He makes a face.

– Still can’t believe you put some of his blood in me. Nasty.

He bites his lip.

– Anyway, thing is, none of it, none of it was an act. Want you to know that. I definitely made a play to put you in a position where you had to help me, but none of it was an act. So. Thank you, I guess.

I don’t say anything.

He nods.

– Yeah, fuck me. I know.

He starts down the hall that runs between the cubicles where the Enclave sleep.

– Will say, I never figured I’d end up here. Heard about these guys. But never thought for a second you’d bring me here. Never had this in mind. Did you know?

– What?

– That they only allow Enclave inside?

I put my hand to the wall, taking some weight off my knee as we go down toward the end of the hall.

– Never thought about it.

– Just brought me over here. Didn’t even know what it meant when they let me inside. Just random.

– Or something.

– Yeah, think about that. Or something. Like, is anything random, right?

He stops again, turns and faces me, the last door beyond him.

Her scent in the air.

– Like, how about this? You dose me on anathema. I mean, hook me on the bad dose. And I see things. And I can’t take it. And I, just on instinct and whatever I’ve learned from what I’ve been reading, I try to burn it out by starving the Vyrus. And you bring me here. And I happen to be Enclave. Daniel looks at me and knows. Which is part of what being him was all about, I guess. And he lays the whammy on me. And I trance out. And he brings me back. And here I am. Up and about. And, like, I was up almost right away. And he was impressed. I mean, they were all impressed. The dose I was on, the way I went head-to-head with it, the way Daniel got me to do that dance with the Vyrus and then I just snapped to, turns out that’s some heavy shit. I mean, Joe, it’s not just that you brought me here. I got potential. Real potential. How’s that for or something?

I push him to the side and walk.

– Fuck do I care.

I walk into the room and she’s there. On a mat on the floor, a thin blanket over her, face sweaty, shivering. An Enclave seated at her feet, one hand holding her toes, whispering.

The Count comes in behind me.

– Tell you, Joe, I can see it. Even all fucked up as she is, I can see what you got there.

I walk over to her and kneel on the floor and run a hand over her head and come away with sweat and hair.

I touch my pockets. I don’t have a blade. Only Rebbe Moishe’s Defender.

The Count crouches at my back.

– A girl like that, what’s a man to do? How can you have a girl like that and not try everything to save her?

Her eyes open. She looks at me. She smiles. A hand comes out from under the blanket and touches the candy necklace and her lips move and she’s asking me a question but can’t speak past the hole in her throat.

Am I pretty?

I nod.

Her eyes close again.

I put my fingers at the clog of scab and new flesh that has grown over the wound in my neck.

A girl like this, how can I not try everything to save her? How can I keep myself from trying every last cruel and desperate trick to keep her with me?

Simple.

I can’t.

I tear open the wound in my neck and lean close and place it against her mouth and the Count grabs me and pulls me away and my hand goes to the Defender and the Enclave has it and I am across the room and more Enclave are there between me and Evie and I try to go through them and I cannot.

The Count leans over her and mops at her mouth with the cuff of his white shirt.

– Hey, man, what’s up, you trying to kill the girl? I mean, dude, imagine if her throat wasn’t swollen shut. She’d be spewing foam all over the place right now.

I try to get to her.

They stop me again.

The Count stretches his arms, hands pushed out at me.

– Joe, man, cool it. You’re gonna get all fucked up by these guys if you don’t cool it. I can only do so much here. Sure I got potential. But potential only gets you a little ways. You got to deliver if you want your shit to stick.

He opens his shirt.

– Now, I know Daniel told you the girl’s like you, but he just meant that she’s Enclave. Or Enclave potential, I guess. Enclave enough to get in here. That doesn’t mean you can infect her. That takes a special touch.

He peels his shirt from his skinny torso.

– Check it. The Vyrus changes when it comes into us. That’s what Daniel said. That’s common sense. That’s why one Vampyre’s blood can infect some people, but kills most others.

An Enclave hands him a short silver tube, one end cut on a bias and honed to a point.

– Thanks. But then, it reasons, some can’t infect anyone. And some, they can infect lots of others. Like carriers. Daniel, he was a carrier. Know what he did? Part of what made him who he was? This is so cool, he told me about this last night, right up here. He infected new Enclave.

He sits down next to Evie.

– Like, if they saw the potential in someone out there, they brought them here. No questions asked. No choice. And Daniel bled into them. And it didn’t always work. Mostly it didn’t, but it worked more than for most Vampyres. Or infecteds. Or whatever you like.

He’s handed a small hammer.

– So we’re talking, me and him. He’s impressed with the way I handled that shit last night. He’s also whacked as hell, you saw him at the end there. Who knows where he was on the inside? But he wanted to talk. Lots of things. Mostly Enclave, but wanted to talk about music too. All kinds of stuff. Women. Kept asking about how high the hemlines are this year. Trippy. And I told him about my girls. Remember my girls?

He raps the hammer against the floor.

– Sure you do. Three sweet little things, wanted nothing but to party, have a good time, give a man some comfort. Well, how could you forget, what with the way you shot them down?

He puts one end of the tube at his eye and looks down it at me.

– That was not cool.

He takes the tube away.

– But I’m off topic. Check it. Daniel was even more impressed that I’d infected all three on my own. Hey, granted I broke a few eggs before I had my girls. There were definitely some that didn’t make it on the way to that ideal three, but it was still pretty unusual. The fact that I could infect three out of a pretty small fucking sample was beating the hell out of the odds.

He taps his temple with the tube.

– And here I am, dropped on Daniel the night before he’s going to try and take the next big step in his evolution? Well, he was a man who believed in signs and that kind of shit.

He looks at Evie.

– And then there’s her.

He holds up his index and middle fingers.

– Two new Enclave. Coming in, just like that. Bang and bang. I don’t need Daniel to tell me that’s got to be some kind of record. That’s got to mean something. That’s got to be an opportunity for something. To learn something.

He pulls Evie’s blanket down.

– ’Cause a man can have all the potential in the world.

He places the pointed end of the tube at his heart.

– But that’s just meaningless.

He hefts the hammer.

– Unless he does something with it.

He strikes the end of the tube and it pierces his chest and blood shoots from the end and he bends and places it over Evie’s trache and the blood fills it and it spills over her neck and face and her heels bang against the floor and her arms tremor and her throat works.

And she’s swallowing.

And she doesn’t die.

She doesn’t die.

And I try to get past the Enclave to kill the man doing what only I ever should have done. But I can’t. I’m too weak.

So I fail.

– That was doing it old school.