Her eyes snap open. 

The first words out of her mouth are "You're not Justin."

The moon-white, raven haired, naked seven year old crouching on the girl's bedsheets nods slowly.

"...Nope."

"Who are you? Why are you here?"

"Um..." 

Zeke crosses his legs. "I'm the check up-fairy. You're sick, right?"

She sighs. "Yeah. Always."

"That's not nice. What's wrong with you?"

"Dunno. I see a lot of doctors and they can't agree on a diagnosis or anything. I'm just always tired and weak and sometimes I cough a lot and sometimes I throw up and it gets worse if I try to do a lot of things."

Zeke sniffs her. "Smells like you eat a lot of crap. You should stop. You'll feel better."

"What?"

"Your blood's full of poison. Why are you taking poison?" 

Another sniff. "Seriously, why all the medicines? You're fine."

"I'm not fine. Some days I can't even get out of bed. Some days I can't even want to."

"Because you're taking loads of medicines you don't need. Trust me, I've smelt way more messed up people than you. Your heart's fine, your lungs sound okay. It's just... your blood's full of chemicals."

She frowns uncertainly. "Mommy says I'd be worse without the medicine."

"Your mommy doesn't sound very bright."

"Mommy's smart! Mommy understands everything the doctors say every time I go. Daddy says when I was a baby, before I was sick all the time, that she had an important job that only smart people can do."

A thought occurs to Zeke. He and his twin are alone on this world, as far as they can tell. This world doesn't know Lilith's blood. The seeds inside him and his sister won't be ripe for years. But their blood can still change...

"Okay, okay, I believe ya. Tell you what. What if I made you all better?"

"You can do that?"

"Yeah. Uh, I sorta lied? I'm not a fairy, those are different. I'm a vampire."

"...If you turn me into a vampire does that mean I won't grow up. I don't wanna be eight forever."

"That's crap humans tell each other to make themselves feel better. We grow up! Just slower." He gestures down at himself. "I'm like... not thirty yet? But around that. And we can make babies, thank you very much. We do it a lot! And we can play in the sun, and eat food, and everything else! Holy water sucks, though."

"Oh, I don't go to church anyways, that part's okay." She nibbles her lip. "If vampires grow up lots slower and I become a vampire we have to turn Justin too. He's my friend."

"Sure! We're sort of low on numbers right now anyway. I can get him now if you can give me an address or whatever."

She gives him an address, "And tell him Eliza sent you so he won't think you're some random kidnapper or something."

"Sure thing!" 

Zeke bounds out the window, following the street numbers till he finds Justin's house. He locates a window with an appropriate looking child sleeping behind it, and taps on the window.

The child wakes up, looks around, sees Ezekiel, and opens the window. 

"Hello, Eliza sent me to pick you up so I could give you both superpowers. You're welcome."

"--Oh wow, that's awesome. Thanks! How...?"

"I gotta feed you both some blood. Figured we could do it at her place?"

"Okay." He looks dubiously out the window. "Do I have to tie sheets together or something or can you carry me, I don't think I can climb down by myself."

Zeke proceeds to leap backwards up to the wall next to Justin's window, digging his fingers into the walls. "Get on my back. You don't have that human thing about people not wearing clothes, do you?"

"I'm not gonna take mine off unless the superpowers include not caring about chill but I'm gonna be a doctor someday and doctors have to look at naked people anyway," he shrugs, grabbing on. 

"They do, actually."

Zeke leaps onto the road and starts running at superhuman speeds.

Justin clings on and doesn't try to shout over the wind. 

They quickly reach Eliza's window again. Zeke helps Justin inside. "Soon you'll be able to do that too."

"Justin!" Eliza reaches out and pulls Justin in the rest of the way when he is only mostly in the window, causing him to sprawl on the bed ungracefully while she snuggles him ferociously. He doesn't seem to mind. 

Zeke is pleased. Always nice when new coven mates get along.

He claps. “Okay, why don’t you two lie down beside each other and we’ll get started.”

"Okay." She lies back cooperatively. 

Justin rearranges himself so he is lying beside her instead of being sprawled across her legs and waits for further instruction. 

Zeke bites both his wrists open. “Drink till it tastes super nice.”

