“You and me, have a disease,
You affect me, you infect me,
I'm afflicted, you're addicted,
You and me, you and me”
-“Infected”, Bad Religion

The heavy base of the dance music made quiet conversation a bit difficult from where the two were standing, but theirs was such a perfected system that hardly any words needed to be spoken. His eyes scanned the crowd, assessing each potential target, while hers focused on an unidentified point in space, mentally preparing herself for the task ahead. With a gesture, he captured her attention, and she followed his gaze to a tall, glamorous woman walking a bit unsteadily towards the rear exit of the club.

‘That one?’ she mouthed to him. He nodded, and she smiled.

The pair let their target get a head start, before making their way slowly but purposefully across the crowded club, easing between those dancing patrons who were blissfully unaware of the predators in their midst. As the two reached the rear exit, the man slid the door open with serpentine ease, squinting slightly as the exterior lights bathed him and the back alley with a sickly yellow glow. It only took a moment for him to spot their quarry, walking briskly, if unsteadily, towards the main street.

Valko waited until the obviously-tipsy woman was midway down the alley, between the pale illumination provided by the poor lighting, before nodding to his partner. Leona, seeing his approval and agreeing that the time was right, move forward swiftly, but silently. As his lover
dashed ahead of him, Valko took a moment to admire her form. Leona was a lithe woman with modest proportions, but a flame-like mane of red hair that tended to draw attention even when her unremarkable curves didn’t. At the moment, she was clad in her favorite hunting attire: black leggings with a white top that bared part of her stomach, topped off by a brown aviator’s jacket. Most unusual to most would have been her completely unremarkable running shoes, but as Valko knew their purpose, they seemed perfectly sensible to him.

Valko himself was similarly thin, but whereas
Leona appeared wirey, he simply looked gaunt. With an unusually white pallor and contrasting black, unruly hair, he had a naturally ghoulish appearance that his behavior and tastes did little to alleviate. He was clad in a gray turtleneck and black blazer, which seemed very subdued in the loud and unsubtle atmosphere of the dance club. In the back alley, however, his attire made slipping in and out of the shadows even simpler.

The tipsy socialite didn’t hear Leona approaching until the assailant was right on top of her, and she found herself slammed into the concrete wall. She tried to cry out, but a quick punch to her gut left her gasping for breath. Leona smiled predatorily as she eyed her prey. Young, beautiful, obviously wealthy, obviously careless…exactly the type of person that pissed the redhead off.

Before Leona could start her work in earnest, she took a moment to rip the socialite’s purse from its spaghetti strap, tossing it carelessly to her partner in the shadows. Valko caught it, sliding it within his own jacket even as Leona went to town on her prey, pummeling the woman mercilessly. With Valko as her spotter, she felt completely at ease as she indulged her violent instincts.

Thus it had been for the pair for almost ten years. Even in the old country, Valko had been considered…different by the children he’d grown up with. He’d had a strange, voyeuristic fascination with violence that had stayed with him even after his mother remarried to an American, and the three moved to New York City.

It was here that his inclinations led him to Leona. He happened to be passing by the rear of their high school building when he saw her in a violent confrontation with another student. After slamming her enemy to the sidewalk, the vicious redhead realized she’d had an audience.

“What the #### you looking at, pussy?” she snarled, prepared to deal out similar treatment to the perceived interloper.

When sighted before, Valko had always had the sense to slip away, never letting the perpetuators of the violence he was so fascinated with get the opportunity to work it upon him. But something, perhaps destiny, perhaps simply puberty, stopped him from running from the girl.

“If you don’t strike her face,” he replied with eerie serenity. “And only strike areas covered by clothing, she is less likely to report you. She’ll keep quiet, rather than be embarrassed and admit that you attacked her.”

The sheer absurdity of the situation, of her voyeur actually offering constructive advice, took Leona by such surprise that her rage was engulfed by confusion. “…kay,” she allowed, walking away. As she suspected, he followed at a respectful distance.

“The #### is your problem?” she finally managed two blocks later, lacking anything resembling tactfulness.

