Enemy Mine
The night was dry and mild, an early-March anomaly for Chicago. For once, when Rhiannon wanted fresh air in the modest, third-floor apartment, she didn't have to freeze to accomplish it. The windows were open. Thin curtains skimmed the windowsills, those few surfaces she hadn't painted erratic colors in an hour of boredom. Back in the moderate winter climate of Nevada, she had forgotten what it was like to be cooped up, and this season had dragged for what seemed like twice its due.

She sat on the carpeted floor, the narrow length of her spine propped against the couch. The television was tuned to a black and white film. A cigarette burned in an ashtray beside her. As she dipped her fork into a cup of microwaved noodles, she looked relaxed, an ordinary twenty-seven-year-old in faded jeans, a tight band t-shirt, and bare feet, crossed at the ankle.

The heavy, long coat had been dispensed in her hotel. Despite never truly feeling the cold a city like Chicago could produce in winter, dressing the part helped the redhead blend with the populace. Vampires were now a known quantity and most stood out like a sore thumb. Deanna'd learned a long time ago how to pass herself off as human; but soon enough, the vampire reasoned, she would be recognized no matter the season.

She entered the building, careful not to touch the railing as she climbed the stairs. A layer of dust clung to the bannister, the building's recent history telling a story within its granules. The redhead approached the door, pulled on the edge of her blouse to tuck into her skirt. Presentation was everything.


It was two hours past sunset. One thing both the vampire and slayer shared -- they liked to hunt later at night. Deanna rapped lightly on the door.

The brunette muted the television and looked at the door. "Jules?" She couldn't think of who else would be knocking. Purity would just let herself in and Joseph was putting the last leg of work into his new business. Besides, the younger Slayer had a tendency of showing up early to assault her with questions before patrol, always inquisitive and unable to wait to start asking. On the threshold, a few centimeters of space let in muted light beneath the door. A pair of shoes blocked some of it out.

Rhiannon set her noodles down. The fork handle knocked the container off balance and it spilled. "Shit... hang on a second!" She mopped up the soupy mess with a paper towel and stuffed it down inside the plastic cup. Taking a couple of long steps, she got to the door and began to work the latches. It wasn't until the last that she hesitated. It was the silence that slowed her down. Rhiannon looked through the peephole and let her eye adjust.

Deanna.

Abruptly she pulled back, a reflexive maneuver, like a passenger in a car, flinching away from an insect that hit the windshield. Rhiannon breathed out and watched her own hand on the doorknob, the slow turning of her wrist. The door hinges creaked when she pulled it open.

"For some reason, I imagined you living in an apartment with a doorman. Don't ask me why." The redhead never believed in saying hello. Neither did she verbally lash out at her nemesis. They'd spent too much time tangled in each other's web to just launch into attack, verbal or otherwise. Their relationship had evolved beyond simple enemies. And frienemies was sooooo 2008.

Deanna pushed back a lock of hair from her face. "A bit of surprise, R?," she continued. "You must've remembered that I had your address, from that special delivery I fed-exed over a month ago. And oh, I got your notes. Quite creative with the red pen."

"I did you a favor." Rhiannon put her shoulder against the jamb, still safely within the confines of her apartment. It wasn't the first time she'd stared down a vampire across a barrier so thin, it could fit within a microscope slide. The weird part wasn't having the redhead in her living space; it was seeing her at all, outside of her head, where she wasn't just a figment. Whenever time passed between visits with an old enemy -- a vampire -- it always stirred something unnameable within her, seeing how not a hair on their head had changed. Deanna was always the same, always would be. The clock didn't tick for her.

But she knew she'd be a little different to the vampire. It was only about two years, but her reflection told Rhiannon the shape of her face was changing, slowly transforming from youth to the look of a woman.

"It was descending into cliche. Come on, D, the bisexuality?" Rhiannon crossed her arms. "We're not a soap opera."

Deanna met Rhiannon's comment with a smile. She hadn't moved from her place just centimetres from the door frame. "But they could write a lovely libretto about our encounters. Alternate reality maybe, but still reality."