This is really weird but she would go through much worse to not be sick anymore. She drinks. 

This is really weird but what's he going to do, not follow Eliza? He drinks. 

First it tastes like cold blood. Then it tastes surprisingly good. Then it’s better than candy. Then it’s better than life itself.

It's the best thing she's ever tasted and she's going to be well and she drinks and drinks and drinks. 

Zeke withdraws his wrist from her. "Good girl. Sleep now."

She sighs happily and murmurs an acquiescence and drifts off. 

Zeke turns his attention to Justin. "How are we doing, buddy?"

Justin is drinking consistently but without Eliza's desperate enthusiasm; he takes a few more swallows and yawns. 

Once Justin's under, Zeke undresses them like the considerate ghoul he is... and goes and fetches an old couple he smelled a few doors down.

She runs. 

There is no tightness in her lungs, no weakness in her legs, no dizziness in her head; she simply moves, and the landscape flashes by her. She laughs, throwing her head back in exultant glory. 

She senses something to her side, and she dodges, ducks, rolls, and comes up to see not an enemy but him. He smiles and holds out his hand, and she grins at him and takes it. 

They dance in the moonlight, joyous and unfettered and covered in blood. 

Zeke sits between the pair, rubbing their chests and feeling their hearts slow.

The old people with the broken legs and the gags in their mouth keep moaning in pain at the foot of the bed.

Eliza wakes first. 

She sits up abruptly, and doesn't even have time to notice her state of undress before her eyes light on the old couple and she launches herself at them, her teeth burying in the man's throat. 

The man's wife's eyes widen as she shrieks behind the gag.

"Welcome to the species!" Zeke crows.

She giggles. "I feel so welcomed!" She looks down at the body and cocks her head. "...I don't feel guilty about that at all," she observes. "I guess he would have died soon anyways."

“And you’re gonna live forever!”

She throws her hands in the air. "Yeah!" 

Justin stirs, then pounces on the old woman. 

“Feels good, don’t it?”

He contemplates this, licking a stray smear of blood off the corpse. "It does. I'm not sure if it should, but it does."

"I guess being a doctor would be a bit redundant now."

"Redundant? Do we have healing powers?"

"We never get sick. Ever. I've regrown my boy parts like three times."

"Oh. That's good." He contemplates this. "But that only covers us. I mean, it's a little redundant, since figuring out what was wrong with Eliza and fixing it was the most important part of becoming a doctor, but being a doctor would have helped a lot of other people too, and I don't care as much about that as I did before I went to sleep but I don't think not caring and being redundant are the same thing?"

"But I am better now," she beams, and hugs him. Then she lets go and hugs Zeke. "Thank you!"

"You're welcome! Still don't think you were really sick."

"But if I wasn't sick to start out with, why would I have started taking the medicine in the first place?" 

"What?" Justin asks, deeply puzzled. 

Zeke shrugs. "I couldn't smell anything really wrong with you. Just yucky medicines."

"Could you normally smell if something was wrong? Like, smelling germs would make sense, or cancer, but if the problem was, was that my heart was shaped funny or something, how would you smell that?"

"Your heart didn't sound wrong."

"Oh." She mulls this over. 

"There are a lot of things in the human body that can go wrong in ways that make less noise than a heartbeat. Maybe we should go to a hospital and do science to see if you can smell liver failure and sickle-cell anemia and multiple sclerosis."

"Sure!" Zeke licks his lips. "Haven't had dinner yet anyway."

"Oh, if we'd known we would have saved you some..."

"Think nothing of it, m'lady."

She giggles. "Okay, which way to the hospital?" she asks Justin. 

"Um, your house is south of my house and the hospital is northwest of my house...if we head north we'll hit Cavendish Avenue eventually and I can find the hospital from there."

"Shall we go for a run?"

"Yeah!" He leaps out the window. 

"No fair, wait for me!" Eliza yells, whooping as she joins him. 

Zeke follows.

Justin runs north, cutting across yards and over fences. 

Eliza's shrieks of glee at the sheer freedom her body is affording her for the first time in her life cause a light or two to flick on in houses they pass, but never before the three are long out of sight. 

Zeke manages to leap over her head.

She tackles him to the ground. 

Zeke proceeds to tickle her under ribs.

