The following morning greets Kieran with a blast of loud music thrumming through the paper thin walls of his apartment. He wakes with a groan, surprised by the about of fatigue that hits him - he counts himself as a morning person - and rolls himself out of bed before the thought of soft and heavy blankets can lull him to sleep again. With bleary eyes he blinks his way towards Alta’s room, the music throbbing in his temple as he picks up the source of it located at the centre of his niece’s room.

“Niece.” He tries to shout above the noise but winces as the harsh and grating melody of a heavy chorus slams into him, causing Kieran to retreat into the corner of the bathroom instead.

“Huh?” Alta pokes her head through the door, eyes wide with alacrity. He notices the way her head bobs, feet shuffling to the music. It’s hard to understand how one could possibly bob their head to near incoherent lyrics, but at the moment he’s hard-pressed to even think.

“Your music is causing me physical pain.” Kieran replies. “I thought perhaps you could lower the volume.” 


“Not your style?” Alta smiles back and eases the volume down a few decibels.

“Yes, though that’s not the reason why.” The vampire mutters. It’s drowned out by a fierce, spitting voice spewing profanities, though at least this time he can hear his own words leave his mouth.

“Sorry, uncle.” She says with a laugh, entering the bathroom as she reaches for her toothbrush. Even despite the lowered volume, Kieran can still hear the music reverberating around his home. “This song’s just been stuck in my head for days.” 



Some small part of him spots an excellent opportunity to bond over an exchange of musical tastes. That’s usually what parents will do with their offspring - discuss mutual interests, do they not? Pretend to proclaim a love for the latest Billboard hit while secretly searching up lyrics online to engage in active conversation with their loved ones, attempt to sing along or discover a newfound appreciation for glitzy pop idols and love songs.

Kieran squints to hear. It doesn’t sound like a love song.

“I also love music,” he replies ambiguously, thoroughly lost with what to do with this trail of conversation. “I especially enjoy Baroque era classics.” There’s a short pause from his niece as he gages her reaction - it’s hard to distinguish wide-eyed surprise from a fear-stricken stare when her toothbrush is jammed between her teeth - before she nods slowly and rinses her mouth.


“Wow.” She says. The exclamation is strangely bland. Sarcasm? “Hey, weren’t you alive in like, the nineties? Didn’t you listen to Bees Gees, or Frank Sinatra or Electric Light Orchestra or anything? NWA?”


“Well, yes.” he sniffs, somewhat disappointed with her reaction but not entirely surprised. “But Mozart is incredibly soothing when committing first-degree murder.”

“… Right,” She turns her head, rolling her eyes with a sigh. “I forgot.”

Behind him, she mumbles the rest of the tune, a soft and lilting sound against the fast rap of the next verse. Kieran wrinkles his nose, though finds his hands swinging to the same beat of the song. Perhaps it is an acquired taste.

— -

“I want to go to a party.”

“What?” Kieran frowns. The traffic today is heavy and his Bentley lurches forward with every inch that the long trains of vehicles are allowed to move. Heat settles around them in thick, near-tangible waves as they distort his vision. He sighs, turning up the AC. Alta shivers in the backseat but makes no comment.

“I got invited to a party.” She says, eyes darting up from her phone as they lock eyes in the rearview mirror. “One of my classmates is holding it and he’s a nice guy, so I figured it’d be fun. It’s tonight, at six.” 


“I see.” Kieran hums. 


“Okay,” Alta narrows her eyes, confused. “Does that mean I can go, or?”

Miranda’s voice springs to mind a clear point: don’t let her anything stupid.

“Will you be indulging in any alcoholic beverages?”

“No.” Alta thinks, cocking her head to a side. “I’m just bringing root beer and coke.”


“You’re bringing what?” With a screech of tires, Kieran brings the Bentley to a shuddering halt. Red again. He turns his head to glare at his niece who, at the moment, stares back with raised eyebrows. “We have none of these things back home.”