“I…I thought I could help you,” Valko allowed, eyes darting aside. “I’ve seen you around, in detention halls, and the SR’s office. Maybe I can help you, to not get caught…anymore.”

“An’ why would you wanna do that?” she asked, still suspicious, but no longer hostile.

“You like fighting,” he said, uncharacteristically shy. “I like watching you do it.”

“You,” Leona decided. “Are some kinda perv. But I got plenty of b###hes who want a piece of me. If you can help, sure. Why the #### not?”

There was a slight curvature in Valko’s expression that might have been a smile. And there, their relationship began, and both malcontents were served by it. True to his word, Valko’s wits and cold, collected temperament allowed him to choose when and where Leona could, as she put it, “get those b###hes what they deserve”, without getting caught in the act.

Although she’d initially rationalized her violent tendencies as being in response to outside aggression, Leona realized, as the consequences of her actions faded away, that the violence was an enjoyable end in itself. With Valko’s help, they’d soon moved beyond the circle of enemies she’d collected at their school, and began to hunt random targets to fulfill their mutual need for violence.

As their activities escalated, the pair became inseparable, and their odd dependency turned to an even odder romance. The hunting, as they euphemistically referred to it, became a part of their courtship; when Leona took Valko into her bed for the first time, she still had another man’s blood on her knuckles. For her, the violence was a cathartic venting of the rage that seemed to constantly be bubbling beneath her surface, a rage only that only Valko seemed inherently immune from. Rather than try to change her, (as a small battalion of social workers did during her time in public school), or contain her, (don’t mention her home life, under penalty of a beating), Valko accepted her and her rage, and loved her the more because of it. Leona had never met someone who embraced her so completely, and she thrived on their expeditions together.

Unfortunately, as they plied their craft, their collective bloodlust grew harder to satiate. Valko had been very insistent that Leona never actually kill their prey, fearing the increased police attention such an action would bring. In a terrible irony, the one time Leona had actually slipped up and killed their victim, the response wasn’t ecstasy, but a controlled panic, as the two moved to obliterate any possible evidence of their presence and get far away from the site as quickly as possible. And while that had been three years ago, and thus far the two had not been caught, it had seriously put a damper on their pastimes.

This brought them to the present day, and their new routine. Every so often, the two would enjoy an evening at some popular club or event, having already scouted the best locations to pounce earlier in the day. They’d pick a target, wait until said target was isolated from the pack, then strike. Valko’s inspiration had been to always take the prey’s wallet or purse, to convince the police they were looking for a particularly brutal mugger, not a hunter attacking for sport. So far, by keeping their hunts both random and separated by weeks or even months, they’d managed to avoid detection, and their hunts were seen as isolated incidents, as opposed to a string of violent attacks.

Despite this, the fear of discovery was always in the back of their minds, which is why Valko was careful to stop Leona from going too far. It was also why his blood ran cold once he sensed the second presence in the alleyway. Leona seemed to pick up on his reaction out of the corner of her eye, stopping her beating to turn with concern.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered.

Valko didn’t respond; rather, he raced down the length of the alleyway. At the far end exiting onto the street, he could see a tall, slender figure outlined in the bright neon of the streetlights. Before he could cross the distance between them, the figure turned swiftly, disappearing entirely around the corner. Valko skidded to a stop once he reached the intersection; there was nothing there but an empty street, and the noise of the club.

“Impossible,” he muttered to himself, still scanning the area for any signs of movement. There was still no one visible, and no obvious place for anyone to have hidden. Still, no sense in chancing it; the night’s event would be cut short. He looked back down the alley, where Leona had already reduced their prey to a sobbing, curled-up ball. At least they had a few moments before the socialite would have the courage to seek help, moments the pair intended to use. They already had an evacuation route in mind, and were seconds away from enacting it when Leona tugged on her lover’s sleeve.

“Baby, what’s this?” she whispered, picking up a small lead box from the alley floor. Valko frowned; he’d been scanning the alley for intruders, and he was entirely certain the box hadn’t been there before. Hesitant, he took it from her, opening the lid slowly.