She shrieks and rolls away, giggling furiously. 

Justin takes advantage of the distraction to tickle the bottom of Zeke's foot. 

Which results in a flailing fist striking Justin in the shoulder at full vampire strength.

"Ow!" He yelps as his collarbone snaps. He hisses in pain as he prods it back into place, then pouts at Zeke. 

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, it just hurt is all."

"Oh boo hoo, at least I didn't hit between your legs. It'll be better in like, a minute or something."

"I said I'm okay! I bet you weren't calm the first time you got your thing ripped off."

Zeke shrugs. "Was less inconvinent than the fingers sis bit off."

"It's probably different when you grow up with it," she shrugs. "He was surprised, he's not crying now, it's not a big deal, let's move on, I'm starting to feel peckish again and I don't wanna just eat some random guy before we get to the hospital." 

They set off again.

The hospital is buzzing with activity even at this late hour, but it's vastly more subdued than in the daytime. Sneaking past the nurses and so forth should be entirely possible with Lilim stealth and speed. 

Zeke grimaces at all the sickly scents. "God, humans break easy."

"It's so terrible," Eliza grumbles. 

"So, how do we do the science thing?"

"I know things about people being sick, so I'll sneak around and pick some rooms and ask you to tell me what you can smell about each one."

“Sure. Then we can snack.”

"While you guys are doing science, I can go around and see who'll make the best food," Eliza suggests. "And if there's anyone who looks fun to turn."

“Now you’re thinking like a vampire!”

"Yeah!" She taps her chin thoughtfully. "I don't think I'll just pick for food who'll taste best, though. Some people are in the hospital for reasons that mean taking them out of the gene pool will improve it and some aren't, you know? And if the human gene pool improves then we'll get better people to turn."

“Technically for the guys you could just...”

Zeke makes a snip gesture around his groin. “Still, food is food.”

"It seems like a bother to do that when we have to eat anyway," she points out. "I mean, old people are food too, but if we can only take people out of the gene pool who should be out, that'll be faster."

“I know, I know, joke’s a joke.”

"Oh okay I didn't realize you were joking." 

“Come on Justin, let’s do science.”

"Science!" 

He runs off in search of suitable patients, then comes back with a mental list of rooms, which he leads Zeke to for sniff tests. 

Zeke sniffs his first subject.

Cancer.

"Smells sour. There's drugs and stuff, but his insides sound... sloshy?"

"Yeah! He has cancer, that does that."

Zeke smirks. "Point to me."

"Cancer was easy mode," he scoffs, leading the other boy to the next subject. 

More sniff.

Osteoporosis. 

"Less bones. I mean, they have all their bones, they're just... thin."

"How can you smell that?"

He shrugs. "Less of the stuff bones are made of."

"How do you smell there being less of something?"

Zeke laughs. “Same way you can smell there aren’t roses here.”

"There are no roses here, I don't know if I could smell how many roses if there were...but you've been a vampire longer, you have more practice in figuring out smells."

"Yeppers. So, what next?"

He zips over into another room. 

(Heart attack)

"Is there... metal inside him? Definitely some medicine stuff."

"Wow, you can even smell the pacemaker?"

"What's a pacemaker?"

"You know how when someone has a heart attack on TV they shock them to make the heart start again? The pacemaker does that but on the inside."

"Oh! Humans have neat ideas sometimes. Not like swim suits or that book of faces thing on the internet."

"You mean Facebook?"

"The thing where humans lie to each other about not-get-sick sticks and pizza."

"Lying is pretty dumb," he agrees, and zips into another room. 

(Stroke)

Sniff. "There is dead in her head."

He just stares at Zeke in awe. 

Zeke bows. "Thank you, thank you, I'm here all night. Wonder if Eliza will believe me now?"

"I guess. It's just weird."

"Wanna go find her? Moon a nurse? Defeat a snack machine?"

"How do you defeat something that isn't alive?"

"Smash it open and take its guts."

"Ooh."

Eliza comes barreling into the room. 

"I found some food, you guys! Hurry or I'll start without you!"

"Sure! Anyone see ya?"

"Naaaaaaaah. I'm fast now."

Zeke punches her arm fondly. "Found anyone fun?"

