Overhead, a crow hung his head, cawed in frustration, and then leaped from the crumbling ledge, flapping its black wings as it soared into the cool night sky.

*     *     *

            Perched on a ledge in a different part of the vast city, the diminutive vampiress held a newspaper in her hands and read the comics section with great interest.  One cartoon, which depicted a cow cooking hamburgers on a grill while being berated by his peers, amused her in particular, and she chuckled as she read the dialogue aloud.

“You’re sick, Jessy!  Sick, sick, sick!” she murmured, her laughter quickly turning into a loud cackle that carried over the rooftops and echoed off the artificial canyon walls of the metropolis.  “Brilliant!”

Down below, people turned their heads skyward as they caught the sounds of the vampire’s laughter, and the more perceptive ones shivered slightly, though they knew not why.  The laughter went on for well over a minute, as the vampiress was tremendously entertained by the simple cartoon, and though most people let it fall into the background of the city’s cacophony, some of them picked up their pace along the sidewalks, suddenly in a hurry to get home.  If the vampiress had taken the time to notice their reaction, she would have been pleased, but she was still too absorbed by the cartoon cows to pay heed to anything else.  At least she was until the crow landed on the ledge a short distance away from her, cawed loudly, and gave her a pointed look.

The vampiress looked up from the comics page and raised a thin, black eyebrow at the big bird.  “What do you want?  Don’t you have somebody to watch over or something to that effect?”  She turned back to the comics and began to chuckle again.

The crow hopped along the edge, drawing closer to the black-haired vampiress, and he cawed again, more insistently this time.  She ignored him, instead focusing her attention on Calvin & Hobbes, and the bird moved even closer.

Finally, after the bird was practically sitting on her lap, she looked down at him and said, “While I respect the fact that your kind has been defying the reapers for centuries, I am not a babysitter.  Your charges are your business, not mine.  If you can’t get them to do what you want them to do, maybe you should choose them more carefully.  Now go away.”

The crow’s response was loud and extremely fierce, and he flapped his wings several times in emphasis.

The vampiress let go of the paper and let it flutter on the city’s air currents as it lazily drifted to the streets below.  She scowled slightly at the crow and said, “I am Raven, and I fear nothing.  The reapers already want my head, so if I were to help you, it wouldn’t be any more hot water in my case.  I’ve evaded them for hundreds of years now, longer than you have, and I will likely be evading them long after your kind has finally been discovered.  I simply don’t want to bother with one of your little revenge scenarios.”

The crow cawed several more times, and Raven shrugged.  “See if I care.  If she doesn’t have the guts to get the job done, then send her off, because she’s a spineless coward.  Balance the scales some other way.”

The crow leaped into the air so that he was eye-level, flapped his wings several times to stay aloft, and practically screamed in the vampiress’ face.  He then dropped back down to the ledge and looked at her expectantly.  “You are beginning to annoy me,” Raven said, narrowing her eyes.  “Go away.”

The black bird squawked again, and the vampiress suddenly lashed out with one of her hands, in which a dagger with a gleaming emerald blade had appeared.  The metal sliced through the air, where the crow had been a second earlier.  He cawed angrily at her from further down the ledge, and she hissed at him, sounding like a furious cat.  The blade disappeared back into the sleeve of her black leather jacket, and she turned her entire body to face the crow, crouching as though she were about to pounce.

“You wanted my attention, balancer.  Now you’ve got it,” she softly purred.

The vampiress slowly moved forward, baring her ivory fangs, her long hair hanging down nearly to the dirty concrete ledge, and her body seemed to flow like a liquid instead of a creature made of bone, muscle, and sinew.  To his credit, the crow held his ground and put his wings out in a defensive stance, cawing in such a way that it sounded like he was growling.  The two began to slowly move towards one another, the crow’s dark eyes locked onto the vampiress’ amethyst ones, and neither one of them showed any sign of backing down.

Raven lunged, moving faster than the human eye could follow, and the crow sprang directly upward with equally supernatural speed, diving back down to deliver a sharp peck to the vampiress’ head before flapping a safe distance away.  Hissing again, the vampiress rushed at the crow, this time with a blood-red dagger in addition to the emerald one, and the big bird avoided them by an extremely narrow margin, losing the tips of several tail feathers in the process.

He wheeled around in the air and began flapping away with a speed that no earthly crow could manage, and after resheathing her daggers, Raven took off after him, laughing wildly as she leaped from rooftop to rooftop in pursuit, her powerful legs propelling her over alleys and streets with tremendous ease.  When the crow rose higher to soar over a skyscraper, the vampiress launched herself into the air impossibly high, matching the bird’s altitude, and neatly landed on the roof, continuing her pursuit with a smug guffaw.

“You’ll have to do better than that!” she gleefully called after her quarry, which she was rapidly gaining on despite the crow’s preternatural speed.  The bird suddenly veered to the side and dove through the air, crossing a busy street from forty stories up, and Raven gracefully skidded across the rooftop, changing her direction.  Without the slightest bit of hesitation, she flung herself off the skyscraper, hot on the crow’s tail, cackling as the cold upper air of the city hit her in the face, enjoying the best chase she’d had in some time.

The crow angled towards the front of an apartment building, dodging several electrical wires before zipping through a partly-open window and into a darkened apartment.  Raven’s daggers appeared in her hands and she slashed through the thick cables in a shower of sparks, plunging the entire block into darkness, and then she nimbly landed on the railing of the fire escape outside of the apartment window for a split-second before leaping and smashing through the glass into the apartment.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” bellowed the vampire, grinning from ear to ear as she spun her daggers around in her hands so fast that they looked like sawblades.

