Darkness is so predictable.

Cerulean left. I wondered if she was from Flower Planet. Blue flowers were rare - one might take a name from that.

When you live for the fight, for the blood, the relationships you form are tenuous and easily broken.

Too young,too young,she chanted to herself. Wrong,of course. I was older than her grandfather but according to my driver's license,she was right.

A hundred yards away, Mike Newton was lowering Bella's limp body to the sidewalk. She slumped unresponsively against the wet concrete, her skin chalky as a corpse. I almost took the door off the car.

It was a strange combination to absorb - the everyday concerns of the town doctor stuck in the middle of a discussion of his early days in seventeenth-century London.

Jasper chuckled, shaking his head. " You truly are one frightening little monster.