The sun set quickly, or so it seemed, but even the ruddy colors left in the twilight sky burned my eyes. Sighing, I pushed the sun glasses up and ignored the pain. I decided a long time ago that there was a difference between hurt and harm. This was just hurt, and there would be no lasting damage, hence it could be ignored. Harm is something decidedly different. I grimaced as I turned my eyes to road in front of me. Interstate highways really did make travel much faster but they were, for the most part, ugly as hell. I realized I knew this fact too well and that I had been on the road for a very long time. This particular journey started eight years ago in a Northern New York town. It was there that I fell in love with a Catholic priest and every night since then I relive the guilt and the memories. I review every detail in my mind constantly.. wondering if I had not found solace in his presence, not sought his company if he would still be alive. I knew these thoughts were futile, for I did seek him out and did love him and the unavoidable fact was that he was dead.

The road blurred red before me - they destroyed my life and now I hunt his killers. Their trail has lead me throughout the country, to Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles, San Jose and all the cities in between. My quarry knows they are hunted and they run and hide with all of their immortal skill. It is only their youth and inexperience that keeps them from being lost to me. It is hard to find one of my kind when we do not want to be found. There are three of them, hastily made out of fear and loneliness by a rogue, who left them to their own devices when he disappeared. I have learned a great deal about my quarry over the years of nights I have stalked them. A smile passes quickly over my face knowing they have been run to exhaustion and more likely to make mistakes.

Every city I pass through is closed to them. They are marked as outcasts in other immortal eyes. No one will touch them, but the safe houses are closed to them and they are driven away. It is only by the weight of my words that this is done. I need no proof. Even the most unaware among us can feel my pain. They interfered with something which did not concern them and it has damned them, I have damned them. That is if the damned can be damned.

Again I sighed as I looked out over the road, cursing the fools for dragging me back up north in the winter. The landscape around me was bleak and grey, the ground covered with the dirty snow that marked the western half of New York. I had spent the last few nights roaming the streets of Buffalo and I found their taint everywhere. All the while I was there I was baffled as to why they stayed. Industrial towns always made me sick. They boomed and busted but were too stubborn or stupid to die. My quarry had killed on those streets and like most of my kind they had covered their tracks as well as they could but not well enough to hide them from me.

The monotony of the drive lead me deeper in to my thoughts. In the early days the runners had left calling cards. The would taunt me with a dead boy dressed in priests clothes, scrawl writing upon the walls and kill women who resembled me. These gestures stopped though. They made the mistake of underestimating me and their little pranks took up too much time. I was close on their heels, close enough to take a fledgling they made. Perhaps the only crime among us is the killing of another of our kind. This was a law I wantonly broke with this fledgling. In the months following the murder I was without remorse and rage was my fuel. I killed when I felt like it - just for the release it gave me. When my hands fell onto one I hunted I made him hurt for all the hurt they had caused. It was unjustified, brutal and heartless. I felt much better for it.

A semi roared past me buffeting my car with spray and slush. I wondered if they would head further north. As much as I knew about them I still had no idea what went through their minds. I knew I had pushed them very hard. The thing I wondered the most was if they would make a stand somewhere. In the early days I expected ambush at every turn because that made the most sense in my mind. I honestly thought I would chase them for a while then they would stop and kill me. That never happened. They just run. It was an aspect of them I could never grasp. I was not a runner not when I was alive and certainly not in death. In my reflective moments I have begun to believe that they have been running so long now that they know no other way. You can live in one state of mind long enough that you begin to believe it normal.

The stereo throbbed a tense the ancient beat of taiko drums. I found that music was one of the few pleasures left to me. It was in San Jose where I first heard Taiko played and I was addicted from that moment on. It was like a drug for me and listening to it almost guaranteed that I would kill. I figured if I was mortal my response to the music would have been the human equivalent to the kill, sex. With the demanding rhythm filling the car I spotted a sign for a rest stop. Smiling I eased the car into fourth gear and slid into the exit. Rest stops on toll roads are little islands unto themselves. You could find most anything a traveler needed. This particular one was set into a wooded area and the neon lights twinkled like colored stars, inviting the weary into its haven.

