Lola stood up, brushing twigs and dirt from her clothes and face. She's never had to make the jump from a moving car before, and she thought she'd done rather well, under the circumstances. Even her gun had landed safely after she'd thrown it out – it was sitting undamaged on the ground, a few metres away. She retrieved it just as Adrianna made her way down to the water's edge.



"There you go," Lola said, gesturing towards the sinking car. "Another successful hit. And no bullets required, either."
Adrianna nodded, staring at the car as bubbles started coming to the surface. She thought she could see the two teenagers thrashing around inside, trying to get out.
Lola looked at her. "Adrianna?" she said, tilting her head. "What's up?"
Adrianna shook her head. "I don't know, Lola," she said. "They were just kids."
"No, they weren't," Lola corrected her sternly. "They're bodies. That's all they are. A bunch of human parts assembled together like a machine. Nothing more."
Adrianna kept staring at the car, watching as it gradually became fully submerged. She flinched when the top of the roof went under and a sudden gush of air and water sprayed out, like a whale surfacing to breathe.
“Don’t tell me you’re finally starting to grow a conscience,” Lola sighed, exasperated. "Remember what I said about becoming attached, Adrianna: you can't. You have to distance yourself from the hits, otherwise you start getting sentimental, and that's when you make mistakes. You know my saying – bullets in bodies. Slugs in skulls."
"How can you say that?" Adrianna exclaimed, turning to face Lola, away from the sight of the car. "They were just children. They were somebody's daughter, somebody's son, somebody's best friend."
"That didn't stop you with Joanna, though, did it?" Lola said fiercely.
Adrianna looked away. "That was different," she said. "There was never enough arsenic in those muffins to kill her, just enough to make her sick."
"No, there was enough to kill her, and you knew it," Lola said matter-of-factly. She started walking back up through the forest to their dented red sportscar. "Come on," she coaxed. "We've gotta get to the airport soon. Paris is waiting."
Adrianna didn't move. "I'm not going," she said.
Lola stopped, amazed. "What?"
"I can't do this any more," Adrianna said. "This…killing. I can't live with myself."
Lola stared. "Well, there won't be any more killing in Paris."
"But there will be," Adrianna said angrily. "Someone always finds you, always knows who you are. Someone will find out that we're the brilliant assassination team that they've heard about: the brawn and the brain. And I'm tired of being the brain behind so many people's suffering."
She walked up to Lola. "So here's what I'm suggesting, as your friend," she said seriously. "You go to Paris. Take all our money with you. Become someone new. I won't tell a soul. I'll take the car and our stuff and stay here, and I'll find somewhere else to go. But I've had enough, Lola. I'm done with this."
Adrianna started to walk away, up the slope, distancing herself from her former best friend. Then she heard a click.
"I can't let you do that, Adrianna," Lola's voice said from behind her.
Adrianna turned, half-knowing what she'd see, but she was still shocked to find her best friend pointing a gun in her direction.



"What are you doing?" she whispered.
"Protecting myself," Lola replied. Her face was twisted into an expression of pain and apology. "I'm sorry, but you're either with me, or you're gone. That's just the way it has to be."
Adrianna was stunned. "Lola," she whispered, horrified. "I'm your best friend! Don't you remember?"
Lola looked at her sadly. "Yes, I do remember," she said softly, haunted. "Once."
"You know I won't tell anyone," Adrianna said sincerely. "Why would I? They'd throw me in jail!"
"I can't afford to take that risk!" Lola hissed. "I'd go bloody insane in prison and you know it." She gestured with the gun. "No, you have to come with me, otherwise you're a loose end."
"So will I just be another body?" Adrianna spat angrily, teeth clenched, tears flowing. "Another—machine? Something that you dump by the side of the road for the animals to eat?"
Lola shook her head. "Don't be so dramatic—"
"All our years together and you're this selfish!" Adrianna cried. "I can't believe it!"
"Shut up!" Lola yelled, raising the gun decisively.
Adrianna watched silently, tears streaking her cheeks.
Lola's face was contorted in pain. "All those years, and they have to end like this," she whispered, gripping the trigger.
Adrianna squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the end—
There was a bang, and a thump, followed by the sound of a tree branch crashing down to the ground. Adrianna opened her eyes in surprise.
Lola was standing there, frozen, gaping at the person who had just seemingly materialised in front of her.
"Victoria?"
"God, you're a heartless bitch," Victoria Guildenstern spat, her words dripping venom.



Lola was lost for words. "What are you doing here?" she managed to gasp.
"I got a text message," Victoria fumed. "And a missed call. From Ellie. Asking for help. So I thought I should give it."
"Well, you're a bit late," Lola said loudly. "Ellie's dead. So is Julian. They're in a car on the riverbed right now. Fish food."
"Is that so?" Victoria whispered menacingly. Lola took an involuntary step backwards. "You killed my fiancé, stone dead, and he never did a thing to harm anybody," she hissed. "My child is going to grow up without a father because of you, and now you're going to pay."
"Your child won't be growing up at all at this rate," Lola snarled, her eyes flashing as she raised her gun and pointed it at Victoria.
Victoria laughed humourlessly. "Do you really think bullets can stop a vampire?" she mocked.
Lola could only watch as Victoria darted forwards with supernatural speed and twisted the gun away from her. With a cry of astonishment, she saw the weapon fly out of her hand and land softly, several metres away. Victoria clutched her wrist in a vice-like grip, and began to twist.
The vampire advanced, raising her other hand to grab Lola by the throat, and Lola screamed in pain as her wrist was broken. She stared in horror as Victoria's flaming red eyes glared into her own, her pointed teeth bared, hands like marble around her neck, crushing her airways—