Her eyes glowed bright red in the dark apartment, which looked like it had already been ransacked; the broken glass her entrance had sprayed all over the place only further added to the effect.  The vampiress slowly moved forward, her boots softly crunching the glass into silica dust as she looked this way and that, searching for her target.  Though it was nearly pitch-black within, her vampiric eyes could see everything clearly, and if the crow had been intending to hide in the shadows, he’d made a major tactical error.

The vampire’s sharp ears picked up the sounds of soft sobbing, and she turned towards it, moving purposefully across the debris-littered wooden floor.  She reached the other side of the room, still on the alert for the crow, and found a door that was ajar, open just enough that a large bird could have scurried through on foot.  The sobbing was emanating from behind the door, and Raven sighed, knowing that she was being played.

The crow was clever, but she’d been playing games like this for ages now, and she knew all the tricks.  But after such a good chase, she felt a grudging respect for the crow’s determination to do his job, enough that she allowed herself to be played for the bird’s purposes.  Besides, after following the crow this far, she didn’t particularly feel like just leaving without something interesting occurring first, so she kicked the door off its hinges and stomped into the room.

The windowless room was pitch-black, and on the floor, next to the overturned bed, sat a red-haired girl in her mid-twenties, dressed in tattered black and red clothes.  Her face had been buried in her hands, but when Raven kicked her way in, she looked up at the vampiress, surprise and worry on her pale, tear-streaked face.  Perched on the bed frame, as though standing watch over the girl, was the crow, who regarded the diminutive intruder warily, especially when she pointed the red-bladed dagger at him.

“There’s nowhere for you to go now, my fine feathered friend, our little chase is at an end,” she purred, taking a slow step forward.  “The only way out of this room is through me, and if you try that, a skewered crow you shall be!  Quoth Raven, nevermore!”  The vampiress threw back her head and laughed madly: she never failed to amuse herself.

“Don’t hurt him,” whimpered the girl sitting on the floor, looking up at Raven imploringly.  “He’s just trying to help.”

The vampiress rolled her eyes.  “Well, he’s not doing a very good job of it.  Otherwise he wouldn’t have had to come to me.”  Her nostrils detected the scent of death on the girl, and she reckoned that the girl had been dead for a bit over two days now.  The balancers were very good at retarding the effects of decay and corruption, and a regular mortal wouldn’t have noticed anything, but Raven’s nose was another story entirely.

The girl shook her head sadly.  “It’s not his fault.  I . . . I just can’t . . .”

Raven huffed in annoyance, blowing some of her hair upwards.  “Can’t what?” she demanded, glaring at the sorrowful form on the floor.  She spun her daggers around one more time and then neatly slipped them back into their forearm sheathes, beneath the sleeves of her jacket.  When the girl looked down at the floor and began sobbing again at the vampiress’ question, Raven hissed in disgust.  “Stop that!”

The vampiress lunged forward, grabbed a handful of her tangled, dirty hair, and violently yanked her to her feet, causing her to cry out pitifully.  She stood nearly a foot taller than Raven, putting her at almost six feet tall, and once she was on her feet, the vampiress shoved her back against the wall of the bedroom so hard that plaster cracked and fell from both the wall and the ceiling.

The crow squawked in distress, flapping his wings, and before he knew it, the vampiress was in his face, her eyes scant inches from his, and they blazed with the vast power contained in Raven’s compact form.  “You got away from me before because I let you.  You’re alive now because your chutzpah amused me.  You wanted my help, and now you’ve got it.  Whether you like it or not,” she said, her voice icy.  The crow stood stock-still on the bed frame, not breaking eye-contact with her, but not making any other moves, either.

“And as for you,” said the vampiress, turning back to the girl, who was now crying hysterically, “Tell me what they did to you.”  When no answer was forthcoming, Raven grabbed the girl’s chin and forced her to make eye-contact.  “Tell me!”

Once their eyes met, the vampiress’ mind reached out and brushed against the girl’s, momentarily washing into her consciousness like a superheated wave, and when it receded, Raven knew everything she needed to know.

Scattershot images flashed through her mind, and she relived the last few hours of Sirenna’s life, as well as the two days following her death, in a matter of seconds.  She saw the apartment as it was before, when it was home to two young women in love, a fortress of happiness against a world that wasn’t ready to understand them.  Sirenna and Io had been friends since childhood, and when they’d grown up, their love for one another had taken a different form, one which had alienated them from both their families and old friends, causing them to uproot and come to the city, where they created their little fortress of happiness.  They didn’t need the rest of the world, because all they needed was each other, boisterous, brave Io providing the perfect counterpoint to gentle, timid Sirenna.  They were yin and yang, in perfect balance with one another, and ready to spend the rest of their lives together.

Raven saw the fortress of happiness torn apart on the terrible night that a gang of young men had decided to take from Sirenna and Io what the two lovers had kept between themselves.  Fearless, dark-skinned Io had known fear and terror as they’d first savaged Sirenna, and quiet, pale Sirenna had screamed so much when they’d made Io helpless beneath their combined assault that they’d had to gag her before they could continue.  These five men completely destroyed a little world that night, a world of peace and love, a world that had never sought to bother anybody or cause another person harm of any kind.  They obliterated a happy little world because of nothing more than jealously, lust, and ignorance.  And the larger world around them hadn’t cared a whit, because nobody in the apartment building had particularly liked “those lesbians.”

