Madam Midnight laid face up, the rain pounding a tattoo on the leather of her body suit.  Blood spread, diluting in the puddle forming under her body, the wound in her back unfelt even though she blinked occasionally as the raindrops hit her.  Holland appeared in her line of sight, knelt beside her and spoke.  The words did not penetrate her fogged mind.

            The clouded sky moved until she gazed across the rooftop of the build as her servant rolled her to inspect her wound.  He worked in shocked silence, first pressing the pressure bandage to her back then rolling her to draw the gauze straps around her body.  Deftly he pulled them tight as he made his knots, one at the bottom of her ribcage, the other between her breasts.

            Satisfied the bleeding was at least slowed, the man lifted his mistress in his arms and moved to the door leading to the stairwell.  Silently he moved down the twelve flights of steps and out into the alley behind the building to the waiting car.  He’d left the rear door open when he’d go up to get her so placing her on the wide leather covered seat was only a matter of maneuvering the limp woman though the car’s door.

            It was a 1938 Cadillac 7553 Town Car and so, huge.  The blood seeped into the leather, ruining it but Holland would worry about that later.  Closing the door quietly, he slid into the driver seat, turned the key and stepped on the starter button.  The car rumbled to life and without hesitation accelerated toward the mouth of the alley. Less than ten minutes later the car lurched off the road and disappeared into a layer of thick undergrowth.

            The woman laid face down on the table, her head turned to the right, eyes closed.  A man hovered over her wearing greens and a surgical mask.  He held a needle in his gloved hand and plied as was neatly as any professional seamstress in the New York garment district.  No hint of a tremor betrayed the pain he felt as every ounce of his concentration was centered of his work.  Finally, the last stitch was made and tied off.  He clipped the ends off with a pair of surgical scissors and dropped them with a clatter onto the stainless steel tray with the rest of his instruments.  She was alive, and would stay that way.  But . . . she would never again be Madam Midnight; the bullet had severed her spine.

            "The girl is five years old and speaks seven languages fluently!"  The man was pacing, an irritable pacing.  "She should be studied!"

            "Do YOU want to tell her grandmother you want to study her granddaughter?"  The other man made it sound ominous.

            "Last time someone did something to one of her family, it wasn't a pretty sight," the third man warned.

            "Still!" the first wasn't quite ready to give up.  "There has never been a manifestation like that as such an early age!"

            The third man snorted “Manifestation?  IS that what you think it is?"

            "But both of her . . . " the first man shut up ad the elderly woman wheeled into the room pushed along by a beautiful little girl.

            "But both what?" the old woman snapped.

            All three men looked sheepish and muttered 'nothing'.

            "Good!"  The old woman gave all three an icy stare and had one almost peeing his pants.  She was the scariest old broad on the planet.  Turning her attention to the little girl the woman said.  “Time for your lessons, Alicia.”

            “Yes, grandmother,” the girl curtseyed and strode purposely toward the stairs.

            When she had disappeared, the woman looked at the oldest of the trio.

            “Report,” she snapped.

            The man cleared his throat, a nervous habit he’d picked up while working for this woman.

             “Out latest series has proved unsuccessful, madam,” he began.  “Both donors have died, each after eighteen hours, plus of minus twenty minutes.  It both cases the recipients appear to have remained unchanged.  We are still testing them, but it has been forty-eight hours and we do not expect improvement.  It should have manifested by this time.”

            The old woman nodded, her back remaining ramrod stiff, no hint of the disappointment she felt showing on her lined face.

            “How do you plan to modify the procedure at this point?” She eyed the youngest, newly hired from a European pharmaceutical mega corp.

            “I have been running test and there is a new series of antibiotics just out that were designed to combat drug resistant strains.” The young man said.  “We will incorporate their use in out next series.  I have high expectations.”

            “As do I,”  the old woman snapped.  “We do not have all the time in the world, gentlemen.  I suggest you get to it.”

            The girl pushed her grandmother’s wheelchair through the entry hatch of the bio-lab clean room.  Both were garbed in sterile white, the wheel chair one kept in the antechamber just for this purpose.  Without comment, the girl wheeled the old woman to a bed where two doctors lifted her and arranged her legs under the single sheet.  Alicia found her grandmother’s grip to be surprisingly tight as she walked beside the bed the doctors pushing it into the operating room.  They stopped it beside an empty but identical bed. 

            One of the doctors secured the old woman’s arms with soft leather straps then pulled a helmet-like device down from the ceiling and fitted it over her head.  The second doctor led a young woman dressed only in an open-backed hospital gown into the room and to the second bed.  The old woman’s eye followed the gowned figure then locked on her granddaughter.

            “Alicia,” she began.  “If this does not work, you are my sole heir.”

            The girl’s eyes began to tear.  She was just fifteen and this woman was the only family she had ever known.  To think of life without her was unimaginable.

            The young woman in the hospital gown stood passively beside the empty bed.  Alicia had been told that this woman’s mind had been destroyed by her long addiction to drugs.  Now cleaned of the residual toxins her body had been found to be remarkably healthy if now little more than an empty shell.  It was there she hoped to find her grandmother after this procedure.  Though Alicia did not understand the science, her grandmother seemed confident enough at last to give the procedure a chance.