This was part of the dance the duo shared, and the vampire enjoyed every step. It'd been decades since she had a challenge that came close to comparing to the woman protected, momentarily, by a Rule as simple as this. Deanna wondered on occasion who'd written in the clause that a vampire required an invitation to enter a living person's dwelling. Then again it was wildly assumed the undead had to sleep on the dirt of their ancestral home, and look how far she'd come. Four-star suites in the best hotels around the world.

"Your hair's longer." Deanna changed topics, as was her wont. "Still with the freckles. Always liked those. Had some work done on your nose?"

She reached into her purse and took out her silver cigarette case. The vampire wasn't planning a retreat any time soon. "And wearing a bra. Who's the boy you're trying to impress this week?"

Temporary silence met the vampire's bullshit. Rhiannon propped her head against the jamb, studying the redhead from that slanted viewpoint. There were freckles and fair skin, but also a very dark pair of eyes, which watched the other woman's hands on the cigarette case. "You always go for the looks. And the social class. You forget, I know about you, Maria. I know you go for girls like me, and I know you didn't come from a house with a doorman, either, so drop the shit."

Backing up, she went deeper into her apartment, leaving the door wide open. It wasn't as if the vampire could come inside, and judging from the hiss and yowl in the hallway, Rhiannon's cat wasn't in a hurry to dart outside. A folding table was set up in the corner. It doubled as a place to eat and also unload her pockets. She got her pack of Marlboros, a lighter, and two straight-backed chairs, which she took to the entryway. Rhiannon passed one across the barrier and sat on the other.

"Take a load off."

The chair was turned so the back faced the Slayer. Deanna straddled the seat and rested one arm on top of the backrest. She lit her cigarette and slipped the case back into her purse. "Maria's dead. She doesn't exist, not since being turned. Which you know. If I didn't want you to know these things," the vampire exhaled smoke and sucked in on the tobacco again, "I wouldn't have written the book. And if I was worried you'd find anything to use against me, I would've edited it out, let alone send you an advance copy."

She couldn't help but notice the fluff of angered fur by Rhiannon's feet. "Awww kitty," the redhead cooed. "You so take after your mother. All hiss and so little bite."

"You've got a two-part rebuttal coming." Rhiannon tucked a foot beneath her thigh, sitting slightly crooked on the chair, so she could loop an arm behind it. "One, I didn't find it out from your book. I got it from Victoria, along with a few other juicy tidbits you'll have to wonder about. Two, who needs biting when you've got fists like mine? Don't fuck around like you don't remember the broken nose." Mary Sue nudged closer to her owner's leg, back raised, tail high and curved. She was a sleek, silvery cat nearing five years old, temperamental as an old tomcat in the street.

"Why are you here?" She opened the lid of her cigarette pack. Inside, eight filters tottered back and forth. Rhiannon slid two fingers into the white box and selected one at random. She lit up behind a cupped hand.

A small chortle rattled from the back of the vampire's throat. Her daughter was many things, but careless wasn't one of them. Allow the Slayer to think she held a virtual Sword of Damacles over her. It gave the woman a sense of power, something to be exploited. "And don't forget the damage I've done to you, hon.

"As for why I'm here..." A deliberate pause. Just because. "I thought it would be fun to catch up on the last two years. Find out what the mighty Rhiannon Lee's been up to since her retreat from the City of Sin. And to let you know I'm back in your orbit."

"If you're looking for a welcome back party, I'm afraid you're at the wrong door." Rhiannon leaned over and put her pack and lighter on the beige carpet. "Hate to say it, but you stayed gone too long. People have forgotten you. But don't worry, that place you held in the grand scheme of things hasn't been folded into nothing. There's just a different pair of feet in those shoes." There was some truth in the statement. When a vampire got scarce, there were plenty of crested foreheads eager to take over the limelight. She could name a few offhand. The one person she knew hadn't let go of Deanna was herself.

"I did have a couple of dreams about you, though." Rhiannon slid down in her seat, legs outstretched and feet propped against either side of the threshold. "Months ago."

Deanna remained mum when cut with Rhiannon's words. Swords and stakes she could deflect. Being relegated to third tier didn't sit well with her. She visibly swallowed and held her composure.

