“It looks to be all clear for now.” Aileen returned while I was dragging over the wounded criminal with me towards Helen. Helen in the meantime has sat down and was resting against the shield, breathing quite heavily.

“I thought you said you were fine?” I just dumped the bandit on the floor and jogged over to Helen. Taking off my balaclava.

“I actually didn’t.” Helen replied and dropped the gun on the floor. “To be fair, I’m in quite a lot of pain right now.” She took the flashlight off the gun and inspected her torso. “But I think it’s mostly bruising… I didn’t really get shot.”

I looked back at Aileen, who was using a zip tie to tie the guy up behind me. “Can we get her to a doctor?”

“Yeah, that’s the plan.” She nodded. “Do you want to carry her out? I’ll carry this bozo then.”

“I’m not a~” Our prisoner tried to speak up, but he got smacked by Aileen instead. He was lucky she was holding back.

“Shut up. I didn’t ask you anything.”

“Can you walk by yourself?” I asked Helen.

“No, I don’t think so.” She shook her head.

“Alright. Tell me if I need to carry you differently, okay?”

I gently scooped Helen up in a somewhat princess carry. It felt a bit strange as she was by far the tallest woman I’d ever carried, and I was used to my girlfriends who were both smaller than I was, but at least it seemed like Helen wasn’t feeling much pain by me lifting her.

Aileen carried the guy quite a bit differently, swinging him over her left shoulder so he didn’t bump into her sword, but that still looked really uncomfortable. Especially with a shattered knee… “You remember the way out?”

“Yeah.” I nodded and walked in front of Aileen through the warehouse. It’s on our way through that the destruction became even clearer. From where I’d fought, I could only see a bit of the entire warehouse, but as we walked through, there were bodies everywhere. Complete and utter mayhem. I had to control my breathing to just keep myself calm, otherwise I’d start to shut down again like a bit earlier. I really hoped that this was the last time I had to go through anything like this... But I feared that was some idle hope.

Helen stayed silent until we walked out of the building. “Shit, it’s cold.” I felt her shiver in my arms.

“We’ll get to the car soon, it’s parked on the other side of the building.” I turned towards the corner. It had started to snow quite a bit harder than when we first arrived. I tried to at least cover Helen a bit from the snow but the best way to keep her warm would be to get her to the car as fast as possible so I picked up the pace a bit without actually starting to run. Aileen behind me just matched my pace.

Through the small corridor we finally reached the car which beeped open as Aileen pressed her key.

“I’ll put you in the front seat.” I said to Helen, holding her momentarily with one arm as I opened the front door.

Aileen in the meantime just dumped the guy back in the snow to run around the car so she could put on the heating for Helen. When she had done so, she motioned to me to close the door as she shut hers.

“I’ll close the door so it can get a bit warmer.”

“Sure.” Helen nodded.

When I closed the door, Aileen walked back over to the trunk, opened it, took something out and then closed it back up again. She was holding a syringe.

“What do you want to happen, Aurora?”

“What do you mean? You aren’t going to jab Helen with that, are you?”

“Oh, this? Nah, that’s for him.” She walked over to the criminal and quickly jabbed him in the neck. The solution inside of the tube disappeared. Our prisoner squirmed a little before he lay motionless in the snow. “This will make him take a nap for a while so we can discuss things without revealing too much.”

“Ah, alright.” I looked at the car and then back to Aileen. “So, what exactly did you mean with ‘what do I want to happen’?”

“What do you want to happen to Helen?” She asked. “When it comes to memory related business.” Aileen clarified.

“Ah….” I scratched my head and looked at the car once more. “I’m… not sure… what do you think…?”

“I think erasing her memory would cause more shit than that it would solve.” She admitted. “She’s too intelligent not to suspect something happened. It might just be easier to bring her into the fold. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to give you the option. It will be doable to hide it with extensive trickery, but that’s up to you to choose.”

I sighed. While I wanted to have Em’s family know about our peculiar existence, this was definitely not the way in which I wanted to break the news to her closest circle. And I definitely didn’t want to take the opportunity away from Em to let her explain it herself if she wanted to. But it was clear to me that that option was off the table. If we screwed with Helen’s memory now and then reveal what we did later… That would leave an even more foul impression than what had transpired today. “Yeah… I think you are right.” I ultimately agreed with Aileen. “Although that means we’ll have a lot of explaining to do.”

Aileen nodded. “There’s plenty of time for that while I drive her to one of our trusted doctors.” She then pointed at the guy sleeping on the snow. “Would you be so kind as to secure him in one of the back seats? I need to call our cleaners so this mess gets cleaned before the sun rises.

I nodded and did as she asked.

When I opened the rear door, Helen looked at me as I strapped in the unconscious bandit with the seatbelt in the farthest away seat from me. .

“Were you two discussing what to do with me?” She just straight up asked.

I was quite taken aback by that. Pausing my movement for a couple of seconds. “Uh… how did you know?”

“It’s relatively obvious.” She chuckled, but then groaned as she grasped for her chest. “Ah fuck, that hurts.”

“We aren’t going to do anything with you apart from taking you to a doctor.” I replied.

“A doctor wouldn’t be an unnecessary luxury…” She slowly took her own seatbelt and clicked it in. “But that’s really all you are going to do? That’s pretty atypical for some kind of shady organization.”

I got in the car myself and closed the door behind me. “Might I ask… what do you think we are?”

“Hmm… that’s the question, isn’t it? Definitely not casual ice-cream enjoyers.” She nodded and looked in front of her. “The both of you are terribly strong, that’s for sure. Your friend is a very skilled fighter. And as for you… I’m pretty sure you are bulletproof. That kind of leaves me to think you are super soldiers, but you are far too clumsy for that.”

“Wow… okay.”

Helen tried to keep back a chuckle, but that only resulted in her groaning a bit more. “Besides, you two don’t seem like government types either so that excludes some kind of super spies as well.”

“Hmm…”

“So which is it?” Helen asked. She was looking at me through the rearview mirror.

I waited for a couple of seconds “Would you believe me if I said vampires?”

Helen squinted her eyes. “That would not have been in my top 10 guesses, no.”

“It’s true though.” Aileen opened the door and got into the driver’s seat. “Immortal, bloodsucking vampires.”

“Wait… how old does that make you then?”

“I’m about to turn 910 if I haven’t miscounted.” Aileen nodded.

With big eyes, Helen looked back to me.

“I’m not nearly as old, I just got turned into a vampire at the start of winter.” I confessed.

“Does that mean you are preying on lady Emma and lady Corelia?”

“Well… I guess… But I wouldn’t call it that… we honestly do really love each other.”

“They do. It’s extremely sweet, so much so that it nearly rots your teeth just by looking at them.” Aileen added, starting the car and backing it up from the parking lot.

“So that means they know…”

“Well… they don’t only know… they are kind of immortal too…”

“What?!” Helen exclaimed and then grasped her chest in pain once again. “Did you turn them into vampires too?” She really did not look pleased with me right now. “You turned them into monsters, too.”

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t use slurs.” Aileen calmly replied as she shifted gears.

“Right… sorry…”

“They… they aren’t.” I shook my head. “Apparently I’m this special kind of vampire, you see… But let me maybe start from the beginning… ” I started to explain the entire story. As much as Helen had always been the more stoic person I knew, she was also the one with the most expressive facial expressions I’ve seen from all the times I’d done my story.

But what really got her heated in the end, is how this entire situation was presumably all caused to get to me…

-And I didn’t blame her at all.-