We monsters are not lifeforms. Despite how well we sometimes mimic life, we do not operate via the same meisms and drives.

  I don’t remember if I’ve said this already, but as far as I know we don’t reproduce. We’re very singur beings, not made up of anythiely like cells. We don’t have mitodria, we have standing waves and straractors and things like that. We don’t have anything like DNA, and we’re essentially immortal. Except when we’re destroyed. So retionships built on sex are just not something that happens for us.

  We just exist, and if we exist long enough a well enough, we get pretty plicated. But when t, it’s deliberate. It’s through learning. It’s through looking at the world around us and deg what to do about it.

  However, we do have one basic drive that we share with life, and that’s to eat. Like life, we are whorls of enthalpy aropy that must tio feed to fun a.

  And I’ve been doing that for a long, long time.

  Even though I couldn’t sehe emanations of other monsters quite in the same way that Felicity could, because I was saving my energy for other things, I was still aware of our target since before Felicity had signaled me.

  It was due to their behavior more than anything else.

  It didn’t hurt that I was supercharged from being surrounded by a rger crowd of excited people than I’ve experienced in a long, long time. My ability to be alert and to think quickly was at what felt like my maximum.

  It was exhirating.

  Anyway, before diving into the employee-only hallways and rooms of the ventioer, Felicity seemed to decide that tending to her vessel’s needs was an essential part of her act. So, we went to where the food was, and she bought a bottle of water and an under-cooked sliicrowaved pizza. The dog vendor had already packed up.

  And the on a bench while she ate and drank, and I noticed our pursuer walk right on by without looking our dire, and then disappear into the crowd. No doubt they were pnning on doubling bad reestablishing their bead on us from further away and in a less obvious position.

  To make that easier for them, I pulled out my phone and pyed with it for a while.

  When Felicity was ready to move on to the part of our pn, she squeezed my hand again.

  I responded by beaming a smile and leaning in to kiss her on the neck.

  She squirmed and giggled, and that made me feel like she maybe did have enough energy to do this.

  The food and water was helping her host’s vessel, and that meant she had more reserves for herself, I thought.

  I realized I’d been doing a lot of hoping tely, and that was a bad sign. A signal I utting myself in too much danger. But I kept at it for the time being.

  Still, I had a nasty trick up my sleeve, just in case. Well, an old and timeworn trick that I he-less henomenally good at.

  Something that surprised and worried Felicity was that she was not seeing more emanants amongst the crowd of -goers.

  Obviously, there would be quite a number of riders and parasites amongst the humans, and just like herself, they were hard to deteless they showed themselves. Even for her. But she expected to see more emanants like Synthia and more predators, too.

  When Fuzzy-feet walked by a going, she expected it would be because another predator was nearby and had made a stronger cim on Synthia. But, if there was, she couldn’t spot it. And, after a bit, Fuzzy-feet appeared again, further ba the crowd, around the er of the T-se in the hallway. She saw its aura wafting up above the masks and heads of the crowd around it.

  That’s when she squeezed Synthia’s hand, while w what was keeping this vention so quiet and free of emanant activity.

  e to think of it, the theater had felt this way, too. Only a couple of emanants besides herself and Synthia had felt bold enough to make their presences known.

  And then Synthia was leaning over and kissing her in the neck.

  It was just an act, but it tickled and tingled, and pying up the natural humaion of pleasure and embarrassment to it was easy. It came naturally, like the body knew what to do.

  She giggled and squirmed, and then stood up, pulling on Synthia’s hand, whispering loudly, “Alright, let’s go fug snog.”

  Synthia squi her as she stood up after, saying, “Snog? What are you, 2004 LiveJournal?”

  “I beg your pardon. It’s perfectly ulent Queen’s English,” she retorted.

  “What are you gonna do about it? ize me?” Synthia snapped, snickering.

  “Maybe behind that door over there,” Felicity responded spiratorially, pointing at a likely didate for where they wao go. It was unmarked. It might just be a supply closet, but it looked heavier duty than that, like a light fire door.

  The bahey’d fallen into was maybe a bit too old for their appearances, but this was an especially geeky pce, and they were trying to be silly and weird to match their cover. No one seemed to even notice.

  Their mark was likely too far away to hear them over the crowd anyway. It was mostly their body nguage that mattered here.

  So, Felicity let Synthia look at the door, nod, grin, and then lead her to it. And theumbled along like before, but with a little more anticipatory energy.

  Or so she hoped. She was still feeling fairly disbobuted from hunger and weakness, even if she had a little more lucidity than before.

  Synthia paused before the door, saying, “Wait a sed. I o look something up. Maybe there’s a floor pn.” Then she pulled out her phone and keyed up the page for the , and poked at a couple of links.

  The map that she found didn’t include this door, but she left that up anyway a her pho. What was more important was that she was more traceable this way.

  “Yeah, let’s see where this goes,” she said. Then she reached for the nob and surreptitiously did something with the lock that her Felicity nor Amber could do. Being a physical emanant with tight trol over your form had its perks.

  And what was behind the door was exactly what they were looking for, a service corridor, so they ducked in and closed it.

