Amelita remembered being sick really, really well. Far clearer than memories of being out of breath, enjoying a solid meal or getting faded without the need to open a vein. Maybe it had had something to do with the way she'd wanted to hurl the moment before she'd been turned. Or maybe the memories you got to keep were a total crapshoot - who knew. Pondering the how and the why was her attempt at distraction from the real concerns. Where she'd spend day, how making contact would go on an appetite, whether Los could ever reach this far to have her snuffed out. It wasn't really working.

The bus station was a stark little oasis of bright, glowing in the night. The light buzzed in her head, so Amelita lurked on the edge of it all. She watched the people, gathering their luggage and waiting around, bleary-eyed. She'd made the trip with these people, and she'd wanted, badly, to drink from them as she pretended to sleep. She'd found a distraction in focusing amped senses on the laboured metronome of a fat man's heartbeat and wondering how far away the coronary was. Morbid, but a welcome break from wanting to consume. You might think that listening to a heartbeat would make the id-driven 'I want Blood!' cauldron bubble out from her sub-conscious and make one hell of a mess. It hadn't, though. It'd been strangely calming.

The young Shade watches fat heartbeat mumble into a cellphone. She takes one last hungry look at the warm bodies and then turns away from the light, shouldering a bag. Tonight she'd find shelter, she assures herself; maybe in an empty building or inside a discarded refrigerator. There were others who got by night to night like that. Tomorrow she'd search for others and start working on something more permanent.