When Sirenna had awakened from her cold sleep the next night, she was obsessed with giving Io a proper burial, regardless of what the crow told her.  Before anything else could be done, Io needed to be put to rest by the only person that had cared about her.  So with the crow quietly following along, Sirenna had taken her lover’s broken, battered body and buried it beneath their favorite tree in the park a few blocks away from their apartment.  Anybody that saw Sirenna tearfully carrying Io had given the grief-stricken girl a wide berth; in the city, nobody cared about you, not even when you were dead.  Sirenna had attempted to bury herself next to Io, but the crow had managed to talk her out of it, trying to tell Sirenna what needed to be done to restore the balance that had been upset.  An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and five lives for a happy little world.

Sirenna had tried.  Sirenna had failed.  And the crow, discouraged and wanting to help the girl no matter the cost, had sought out a legend, a dangerous and mercurial vampire known in some cultures as the Great Destroyer.

If anybody could teach Sirenna how to kill, it was Raven.

“So,” said the vampiress, “They gang-raped and murdered you both.”

Weeping, Sirenna nodded, casting her eyes down once again.

“And just a little while ago you had a chance to kill them with the gun that Io had kept under the sink in case of emergency.  You could have avenged both yourself and her.”

Sirenna nodded again.

“And you failed.”

The girl moaned.

Raven’s eyes narrowed as she regarded Sirenna for a long time, and she shook her head and spat.  “Are you such a weakling that you can’t even avenge your own death, much less the death of your lover and only friend?!”  She shoved the girl back against the wall, causing more plaster to rain down.  “Pathetic!”

“I can’t do it!” cried Sirenna.  “I just . . . can’t!”

“Why?” asked Raven, her voice soft and cold while her eyes burned brightly.

Her voice choked by her sobs, Sirenna said, “I don’t . . . believe in violence.  I don’t want . . . to hurt anybody!”

“Even after what they did to you?  After what they did to Io?” demanded the vampiress.

Sirenna gestured helplessly with her dirty and bloodied hands.  “What good would that do?  It won’t bring Io back!  It won’t fix anything!  Io’s dead and so am I!” she wailed.  “Why did I have to come back?  Why couldn’t I just die with Io?!”

Raven folded her arms over her chest.  “Maybe if you’d stop blubbering and just do what you need to do, you wouldn’t have to worry about that.”

“I can’t kill them!” Sirenna cried, her voice high and anguished.  “I can’t even swat a housefly!  I don’t believe in killing, because it never fixes anything!  Io loved me because of what I am, and I can’t change that!  I won’t change that!  I’m not a killer!”

“Well, you’re certainly a coward,” Raven sneered.

Clenching her hands into trembling fists, Sirenna keened, “Life is precious, don’t you understand that?  All life!  Nobody has the right to decide who lives and who dies, especially not me!”

“I’m over two thousand years old,” replied the vampiress, sounding bored.  “And I certainly don’t need to be lectured about life by a dead girl in her mid-twenties.  The number of people I’ve killed completely dwarfs the number of people you’ve ever known.”

“Then why don’t you kill them?” hissed Sirenna, her sadness starting to transform into frustrated anger.  “What’s five more to you?”

Raven shrugged.  “Because that’s not the way things work.  You were brought back to avenge the deaths of yourself and Io, and if I were to kill those men, it would be meaningless.  You killing them will lead to absolution, and the restoration of an upset balance in life.”  She paused.  “I think.”

Pointing towards the crow, she said, “Ask him.  He’s the one that brought you back.  I try not to meddle around with this sort of thing, as I’m in enough trouble with the reapers as it is, and drawing their attention at this point in time would be inconvenient and annoying.”

Both women looked towards the large black bird, and he offered nothing more than a firm caw, which answered nothing.

“Exactly,” said Raven.  “The balancers’ reasons are their own.  Why they choose whom they choose and precisely why they do what they do is for them to know and the rest of us to guess at.  Perhaps someday I’ll sit down with them and trade a few of my secrets in exchange for their own.  In the meantime, all I know is that they’re rogue souls challenging the deities that be by bringing wronged souls back over the line to exact revenge and balance the scales of justice, as it were, and right now, you’re in the middle of one of their balancing acts.  At least until your body decays to the point where it can’t go on any longer and they have to give you up.”

The crow sharply cawed, clearly angered by the bit of information the vampiress had dropped.  Raven raised an eyebrow.  “Don’t scream at me just because you chose to withhold that from her.  At least I’m being honest.”

Sirenna shook her head.  “I won’t do it.  I’m not going to hurt anybody.  I don’t want Io’s memoriam to be more bloodshed.  She never hurt anybody, and she wouldn’t want me to kill in her name.  I’ll just sit here until I die again.”

“Well,” said Raven, “You can do that, which is wimping out, if you ask me.  Or we can go this route.”

The girl frowned.  “What route?”

She never saw the punch coming, and she hit the wall so hard she nearly went through it, and then fell to the floor, unconscious before she landed.

*     *     *

            Raven sat on the ledge of the skyscraper, idly swinging her legs over the edge and looking down at the traffic thirty stories below, waiting for Sirenna to wake up.  The crow sat on the ledge a short distance away, quietly contemplating events from the looks of it, not that the vampiress really cared.  She had a challenge laid out in front of her now, and she was going to follow through on it.  After all, there was plenty more to do with life than sit on the edges of buildings and read comic pages, which she could do any time she wanted, any way.

            She also felt compelled to do this, because despite the fact that the girl was naïve and in denial, she had a good heart and truly had loved her girlfriend, and the ability to love truly and unselfishly was something that Raven respected.  But the girl was going to have to realize a few truths about life before she went beyond this plane of existence, and though she didn’t want to know them now, the vampiress had spoken with enough ghosts and lost souls to know that Sirenna was better off in the long run if she took the harder road.  Eternal regrets were something that could destroy a person, regardless of whether they were living or dead.