She pouts. "All the kids are in a whole different wing! I came back so we could drag some of the food over so nobody wakes up hungry if they turn too fast."

"You're fun!" 

Zeke follows Eliza's lead.

Eliza has identified three people with genetic disorders, a guy with some kind of pathological exercise fixation that ripped a hole in his heart, and a handful of people with traits unrelated to their hospital stays which Eliza claims "do not need to be invited to play with fangs." 

Justin knows where they can break people's spines so they can't struggle but their hearts will still beat so the blood is maximally fresh for the new turns. 

"You guys are great," Zeke says lugging one of the genetically diseased patients.

"I know," Eliza says smugly. 

Eliza's first pick watches them interestedly as they drag the immobile patients into her room. "Can vampires turn into bats?" she wants to know. "Do you really hate garlic? Do you obsessively count things?"

"No and no and no, but we can turn into cats!"

She claps her hands together, eyes sparkling. "That's even better than bats!"

"I know, right?"

"Eliza says my leg will grow back and I just have to drink some blood. And I'll never have to wear another stupid scratchy sweater again. I want in."

"May I do the honours?"

Eliza bows. 

Zeke bites his wrist and offers it to the girl.

She leans forward and drinks. 

Zeke turns to Eliza and Justin. "You gonna handle the others?"

"Mm-hm." 

Zeke strokes the new girl's hair. "So, want me to get rid of the pyjamas while you're out?"

"Sounds good!"

The two of them scamper off. 

Zeke undresses the girl when she falls into the turn-sleep. He's never seen a new vampire regrow a limb.

The amputation is fresh, the stitches still fresh on the stump that ends halfway down her thigh. 

The stitches aren't there for very long, though. The stump splits open like an overripe tomato, if smashing vegetables resulted in creation rather than destruction. 

Zeke oohs. She's going to be so happy when she wakes up...

Zeke's prediction comes true. She's so happy she's distracted by her leg for multiple seconds before she notices the food and lunges for the throat. 

He hugs her from behind. "Welcome to the family. Wanna go find the others?"

She beams at him and hugs him back hard enough to crush a human. "Yeah!"

They run into the hall, naked and blood stained, too fast for humans to register more than a breeze.

Eliza has picked out three more girls and one boy. All of them have finished turning and eating their first meal. Two of the girls are violently tussling. 

Zeke wraps an arm conspiritorily around Justin. "Very girl crowd. Good for the coven."

He nods smugly. "Lots of girls and a few boys can have way more babies than some girls and some boys."

"And we don't have to have jobs or whatever to distract us."

"Do vampires not have jobs?" asks the other new girl who isn't currently fighting. "I wanted to be a racecar driver."

"I mean, just kill a guy and steal the racecar."

"Killing people and taking their stuff isn't a job?"

"No, it's having fun! There are no rules!"

"Oh, neat. That's fine then." 

The fight draws to a close as one of the girls manages to rip enough bits off her opponent that she has to spend a while not-fighting to regrow them. 

"Also, having babies? Feels good for vampire girls."

The girl looks down at her flat chest. "I don't think that matters for a while," she shrugs. "We won't be grownups for, like, practically forever."

"Yeah. Though, most vampires don't wait till they're maximum bigness to start. Still, long time. In the meantime, fun. All the time."

"We can eat stuff other than blood, right? I wanna break into an ice cream parlor and eat all the ice cream."

"Yep! Don't even need to go to the bathroom after."

"I'm hungry," the fight's loser says, picking herself up off the floor and shaking off as much of her own blood as will come off. 

"Shall we go find ice cream?"

"Yeah!"

"On the way out, wanna scare some people?"

"Ooh! Yeah."

"Everyone, be just a little slower..."

They freak out a lot of people in the lobby on the way out. 

One of those people seems less freaked out than annoyed, and leans back in her hard waiting room chair, head tilting back as a cloud of smoke erupts from her mouth. 

The children don't notice.

"So, where does the ice cream live?"

"Uhhhh." She looks around. "I dunno where from here. We could go look."

"A candy store would be just as good if we find one of those first," the boy opines. 

"Lead the way, local ex-humans."

The children charge down the street. 

A glowing humanoid figure appears in front of them. 