            The blast was deafening. The doctor on the opposite side of the bed staggered, a crimson rose blossoming over his heart.  With a exhalation of breath, he crumpled to the floor.  Alicia whirled to face a pair of pistols pointing as her grandmother.

            The woman in the hospital gown stood clear-eyed, pistol steady in her hand while the doctor beside her stepped to Alicia and jammed the muzzle of his own pistol into her rib.  Gripping her by the arm, he dragged her to the bed and forced her up onto it.  The young woman, stood over the old woman with the gun pressed to her forehead.

            “First sign of your power,” the woman began then altered her aim to the girl being strapped to the bed by her confederate.  “This girl dies.”

            “Who are you,” the old woman hissed, her strength seeming to had drained from her.

            “Me?” the younger woman shrugged.  “A granddaughter like yours.”

            “Granddaughter to whom?” the old woman asked.

            “Madam Midnight, who do you think?” the girl sneered.

            The woman once called Madam Midnight paled. She whispered “Kurtz.”

            A smile grew on the face of the young woman.

            “So, you remember my grandfather,” she said.

            Madam Midnight nodded slowly.  “I remember how he died,”

            “YOU MEAN HOW YOU KILLED HIM!”

            The woman pressed the muzzle against Alicia’s temple.

            “NO!” Madam Midnight struggled to sit up but her body was too frail and the straps too strong.  She could barely move.

            The ‘doctor’ pulled the helmet down over Alicia’s head and twisted several thumbscrews to hold it against her skull.

            “So, you want to live forever, Madam Midnight?” the woman sneered.  She gave one the thumbscrews holding the helmet in place on the old woman’s skull, causing her to wince but not cry out.

            The man began flipping switches and the equipment filling the room began to hum.

            “I want you to live forever,” the woman said, taking a seat at the computer and tapping the keyboard with flying fingers.  “I just think it will be fair if you do so as your granddaughter!”

            Pausing dramatically with her finger hovering over the keyboard she waited until realization of the situation dawn in both of her captives.

            One of the conditions on her grandmother’s will had appointed a law firm as guardian to Alicia and since she never saw them, she never thought about it.  She was pretty much free to do whatever she wanted when ever and liked it what way.  Then someone started the school year and she found herself enrolled in this Stan Lee High School out on Point Loma.

            The lawyers never explained why that particular school, she would have preferred the school she’d been attending, a private one in La Jolla but the men in suits insisted.  So Monday morning dawned and Alicia groaned as she sat up in bed.  First day of school.  A new school.  It was gonna be totally crappy, she could feel it.

            Alicia was the first of the class to arrive and took her seat in the back of the classroom.  She removed the round lens glasses and gave one side a wipe with the hem of the crop topped tee-shirt she wore.  As she settled them back on her nose, the first of her new classmates arrived.  The door opened and a huge boy with sun beached hair and deep tan held it open for a tall, slender and very elegant girl.  Both made their way to the back of the room and took seats side by side.  Alicia stifled a laugh as the surfer guy tried to fold his large frame into a desk obviously mean for someone considerably smaller than his seven foot plus height.  The girl gave her a long, cold stare.

            Alicia’s heart skipped a beat as a boy sauntered in, gorgeous beyond belief, dressed in expensive though casual clothes that had to be tailored.  The thunder in her chest increased as he moved to the rear of the room and took a seat beside Alicia. 

When their eyes met, she dropped hers but could feel his gaze taking in her bizarre appearance, the rows of studs through her eyebrows, the tattoos on her hands and shoulders, and her bag lady style of dress.  Inwardly she cringed, for the first time in her life truly concerned with the impression she made on someone else.  When she looked up with defiance in her eyes her mouth dropped open as the boy held out a hand to her with a huge and genuine smile.

            “I’m Slater,” he said.  “And you are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.

            Through the chaos of the filling room she registered his words as she took his hand.  It was soft, and the pressure, gentle the entire time his eyes were locked on hers.  When she finally found her voice she stammered.

            “A a Alicia.”

            She waited for him to release her hand but he continued to hold it, that smile blinding her.  Behind her the big surfer boy cleared his throat.

            “I’m Nat, this is Wren,” he indicated the girl he come in with.

            Slater glanced over at the two across Alicia’s desk and though he still smiled, it did not seem to Alicia to be anywhere near as bright as before.  He released her hand and she drew it back, the feeling of his touch lingering.

“I’m Slater and this is Alicia,” his words hit her like little jabs.  He’d introduced HER and they’d just met.  She felt a warm flush suffuse her face.

            “Shall we banter pleasantries at lunch,” the girl called Wren suggested, her gaze scanning them both like RADAR.

            “Yeah, how ‘bout we meet on that little grassy hill with the single scrub pine?” the tall surfer suggested.

            “How about . . . “ Wren said, puzzling Alicia by her repeated and corrected words.

            Nat smiled “How about?” he repeated.

            Christiana sat on the edge of the couch, knees together, listening to her friends speak of vampires and horror movies as if it were all a joke.  Only Alicia stared at Christiana from Slater’s lap, somber.

            “Vampires are truly undead?” she asked, her voice barely audible through the hubbub.

            Nat whistled a single sharp note to which Wren responded by covering her ears and giving him a dirty look.  The room went silent, all eyes on Christiana.

            “Yes, vampires ARE undead,” she said directly to Alicia.

            The other girl nodded and said “Good, then I will know one on sight.”