            Sirenna slowly stirred, moaning softly, and Raven turned on the ledge to look at her.  “It took you long enough to wake up.  I didn’t even hit you all that hard.”

            The girl sat up and glared at Raven.  “Haven’t I gone through enough?  Why don’t you leave me alone?”

            “What, you think that you’ve earned a respite?  You think that you get a reprieve after a certain amount of suffering?” asked the vampiress.  She laughed scornfully.  “Welcome to the real world, child.  The only thing that you’re entitled to here is pain and suffering, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve suffered all your life, because somebody’s waiting right around the corner to give you some more.  As a matter of fact, I’m often the one that does that.”

            “Just leave me alone,” said Sirenna, shaking her head.  “All I want is for this to be over.”

            “It can be over in pretty short order,” said Raven, “If you’d stop whining and just take care of business.”

            “You don’t understand.”

            “I understand perfectly well.  Better than you, as a matter of fact,” the vampiress said.  “You’re under the assumption that love is nothing but hugs, kisses, and roses, and that love starts and ends there.  It’s never occurred to you that love is more than just writing poetry and having sex.  It’s also standing up for your lover when they can’t defend themselves.  It’s also violently ripping someone to pieces when they’ve hurt your lover.  It’s murdering the scum that killed your lover, so that not only can she rest in peace, but yourself as well.  Not to mention the fact that you’re ensuring that they can’t tear apart any other pairs of lovers like they did to you.”

            Looking at Sirenna, Raven extended her ivory fangs and said, “Love has its darker side, child, and it’s just as valid as romance and flowers.  Sometimes even more so.”

            The girl said nothing, and she looked away from the vampiress, tears running down her face again.  “I just want this to end.  I never wanted this.”

            Raven gestured towards Sirenna.  “Come here.  Now.”  Her voice was like the coldest iron and broached absolutely no argument.

            The redhead, after meeting Raven’s eyes again, reluctantly got to her feet and stepped over to the ledge where the vampiress was sitting.  Raven pointed down towards the park that rose out of the middle of the city like an oasis of green in a metal-and-glass desert, and Sirenna realized that she was only a few blocks from her apartment.  Somewhere within the gently rolling knolls of foliage of the park, beneath an oak tree that they’d always picnicked under, Io quietly lay in her earthen grave, and the knowledge was almost enough to make Sirenna run away from the sight.  As it was, her tears doubled, washing her face of grime yet again, but leaving the grief and pain intact.

            The black-haired vampiress pointed down towards a young man and woman walking hand-in-hand across the grass, likely moving towards the benches around the little pond near the center of the park.  “You see them?  Two lovers, just like Io and yourself, though of a more mundane sexual persuasion.”

            “Yes,” replied Sirenna tonelessly, the view of the cheerful couple tearing at her heart worse than any knife could.  At this time last week, that had been her and Io.  At this time just three days ago, that had been her and Io.  That should have been her and Io fifty years from now.  But everything had been ruined, and there was nothing but hurt now.

            “They certainly look happy, don’t they?” Raven asked, her tone light, almost merry.  The girl nodded, biting her lip.

            The vampiress stood up and stretched as though just getting out of bed, and then idly cracked her neck first to the left and then to the right.  She finished by cracking her knuckles and turning her back to the park, so that she was looking down at Sirenna.  “Too bad I’m going to go kill them.”

            Before Sirenna could even blink, Raven put her arms out at her sides as though crucified, cackled loudly, and then allowed herself to fall backwards off the ledge, plummeting headfirst towards the sidewalk thirty stories below, laughing all the way.

            “What?!”  Sirenna watched Raven plunge downwards for a couple of seconds, then looked at the couple walking across the park, and then at the crow, who was peering over the ledge to watch Raven as well.  “She didn’t mean it, did she?  She’s not really going to kill them, is she?”  The crow offered a low caw in answer, apparently not sure himself.

            Seconds before impact, the wind of her descent whistling past her ears and rippling her hair, Raven rolled and spun so that she was right-side up again, and when her feet hit the sidewalk, it partly caved in from the force of her momentum with a loud shattering crash, and the vampiress expelled some of the force by easily dropping into a crouch.  The few people that were on the sidewalk at this time of night stared at her in amazement, not sure whether they were imagining this or not, and one old wino turned and ran away as fast as he could.  The vampiress grinned: she so loved to make a dramatic entrance.

            She stood up and stepped out of the little crater she’d made, starting towards the park.  A man dressed in a suit hurried up to her and asked, “Are you all right, lady?  Holy shit, I can’t believe—“

            Raven shoved him aside without even looking at him, sending him bouncing along the concrete, and stepped off the curb into the street.  She strode across the asphalt, her eyes on the couple a distance away, oblivious to what was going on behind them, and she paid no heed to the light traffic swerving around her with the sound of blaring horns, angry curses, and squealing tires.  From somewhere above and behind her, she heard Sirenna shouting at her, but didn’t respond in any way other than smiling knowingly.

            After crossing the street, Raven stepped up onto the sidewalk, and then neatly leaped over the ten-foot-tall iron fence, landing in the grass on the other side of it and continuing along, the gap between her and the unaware couple slowly closing.  When she was just a short distance behind them, her ears picked the sound of more yelling, the screech of tires, and the honking of horns.  The crow swooped by overhead, angrily cawing at her, and she ignored him.

            The couple, however, stopped and looked up at the big bird, and the cessation of their motion enabled Raven to close the gap in just a few more strides.  With a snicker, the vampiress roughly knocked them to the ground, causing them both to cry out in surprise and pain.