Suddenly, there was a bang, and Lola doubled over despite Victoria's hold. Victoria jerked backwards and stared towards the source of the noise.
Adrianna was standing there with glassy eyes, holding Lola's smoking gun.
Lola looked down, shocked to see red spreading across her front. "Wh—" she gasped. "How—how could you…?"
"Bullets in bodies, Lola," Adrianna said tonelessly, her voice cold and detached. "Remember that."
She fired once more. Lola's head snapped back violently, a round hole between her eyes, and she sank to the ground, dead.
Victoria looked at Adrianna, gobsmacked.
Adrianna slowly lowered the gun, and gazed at Victoria, eyes bright. "I tried to stop her from killing him, you know," she said, sounding choked. "I told her not to. He was so kind to us." She took a deep breath. "I'm so, so sorry."



Victoria bit her lip, shaking her head as the flood of pain within her threatened to overflow. Her shoulders shook as Adrianna came slowly over, dropping the gun once again on the ground, and embraced the vampire in a hug of shared suffering and sorrow. They clung to each other for a moment, until the quietness of the night was broken by a splash, followed by a loud gasping sound.
They both turned in surprise to look at the river's edge, where Ellie was dragging a limp Julian out of the water onto dry ground. Her hands were still handcuffed in front of her as she hauled his body into the leaf litter and dirt, frantically pressing on his chest in a rhythmic pattern, then forcing his mouth open and breathing into it. She repeated this for a few cycles before Julian finally gave a great gasp and spluttered back to life, coughing up water and shaking drops from his eyes.
Ellie thumped him on the back as he continued to heave the water from his lungs. "Keep coughing, that's the spirit," she panted.
Then she glanced up, noticing Victoria and Adrianna for the first time. She looked down, seeing the lifeless form of Lola lying on the forest floor.
She glanced up at the shocked Victoria and Adrianna again.
"Victoria," she gasped. "Do you never answer your phone?"






All that and I didn't even get the fluffy brown blanket.
You know how in movies, if there's a girl that's gotten all wet, at the end she always ends up wrapped in some kind of blanket (usually some gross shade of brown)?
Well, I didn't get it. Julian got it, even though he's a guy and they're meant to tough it out. Just because he went all unconscious on me, he was the one the paramedics wrapped in the blanket (it was white though because they obviously have no imagination), while I just stood there, soaking wet, sticky in places I didn't know I could feel sticky as my jeans started to dry out.



Anyway, there’s a chunk missing from this story, right? How exactly did we manage to get out of that car?
As the car went under, there I was, yelling at Julian to keep breathing as long as there was an air bubble in the car. Of course, he didn't listen, and started hyperventilating.
This was actually quite unhelpful. Apparently most people think that, if you’re about to go underwater, hyperventilation will pack extra oxygen into your bloodstream and allow you to stay under for longer. In reality, you’re not taking much extra oxygen in. You’re just breathing out carbon dioxide at a much faster rate, and since carbon dioxide content is what the brain measures, it gets tricked into thinking your blood has a lot more oxygen than it actually does, and so it sends the impulse to breathe in way too late. By that time, of course, you’re dizzy and probably underwater, and you black out.
I didn’t really have the time to explain all of this to Julian though. I was too busy trying to loop my chained wrists around my legs, thus bringing them in front of me rather than behind my back. They make it look so easy in movies, I thought. Why shouldn’t I be able to do the same?
Well, I nearly dislocated my damn shoulder. In fact, it made this horrible noise at one point and it was pain like I had never known before, but thankfully I was still able to move it, and eventually I managed to bring my chained wrists around so that they were in front of me. I noticed Julian was trying – and failing – to do the same. By that time, the car was almost resting on the riverbed, and taking on water fast.
Since I knew I couldn’t open the door even if it wasn’t ‘child-locked’, thanks to the immense pressure of water against the outside of the car, I grabbed the window-winding lever and started tugging, while thanking my lucky stars that Lou didn’t have electric windows. The window went down just a few inches before water came gushing in with the force of a fireman’s hose, hurling me back through the car and knocking Julian under the surface of the water. Thanks to the window, the car started taking on water even more quickly, and the air bubble was shrinking at an alarming rate. While the water poured in, I grabbed at Julian’s hoodie and lifted him back up to the last remaining air, where we both took a gulp before the car was fully flooded.
I managed to fight my way back over to the window and wound it down all the way. It was then pretty easy to swim out through the window, but no way was I going to leave a blacked-out Julian to drown at the bottom of the Fawkes River, so I swam round to the other side of the car, wrenched open the door, and pulled Julian out of the back seat. While my lungs screamed for air and my vision started to dim, I kicked against the car and rose up towards the surface, where I broke through the water with much noisy spluttering and gasping.
It was quite a task to then drag Julian to the side of the river, and then perform CPR to get him breathing again. For a minute, I thought it was too late. You wouldn’t believe the relief I felt when he finally coughed back into life. Then, as you already know, I looked up and saw a dead Lola on the ground, next to a teary Adrianna and stunned-looking Victoria, whom I had been desperately trying to call earlier.
It all sounds rather unbelievable, doesn't it?
That's just the kind of girl I am.