“Oh God, it popped right off,” KerriAnne’s thin voice shrieked. “I’m alive and it’s off, oh thank God!” The voice dissolved into helpless weeping.

Sally sagged with relief.

Moved to a gentleness she seldom showed with her sister, she said, “Well Darling, you keep yourself safe. I…” But she couldn’t bring herself to say I love you. “…worry about you sometimes. Oh, do go down into Bunt’s basement, there’s somebody down there you have to let out,” she finished.

Her finger started for the “End” button. She heard KerriAnne say something that might have been a humble and grateful thank you but couldn’t stop her finger in time.

Bip. Call finished.

Feeling incomplete but not wanting to call back, she put the phone away and faced Bunt.

She wanted to kill him and there was good reason to kill him. It would shut down the Home Runs. If she let him live, he’d Tweet lies to his online following the instant he was out of her sight. He’d catch someone else as blood bait for the Runs.

She could see him calculating all these things.

But if she killed him, she’d be a murderer. She’d done crazy things but she couldn’t cross that line.

“I’ll be watching you, asshole,” she snarled.

She saw him understand immediately that she wasn’t going to kill him. Angrily she drew back and kicked him in the face. His nose crunched and blood spurted. The vampires against the barrier hissed and snarled. Bunt howled and covered his face.

She glared down, uneasily certain that as soon she was gone he’d make trouble.

At that moment, there came a musical smashing of glass.

Sally jerked but saw that Lavinia had done it. She had pulled the camper flush against a display window, wrapped her hand in a green curtain from behind the driver’s seat and punched hard. “Shit,” Lavinia muttered as the cascade of shards subsided.

Sally had been wondering how she would get out with vampires filling the alcove. Lavinia had made a clear exit. Why was she annoyed with the older woman who now climbed carefully into the store?

Lavinia stood before her, eyes blazing with love and exasperation, and Sally hung perfectly balanced between defiance and melting desire.

She opened her mouth to explain something very important. But Lavinia turned, grabbed the fire extinguisher from beside the door and with a grunt, teeth clenched, brought it down on Bunt’s skull. Eyes popping, he sagged into a heap.

“What did you do that for?!?” Sally screamed. “You probably killed him!”

“Or at least knocked him out so he can’t fight me,” Lavinia answered grimly. She grabbed his bloody hands and dragged him to the door, an unhappy look on her face.

Sally realized what she was going to do in time to stop her but watched in confused relief as Lavinia repositioned herself and stretched Bunt’s arm so that his right hand reached to the threshold of the door and then past it.

With a rush which nearly wrenched Lavinia with it, Bunt’s unconscious body was pulled completely outside.

Lavinia staggered against the door jamb. Sally ran forward and grabbed her so that she fell inside, not outside. The vampires, maddened by the blood, pressed into a tight pack around the man they had idolized ten minutes before.

Movement rippled through the pack and one single droplet of blood flew into the air, to be caught by a leaping vampire with its mouth open, who was then pulled down by five sets of claws.

When the pack dissolved a few minutes later, no sign of Bunt remained except a foul smell of shit and blood. Even his clothes had been eaten or shredded into such fine particles that they were gone. A pile of fragments which had been his smart phone was quickly kicked away by the now-aimless crowd.

Lavinia looked like she was about to throw up as she angrily faced a shocked Sally Yan. “Couldn’t you see the world of trouble that pig was gonna make for you?” And then quietly to herself she added, “Jesus fuck.” Her face clouded with some memory. Sally wondered what desperate situation this capable woman had faced in her travels. Maybe she had killed someone to defend her long-ago girlfriend?

Embarrassed by the rush of lust and jealousy she felt, Sally said only, “Let’s go. Let’s get far the fuck away from here.” I’m starting to talk like her, she thought.

“Make sure there’s no trace of you left,” Lavinia started.

“Jesus Christ, I know that!” Sally exploded. “I didn’t drop anything but how do I know what traces I left?!” A new, horrible thought troubled her. “And no matter what I do, my GPS will show that I’ve been here. I checked in as soon as I got here. They, anybody who wants to can probably reconstruct, aw shit.” Sally realized she was about to cry. She squeezed her jaw tight but the sobs buzzed through.

Lavinia, who had listened with sad patience, now put tender arms around her. Sally fought the sweet embrace and said harshly, “Let’s go.” But Lavinia’s hand was still on her back as she climbed through the broken window into the homely camper. Sally sat still and straight, looking at the thronging faces, matching their evil with her anger.

She pictured herself holding out sticky rice or yellow paper with a Chinese spell. Had her father left because he saw what his daughter thought he was? Why would that shame him when molesting her did not? Sally had come home to help her mother when he got the cancer diagnosis. She had watched him drink himself to death (a path which he had warned his daughters would cause “nine-fold harm”) without speaking about what had almost happened. She hardly dared to look at her confused feelings about Bunt or KerriAnne.

Lavinia climbed in beside her, started the motor and after a moment broke into Sally’s thoughts. “Kid. You gotta navigate me, least until we get several blocks away. Then, I don’t know, maybe we ditch the phone?”

Her eyes blazing at the endless plague of vampires, Sally raged, “Why should we have to? Navigate, I mean. I mean, if this is our home…” Lavinia brightened when she said that “…and it’s a moving home, shouldn’t they have to get out of the way? Move your pale asses, you leeches, you slugs, this is our home!!”

Then she saw the miracle that Charla Thorpe had shared in a video which would soon go viral. The vampires, some fighting it tooth and nail, were pushed away from the front and sides of the van as if a cosmic janitor wielded a broom. In twenty seconds, the way was clear to drive.