“What’s the big idea?” angrily demanded the young man as he started to get back up a few moments later, clutching at the shoulder Raven had shoved.  His girlfriend held her other shoulder, looking both irritated and confused by the appearance of the small, dark woman who smirked back at them.

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied the vampiress with a shrug.  “I thought maybe I’d kill you tonight just for fun.”

“Say what?”  The young man was back on his feet again, still holding his shoulder, and he growled, “You’d better step off, if you know what’s good for you.”

“Ah, yes.  But you see, I’ve always been one of those types that just goes and looks for trouble, whether it’s good for me or not,” Raven said, and she moved so swiftly that the young man didn’t even see her drive her knee into his stomach while she doubled him over with an elbow between the shoulderblades.  He certainly felt it, though, and he went down in a gasping heap as Raven did the same thing to his girlfriend, who reacted in much the same way.

“So, which one of you wants to die first?” Raven asked pleasantly, kneeling down in front of the gagging man and grabbing him by his longish hair and turning his face up towards her.  “Would you like to do the chivalrous thing and try to stop me from killing her, or are you a realist that would prefer to get your death over with?”  He was too busy trying to regain his breath so he could properly groan in agony to manage a response to Raven’s question.

“Well, I suppose I’ll kill you first, just like a dragon chewing up a knight before he makes a light snack of the princess.”  The vampiress cocked her fist back and chuckled.  “If you thought I hit you hard before, wait’ll I hit you this time.  Your grandfather will in all likelihood soil himself.”

“STOP!”  A hand grabbed Raven’s wrist and yanked back on it.  Sirenna tugged on the vampiress’ arm as hard as she could, using her supernaturally-enhanced strength to pull Raven away from the helpless man.

The vampiress let go of the mortal and turned towards the girl, her eyes dancing.  “You want me to leave them alone?” she asked, her voice oozing scorn.  “You’re going to have to make me.”  She delivered a blinding backhand to Sirenna’s face that sent the girl spiraling through the air like a barrel-rolling jet until she crashed into a tree and fell to the ground.

“Now, where was I?  Ah yes,” said Raven, turning back towards her original targets.  The woman, despite her injured shoulder, was trying to help her boyfriend get back up, though he was hurting bad enough that she wasn’t having much luck.  When she saw the vampiress grinning at them, she screamed.

“I’ll take that as a compliment!” guffawed Raven, throwing back her head as she laughed.  Her laughter was short-lived, however, as Sirenna tackled her from behind, causing them both to tumble across the grass in an out-of-control tangle of arms and legs.

Before Sirenna could figure out what to do next, Raven was hammering her in the face with a fist that felt harder than concrete, and then the dead girl was swung through the air in an arc by her wrist, until her brief flight was stopped by a violent collision with the ground.  She didn’t even have a chance to catch her breath before she was in the air again, launched by a sharp kick to the ribs.  Despite being dead and unable to feel most pain, the kind of damage Raven was dealing out was actually enough to register, and she yowled as agony exploded in her midsection.

The vampiress moved so fast that it seemed as though she had a twin, because she was there to intercept Sirenna in mid-air, slamming her in the stomach with another crunching punch, and then flinging her to the ground by her ankle.  She hit hard enough to leave an impression in the earth, which was still somewhat soft from the recent rains, and she lay there on her back, staring up at the moon, as Raven gently touched down and immediately started towards the couple again.

“It would seem that the time has come for you to flee, because your would-be savior is nothing but a weakling, easily defeated in battle, leaving only me!” Raven gleefully cried out, advancing on the helpless mortals, “Quoth Raven, nevermore!”

“Leave us alone!  We haven’t done anything to you!” shrieked the woman, now trying to drag her boyfriend away.

“So?  You think that entitles you to anything?  I can do anything I want!  I am Raven!” shouted the vampiress jubilantly, giving the mortal girl a kick that sent her flying.

Overhead, the crow started cawing over and over, swooping low over Sirenna, urging her to get back up, and though it broke her heart, she understood at last.  The real world was an ugly, harsh place where innocence and love were usually crushed by those who wielded any sort of power.  Might made right, and sometimes the only way to say “I love you” to someone was to kill in their name, and the bastards couldn’t be wished away or ignored: if you wanted them to leave you alone, you had to be an even bigger bastard.  The revelation almost made her glad she was dead, because Sirenna, with a heart as gentle as a kitten’s, wasn’t sure she wanted anything to do with a world like this any longer.  In fact, she was sure of it.

She closed her eyes as the mortal girl pleaded for the life of her boyfriend, and all she wanted was to be back in Io’s arms again, safe and warm.  She would have given anything for it, anything at all . . . even the morals of peace and love that she’d held dear since she’d been a child.  Those men had violated and killed her body, and if she wanted to be reunited with the one they’d taken from her, she had to finish the job on her soul, so that she could be reborn on the other side.  It’d be over soon, then she could be with Io again, and she’d never have to come back to this awful world ever again.

Sirenna opened her eyes and got to her feet, the crow hovering over her head, giving her the strength to be something that she wasn’t.  “Let them go,” she said to Raven, her voice strained and weary.

The vampiress was taunting both of the lovers as she jerked them around by their necks, and they both weakly struggled in her grasp as she turned and laughed at Sirenna disdainfully, not even bothering with a witty remark.  The crow cawed, and the dead girl was suddenly upon the vampiress, punching, clawing, kicking, and even biting, fighting with a manic fury that came from being angry at Raven, angry at herself, angry at those that had ruined what had been a good life, and angry at a world that just didn’t give a damn.