The figure is pale, with dark hair and long, slender, angular limbs. The effect is something like someone who wanted to create a plausibly human body but wasn't too bothered if they fell into the Uncanny Valley. 

The Uncanny Valley effect is not supported by the look on the figure's face, which looks very humanly irritated indeed. 

The figure folds their arms. "Do your parents know where you are?"

“Uh, no?”

The figure's gaze sweeps across the whole gang of naked children, some of whom are covered in blood. 

"This situation is incredibly concerning. Can you offer me an explanation?"

“Me and Justin and Eliza made these kids not sick.”

"And this requires running around naked at night without parental knowledge?"

“…Yes.” 

"Why."

Zeke wiggles happily. “It feels nice?” He looks back at his new flock. “What do you guys think?”

"Who are you?" Eliza demands. 

"A responsible adult."

"We don't need one of those."

"You definitely do."

“We’re good. Find a nice cave or a lake to sleep in, we’ll be fine.”

"No," they say, pinching the bridge of their nose, "you are running around, naked, at night, some of you covered in blood. This is extremely concerning. None of you are going anywhere until at the bare minimum I get a satisfactory explanation."

“…We should run now.”

They bolt. 

Or they try to. They smack into an invisible wall like a horde of tiny mimes within a few feet. 

Eliza picks herself up off the ground where she fell after bouncing off the wall, folding her arms and glaring at the grownup. 

"Even if you did manage to get away," they say mildly, "it wouldn't be too difficult for me to find you again."

“Meanie!”

"Leaving aside every other aspect of this situation, several of you are covered in blood. It would be incredibly irresponsible of me to just ignore the situation."

"It's not ours," the girl who won the fight at the hospital offers. She glances at the loser. "...Mostly."

The adult pinches the bridge of their nose. "Words cannot express how much that does not reassure me."

“They needed to eat.”

"Can you explain," they ask levelly, "why they needed to eat such that they ended up fleeing a hospital covered in blood."

“They’re vampires, alright?”

She gets a far-off look in her eye like she's running down a list of things in her head. Then she closes her eyes. 

"Alright, I officially cannot handle this by myself." 

There is a faint smell of fire, and then all of them are somewhere else. 

The somewhere else is a fairly large room, with walls a dusty rose color and a cream carpet so soft and plush you could sink into it, which the girl vampire Eliza turned who wasn't in the fight promptly falls over backwards and does. 

After a moment, the door opens and several other adults file in. 

"I would say 'vampires don't exist,' one of them says, "and yet, here they are." This one is unambiguously female-presenting.

“Duh.” Zeke asks Justin, “Is this… normal here?”

"No," he says.

"It's normal enough," the woman says, crouching down to their level. "Normal is relative. We're Ignited Spirits; we know a lot about what exists and what doesn't, and you are new. Are you okay? Auncle Lu isn't very good with people yet."

"We're better than okay! We're vampires! Right guys?"

There are a chorus of affirmative answers, ranging from enthusiastic to defiant.

"Okay. I'm glad to hear it! But you were running around naked, after murdering a large number of people, so I hope you can understand why this might concern grownups who are not vampires." 

"Why are humans weird about skin?"

"Loads of reasons. Firstly, humans are fragile; even aside from the cold, clothes provide protection against one's environment. Places with too much sun cover up as much as places that are too cold, to prevent sunburn. Secondly, once wearing clothing becomes the cultural default, taking off the clothes has to have an implicit reason, and because people are people, that reason is frequently assumed to be sex. Which gets people even more freaked out when there are children involved; I don't know about vampire children, but the overwhelming majority of human children are seriously harmed by being molested. I'm not saying it's unethical for you to go around naked, but you were doing it in a human neighborhood, and if anyone saw you they would have very good reason to be concerned."

"So, you're not going to make us wear pants?"

"Not while you're here. A lot of people here would be more comfortable if you did, because a lot of people here used to be human, but they can cope."

Zeke is somewhat relieved. He pulls Eliza into his side. "I think Eliza's mummy was being bad to her."

Eliza still isn't one hundred percent convinced on that point, but she makes big soulful eyes at this lady about it anyway. 

Edoni glances at one of the other Ignited Spirits; they vanish. 

"Good to know. Thank you for bringing this to our attention."

