She took a deep breath, "Last chance. Are you in need of rescuing?" His expression turned very strange, almost as if she'd struck him, "Yes," he said finally.

Nothing can happen more beautiful than death - Walt Whitman

Little mouse," a voice said through the keyhole. "Don't you know the more you wriggle, the greater the cat's delight?

Maybe it was that nearly everyone else was dead and she felt a little bit dead too, but she figured that even a vampire deserved to be saved. Maybe she ought to leave him, but she wasn't going to.

Keep going' she told herself, 'Don't look back.' But she looked anyways.

Be careful," Aidan called from the bed. "You don't know what he might do." "We all know what you'd do, though, don't we?

Are you sure?" Aidan asked, "Gavriel's still a vampire." "He warned me about you and about them. He didn't have to. I'm not going to repay that by-" she hesitated, then frowned. "What did you call him?" "That's his name," Aidan sighed, "Gavriel. The other vampires, while they were tying me to the bed, they said his name." "Oh." With a final tug she pulled the blanked free and tossed it over to 'Gavriel

I don't want to be a vampire' she told herself. But in her dreams, she kind of did.

I'm sorry,' she said to each of the dead as she unzipped and unfastened their things, 'I'm sorry Courtney. I'm sorry Marcus. I'm sorry Rachel. I'm sorry Jon. I'm sorry I'm alive and you're dead. I'm sorry I was asleep. I'm sorry I didn't save you and now I'm taking your things. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

You said you were allowed to lose it,' some part of her reminded herself. 'Not yet, not yet.

Behind Tana there was the sounds of splintering wood, as though something very large had hot the door. "No," she said softly, "Oh no. No." "Leave me," said Gavriel. ....."Shut up or I might," she told him.

In the dream, Tana's mother loved her more than anyone or anything. More than death.

please,Tana,please.' -lots of characters in The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

He whom the gods love dies young.

Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life.

His voice had a faint trace of an accent she couldn't place - one that made her pretty sure he was no local kid infected the night before.

I'm going to take off your gag. And if you try to bite me or grab me or anything, I'll hit you with this thing as hard as I can as many times as I can. Understood?

That was seven years ago. The doctors told her father the memory would fade, like the big messy scar on her arm, but neither ever did.

We all labor against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases

Tana would sit near the door to the basement with fingers in her ears, tears and snot running down her face as she cried and cried and cried. And little Pearl would toddle up, crying, too. They cried while they ate their cereal, cried while they watched cartoons, and cried themselves to sleep at night, huddled together in Tana's little bed. 'Make her stop' Pearl said, but Tana couldn't.

Death is the dropping of the flower, that the fruit may, swell.

She swallowed his blood, a dark vintage from some forgotten cellar. She felt like Persephone in Hades, pomegranate seeds bursting against her teeth, juice rolling on her tongue, and the more she had, the more she hungered.

Occasionally, there are battles in the sky. One likes to imagine the angels are always triumphant. One does not like to think of the ancient and terrible scales balancing the infernal and divine as wobbling back and forth. Tilting freely, to and fro. One does not like to think that sometimes it is the angel that falls.