"It's not all about you either," the vampire retorted. "And a girl's entitled to travel a little, don't you think? Oh wait." Another drag on the cigarette. "This is probably as far as you've ever gone. I won't hold that against you, R."

The redhead examined the Slayer's longer hair, the maturing features, toned arms. She'd kept fighting trim. Good. "You may have entered my waking thoughts once or twice. I don't suppose you have a fear of drowning," Deanna smiled.

Rhiannon's eyes lifted. Uncertainty flashed behind them. She remembered the burning agony of water in her lungs, the sharp puncture of metal debris in her leg, keeping her under. The teeth slicing into her neck had been her very last concern, considering she couldn't breathe. But it was only a nightmare, one apparently shared with the vampire. Sharing dreams wasn't new; she had done it before, always accidentally, with Whistler and with Joseph. One couldn't call it a talent when it was subconscious and ended badly.

"Package it as travel all you want," she said quietly. "I'll still believe you ran away. I've never taken off on you because I'm not afraid of you, and I don't have a pressing need to take a world tour. I carve my place in the world and I stay with my responsibilities until they're done. Your big mistake is wandering back into my turf."

The earlier chortle became a full-throated laugh. Deanna ashed her cigarette onto the hall carpet, ignoring the specs as wind from the Slayer's apartment caught the flakes and swirled them between the chairs. "You believe what you want. I'm not tied to responsibility. I'm a vamp of the world. And when the book launches, everyone's going to know my name. More than can ever be said for you."

The fashionably undead woman locked eyes with her enemy. "I've lived for centuries and I'll be around long after I've bled you dry and left your corpse for the maggots. Your mistake, dear girl, is that you stayed alive long enough for me to find you again. "

"Yeah. Because staying alive sounds like a huge mistake." Rhiannon wasn't amused. Sitting up straighter, she took a hit off her cigarette. "Do me a favor, Deanna. Conduct a little test. Next time you're in a bar where demons hang around, say my name. The silence you hear? That's fear. I know for damn sure there aren't any humans cowering from yours. I don't have to publish a tell-all and sensationalize my life to be known. You're a sell-out. A corporate whore with fangs. You're not even in my league anymore, so excuse me if I ignore the maggot pipe dream in favor of enemies who actually matter."

She flicked her cigarette and watched it sail across the threshold, unencumbered by mystical resistance, and land in Deanna's shirt collar.

A free hand reached up and grabbed for the offending intruder. The cigarette managed to scorch the edge of her blouse before retrieved and tossed to the ground. Deanna wanted to leap to her feet, smash the chair against the wall and call the bitch out. Every fiber of her being demanded the fight.

Deanna held herself in check. She was being baited. In the past she would've launched an assault without hesitation. Hit the barrier separating the duo and pushed back, giving Rhiannon the advantage. That's what the brunette wanted. To make the vampire angry, careless.

In her two years gone from Vegas, the redhead had encountered a lot more than Rhiannon could've imagined. And it taught her a few tricks of her own, the most obvious being patience.

"Nice." Not a muscle twitched. Her eyes were steel. "But if you were done with me, you wouldn't have opened the door. Wouldn't have offered the chair. And spare me your words to the opposite. Admit you got a tingle when you touched the door knob, that your breath hitched when you saw my face. How every muscle aches to tighten up and cross the threshold and take me on.

"Admit you can't wait for one more round. Even if it means you might lose."

Rhiannon lifted her shoulders. "I might get hit by the city bus. But it's unlikely." The chair wasn't terribly comfortable. She pulled a foot onto the seat and hooked an arm around her knee. "Your ego is really something, Deanna," she said, tapping her fingers on the top of her foot. "You think you're still the center of my world. Like you can leave town, jet-set, come back a few years later and still put the fear of god in me. But you're a relic, a piece of unresolved history. Of course I want to stake you. I want to check you off an old to-do list and get on with things. Me, on the other hand?"

She drifted off. In the corner, the television still flashed black and white images, illuminating the living room and one side of Rhiannon's face. "I'm still your number one girl. I'd bet money you didn't even unpack before you stopped by."