  The color of the carpet ged from the pattern of the main floors to a solid dusty rose, and the walls were a simple textured eggshell. The ceiling had the worst fluorest lighting installed.

  It went bato the building several paces before interseg with a main corridor that was twice as wide but with the same ck of decor.

  Synthia led them to the first er and around it, then paused, looking down at her pho doing nothing in particur.

  “Listening for our mark?” Felicity whispered as quietly as possible.

  Synthia didn’t respond.

  But after a couple of breaths she started moving again, looking satisfied.

  “What was that about?” Felicity asked.

  “You didn’t notice?” Synthia asked back.

  “Notice what?”

  “Perfect,” her partner in crime said. “I’ll expin ter. Right now we gotta keep quiet and keep moving.”

  Felicity shut up and looked back.

  These corridors weren’t infinite, nor massive. There were solid double doors at either end of this big corridor. It looked like the halls existed in small ses between main areas of the ventioer. But there were enough side corridors that they were able to do a little sion.

  At the er they took, Synthia paused again, squeezing Felicity’s hand for some reason.

  They weren’t putting on their aymore, or didn’t o, but they were still holding hands, and Synthia robably just subsciously keeping it up. Maybe trying to be reassuring like a human.

  Then they moved to the door at the end of that side hallaused yet again for a couple silent breaths, before Synthia ope.

  Oher side was ay ballroom or meeting room of some sort. Maybe a party room. It was a little bigger than your typical , but instead of a desk it had a dry bar in the er to their right, and rails fhting, with a wooden floor.

  And it was pletely devoid of any other furniture or fixtures or decor. Like it was bei a bnk ste for whomever might book it iure.

  “Yes!” Synthia hissed. “Love it. Let’s set up behind the bar. They’ll have to go around to get at us.”

  “Sounds good,” Felicity heard herself say, still looking around at the room. She really wasn’t as present as she wao be. She hoped that whatever Synthia was doing would give them a good edge.

  She felt herself being dragged by the wrist into the room and toward the far wall where the entrao the bar was. It didn’t make a lot of sense, she thought, because anyone bringing supplies from the service halls would have to make this same trek to get to the bar. But, sometimes things got rearranged for other reasons and thoughtful architecture got nullified.

  And she had a fleeting thought that the bar and service door were like some sort of allegory for what was going on in her broader existence, but she couldn’t really expin how at the moment.

  Then, suddenly, she felt herself falling.

  “The mark is right on our tail, but moving cautiously,” she heard Synthia saying.

  And then she lost sciousness.

  I found myself looking bato the startled and fused eyes of someone I assumed was Amber.

  Well, shit.

  I lowered my head and loosened my hold on her hand after a quick squeeze, in case she wao let go. I could feel her bewilderment and arm as it fed me.

  “What…?” she asked, gng around. “How…?” She at least appeared tnize me when looking my way.

  I tilted my head aured slowly downward with my left palm, “Hold on a moment, Amber. Let me catch my own bearings really quick.” But I waited to see her nod before doing my thing.

  Then I did what I’d been doing in the hallways and put a little two-dimensional pseudodomain down c the floor behind the bar.

  We were in Portnd, let’s call them pseudomains.

  This is a thing I normally did when being pursued, if I had enough time and wherewithal to pull it off. And I wished I’d had the forethought to use it iheater. But what we’d been doing there was so far outside my typical modus operandi it hadn’t occurred to me at the time. Here, however, the slow chase had prompted me to remember the trick.

  “OK,” I said to Amber when I was done. “Let’s stand here in the middle of this spad wait. This might end up being a little scary, but you’re OK. You’ll be safe.”

  “What are we doing? Why am I here with you?” she pulled herself together enough to ask.

  “Have you had any bckouts before?” I asked her back.

  She shook her head, “N… no? I don’t… Never.”

  “What’s the st thing you remember?” I asked, keeping my words quick, to imply that she should answer quickly, too.

  I could feel the other teratovore stepping on my sed to st pseudomain. One more and they’d be walking in the door. There was no time to break the iber. She was just going to have to withis if Felicity didn’t take back over real quick.

  She sched up her face, and said, “I remember talking to you at the checkout ter with my friend Josephine. We were going to have fajitas.”

  “You’ll probably remember more than that as you talk about it, or when you see Josephi,” I told her in a reassuring tone. “But that was yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?” she gasped, radiating quite a bit of incredulity and fear. Good. I wanted her engaged but with lots of adrenaline and alertness.

  “Yeah, and Josephine, I think, has a big huge crush on you,” I told her, based on my memories of Josephine’s emotions. “It’s probably reciprocal.”

  “What?” she bliaken aback.

  The st pseudomaiered a monstrous footprint. I had time for o line aional rea from her to recharge me before the door opened. I decided to see if I could trigger Felicity to e back fain.

  “Remember that mohat almost ate you?” I asked.

  “What?!”

  My pn was that, if Felicity wasn’t present and couldn’t attaark, I would expand the pseudomaih me to envelope the teratovore and trap them. To have the stro trol over it, I o be in the same domain as my attacker, so I didn’t want to do that with the ohat was at the door.

  What happened instead henomenally bad timing, to say the absolute least.

  theInmara