing about her that suggests the terrible persona his customer had blared into his phone. She is - though he can only quote - modest, kind, a hard worker and a cat lover with a green thumb.

Speaking of customers:


“Grace.” His voice is clipped and smooth, enunciating the consonance of her monosyllabic name with almost comic tone. “You swine.”
 

“I fucking changed my mind a little, okay?” Her cold-eyed stare glares past a crackly reply and he feels the chill of it run down his spine. “I’ll be honest with you and say you haven’t been doing so good lately. You’re slower. You’re over a hundred-”

“Six.” He responds crisply.


“-Six hundred years old so there’s no wonder you move like a constipated snail.”

“Who’s getting the money, then?”


“Whoever gets her first, dumbass. Everybody down under and their mother knows the difference between your kills and Kilgrave’s. It’s just the media getting their fucking speciesism hate-crime shit in the mix.” Even behind his cellphone, he can feel her arms gesture wildly in her plump, red, Louis VIII chair. “One shot to the centre of the head, clean, no shock to the face. That’s the Human-Killer. That’s our fucking Oculus Prime-of-the-Sixties sharp-shooter.”

He snorts at that, trying to obscure the smirk that rises from his lips. To think they regarded him as only being ‘in his prime’ during the sixties - a poorly told joke by a fool, no doubt. Then again, he allows the old hag his pity: she’s only got twenty more years before she kicks the bucket.

“What, are you not shooting so sharp anymore?”


“Why can’t you forgive and forget, Grace?” 


“Why can’t you stop asking questions?”

With an angry thud the phone disconnects, bleeping harshly into his ear. Kieran lets out a loose sigh and goes to work.

Quill greets him more than cheerfully upon his arrival, waving wildly to the vampire as Kieran crosses the street and heads straight for the spy’s quaint little home. It seems as though, during these past three days, he had acquired a beanie and three extra kittens to further emphasise his Average Tragic War Veteran look. Combined with the blanket, the tin bowl, and three more self-inflicted bruises to the face he seems to be actually making more money: a small glance to his bowl, filled to the brim with coins and crackers, insinuates that the despicable disguise works more than just wonders.

“I got your schedge,” Quill almost beams with yellow teeth, chest thrust forward with pride as Kieran walks up to him. “Your schedule. She’s kinda hard to find, Oculus.” 


“Though,” and he winks, “nothing a good, deep, search can’t dig up.” 
“So?” Kieran dismisses his comment with a wave. “What do you have?”


The vagrant stretches out his hands, eyes wide and pupils dilated like a puppy. “Nothing but woe. Won’t you be a Good Samaritan and feed me?”


“I have no choice.”

They exchange goods quietly - the vampire with a thirty dollar bill and Quill with a stash of grimy A4 folded thrice over, smudged in black from his begging hands. Kieran glances to his right then his left, the street completely empty save an old woman grinding her teeth into a bagel against the wall, and he unfolds the paper. Quill’s got earlier commissions covered too - the vampire nods, thoroughly satisfied with the middleman’s work - with approximate dates and locations of possible the Spanish guy from Tacobell, the rich abuser of a quiet wife, the young woman who’s about to inherit a large fortune. About to.



“You know you’ve got other deadlines, right?” Quill asks, scratching his head as his other hand plays with a kitten’s tail. “I know you’ve been picking calls with Grace but you got some other people on the line too starting t’ask me about how stuff is going.”

“I’ll deal with one today.” Kieran pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing softly. “Do me a favour and tell Indigo that his sister’s husband is dying today.”

“Gladly.” Quill snorts. “Still want a fifth of your pay, though.”

— -

Indigo and Lila Walkers aren’t the sort of people Kieran would expect to have a hitman’s hotline. The former is an ordinary college kid struggling with debt and the other, a patient and mellow librarian with the patience of a pre-K schoolteacher educating five-year-olds on the subject of manners. Needless to say, there’s an impeccable way she handles things that Kieran wouldn’t expect in anyone at all. Perhaps it was by virtue of luck that they got it, perhaps it was terrible mistake.

“So you’re… the vampire hitman?”


“There are many.”


“Human-Killer or whatever? The clean shot?”


“That’s the one.”

He supposes there’s something to every case; every commission he’s taken up has their own reasons, be they “morally justified” or totally corrupt, or sliding between the grayscale of right and wrong. There was once a time where everything seemed pitch-black to him: he’d pick up the call and move in like his money ran on four legs, but two hundred years has taken its toll on him both physically and mentally. Kieran winces as he turns, climbing up winding stairs, the wound at his side still throbbing. He could start taking painkillers- but when have they helped anybody?
 

No matter how funny it may sound, he thinks striding forward, pain is the closest thing to being alive.

He reaches his destination. It’s more or less an abandoned building, the penthouse and higher floors cleared of office equipment furniture. In the corner of the spacious room, he spies a box abandoned, mouldy at the corners and a harsh contour made by the sun’s yellow rays have coloured the box two shades.

Within minutes Kieran sets up his equipment. It comes to him naturally now- back of his hand stuff, eyes closed and muscle memory doing the rest of his work as he clears his mind and focuses on his target. Apartment building C of Redlane Apartments, floor fifteen, block D. Redlane apartments have glass sliding doors with balconies to match and often, if people aren’t cautious, you could get a whole view of the living room with just a 45-degree tilt of the head.

Victor Corbsy is balding. Kieran spies, through the rifle scope, his fat hand reach for a glass of water. Something funny must’ve come on because the man laughs and the smile reaches his eyes, downing the glass and setting it down again as it nearly slips from his fingers.

700 meters.

Kieran inhales. He fires.

— -

“It’s Oculus. Give me a name and pay what you’re due to my listed offshore account.”

“Uncle… Kieran?”


“… Niece? You have my phone number. Why?”


“I- I just wanted to tell you that you weren’t at the school gate today, so I got my friend to pick me up and send me to Costa’s. It’s like, walking distance from our house.”

“…”

“I’ll come find you.”