“I beg to differ!” She strikes a cheeky grin in response. “You’ve been drinking from my coke stash for a while now.


“I’ve what?” Kieran tastes the inside of his mouth, bewildered, and recoils from sweet aftertaste he didn’t notice before. He inhales a shudder. 


“It’s really subconscious." Alta continues, not at all weirded out by his reaction. "You just reach into the left side of the fridge and take it.” Her mouth twists into a quizzical expression. “Kinda like something was there before.”


“I-” a moment of clarity strikes him. “You rearranged my fridge.” 

“Yeah. You didn’t complain when I did it, so I moved your vodka to the upper shelf-” and a second later, the penny drops for her. “Ohh.”

Kieran buries his face into his hands, slumped forward. “I have been consuming sugar.”


“Better than alcohol.” Alta’s eyes turn sombre. “Hey, you’re not… an addict, right? Too much vodka is bad for your health.”

“Do not tell me things I already know.” Kieran snaps, slamming his foot onto the accelerator as they zip forwards.

“Okay, okay.” Her hands shoot up defensively, deciding not to touch on the matter any further. “But you seem to like coke, so I’m just going to leave it there, okay? And maybe after school's over we can buy root-beer before heading over.” Her arms fold, thinking. “Maybe you’ll like root-beer too.”

Kieran grumbles, nodding begrudgingly as he comes to the shocking revelation that perhaps his niece is actually being a good influence on him, and he’s being a somewhat questionable influence on her.

“Fine.”

— -

Two hours later he stands poised above the trembling figure of a blonde woman, her eyes wide with fear and mouth stretched into a grotesque cry for help between a black gag filthy with spit. Tearing up, she whimpers and writhes, legs thrashing in a tightly knotted rope.

It’s strangely bizarre if he thinks about it - only two hours ago was he questioning whether or not Alta had indirectly replaced Kieran’s drinking habit with sugary soda. The feeling is surreal - like it belongs in a totally different world, but Kieran isn’t averse to it as he brings himself back into reality and concentrates on the task at hand.

He knows the woman’s name. He wishes he didn’t have to, but there’s really no other way.

“Phease," Her hands struggle to break free. Her nose, wet with snot and salty tears, inhales a ragged breath filled with fear and anguish. He’s felt such things before. They seem alien, coming from other people. “Phease, just don’t thouch my shons.”

Kieran stares down at her. He’s familiar with this pose, this angle - a long time ago he relished the feeling of running his hands through human blood. Inhaling the scent of death. Feeling life drain from to-be corpses on marble floors and marvel at the rivers of blood that pooled from their bodies. For some reason, it all feels terribly gothic and lame now, and none of these things catches particular interest - not even the way her eyes roll upwards now, light leaving those flickering blue irises as she succumbs to her own mortality dug out from the tip of his dagger.

“I don’t kill people I don’t need to,” Kieran replies. “Your sons will be fine.” Her body sags in his grip - he steps aside quickly before blood can seep into his shoes, dumps his plastic gloves into his trusty duffel bag.

Does it feel good, killing her?

He raises a hand - reaches past his blazer and between his suit, against his bare chest. There his heart beats, calmly, not at all thrilled by the prospect. In a few hours her husband will come home and find her on the ground, lifeless eyes turned to the ceiling with a hand over her head and rope burns at her ankles, tear stains tracing the contours of her once breathing skin. His heart does not thrum. It doesn’t sing for her death, or her agony or even her struggling as Kieran took her life with one quick motion.

But does it feel good, knowing her husband will mourn? Kieran swallows, strangely nervous at the thought.

It is true that the woman’s husband will feel a devastating grief envelop him in waves as he grips her dead body, unable to question the cleanliness of the room and the methodology behind her death. It is true that he will he cry into her arms and smell the last scent of her living body before it is flung into a grave and given a tombstone, placed into a cemetery and lost among the thousands of other corpses that fertilise the flowers there. It is true that he will try to live past the death of his love and ultimately drown in his own sorrow. It is true that he will live, but live like he wasn’t given life. Kieran would know. These feelings aren't foreign to him. 