After parking I checked my face in the rear view mirror, then stepped out into the night. The air was chill and deliciously invigorating after the moderated temperature inside the car. I walked toward the tractor trailer parking area and opened my consciousness. I began to feel the flicker of the minds around me and was almost disappointed... there was not an evil man among them. Each had his own petty sins and triumphs, but all were basically good. I stood drinking in the banality of it all when I was startled by a wash of pain. I focused in on the feeling and it filled me, weaving its way around my own sufferings. I moved toward the man focusing in on his thoughts. His wife had recently died and I was seeing and feeling it as clearly as if it had happened to me. They had their difficulties, with him being on the road so much and the loneliness she experienced while he was away, but they had loved true and deep. He was lost without her and his life held nothing for him, but he knew no other way. The sound of my heels on the pavement made him look up. I smiled sadly at him, locking his eyes on mine.

"She loved you too." I whispered taking his hand. "There is peace for you.. if you come with me." With the slight glazing of the eyes he followed me into the woods. He was crying, her name echoed in my head and his loss became my world as his life spilled into me. He looked up at me as his eyes began to loose their light and with the crystal clear clarity afforded only to the dying said, "Let it go girl." He smiled as he died in my arms. I realized I was crying too, his weight slipped down to the ground. I stood staring up through the bare trees to the sky, it was spinning. Through this haze I watched myself cut his wrists, letting the ground soak with his blood, covering my tracks.

I walked back through the woods, the twigs and leaves cracking underfoot. The tears were hot on my cheeks, angrily I wiped them away. I opened the door of my car, the keys jingling loudly. I slid behind the wheel, the interior was dark and comfortable and I hated it. My soul felt naked and I wanted to hurt - to let one of the truckers have his way with me, to feel the pain and hate. I just stared out the window, the lights of the parking lot illuminating a few stray snowflakes. I started the car, flicking on the radio and someone was screaming in brutal, angry tones. I turned up the volume and pulled the car back onto the highway.

I hit Albany about quarter after eleven. It was easy to follow the pattern once in a town, they didn't vary it much. They would find a hotel, pay in advance, then hunt in the worse sections of town. My routine was a similar, familiar ritual. I would go directly to the slums to search for them. There were indicators I searched for, one was the residue fear that those they hunted left behind and their lack of presence. Most of my kind can "feel" those minds around us, mortal and immortal alike. Almost all of us blocked this in some way or another, but they learned nothing from their maker and all their defenses, as they were, they discovered themselves. Their solution was to become nothing, essentially blanks in the fabric. Fortunately for me "nothing" is as much of a marker as something.

It was for these "markers" I searched as I drove through downtown Albany. There were echoes of fear, but it was hours old. I was sure they would stay here for a few days, I had no idea why I knew this but I always trusted these feelings. I hit the end of Central Ave., realizing the trail was cold for the night. I was doubling back when I saw a crowd gathered outside a club. I could feel the excitement boiling off the humans gathered there and I realized I could really use a drink. I pushed the car into a small parking space across the street and joined the crowd. There was an intriguing mix of people and some of the faces looked so young it hurt to look at them. I smiled, blending in with my black boots, jeans, t-shirt and leather jacket. I lost myself in their excitement, letting myself be jostled to and fro. Finally the bouncer took my ID, the best fake money could buy, and my fiver and let me in.

The bar was small with every inch of the walls plastered with band posters - layer upon layer of them. As I glanced around several things stood out - the abundance of pierced flesh, leather and pheromones. I bought a beer just to feel the cool glass in my hand and made my way back to the stage. The atmosphere was dark, not really gothic but filled with artful decay. Smattered among the leather clad were a handful of gap kids, they looked out of place clutching their imported beer and talking nervously among themselves. They even smelled like ivy league. In passing I noted among the crowd the old that the young always attracted, who failed to look inconspicuous in their denim and cowboy boots. The heat and warm bodies swirled around me. One or two perceptive humans gave me a wide birth and I could see the fear in their eyes. No one would believe their ravings and I flashed them a fanged grin. The band was making final adjustments on the rattrap stage.