“How did you do that?” Lavinia said in awed silence.

Sally shook her head, then found her voice. “I’d suggest that you drive, though.”

Maneuvering carefully off the sidewalk Lavinia observed, “You should bottle that and sell it, kid.”

The tires thumped down onto the pavement and the old camper pulled away.

After several blocks, Lavinia put a tentative hand on Sally’s knee. Sally wrapped her small white hand tightly around it. They drove like that for several more blocks until Lavinia turned right onto Mickabelle Street, which soon became a quiet country lane.

Sally let the triumph seep deliciously into her body. All those years of martial arts and gymnastics with no end in mind but never being raped again, all the months of training to kill vampires, all the reconnaissance for this Home Run, it had all paid off. Whatever the repercussions from Bunt’s death (and maybe there’d be none, nobody had liked the bastard) she had won. Her inbox was probably clogged with congratulations. (She pulled out the phone, unwilling to destroy it, compromised by putting it into airplane mode.)

She had saved her sister’s life. And, amazingly, this love had fallen into her lap. Maybe it would just be a few months of fun, like all her other relationships except one. It felt different though: it felt like she could give this woman the devotion she’d always yearned to give.

At the very least she and this amazing witch woman had a dish of incredible sex on order. But did she want to devour it?

They reached the entrance to a county park and Lavinia turned onto the access road. There was an old tents-only campground which nobody used anymore except daredevils brave enough to trust a home with thin nylon walls.

The place was deserted by humans but a few vampires drifted aimlessly. Neither woman had yet really absorbed the fact that they could order the vampires away: as soon as Lavinia parked, the drifters peered in, their eyes seeing everything and nothing.

The engine thrummed off. In the loud silence, Sally turned resolutely to Lavinia.

She saw a desperately vulnerable face and throttled back the charge on her next words. “Look, I appreciate….” But I appreciate what you’ve done for me was inadequate. “No, I’m….” Already half in love with you was too scary.

A frightening white face pressed hungrily to the glass in front of her. “Can we get into the back of this thing? The home part?” she asked. Hastily she added, “Not that the front seats aren’t part of our home!”

Lavinia motioned with a grand gesture at the gap where a curtain had hung. “Climb over the seat. I’ll follow you.” She was waiting for Sally to give her a clue and Sally found herself disappointed. A part of her wanted Lavinia to just take over.

She made herself stop and say the words, ignoring the vampires. Tenderly stroking the older woman’s face, she said, “You saved my life tonight. You helped me save my sister’s life. I want you, just the way you want me.”

Lavinia looked cautious. “But?” she prompted.

“I don’t want a twenty-four by seven … master/slave thing.” At the warmth and relief which filled Lavinia’s beautiful face, the perfect words rose. “I want to be bossed around in the bedroom. Nowhere else. So that stunt you pulled in the garage? Never again.”

Lavinia nodded sardonically. “Yeah, that went well, didn’t it.”

Sally looked stubborn and Lavinia raised her hands. “Look, I’m sorry. I thought you wanted, you know, like that.”

A smile wriggled its way onto Sally’s face as she felt again her rush of panting lust when Lavinia floored the accelerator, sweeping her along.

Lavinia looked pensive. “Look, I know we also oughtta have the safe sex talk and go over what we both like and don’t like and set boundaries and a fuckin’ safe word and shit. By the way, you got a fuckin’ name?”

Stunned, Sally realized she’d never told Lavinia who she was. “Sally Yan,” she said weakly.

“Well Sally Yan, I got no diseases, not even a cavity. You?”

Sally shook her head. “But I’ve been with …” She trailed off, not wanting to tell Lavinia just yet that she’d had lovers of both genders. “I haven’t been 100% safe,” she finished.

“Safe,” Lavinia muttered. They both looked at what was now nearly a dozen vampires prowling and Sally felt herself laughing. Lavinia chuckled. A schoolgirl excitement suddenly filled the air.

“I just got one other question for you then.” Lavinia’s violet eyes were now ablaze with merriment. “You don’t get off begging ‘stop, stop, don’t,’ do you?”

Sally shook her head again. “Great, then your safe word is ‘stop!’ That’s all you need to know. I don’t want you to know just yet what’s in store for you. But you want something to stop, say. You good with that, baby?” Lavinia looked surprised that the word “baby” had emerged.

Sally shivered deliciously. On fire and fully sure at last, she nodded. She liked Lavinia’s smell, she realized. Musky and still that hint of lavender flowers. “Come on,” Sally said meaningfully. “Get me into the bedroom.”

But behind Lavinia’s head, five hungry faces filled the still-open window. “And roll up the window,” Sally added.

“Jesus fuck!” As Lavinia cranked up the old window, Sally stared into the faces. She remembered her crazy wish to step out among them earlier. Now she imagined tacking thin yellow paper to their foreheads.

In the cozy little back Lavinia set up the bed: the table became a baseboard and foam seat cushions became the mattress. The camper had been well cared for: it was old but not musty. Sally liked that Lavinia was the kind of person who took care of an old camper. Even the emblem on her jacket was done with class: a crow whispering into a stylized ear, hand-stitched of different-colored pieces of leather and with some writing on it which Sally couldn’t make out in the dim light.

Lavinia rehung the curtain between front and back, made sure all the other curtains to the outside were pulled. No vampires could be seen.

In the dim light filtering through from the moon she turned slowly to face Sally, who lay in warm excitement on the bed. Their eyes locked. The vampires were outside and the long night ahead was theirs and theirs alone.