A strange wind rose, all at once, swirling from the corners of dank and moldy cobblestones. Her hair lifted off her shoulder and whipped round her eyes and Bette reached blindly for Helena’s hand.

All at once, the wind ceased its movement.  The air was still again.

Helena’s hand gripped tightly in Bette’s, cool and strong—stronger than Bette remembered her to be.  Moments after they had paused in that alleyway, the cool night air above them, a figure appeared in the darkness.

“Jenny?” Bette squeaked.  The woman looked horrendous. She stood there, rooted to the spot, swaying on skeletal feet, her eyes milky yellow and sunken in a face bare of sun-blanched bone.  Her clothes flapped around a skeletal frame.  When she moved, she clattered. Her eyes were mournful as she gazed upon a single drop of blood, on the corner of Bette’s mouth.

“I used to have that.” Her voice was like gravel. She coughed but the air whistled through her ribs.  A single boney finger rose to her jaw before reaching for Helena. “You’re in danger…”

A look of terror came across what was left of her eyes then.

“Jenny?” even as she spoke her name, Helena found herself distracted by movement just over the smaller woman’s shoulder….

Present day…

It took longer to light a fire than it should have.  The logs were wet with something Bette did not want to look closely at.  She used a strip off her shirt—which was really the house’s owner’s shirt—and doused it in gasoline to jump start the flames. She would cook breakfast before the sun rose, and then they would go back inside for the day.

Inside, Helena shoved an old VHS tape into the VCR.  She sat in the basement, where the family had made a safe-room of sorts.  The walls were fake-wood panels overtop thick concrete blocks, and a thick metal door was ajar.

Two perfectly formed handprints on the inside of the door drew Helena’s attention.  Purple and brown and red tones characterized what was now old blood.

The ones who had tried so hard to survive were in the basement cellar, many meters from where Helena waited for Bette to return inside.  Their heads removed to ensure that they would not come back, as either Werewolf or Vampire. New to the ways of immortality, they had not put up much of a fight when Bette and Helena took over their home.