The blonde drummer set the pace and the guitarists and bass player followed. I descended into this reality, letting the beat take me. The band was better than good and I danced and flirted with the mortals around me, finding myself drawn again and again to one of the "ivy boys." He was a young Asian, dressed in "GAP" fashion, baggy pants, white oxford and a blue baseball cap. After the first set he was very intoxicated and I watched as his friends bought him beer after beer. His response to the music belied his neatly tucked shirt and tennis shoes and he moved with an instinctual grace. He was as drunk on the music as he was on the beer. I could not resist.

I danced near him the bass player's heavy rhythm making me shiver. I caught the gap boy's eye and drew him toward the middle of the dance floor. Considering his state he still danced well. I enjoyed the sweet smell of his excitement and youth. Within a few minutes I knew his name, Hoshi. The band met the demands of the audience, screaming out song after song. I kept the boy drunk and led him into seduction. The last echo of feedback filled the dive and without a backward glance I guided him out to my car.

We talked little in the car. My questions keeping him too busy to think much. Although he was still drunk his answers were rapid and intelligent. Quickly I found a hotel and I took him up to my room. His buzz made him comfortable and we kissed in the elevator, my hand caressing between his legs. The key slipped into the door and we slipped into bed.

When his eyes closed and he drifted into his dreams I slid out of bed. My thoughts returned to the runners. I tried to convince myself that I would never be safe until they were destroyed but the argument sounded hollow somehow. Would they ever stop running and could I ever find peace with them still walking the earth? I had let them destroy my love and now I had let them destroy me. The dying man's words came back to me, "Let it go." I my head dropped into my hands and the tears started. This is not how is should have been and not how I should be. I was as much a slave to the chase as the others.

Suddenly the glass of the window shattered inward sending tinkling shards through the room. I stood and leaped in one motion toward the dark streak entering the window. My hands closed on one of the young runners pushing him back against the second who was trying to gain entrance. I heard Hoshi stir and gasp behind me and worried. There was a third runner leaping through a second window and I had no idea how I was going to deal with all of them. The one in my grip writhed and clawed at me as I shoved him back through the window thrusting him up against the broken glass and pushing the dark haired one behind him back out on the ledge. His blood spilled over my arms and his limbs flailed against the window frame. A loud crack sounded behind me and I watched the head of the runner I held expode and with a thrust he was through the window falling quickly to the ground. There was a second crack but I did not have time to turn and see the results as the darkhaired one was lunging through the window. The rage surged through me and instead of retreating I steped forward, my hands grabbing his head and snapping it to the side. Although he would not die from having his spine snapped he also could not move. Another crack sounded. I turned to see the final runner lunging at Hoshi as he leveled his gun and fired a last time point blank into his attacker's skull. The body dropped to the floor.

The room was covered in blood and I stood staring at Hoshi. The gun slid silently from his fingers. "Thank you." it seemed ludicris but my mind was numb. "We need to get out of here." He said motioning to the bodies. "They will be gone as soon as the sun rises." I looked to the lightening sky. "As should I." His gaze narrowed slightly. "We have about seven minutes." I heard the shouts and the sirens. I moved quickly and pushed the dresser up against the door, then the bed against that. "It would not look good for you to be found here. I can take you out the window." I offered my hand and he scooped the gun up in one hand and took mine in the other. We were out the window in a heart beat, landing solidly, my legs absorbing the painful impact. The sun was beginning to burn my eyelids. I had to decide to live or die in the next moment.

"I will drive." He said and pulled me toward the car, the lethargy filling my limbs. I smiled grimly, "The trunk is lined." He nodded and unlocked and hoisted me gently inside, pulling a layer of thick insulated fabric over me. Then the trunk closed and sweet obvillion filled me.

and then what...? Send me ideas.