"I've been here a week." She spoke the truth. Deanna had slipped into town unannounced, acquired accommodations. She made contact with her publicist and agent, made sure everything related to her book was now relayed to Chicago. She'd walked the streets, refamiliarizing herself with the territory. All done under the radar. Even Vicky wasn't made aware of her arrival. "So clearly you weren't on the top of my agenda either."

"Tell it to the judge." Rhiannon's mouth hitched at the left corner, a smile coming out. "Okay, you want the truth?"

The smile was returned. "Nothing but."

"I wouldn't call you the Holy Grail... there's another enemy out there that owns that honor... but she's not made of flesh and bone, like you and me. I do want it. Maybe more than any other kill I ever had." Rhiannon looked across at the vampire, the tiny singed spot on her blouse. "It's not because you're the best fighter. There's at least one vampire in Chicago who could give you a serious run for your money. If you've ever had the privilege of meeting Katherine, you know what I'm talking about. There's something about you I can't put my finger on. A quality. We're a matched set. I'm supposed to take you down, not because I'm a Slayer and you're a vampire, but because I'm Rhiannon and you're Deanna, and that's... just how it is. Maybe how it's been before."

"How it's meant to be." Deanna wasn't sure why she said that. It came... instinctively. The redhead didn't believe in past lives, not as she continued living one after death. But how else to explain their connection? "If I hadn't hired someone to track you down, gone looking for myself, I would've started here. In Chicago."

She tossed her own cigarette butt, now burnt to the end, onto the hallway carpet and scrubbed it with her shoe. "As for Katherine, we go back a few decades. Had a grand time in Miami. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am."

"Could've done without the imagery." Rhiannon's traitorous brain tried to imagine it anyway.

Attitude-wise, she could see the two of them getting together for a couple of hours, picking fights, screwing around, drinking, but afterwards? One of them was a diva. The other was a no-nonsense killing machine. The lifestyles didn't mix. "Me and Katherine, as fighters, we've got more in common than me and you, stylistically at least. Except... I look at her, and I see nothing but efficiency, going from one thing to the next." Rhiannon snapped her fingers a few times. "She's not cold, but she's empty, unsentimental. She doesn't linger over things or people. Not like me and not like you."

"She's an assassin." There was no other word for it, Deanna knew. While the term could be considered restrictive, that was Katherine. She killed without remorse, and usually for money. Whereas the redhead liked it for the thrill, and didn't care how long it took to get her prey. "And you're many things, Rhi, some of which rhyme with witch, but you're not that."

"So why does it bug you so much that I'm still here?" Rhiannon leaned forward, elbows on her knees. "Seriously, think about that and tell me why you care if I'm rotting in the ground or not. Why you bother giving me nicknames, why you write chapters about what it's like to fight me. Is it because I'm so fascinating, or is it something in you?" The day's old make-up collected in the crease underneath her eyelashes. Her mouth was pale, all the lipstick gone. "I'm just another in a thousand."

The vampire pulled out her cigarette case again and ran her thumb over the cool steel before opening and removing a tobacco stick. "Don't ask that question unless you're prepared to answer it yourself. And don't give me the 'I'm a Chosen One, it's my sworn duty' bullshit." She rummaged through her purse for a lighter, buried under her cell phone, three tubes of lipstick and a small vial of perfume.

"You present a challenge," Deanna continued. "In all my years, there's been no one quite like you. You're... three-dimensional in a world of cardboard cut-out Slayers. Most are purely about the job, they can fight but that's all they have. You carry the experience, but you haven't let it define you. Simply put, Rhi, you're interesting to have around. How many other vampires and Slayers do you think can have a conversation like this without wanting to lunge at each other?"

"You don't want to lunge?" Rhiannon's face tipped downward. "Come on, we both want to lunge. We're just capable of setting it aside for five minutes."

Mary Sue pushed her head into the Slayer's calf muscle. She reached down and stroked the cat's silken ear, calming her until the fur lowered, shrinking the feline's size significantly. "You're exactly what I hate about women. You're style over substance, money, designer labels, catty remarks. You say the things girls said to me in school; they talked about my house, my neighborhood, my blue-collar dad, my dead mother. Once I learned to hit, that was the end of that. But that's where the similarity stops, because they cowered and you don't. I can hit you and your mouth just keeps on running. Which works out."