"Is there stuff to do around here? All these guys just got vampired and they haven't had long to enjoy it."

"There's a playroom, but if you want to go in there you have to convince me you won't be mean to the other children or break things anyone wants to play with."

"There's other kids here?"

"Yes. And you are not to turn them into vampires, even if you get to play with them."

"Aww, why not?" 

"Because we don't yet understand vampires well enough to let you turn our children into them."

"...None of them are sick or anything?"

"If they were, we would fix it."

"Fine."

Zeke turns to address his new coven. "Guys you promise not to hurt any of the spirit people's kids? Or be mean?"

There is a chorus of varyingly tentative promises. Eliza doesn't hesitate at all, and so neither does Justin. 

"And that you won't break anything anyone looks like they want to use," Edie supplies. 

"I'll try not to," says the girl who was missing a leg, "but I'm really strong now and I haven't been for very long!"

"Good enough," Edie says, and once everyone also reluctantly promises to this, she leads them all to the playroom. 

The playroom is big, and full of toys and puzzles built into the walls and with a big tubey climbing structure with slides and ladders and so on. There are a dozen or so children playing there already. 

"You're naked!" one little girl giggles as she spots them.

"Yeah, and you're covered in stuff," Zeke jeers playfully. 

"It's called clothes," she says, rolling her eyes.

"And they suck," Zeke insists. 

She gives him all the disparaging look her five-year-old face can muster. "No they don't." 

"Don't like the air on your skin?"

"I like the fuzzy softs on my skin," she says, holding out an arm which is, indeed, covered in an extremely soft purple sweater. "Do you like not having any pockets?"

"I like stuff not clinging to my skin when I swim or run in the rain." Zeke turns to the rest of the vampires. "Quick poll, skin or shirts?"

Most of the vampires chorus "skin," but Eliza looks conflicted. "Pockets are nice," she says hesitantly, then firms: "But you could have, like, a belt or something, with pouches, and not have to wear all that."

"Obviously I don't wear this to swim," the girl says, rolling her eyes. "I have a swimsuit." 

"Swimsuits are still annoying," Justin asserts. 

"You're a boy, boys have a different kind," she says dismissively, then pauses. "You are a boy, right?"

"--How can you not tell?" he asks, outraged. "I'm not wearing any clothes!"

She gives him a pitying look. "Just because you have boy parts doesn't mean you're definitely a boy," she tells him loftily. "My mommy has boy parts and girl parts but he's definitely a boy. And Theresa has just boy parts but she's a girl, and Tommy has girl parts but he's a boy." 

"Girl swimsuits are evil!" Zeke crows. "They make them cover their top parts! For no reason."

"It's not for no reason! Girls aren't supposed to show their chests!" she squeals. 

"That's true in most cultures today," Edoni interjects firmly, "but it's just a cultural thing, not a universal. There isn't anything wrong with being different."

"--Okay, but it's still not no reason! Anyway, I don't wanna wear swim trunks."

"Show we show these kids what we can do?" Zeke asks the rest.

The children cheer!

"Show them like how," Eliza says cautiously, "I'm pretty sure beating them up counts as mean." 

Zeke proceeds to leap over the human girl's head, landing in a handstand behind her.

She turns to look at him, not particularly impressed. 

"So you can jump, big deal." 

And then he lifts her over his head, one handed. 

She shrieks in outrage. 

Vines grow from her hands and feet, burrowing into the floor and pulling her back to the ground. 

"Don't manhandle other children without their consent," Edoni says sternly. "I realize this was not obvious so I'm not mad, but you need to not do that." 

Zeke's eyes dart from the girl to Edoni. "Ah, who did that?"

"I did!" the girl exclaims. She makes an abortive gesture as though to kick him in the shin, but she glances at Edoni and stomps her foot instead. 

Zeke smiles crookedly. "It wouldn't have hurt. That's neat, though." Again, he addresses his flock. "Anyone feel like they can do something special now?"

"I think so," Justin says slowly, "but I think I'd have to touch someone to do it." He glances at Edoni. 

"You can do it to me. I'm consenting," Eliza says, staring straight at Edoni.

Edoni nods approvingly, which is not the reaction Eliza was going for, judging by her scowl. 

