It was new moon, and business was booming for Hooker’s. Since the legalisation of feeding the regulars had become much more bold and brought curious friends. Cass had watched the other coven members feed night after night either nibbling in the bar or taking their drinks to the rooms behind it.

Every inch of her skin itched, and her toes curled in her boots as she watched night after night. Going back and forth to present on the wireless. Her ratings were on the decline, too much chat about vampire rights and not enough about music, her producer said. Cass hardly heard her, all she was focused on was the throb of blood through the arteries in the witch’s neck and the sound of the blood rushing. Every warmblood she encountered, it was all the same. She could hear the blood, and see it. She’d always felt it most keenly at new moon, but the past month it was maddening. Last new moon she’d fed up north with Hope, reunited with the vampire who had turned her years ago. It had been glorious, and Cass had felt the rush so keenly in the presence of another vampire. The hot, wet blood a torrent of pressure at first and then slowing as the breath shallowed and the pressure bottomed out. She had felt reborn, satisfied at last.

But within a week it was as if she’d not fed at all. The St Mungo’s ration was pitiful, and she’d been ticked off for racing through her share at the coven. Cass, despite her years and maturity, had sulked. Complained bitterly that the rest of the coven got to feed off live customers regularly but she couldn’t so much as take a sip from flesh. They didn’t know she had fed, though in truth she was kidding herself, of course they knew. There was only one reason a vampire’s eyes shone like that. They were all glassy eyed around her now. All well fed bastards.

A tray of drinks landed on the bar beside her. Cass exhaled, knowing her role in this. Fetch and carry, pull her weight once in a while. Since she couldn’t nibble she could earn some extra blood. She scooped up the tray easily, and strode towards the back rooms, glasses clinking beside her ear. She slid into the appointed room, confronted with the smell of fresh blood. A group were lounged on soft furnishings, basking in the high that came from feeding. They would ride it for a while and once recovered take refreshment and leave. The coven had moved on to the next guests, new moon their busiest night as the hunger was at its peak.

The nearest warmblood let out a contented sigh, eyes half closed, as if dozing. Her hand was clasped over the crook of her elbow, a dribble of blood rolling down her forearm. Cass licked her lips, setting down the tray of drinks and glanced about, knowing it was her place to provide something soft and fold the customer’s arm up to help her clot. She found a small towel in a stack and approached silently, crouching down.

Up close she could hear her heart beating slowly. The chambers echoing one after the other as the blood rushed through into arteries. Cass lifted the outstretched arm gently by the wrist, new beads of blood oozing in the crook of the elbow before her eyes in the low light. The heart throbbed again. The blood rushed…

Cass licked slowly, sensuously, cleaning up the trail of blood on the inside of her forearm. The witch let out another sigh, long, slow and shivered. It wouldn’t hurt to take a little sip. She was only cleaning up, providing a little more service. Her jaw cracked and she sunk her teeth into the warm ruddy flesh in her grasp. The witch gasped, eyes opening and head tilting back. Her blood filled the vampire’s mouth, and she drank down thirstily, blood dribbling down her pale chin as she did.

She drank, and drank… eyes darkening into something feral. Like the look she’d seen on Hope’s face as they’d fed together last new moon. Becoming the creatures they were.

The customer’s breathing became shallow and the pressure waned unsatisfactorily. Cass pulled fangs from the human vessel, tucked the towel in the crook of the arm as if she’d not just stolen a pint or two. The almost lifeless witch’s body draped across the armchair, neck invitingly stretched back through lack of consciousness. The sound of blood in the others roared in the vampire’s ears. She was not sated with that drink and the need for blood was only stronger.

The wizard beside stirred, coming to from his daze. Cass struck before he could notice her presence. She sank her teeth into his throat without manners, as he choked above her. They struggled, his foot slamming into the tray of drinks she’d placed on the low table. She sank her fangs in harder, gorging on his blood, ripping out his throat. Arterial blood sprayed upwards, dying her blonde hair and ruining the wallpaper.

Earnest Carstairs was among those laying comatose, and was pulled into reluctant consciousness by the clatter of the tray and the shatter of the glasses. Warm wetness hit his face and hair and shirt in a spray. He groaned and wiped it away and saw it was blood.

"What the fuck..." he muttered then looked up to see the source. A vampire was tearing into a person on the chair next to him, rending him like a hound.

"Holy god!" Earnest cried and scrambled to his feet. His athlete's frame served him in this time of need, and the vampire's glamour had faded enough. He stumbled over another limp form for the door. His left side was spattered red like he'd been near an explosion.

"She's gone mad!" he shouted, his voice almost a choked scream. He collided with Lazarus Blackburn in the corridor. Lazarus recognized Carstairs as a regular from before the free feeding law began; Laz knew he was not the flinching kind.