That, he inhales sharply, is that enough?

His heart beats. Steadily.

For some inexplicable reason, the sound nearly makes him cry.

— -

“So you’re sad?”


“I’m in pain.”

“We can remedy that. You’re a damn good shot, Oculus. It’d be a waste if you didn’t use that sweet right hand of yours for something useful.” 


“What are you proposing?”


Cool arms. A smile.

“You close your eyes and play pretend. Ten years back, 1824 — that was you, wasn’t it?”


“Maybe.” 


“Well, close your eyes.” A whisper.

“You could do it all over again.” 
“All over again.”

All over again.

Again.

Again.

“-Kieran. Uncle Kieran. Uncle Kieran?” He blinks. Alta stares at him from the backseat, eyes curious and a shade worried. “Are you okay?”

“What happened.” He stares, the question falling flat on his tongue and coming out like a confused statement.

“Uhh…” she reaches for her hair, mouth twisted into somewhat of a grimace. “Nothing? I opened the door, sat down, read through all my new texts, and you just sat there breathing for ten minutes. You didn’t even blink.”

“I’m sorry.” Kieran frowns. “I was… reminiscing.” 


“Oh.” Alta looks at him, somewhat expressionless before her eyes dart back towards her phone at a single vibration. “Okay. Could we get those root-beers now?”


For some reason, Alta insists on buying six bottles of root-beer, no less. Kieran weighs them on his hands, clenching their plastic caps between his fingers as he contemplates — rather cynically — whether or not this could be a decent, potential murder weapon. Even stranger, his niece picks up on the silent thought with a small frown as she swings her head towards him and makes a small remark.

“You can’t.” She says, brows furrowed. “It’s… just liquid.”


“In a large bottle.” Kieran retorts, though he isn’t sure why he’s even arguing a point so easily won. “Cased in hard plastic, compressed. The cap is a potential choking hazard.” 


“Whatever.” Alta snorts. “You’re the professional, I guess. Literally.”

The ride to-

“Davy.” Alta pipes up.

-Davy’s house is more or less peaceful, with his niece occasionally letting out a giggle as her fingers hover over a glowing screen and the streets outside bustling with all sorts of evening commotions. Night vendors switch on their, neon signs that invite the passing sea-food lover or a good, cheap thrill, the occasional karaoke drunk and his equally inebriated friends singing along to a song in some funny foreign language. Kieran’s eyes flicker over all of them, observing as hundreds of people flash past his Bentley in mere seconds.

Within half an hour Kieran reaches a house adorned with little lights, curtains drawn but light glowing through long slits from the house’s interior. Music sounds faintly indoors, a mixture of new-wave EDM and some unfamiliar jazz beat Kieran finds both hypnotic and catchy.

“Niece.” A sudden wave of discomfort hits him and he shifts uncomfortably in his seat, eyes glued to the entrance of Davy’s house. “I just leave you here, right?”

“Yep.” Alta nods, eyes never leaving her phone as she pushes open the car door and slides out, backpack in hand. “My friends will probably bring me back home when I’m done.”

Kieran doesn’t know what done means, but surely if she’s back before he is, there shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

“I must tell you where I am going before you leave.” He straightens his back, rolling down the window as she walks past.

“Okay.” She turns to him, blinking.


“I am going to perform a hit now.” He says slowly. “I may come home later than you, or earlier if time permits.”

“Okay.”

“Um.” Kieran scratches his head. “Unfazed again, I see.”

Alta smiles. “It’s all super surreal to me. I try not to think about it too much. Neither should you.”

With a swish of black hair and a small, half-hearted wave, she walks off. The streets are growing darker now, lamps flickering on as Kieran watches Alta rap her knuckles against a painted white door. In a few minutes it opens, light flooding her once dimming silhouette a bright yellow, and he catches a glimpse of a boy leaning against the doorframe. They turn to him, and Alta waves again.

Kieran waves back before driving away.