Justin takes Eliza's hand. 

Her skin turns blue, and then back, and then her arm splits at the elbow into two forearms and hands. 

"...Okay, that's pretty cool," the little girl admits reluctantly. "You have to be naked for that?"

"I don't think so," Justin admits. "But I think I have to be touching someone to do that. Them, not their clothes or my clothes." 

She wrinkles her nose. "I don't want you touching me anywhere I'd be wearing clothes."

"You hate elbows?"

"You could wear a t-shirt!"

Zeke squeals and hugs Justin from behind. "Witch boy!"

He giggles and hugs Zeke back. It's awkward, at first, and then he figures out how to reverse his own joints.

Zeke is even more impressed. "I can make stuff cold!" he reports.

The room is briefly as frigid as the inside of a meat locker.

There are a lot of yelps from the other children in the room, who come to see what the commotion is about. 

Zeke relaxes, and the heat rushes back into the air. He grabs Justin's hand and hoists it into the air. "Witch boys for life!"

"Witch boys for life!" he exclaims gleefully. 

"Hey, no fair," one of the boys who came over says, "how come I have to wear clothes and I don't?"

"You will have to take that up with your parents," Edoni informs him. 

"My parents aren't here!"

"Well, it's their rule, not a here rule."

"So I can take my clothes off and you won't stop me?" he asks. 

"Please put them in your cubby if you do," she says. 

He whoops and yanks all his clothes off. The original little girl gives him a judgmental look. 

"You're magic too, right?" Zeke asks the boy.

"I'm kindling! I can't do any magic of my own yet. But I will when I'm grown up!"

"Still, magic people shouldn't wear pants. Common sense."

"I'm magic and I wear pants," the first girl says icily. She glances at Edoni, who is wearing a skirt, instead of pants, and adds, "or skirts. If you want to wear skirts instead of pants that's fine." 

"If they choose to go around naked, that makes them different, not wrong," Edoni chides her. 

"Well, I wear clothes, and I have pockets," the girl says firmly. 

"I could have pockets without clothes if I wanted to!" Eliza objects. 

"But you don't," the girl says smugly. 

The girl turns pleading eyes on Edoni. "Can I have a belt with pockets?"

"Sorry, kiddo, I don't have anything like that and I can't pull one out of thin air." 

Eliza scowls and folds her arms. 

Zeke strides up to the boy. "Honourary vampire?"

The boy looks at him suspiciously. "Like Dracula, or like Twilight?" he asks. 

"Um, I guess more like Twilight? But only because we're strong and pretty as heck and don't have dumb weaknesses." Zeke thumps his chest. "Nobody's getting a stick through me." 

"I don't wanna sparkle."

"Oh, we don't do that."

His suspicious look eases up a little, but only a little. "Do you drive dumb cars?"

Zeke snorts. "We run faster than cars. We don't live in dumb houses, we don't go to school, and we don't wear pants."

"And you don't kiss girls?"

Zeke shrugs. "If we want to."

He wrinkles his nose. "I don't wanna be a kissing kind of vampire!"

"I mean, you could mate without kissing." 

"Mate?" the boy asks blankly. 

"Mating is getting married, but for animals," the first girl says authoritatively. 

"I don't wanna get married!" the boy yelps, and dashes back for the climbing structure. 

Zeke glares at the girl. He was hoping to turn the boy eventually. He's cool. "Mating is not getting married. It's making babies."

"You should get married before you do that," she asserts. 

"But then you can't make babies with other people!"

"You can marry more than one person," she says reasonably. 

Zeke has decided this girl will be his enemy. Which isn't the worst thing to be. Means you're worth paying attention to.

He decides to start actually playing. 

Eliza approaches the other girl. "What were you playing?"

"...Jump rope."

"Can I play?"

"Okay, the rope bucket is over there." 

Eliza has never jumped rope before, so she studies the other girl doing it for a little before she gives it a try. With vampiric grace, she gets it right the first time. 

"I'm Eliza, what's your name?"

"I'm Lisao. Chu Lisao."

"Hi, Chu."

"Chu is my surname. It goes in Eastern order."

"Sorry."

"It's okay."

One of the walls has a rock-climbing wall for part of it. It only goes up about six feet. One kid is working his way across it slowly. 