Lazarus didn't need to hear more. In three winks he was pulling Cassandra Motley from the destroyed body of Yorick Tinsley.

He was sharing a booth with the evening's blood bag of choice, a plump and jovial witch decked out in vintage denim. She was already slack against the back of her seat - sleek brown hair framing a blissful expression, the dishwater grey of her eyes hidden behind fluttering lashes.

Terrence traced his sharp fingernail along the side of her face. She tasted like the clean linens of a lusty seamstress, like the sensuous drape of raw silk. His touch dragged down her neck to the dip of her decolletage - Tristan planted that word in him - to pluck at the plunging neckline of the zip-up top. The witch made a pleased sound, squeezing her thighs together.

He would play a little, he thought, having blunted the sharp edge of his hunger.

Or not. A door slammed open, startling the bar's modest clientele, and Terry glanced over his shoulder to see a frantic Jin-ho cast a look around.


In the backroom, Poole had quickly followed on Blackburn's heels to get the rest of the patrons out of the room. She wore her feelings right on her face, contorted by anger and disgust. There were no niceties as she grabbed each mortal by their arm, shoving them out into the passage for another coven member to corral.

Witnesses. This was not the first or last time they'd have to figure out what to do with them.

       "Terry!" her gaze snapped to the figure coming down the dimly lit corridor.
"Show me," Terrence Hooker did not prevaricate.

He was quiet and tense and to-the-point. His theatricality, which he wore like a fabulous cloak, did not belong to the tension of the moment. This was coven business of a rare and serious order.

The smell of blood hit him long before he reached the door. There was so much of it after all, exposed, oxidising. Anaïs stepped aside almost timidly.

“What the fuck.. Holy god!” Cass barely registered the voice, drinking hard and fast on the throat in her jaws. All she could feel was the need to drink and drink fast. Her control had flown out of the window with about the same grace that Cass managed to fly in bat form.

“She’s gone mad!”

Her shoulders were wrenched by Blackburn, not that she knew who it was. Her mouth was full of gristle, tendons and flesh, and her hands dragged the body like a ragdoll from its rest to the floor. A mortal teddybear for a crazed child. About them was a hubbub, the slamming of doors, of shrieks and orders. She heard none of it, just the rush of blood and thud of scared hearts in those living in the room.

Undeterred by Blackburn’s grip, she spat her bloody mouthful, and dropped instantly to a crouch. She tried to throw herself back on the body with vampire strength and speed but her blood lust eclipsed the fact she was now surrounded by her coven by the dark of the new moon.

Lazarus saw now that Cassandra Motley was not victim to a momentary lapse of judgement; she was fully regressed to the savage fairy-tale place he dreaded. There'd be no appeal to any wants and needs of her saner self, and if left to it, she'd gut more living throats until she gorged herself to a stupor. Her strength and single-minded hunger was difficult to contain. It took two more of Hooker's kith to hold her, slick with blood as she was.

Terrence was there and Lazarus turned over his shoulder. "...Hook!" he called to him, unsure actually of what they should do with Motley, if indeed, they could keep her.

Hunger, insatiable. That form of hunger gave you strength.

Jin-ho had joined Laz and another coven member to grab a hold of the blonde thing - the thing they once knew as Cassandra Motley but was now beyond the reach of name or rule. She was the stuff of human nightmare; what their prey feared laid dormant underneath civility. And they were right to fear, weren't they?

"Sister, sister..." Terry hissed, eyes only for her as he stepped into the room.

Others filed in behind. Those who could be spared. His own jaw loosened, coming unhinged. It was the smell of blood setting his senses on fire. His focus darted  from sinew to raw flesh to the gristle masking Motley's feral countenance.

Hooker strode up to the young vampire but stopped short of a few feet, raising his hand in a choking gesture as he sent out a shove of psychokinesis to grasp Cassandra's bloody jaw. Holding it in place to look her in the face. There was nothing there. He had seen the blood lust, many times, but never so consuming.

"How do you plead, sister?" he asked anyway, in his double voice.

The coven surrounded. Terrence did not have to look to know, to feel them, closest thing to kin, treading over what remained of the unbridled feast.

She was held by hands and invisible hands, blood dripping from her locked jaw, teeth drenched and ruddy. She had to drink, but she was gripped, and faced by Hooker. Time stood still, and the world ceased to exist, all save for the mania to feed. A strength she had never known but had been growing faster every month and now deafened her very existence.