“Run!” she screamed at the couple as she smashed an elbow into Raven’s face right before she dodged a punch that whistled when it went by.  She’d never been in anything even resembling a fight, save for playful couch wrestling with Io, but she seemed to know what to do anyway, and the crow circled around above their heads, cawing encouragement to her.

Sirenna rained blows down upon Raven, beating her as fast as she could, hitting her hard enough to bend metal and shatter stone, using her supernatural strength to hold the vampiress at bay while the wounded couple painfully staggered away and disappeared over a knoll.

The dead girl grabbed Raven’s arm and gave her a taste of her own medicine, violently swinging her through the air and slamming her against the grassy ground.  She brought Raven down so viciously that a shock of pain shot up her arms and into her shoulders, and for a few moments, she thought that maybe she’d shut the damnable vampiress up, but when Raven’s hand locked down on her throat, she realized that she probably hadn’t done more than amuse the diminutive titan.  Cackling as though life was nothing but a game, Raven gave Sirenna another backhand that sent her flying, and then rose to her feet and stopped, her arms folded over her chest again.

As Sirenna leaped back to her feet and started to charge at the vampiress again, Raven held up her hand and snapped, “Stay your hand!”

“Not until you leave those people alone!” shrieked Sirenna, rushing forward.

Raven easily caught her and clamped on a full-nelson, then said into the dead girl’s ear, “I intend to, now that you’ve woken up and realized what you’ve got to do.  Welcome to the real world, child.”

“I don’t intend to stay here long, I just want to see Io again,” growled the girl, trying to free herself from Raven’s grasp, but without much luck.  “And make sure that you don’t ruin anybody’s life.”

“Oh, they were safe enough.  I had a point to make.”

“By hurting them like that?!”

“It got the job done, didn’t it?”

Sirenna twisted around and glared at Raven.  “You’re a monster.”

The vampiress grinned.  “Exactly.”

She loosened her grip on the dead girl and pushed her away, then regarded her smugly.  Sirenna returned the look coldly.  “You enjoy this, don’t you?  You think it’s fun to make me something I’m not.”

Raven raised an eyebrow.  “Something that you’re not?”

“A killer.”

The vampiress chuckled.  “Oh, we’re all killers, child.  It’s in each and every one of us.  We wouldn’t be here today if our primitive ancestors hadn’t been so effective in murdering their Neanderthal adversaries; in essence, we’re all just killer apes.  Some of us are just more comfortable with that than others.”

“I don’t see how anybody could be comfortable with that,” scoffed the dead girl.

“Well, perhaps if more people were comfortable in killing those that deserve it, maybe those men wouldn’t have been around to do what they did to you and your girlfriend.  Maybe somebody else would have killed them off long before that, and right now, you’d be cuddled up on the couch with Io, drinking hot chocolate and watching old movies.”

When Sirenna winced and turned away, Raven grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her back around.  “You kind-hearted, pacifist types can kid yourselves all you want, Sirenna, but sometimes you have to spill blood in order to make the world better.  What has killing ever accomplished, you ask?  Killing has put countless madmen and psychopaths into their graves, enabling children to sleep soundly at night, unafraid of them.”

“But where does it stop?  Where do you draw the line?”

Raven smiled.  “After enough of the world’s trash has been wiped out, the answer will become obvious.  Our ancestors killed off their competitors so that they could survive.  Now we must kill off our troublemakers so that we can thrive.  Those men ruined the lives of two lovers.  Do you want to leave this plane knowing that they’re still around to ruin the lives of others?”

Keeping her eyes on Raven’s with an effort, Sirenna whispered, “No.”

“Are you ready to go forth and make them pay for what they did to you and Io?”

Swallowing hard and after hesitating for a long time, Sirenna said, “Yes.”

“Good,” said the vampiress, and with a flick of her wrist, her emerald dagger appeared in her hand.  Sirenna started to pull away, but Raven held her fast.  “I’m not going to hurt you, so stop squirming.  You’re just not quite ready yet . . .”

Raven carefully sliced at her wrist with the blade, and dabbed some of her crimson blood onto the tip.  She then slipped her free hand up to the back of Sirenna’s head and held her in place.  “Don’t move around or I’ll accidentally stab you in the eye.”

Using the tip of her dagger, she began to delicately apply her blood to Sirenna’s face, duplicating the ages-old mask she’d seen on the faces of past avengers, except with bright red instead of black.  She lightly outlined Sirenna’s eyes, then made slender points extending upwards and downwards from them, and after dabbing the dead girl’s lips until they were a lustrous red, finally drew downward-turning lines extending from the corners of her mouth, creating a frown, unlike the usual smile the avengers seemed to go for.  She took a step back to admire her work, thought for a moment, and then added a crimson tear on Sirenna’s cheek.  Stepping back again, Raven considered Sirenna, and then nodded.

“The red goes well with your hair,” she said, “And gives you a more unique look than other avengers I’ve ran across.  Now you’re ready.”

“Glad you approve,” said Sirenna harshly, and then turned and walked away as Raven licked the remaining blood off the dagger.

The vampiress shrugged and put the dagger away.  “I’ll meet you by the oak tree when you’re done.”

Sirenna froze for a few moments, but instead of turning around, she started walking again, the crow flying above her head

*     *     *

            The dead girl threw the empty machine gun to the dingy floor of the dark, abandoned warehouse and stared at the bloody massacre laid out all around her.  They were all here, all five of them that had raped and ruined both her and Io, and now, thanks to her, they were nothing more than cooling carcasses, shredded almost beyond recognition, never to hurt anybody ever again.  What had she done?