Still bent at the waist, she sifted through other reasons why, then tucked a lock of brown hair behind her ear. Rhiannon straightened. "You weren't bred like them. There's a brittleness in you, and that doesn't come from a pampered life. You've made yourself up into this... persona. 'Deanna'. And Deanna thinks Rhiannon's noteworthy. Every Slayer likes to know she's on the map. That's why you're interesting. A little bit of post-adolescent anger, a little bit of ego-stroking, and a lot of my gut saying you're the one that'll really count."

"Does it bother you?" The redhead took a long drag of her cigarette, and re-crossed her legs as Rhiannon stared her down. "Does it bother you that I could so easily achieve what I want while you slave to the idea of what you should be? What everyone expects of you?" Her free hand slid down her thigh to scratch an imaginary itch on her lower calf. "I'm not suggesting you want to be like me. That'd be foolish. But I'm betting you've had to sacrifice a whole other life to be who you are today. And with all your abilities, Rhiannon," Deanna blew out a smoke ring, "to have to hold back so much because you don't want people to be afraid of you."

Deanna's fingernails lazily trailed back up her leg until the hand moved up and through the air, then through long, flowing locks of hair. "You're right. Whether you read it from the manuscript or got the intel from Victoria. I wasn't bred this way. I did have to remake myself into who I am today. But I did it on my terms. Can you say the same?"

"Yeah," Rhiannon said honestly. "I can. I don't give a shit what I should be, or what anyone wants, not anymore, because what's that? The cardboard Slayer you mentioned. I went through some Herculean labors to get here, and no matter what here might seem like to you?" She twirled her finger around, indicating the modest apartment. "It works for me. I'm satisfied. I wanted to be a great Slayer and I am. I wanted to be an artist and I am. I wanted to be in love and I am. I do it all, uncompromisingly me. The funny thing is, the minute I let go of foolish ideals, everything fell into place. Sorry to burst your bubble, but I'm not tragic, and I no longer feel the urge to set my life on fire, just to have one to put out."

"And I can say the same." Deanna took one more drag before ashing on the carpet. "If I seem random, or that I'm 'trying hard' to be something, think again. It's all who I am. And I am Deanna, lover of women, nightmare to slayers. I don't feel pity for you, so try to extend the same courtesy to me."

Lifting shoulders, Rhiannon asked, "Whoever said I pitied you? That's your riff. Poor Rhiannon's shitty everything. If it's not pity, it's that you want me to second-guess myself. Otherwise you wouldn't waste air and time insulting me. Speaking of a waste of air, this is starting to feel like one."

"You're the only one who needs to breathe, hun," the redhead quipped in reply.

Rising from the chair, Deanna slightly stretched and stepped backwards. "Be seeing you."

She turned only part-way, keeping a wary eye should the brunette decide to launch an attack for the sake of continuing their feud. But she suspected their detente would last the night. As the vampire moved down the stairwell, she made a mental note of something Rhiannon said.

I wanted to be in love and I am.

Still with whatshisname. Deanna would keep her eyes peeled. Any opening to hurt the Slayer was one to be exploited.

"Looking forward to it." Rhiannon retrieved the chair from the hall and shut the door. Once inside, she put her back to it. All her nerve endings were jangling, screaming 'vampire' and urging her to run after Deanna... Maybe give her a taste of how it felt to get dropped in a stairwell. A little bit of poetic justice. Old favors returned. But in her gut, she knew this wasn't the right time for a fight, not when Juliet was due to show up for patrol. It would have to wait.

As for the redhead's thoughts, she hadn't a clue. She hadn't thought twice about mentioning being in love, assuming the vampire would've dug that piece of dirt up years ago.

She went across to the window and watched the redhead slip from sight, making sure she didn't run into the younger Slayer on the sidewalk. Once certain she was gone, she texted Juliet. 'Hey- Come by about 15 min. late tonight. I'm running behind. -R'

Better safe than sorry.