Yeah.

Figure there’s a girl.

Guy living in a sewer. There’s got to be a girl in the story somewhere. My story, it’s thick with them. Lost girl, rich girl, smart girl, dyke girl, crazy girl, tough girl, pregnant girl. Over the years, I’ve dealt with all of them. Dead girl. Yeah, her too. But only one matters. My girl. A girl worth sitting in filth for. Waiting. Watching. Feeling the walls of the tunnels for vibrations that will tell you something about what’s going on up top.

What the hell is going on up there? Who’s bought it? Who’s still kicking? How are the cards coming off the deck and where’s my play? Confused? Well come late to a tale, you got to expect to have to tread a little water.

Last thing is this, I’m not the way I am because of god or the devil. I’m like this because it’s who I am. I’m a bastard. That I happen to be a bastard that got infected with something called the Vyrus that turned me into something called a Vampyre, that’s just bad news for a lot of people who happened to cross my path over the years. Not because I’d have left them alone if I wasn’t infected, but because being infected makes me a damn sight harder to put down than I’d have been otherwise. Some people, they’ll argue against that. They’ll tell you there’s something mystical about the Vyrus. Some will tell you it’s nothing but a bug, a bug that makes us special, makes us dangerous. Some will say it makes us sick, makes us need to stick together, makes us better off if we went public and got help. Some will say that we need a cure. Some hover around the top of the fence and put off making a choice about which yard they’ll jump into.

Those people, they’re all at war against one another.

My bad.

I’d have kept my mouth shut, it wouldn’t be happening. But that girl, I needed to see her, and I needed a distraction to make it happen. Starting a war seemed what the occasion demanded.

Looking back, I maybe made a mistake. Not about starting the war, but listening to the girl. When she said to leave her where she was, I shouldn’t have listened. I should have dragged her out. I’d done that, we’d be gone from here already.