            She looked down at her hands, which were covered with blood that wasn’t hers, and saw that they were trembling.  As a matter of fact, she felt on the verge of passing out, but resisted it, no matter how sick the smells of gunpowder, blood, piss, and fear made her feel.

Sirenna willed her hands to stop shaking, but she couldn’t make them quit.  These were the hands that used to paint pictures and fold little paper birds, the hands that Io had time and again referred to as “amazing,” the hands that she could have been used to create entire worlds on canvas or sculptures, but were now the hands of a murderer.  A murderer five times over, as a matter of fact.  She tried to wipe the blood onto the rags that had once been her clothes, but all it did was smear, and she shook her head.  It wasn’t going to come off, and even if it did, that wouldn’t change what she’d done.  The blood would always be there, and she’d always be a killer.  And what was worse, she’d actually started to enjoy what she’d been doing.  When she’d thrown down the machine gun that she’d used to mow down the last of her killers, she’d had a smile on her face.  A big one.

“She was right,” she murmured, shuddering.  “I did have it in me.”

The crow swooped down from the rafters and landed on her shoulder, cawing at her in an insistent manner.  When he quieted down, Sirenna could hear the wail of sirens in the distance, and she suddenly had a flash of herself landing on the hood of her killers’ car and smashing through the windshield, screaming at the top of her lungs as she clawed at them.  She turned and saw the wreck of the car a short distance away, partially smashed in like an accordion from where it had crashed through the warehouse’s outer wall, careened around for few seconds, and then collided with one of the thick steel support beams.

One of her killers lay by the wreck, the lower half of his body missing.  She didn’t know if that had happened because of the wreck, or if it was something she’d done personally.  She didn’t want to know, either.

The sounds of the sirens drew closer, and the crow nudged at her with his beak, urging her along, and she hurriedly glanced around the interior of the warehouse looking for an escape route, wincing at just how much blood was all over the place.  It seemed impossible that that much blood could have come from just five people.

The crow nudged at her again, wanting her to look upwards.  When she followed the bird’s gaze, she saw a skylight far above, and she gave the crow a sideways glance.  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The crow cawed in response, assuring her that he wasn’t kidding.

“Halt!”

Sirenna looked back and saw several police officers standing at the hole the car had left in the wall, their pistols up and aimed right at her.  “Hold it right there!  Do not move!” shouted one of the cops, slowly moving forward, his gun and eyes unwavering.

The dead girl shook her head and couldn’t help but laugh ruefully.  “Where were you when Io and I needed you?” she asked, her voice harsh.

She looked up at the skylight, crouched low, and then launched herself into the air, soaring upwards with ease, and she not only reached the skylight, but smashed right through it, leaving a rain of broken glass in her wake as she left the bloody warehouse for the cool night air.  She’d moved so quickly that the cops didn’t even have a chance to fire, and they watched the glass shatter against the floor in confusion.

“Okay . . . how are we gonna report this one?” one of the officers asked, and none of his comrades had a ready answer for him.

*     *     *

            Sirenna stumbled through the back alleys and streets of the city, feeling her strength ebbing with each step, her body becoming more leaden and heavy as death began to assert itself now that vengeance had been exacted.  The crow remained on her shoulder as she staggered along, cawing encouragement to her, promising that she didn’t have much farther to go, and that it would all be over soon.

            She tripped and crashed against a wall, knocking the crow from her shoulder.  He flew upwards and landed on an electrical wire overhead, peering down at her in concern and flapping his wings excitedly.  Gasping and trying to remain upright, Sirenna held onto the wall for support, doggedly moving forward, and when she staggered around the corner, she came upon two young women standing outside an apartment doorway.

            They both jumped at the sight of her, but that didn’t break the embrace they were in, and if anything, they clung to one another even more tightly as they gaped at Sirenna.  “Sorry,” she grunted, wishing her head would stop spinning.

            “You need any help?” one of the women asked, looking at Sirenna with concern, and the dead girl shook her head and smiled sadly.

            “No, I’m fine,” she said, shivering as coldness slowly seeped through her body.  “I just need to get home.”

With a groan, she pushed away from the wall and stumbled past the couple, not wanting to ruin their moment.  The crow swooped down and landed on her shoulder again, giving her a little more strength, and she hurried as best she could, forcing her weary body along regardless of how badly she wanted to just lie down and bring this all to an end.

*     *     *

            Sirenna fell to her knees on the grass near the top of the hill, the upper branches of the oak tree in sight, and she nearly fell onto her face, but managed to catch herself at the last second.  Sitting on her back, the crow squawked and pecked at her, still urging her on, and she fought with her trembling limbs, trying to get back up.  “Can’t do it,” she moaned.  “Too tired . . .”

            “Ah, I see the prodigal daughter has returned,” said a familiar voice from the top of the hill.  “I assume your mission was successful?”

            The dead girl hissed in exhausted annoyance, putting all of her strength into not completely collapsing.  “Shut up,” she growled.  “Just shut up.”  She put a hand in front of her, and then the other, slowly crawling forward.  She’d be damned if she needed Raven to get her up the hill.

            “There we go,” said Raven, “That’s the spirit I want to see.  You’re almost there, and then you’ll never have to deal with me again.”

            Sirenna looked up at the vampiress, and saw her standing at the crest of the hill, a shovel held over one shoulder like a baseball bat, while on the other shoulder sat a big raven, who cawed when Sirenna met eyes with her.  And standing next to the vampiress was a tall, dark-skinned young woman with long black hair and piercing green eyes.

            “Io,” whispered Sirenna, reaching out towards her lover with a shaking hand.

            “Come on,” said Io in her rich voice, smiling warmly at the dead girl.  “Just a little farther, and we’ll never be apart again.  It’s almost over, baby.”

