“Can I sleep somewhere else?” Shane grunted when Bette crushed her into much longer, much stronger arms.  Werewolf or not, Shane and Carmen were not the menace that Bette could be when adrenaline took over.  “I can’t sleep with a vampire.” She added.

“Fuck you.” Tina threw out over her shoulder.  Her feet crunched on the porch and she wiped them quickly on the doormat just inside.  Her hair was red, dark and long, and she wore a black leather jacket. When she took it off, Bette saw a series of weapons—bullets in a leather holder on one bicep and small silver stakes on the other. Her clothes were a bit dusty but otherwise she seemed intact. “Who dealt with your mood swings during your last full moon phase?”

Carmen nodded and shrugged in tired agreement. She sat down heavily at the kitchen table, which Bette and Helena hadn’t used in their time in the house.  The kitchen windows were still heavily boarded, and the stove didn’t work.  An unmistakable and disgusting smell came from the fridge, which they had also left alone. Carmen re-thought her decision to hold a cozy kitchen table chat and followed Tina downstairs, past the heavy wooden door that led to the family bunker.

Behind them all, Bette brought in the food she had cooked earlier.  Ultra rare meat, cooked just to keep any foreign mutations from altering it, sat next to raw, barely heated liver, blood sausage and kidneys.  Helena hated her food to be cold, but she also hated it cooked. Bette was going to make her cook it for herself if she thought that she and Tina were ever going to…

“Why are you both in hiding?” Tina asked casually.  She deliberately interrupted Bette’s thoughts, gazing warily at her, then plunked herself on the couch and watched as images of Angel played on the television. “The werewolves are almost all dead and I’m almost certain that most of the vampires are as well. In fact, everyone is pretty well dead. So. Why hide?” She also wanted to ask how they had gotten themselves to the Americas without Tina, Shane and Carmen knowing about it, but the rest of the story could wait.

Helena and Bette exchanged a wary look, before Bette explained…

tbc