"You saw this coming from a mile away, didn't you?" she said to Edmund.
The alleys and streets were riddled with the chaos of parties... and bloodshed. Party paraphernalia was everywhere. Little plastic buckets shaped like Jack's head, skulls, and ghosts that glowed its plastic green in the dim lamplight.
"At first," he began as he pulled up his collar against the biting wind. Apparently, it wasn't the only thing biting these past few weeks. "As usual, some things were unexpected. You posing as a male, for one."
Edmund smiled and cast her a sideways glance.
"That was fun, wasn't it? Strange what you can get away with by simply looking male, let along being male," Syrcaid commented, re-rolling up the sleeve of a beaten up office shirt she was using as a smock.
"Don't fool yourself, young woman, simply having a sweet face and a bosom can charm the snake out of his basket," laughed Edmund. "You let them take you. Weren't you afraid for your life?"
"Not really," Syrcaid said, catching on to the fact that she'd let the vampires make her succumb. "You know the undead have always been a curiosity for me."
"It must've surprised the more experienced ones when they found the lycanthrophic taint in your veins," he said as he gazed down upon a bucket filled with only five or so treats, puzzling over it idly as he pushed it to and fro with one foot. "People are so wasteful during these holidays..."
"Hmm-no," Syrcaid shook her head, taking up a rake and pulling up a pile of toilet paper strands near a shop door.
There were others strewn all about, collecting their "dead". There were human medics caring for the wounded, lights on the ambulances flashing in their sterile red and blue. The lamplights flickered in their own sleepy bewilderment as the dawn was breaking. Little vials were seen flashing all around as they were administered to those who had wished to walk amongst the living once more. It was the worst hangover in history, Syrcaid imagined.
"They didn't really notice in their mania. Some of them will find a nasty shock, those who've become human again, when the moon swells to full," she laughed. "Oh, well, if they're smart they'll come to you."
"You never did," Edmund chuckled.
"I never claimed to have good sense," Syrcaid admitted. "And I don't think I want to be 'cured' of it. I was literally born into it."
"Or reborn, as it were," he added. "I could help you regain those lost memories."
"I thought about that long and hard, Edmund, I really have. But... I've found a kind of serenity amongst the chaos now. My children have grown and I can protect them from a distance. No one thinks to carry the silver when the stakes are what are fashionable and you know I don't kill people."
"At least not the ones that anyone would miss," Edmund noted, looking down upon an oddly shaped pile of ash that looked vaguely humanoid.
Syrcaid walked closer to have a look for herself. Edmund had lifted up a battered bit of old particle board, it looked like a makeshift shield. There were crossbow bolts, trails of magical residue dripping off it like snot, and the occasional spatters of something that was probably organic.
"He didn't make it," Syrcaid mocked sadness. "Poor b*****d, and it wasn't even the sun that did him in."
Edmund and Syrcaid stared for a time, both suddenly noticing the little bat clip that must've been what was clasped on the lapel of whoever this was. The ribbon long since melted off and the sad little bat bubbled and its enamel trailing off the edges like ooze.
They both laughed in dark humor.