            Unable to believe her eyes and ears, Sirenna turned her eyes towards Raven and asked, “How?”

            The vampiress grinned.  “I’ve got all sorts of connections, child.  Not only in this world, but many others as well.  Now, get up here and get reunited; you’re starting to smell.”

            Ignoring the vampiress’ comment, Sirenna struggled up the hill, her eyes locked on Io’s, and she found herself truly smiling for the first time since this whole ordeal had began.  Though she could feel her body stiffening and resisting her, she kept climbing, ignoring everything else except for Io.  Her fingers dug into the cool earth of the hill as she dragged herself up step by step, foot by foot, until she was, at last, at Io’s feet, gazing up at her lost lover with a longing that she felt to the fiber of her being.

            Chuckling merrily, as she always had when Sirenna overexerted herself and needed comforting, Io reached down and grasped the dead girl’s ghost-white, dirt-encrusted hand in her own and easily hauled her to her feet.

“Get up out of the grass, girl!  You’ll catch your death of a cold, if you’re not careful!” she lovingly admonished as Sirenna felt the warmth of Io’s hand start to spread through her own body, sweeping away the graveyard chill that had settled in.

“Thanks, luv,” murmured Sirenna, a wave of dizziness washing over her, causing her to tip forward into Io’s waiting arms, and the dark-skinned girl picked her up and held her close, concern in her voice.

“You overdid it at work again, didn’t you?” she asked, brushing at Sirenna’s tangled hair.

The dead girl could barely reply, she felt so warm and sleepy in Io’s strong arms, and she encircled her lover’s neck with her trembling arms.  “A little,” she slurred, shutting her eyes and resting her head against Io’s chest.

“You’re always overdoing it,” Io gently chided, turning and carrying Sirenna towards the oak tree, beneath which an open hole yawned in the raw earth.  But when Sirenna opened her eyes to see where they were going, all she saw was their apartment, whole and intact, and she knew Io was taking her over to their overstuffed couch, which was incredibly comfortable.  “Gotta stop doing that, or you’re just gonna burn yourself out with all that stress.  And you aren’t gonna do that as long as I’m around, you dig?”

“Yup,” sighed Sirenna, snuggling against Io.  “I’ll be more careful.  I had a terrible nightmare . . .”

“Oh yeah?  Wanna tell me about it?”

“I dreamed that . . . that . . .” Sirenna said, trying to conjure up the images that had been bothering her so much, but they flitted away from her grasp, like ashes on the wind.  It had been something terrible, she knew, but she couldn’t pin it down anymore.  “I can’t remember, Io.  I knew what it was, but—“

“Then don’t worry about it.  Forgetting a nightmare isn’t necessarily a bad thing, huh?” Io asked as she carefully set Sirenna down on a yielding surface of soft warmth, and then pulled the comforter up from the foot of the couch.  “How’s about you and I catch a nap for awhile, and then later on we’ll watch some movies and order in a pizza?”

“Sounds like a plan.”  Io settled down on the couch next to her and pulled the comforter over the both of them as Sirenna grabbed her in a tight embrace, letting her body melt into her lover’s.  “I love you, Io.  I really do.”

“Hey, I love you, too,” cooed Io, giving Sirenna a gentle kiss on the forehead.  “You’re my one and only.”

“I’d do anything for you, Io.  Anything.”

Io chuckled again.  “All you gotta do right now is get some sleep and not hog the comforter, and we’ll do just fine.”

“Okay.”

Just as Sirenna started to completely drift away, there was a sharp knock at the door of their apartment, and a loud male’s voice called out, “Open up, you lesbo bitches!  We know you’re in there!”

“Who’s we?” demanded Io, and there was a long pause before Raven’s voice answered.

“Sorry, they had the wrong address.  I think they found all the trouble they were looking for already, and they won’t bother you again.”

“Stupid asses,” Io muttered as she curled around Sirenna and lightly nuzzled her.

“Who’s Raven?” Sirenna whispered, feeling so heavy and warm that she could hardly speak at all.

“Who?”

“Never mind.  Good night, Io.”

“Good night, Sirenna.”

*     *     *

            Raven solidly tamped down the earth with the flat side of the shovel blade, and then covered the grave over with the pieces of sod she’d carefully removed earlier that evening.  When she’d finished, she examined her work, and then looked over at the two big birds, who were standing next to the crow alongside the concealed grave, looking like a pair of miniature mourners dressed in black finery.

“Flawless,” she said, pleased with herself, and the two birds cawed in agreement.  After intently inspecting the grave for a few moments, the crow leaned over as if performing a courtesy bow, cawed at Raven one final time, and then leaped into the sky, flapping his wings and spiraling up into the night, fading away into starlit darkness.

The vampiress and the raven watched him go, and then the black bird sprang into the air and lighted onto Raven’s shoulder, then cawed at her, which made Raven laugh.

“You can call it soft if you want, but I liked the crow’s spunk, and though Sirenna was yet another naïve product of the modern world, she had a good heart, which was enough.  Not everybody can be like me, after all,” she said, and when the raven tugged on a lock of her hair, she cackled.  “And besides, it was yet another opportunity to slide one past the powers-that-be, something that you and I both excel in.”

The raven peered at the vampiress as they started down the hill, waited a few moments, and then began to caw insistently while Raven snickered.  “Oh, and I suppose you bringing Io back over the line for a little while gave me a good excuse to see you again.”

The bird swatted Raven with her wings, and the vampiress grudgingly growled, “Yes, yes, I know: I actually do have a heart, after all.  Are you satisfied, Mother?”

The raven cawed triumphantly in agreement.