Selene felt her head tumbling towards the floor, but managed to turn her body so that her shoulder took the impact. She felt it crumple into the socket, the shock running up to her neck before the rest of her body fell into the room.
Harland followed, but because his limbs were free his entrance was far more dignified. Selene felt him grab her and pull her aside, to where she could be seen from where Hector lay. She took position on her knees, and only once she was comfortable did she turn to look at her owner.
His senses must have been dulled by his injuries, because he hadn't moved when she had landed on the floor with what was not an insignificant bump. Selene could see his face in profile as he lay in bed. Only his head was above the satin sheets, the rest of his body concealed. He looked unharmed, but he looked dead. He was so still that Selene could not imagine him ever getting up again.
"Is this normal?" Asked Harland, in what was barely more than a whisper.
"No. You might have to wake him."
Every particle that composed Selene's body was vibrating with a strange mix of terror, fear, and excitement. She had thought Hector had died in the fire, she had thought she would never see him again, and yet here she was, watching him sleep as the sun began to rise outside the window.
She wanted to stand up and walk over to him, touch him, confirm that he really existed, confirm that the whole thing wasn't some kind of illusion.
"Selene?"
Hector's voice rasped in his throat, almost unrecognisable, and so quiet that she wasn't sure he had spoken at all.
"Is that you?"
Harland clapped a hand over her mouth, and just as well because her answer had crept right to the tip of her tongue, dangling off, hanging by one hand. He scooped it up with a sweaty sewage covered fist and crammed it back into her mouth. She gagged, and groaned.
"Who is that with you?"
Hector hadn't moved. Selene wondered whether he continued to lie still because he couldn't move, and the thought pained her. She struggled against Harland's grasp.
"My name is unimportant. I have come because you have something I want. And I believe I have something you want."
Harland used his free hand to pull the knife from his boot and with a swift movement he pressed the cold metal to Selene's throat. Hector sat up, making a sound like crisp leaves crunching underfoot. As he turned to look at them, Selene screamed, the sound caught in Harland's muscled hand.
One side of Hector's face was entirely black, and as he moved parts of it flaked off and fell on the satin sheets. His features were impossible to make out, and his right arm hung by his side, nothing but a blackened trunk that creaked and crisped and fell apart when he moved.
Selene could feel Harland's shock too, in the movement of his body and the tightening of his grip over her mouth. He shuffled his feet behind her, and she could hear his boots rubbing filth into the fibres of Hector's lush carpet.
"What do you want?" The sound grated from his mouth, a pitiful rustle.
"The boy. I know you have him. I am willing to complete an exchange. Selene for the boy."
Hector's features were difficult to read; with only half a face it was almost impossible to know what each tweak of muscle meant.
"If I press this button my guards will be here in a second," said Hector, reaching out his good hand to a button on the wall.
"If you do that I'll slit her throat."
Harland was so loud and forceful in comparison to Hector. Selene felt the knife press harder against her flesh. If he wasn't careful he would tear the skin, and she didn't want to bleed in front of Hector: there was no knowing what would happen then. In all likelihood he would lose control and kill her there and then, and Harland could never fight him off once he had drained her blood.
"Selene, do you want to come back to me?"
Hector's tone had changed. He crunched out of bed and stepped towards her, one leg black and flaking, leaving a trail of ash that fell out the bottom of his trouser leg. He looked at her with his good eye, and she resented Harland's presence in that moment.
"What does that have to do with anything?" Harland shook Selene, so her head snapped back and forth on her neck. She wanted to cry; the situation was unbearable.
"I won't trade if she doesn't want to come back to me."
Harland let his hand drop from Selene's mouth and her upper body wobbled, unstable in its release.
"Answer him."
"Do you, Selene? I'm not much use like this."
A flake of his blackened face fluttered to the floor like a feather, landing beside the satin of Selene's dress. She couldn't take her eyes from it. Her mouth dried up like a desert and she couldn't speak.
"Answer him," boomed Harland. He followed the verbal explosion with a physical one, striking Selene's cheek with the butt of his gun. A welt bloomed and a trickle of blood bubbled to the surface. Selene knew without seeing her own face that she was bleeding. She read it in Hector's eye, which creased and crinkled in its socket and began to glow with fire.
"I do. I want to be with you!" She screamed the words, attempting to block Hector's attack with her passionate cry. But it didn't work, he lunged, whether for her or Harland she couldn't be certain, with half his body, the other half disintegrating as he moved.
Harland, quicker than Hector with a body of functioning reflex and muscle, stabbed his silver-bladed knife into Hector's upper arm, where it immediately began to singe and sizzle, smoke rising from the wound that ruptured and festered before their eyes.
"The next full moon. Hampstead Heath. Sundown. Come alone. Selene for the boy."
Hector fell to his knees, and for a moment Selene thought he would collapse onto her. He reached out with his good arm and grasped her thigh as she knelt opposite him on the floor.
"The knife, take it out," he whispered. She ran her gaze up his arm to the where Harland's knife still held onto his flesh, which bubbled and blistered around it.
"Harland, take out the knife. Can't you see he's in pain!"
Harland knelt down and gripped Hector's arm with one hand, and with the other he slipped the blade out and wiped it clean on his trouser-leg.
"Do you really want to?" Hector whispered to her as she leant towards him. "I'm no good for you, Selene. I can't resist forever."
Harland pulled her up, leaving Hector shaking on the floor. He pointed his loaded gun at him, and together they looked down on the ruin of a great Vampire. Selene knew Hector was humiliated by his own frailty. The collapse of his shoulders and the roundness of his back as he stared at the floor told her that much. He had let himself be beaten by a human.
"Remember, Vampire. Hampstead Heath. Alone."
Hector's head lifted as though on strings pulled from above, and his gaze held the force of a raging bull. Harland gritted his teeth, and Selene knew he was trying not to look away, not to weaken under the strength of Hector's last resolve.
"I'll never forget this, human."
The words were deep, crumbling in a hell that only Hector could have known. In that instant Selene remembered the true terror she had felt of Hector in the past. There was a monster inside that damaged body, and it was going to exact revenge. Of that much she was certain.