Cassandra Motley hissed, something akin to a cornered feral cat and the rumble of fire in the belly of a dragon. There was nothing of the Hufflepuff witch who had once owned her mortal form and filled the living rooms of wix families up and down the country with her radio show. Gone was even the verbose vampire who graced the midnight airwaves with new music and vampire rights. Something, or someone, had changed her once more into something truly monstrous. She struggled, throwing a fit against her restraints, whites of her eyes deepening to darkest blood red. She would know nothing of what happened next, for she was no longer her own.

Motley was gone. Every spasm and gnash of her jaw told the tale of a vampire who'd sank. If humanity is what kept a vampire tame, the last shred of it had left poor Cassandra. Hooker prompts yielding no evidence to the contrary. The course of action for the coven was clear and though Old Laz was chewed up inside over it, there'd be no rescuing her and time would not bring her back. There were two ends only for her: starvation or the other thing.

"Find the stakes," he told Anaïs Poole.

At a hint of hesitation, at a worried look from some of the younger ones, Lazarus flicked his spare hand. "Go on, go on, go on. There's nothing left of her."

It was Hooker's to finish if he saw fit since everyone here was for him and Lazarus was glad of that. He'd bring the tinder, so to speak, but didn't think he could light the match.

If there was a prickle of sadness beneath his scrutiny of Cass Motley, it did not surface. They welcomed the persecuted vampire under the assumption that she was not guilty of the crime for which the Ministry had arrested her. Right now, it seemed as if though this assumption was false. She had deceived them, deceived even Vaillancourt.

Terry returned her hiss with his own, echoed by two or three of the watching coven. No. Even if there was a chance of her sanity returning, this was violation enough to end their youngest member.

A pity. Her portrait, depicted in pastels, had been lovely.

       "Hook..." Poole's approach tore him away from holding Motley's malevolent gaze.
He looked at her, saw the conflict in her brow and the worry in her mouth. No sarcasm or laughs tonight.

Then his eyes dropped to what she was holding out to him. Three slender stakes of birch wood, bone white mottled by rough patches of brown. It only took one but some were harder to put down than others. He wondered.

Terry took up the longest of the stakes, "Let her go."

He turned back to Cass, ready to meet her lunge. Hooker would not stake her like his, like an animal in a cage.

Cass was released, and burst forward such was her momentum when the restraints were shed. The Motley vampire was upon her Coven leader in an instant, all spittle, bloody chin and clawed hands. She did not see the stake, not even as it buried into her cold body from his grip, between her dry ribs, and found its mark.

The birch pierced deep within her and she stilled, meeting eye to eye with Hooker, jaw slack with tiers of teeth glinting between gristle and clots of blood. There was the sound of gagging, of something caught in a throat. Another stake slid home from behind, and the head pivoted to stare back at the other vampires. Seeing and yet unseeing them, for it was as if nothing but a demon remained inside the vampire’s slender form.

An barbarous scream shook the room. The sound of a two lifetime’s grief and anguish, of a witch turned vampire by mistake, driven delirious by hunger in her undead form. A soul who never belonged but craved the adoration of all around her. It rang without a break and jolted furniture and fixings, suffocated candles and fractured glass.

The vampire, staked, imploded inwards, visage cracking like mud in the heat of summer. Every inch of her being disintegrated into fine-grained sand. What remained of the vampire spread across the floorboards and into the cracks. Leaving a drift about their feet, and their ears ringing from Cassandra Motley’s final unholy screech.

Lazarus stood where he was. Slowly he removed his hat and held it to his chest for a few long moments. Cassandra Motley was here no more, left from this world a second sad time, both of her lives far to short. She'd lived the storm but not long enough to have seen the calm. Two childhoods and nothing else.

"Because I could not stop for Death-," he recited by way of ode. "He kindly stopped for me. The Carriage held but just Ourselves - and Immorality."

Lazarus put his hand back on square with resolve and took off his jacket so he could roll up his shirt-sleeves. Easily he lifted the empty body over his shoulder. The smell of blood was repulsive now, like it had gone off.

There were some things you could not ask another vampire to do, and one of those things was to kill your own. He led this coven - he accepted Cass Motley, trusted her, expressed a kind of fondness even. And now he looked into her eyes. Into the last glimmer of life.

Terrence Hooker thought about his own death. When you have been alive for long enough, you start to wonder what it will look like when it happens. He held no delusions of true immortality; would he go the way of this wild creature or would it be at the hands of a hunter, an auror? Which did he prefer anyway?

Motley shattered. The stakes clattered to the floor in a sudden silence, which persevered until Blackburn spoke. But Terry did not feel like poetry. He felt like petrified wood. He felt old.

Others were following Laz's cue to begin this long night of cleaning up after their fallen comrade. Hooker picked up the two stakes and studied them thoughtfully.