Zeke equals his height in an instant. "Hi."

The kid startles and almost falls off onto the soft mat below. "Hi," he says once he's caught himself. 

"You're a good climber for a human. Is it nice here?"

"It's a good playroom. I've never found one that's this big before. And the ones humans make can't have ball pits because people will put things in them."

"Oh, I was wondering why those went away! And I mean like, the whole place?"

"I dunno, Mum just drops me off in the playroom when we come here." 

Zeke winces. He suddenly remembers how much he misses his mothers. "That's nice."

He jumps down and finds Xavier. "Excuse me, ma'am?"

"Yes?" she asks, falling gracefully into a cross-legged sitting position on the floor so they're about at eye level. 

"Could you find my sister? Or anyone... like us. We haven't been able to find other Us people in a while and..."

Zeke starts to tear up.

"Okay." 

She makes a very high-pitched noise, too high for human ears, in a flowing melodic language Ezekiel doesn't recognize. 

"I've asked someone to look," she tells him. "I can't promise what they'll find. But we'll do our best." 

"Thank you." He opens his arms. "Could I have a hug, please?"

"Yes, of course." 

She hugs him, more tightly than she would hug a human child. 

It feels nice. Like a vampire hug.

Somewhere in North America, a naked redhaired boy is leading another child across a field of yellow glass, stained lilac by dusk. "You're lucky I found you now. Don't have to wait long at all."

A tall, pale figure appears in front of them. 

They cock their head. "You're not a vampire..." they say, their eyes flickering between Joey and the other boy. 

Joey tenses. "No, I'm a werewolf." He sniffs. "You're not a vampire or a werewolf."

He takes the other boy's hand protectively. 

"I'm an Ignited Spirit." To the other boy. "You are not yet a werewolf."

"Uh..." the boy says. 

"Do your parents know where you are."

"Yes?"

"I know when you lie."

"Uh."

The bite mark on his ankle vanishes. Then he and the Ignited Spirit both vanish. Then the Ignited Spirit reappears. 

Joey sputters. "What did you do to him?"

"I returned him to his parents." 

"B-but--he's going to be like us."

"He will not. I erased the latent traces of your magic from his system. He had not yet changed, and so it was simple."

Joey growls. "But he wanted it."

They fold their arms. "The vampire children we discovered had just killed several people. Do werewolves also kill people?"

"Just when we're hungry or someone's tryna hurt us."

"'When we're hungry' is too often. When a human is hungry, this does not cause another person to die."

"But his parents hurt him. He was gonna be strong and we were gonna run together."

The Spirit considers this, then vanishes for slightly longer and reappears again, child still not in tow. 

"I have removed him from his parents pending investigation into how they treat him."

"Can I please bite him again? The moon's about to come out. You could give him a cow if you're upset about people."

"There will be other full moons after werewolves have been investigated in greater detail. ...Did you bite anyone else."

Joey freezes up again.

They pinch the bridge of their nose and then the two of them are where the other werewolf is. 

The other werewolf is in some kind of cave. She's as naked as her brother, as are the most of human children sitting around. Some retain bits of their clothing, though grimey from days of wear. One boy is stubbornly fully dressed, because he "wants to do it like the Hulk," when the moon comes out. There's a fire crackling. Some children are roasting stolen marshmellows. 

Angie startles, but smiles. "Oh, hi Joey." She points at the figure. "Who's that? Fairy or something."

"I am not a fairy. I am an Ignited Spirit. You have come to a world where vampires and werewolves are unknown among the creatures Mankind does not know."

"Oh, that makes sense, I guess." She glances around at her future packmates. "Say hi to the Ig-ni-ted spirit, guys."

Deeper in the cave, something alive tries to scream against masking tape. 

There is a chorus of "hi's."

Lucifer pinches their nose and teleports deeper in the cave to rescue the kidnapping victims who were presumably not intended to survive the night.

There's ten of them. Adults, mostly a bit on the heavier side. Most are just unfortunate ramblers or passersby. A couple were lured in by the sight dancing, beautific naked children at night. It's the full gamut of deservedness.

Meanwhile, outside, the sun finally sets. A curtain of cloud is drawn from in front of the moon...