Inside was a folded piece of paper, and some item wrapped in black cloth. Valko opened the note, holding it under the light so he and Leona could both read it. He was shocked by what he saw. In an extremely steady script was the following message:

“Dearest Friends,

I was fortunate enough to catch your performance outside of Club Stiletto two months back, and have been a fan of your work ever since. Sadly, it seems that circumstances of the law infringe upon your ability to bring your acts to their proper climax. Hopefully, the attached token, constituting my support of your art, will allow you to circumvent this problem. Ensure that I will employ the greatest discretion in regards to your performances, which should now be far more fulfilling for all parties.

Your Most Eager Patron,
M.M.”

Handing the note to Leona and allowing her to read as well, Valko pulled the small item wrapped in cloth from the box. He frowned as he slid the cloth aside, revealing, a broach in the shape of a small half-sphere. The casing of the thing was sterling silver, but the jewel inside was a very dark shade of blue, almost black in the way it reflected the dim lights around them.

“The #### is it? A necklace?” Leona asked in a hushed whisper, simultaneously impressed by the bauble’s beauty and confused by its presence in this alleyway. Val nodded slowly, lifting it slightly to allow the street lamps’ lights to catch upon it.

“It appears that we have an audience,” he noted, observing the sparkle of the jewel in his hand.

“What kind of freak would be-“ Leo started, but stopped herself after recalling who she was speaking to. “Well…I still don’t like this. We need to go, now.”

“Agreed,” Val said, preparing to pocket the jewel. “We need to take care of our prey, before we-“

His planning was cut off as the sparkle within the jewel suddenly illuminated the entire interior of the broach, forming an illumination on par with the street lamps around them. The otherworldly shimmer seemed to recede, before suddenly propelling forward in a pale blue beam, like a miniature comet in the night sky. This phantasm flew towards the cowering socialite in the corner of the alleyway, erupting into a shower of sparks which flash-blinded Val and Leo for several seconds. When his vision cleared, however, Val was shocked by what he saw.

Their little friend was, well, little. The sobbing woman, now completely hysterical, was, at most, two inches tall, smaller than a discarded beer can which littered the ground not far from where she trembled.

Leo breathed in, astonished. “Holy ####,” she whispered. “She’s so…tiny!” Val watched as his lover circled the shrunken woman cautiously, the way one might approach a large spider on the kitchen floor. Leo wasn’t entirely certain what had caused this, and a sense of caution caused her to keep her distance.

Val saw this plainly, yet he also saw the broach in his hand, and the note still clutched in Leo’s fist, and everything fell into place. Without hesitation, he approached Leo, placing an arm lovingly over her shoulder. “And disposable,” he finished her sentence.

With absolutely no hesitation, Val stepped calmly over their target, lowering his foot upon her with a sickening crunch. The woman, who mere moments ago had been a human being the same as both of them, was disposed of with the same inglorious casualness one would reserve for a roach. He drugged his foot in an arc before them, completely eradicating evidence that a living thing had once been in that spot, save for a smear of vaguely-red grease soon lost amongst the other foul discolorations of the alley.

Before Val could come to terms with what he’d just done, he found himself pushed to the side of the club, Leo pawing him amorously. “Baby, that was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,” she whispered, eyes alight with excitement. “You killed that b###h. Like she was nothing! An’ you usually let me have all the fun. When we get home, I’m gonna-“

“Who says we’re going home just yet?” Val breathed, finding his lover’s arousal contagious.
“We have this new little toy, and it has such possibilities…”

Leo looked equal parts surprised and intrigued.
“You think it’ll work again?”

“I think whoever our mysterious friend is, she clearly wanted us to have this, and make proper use of it. It would be rude not to.”

“And you just want to do this now, with no plan?”

Val gave a small, if manic, grin. “To Hell with plans. Throw the fire alarm, and we’ll take whomever we can home with us, for more extended and…intimate games than we’ve been allowed in the past.”

Leo kissed him, then. “I love you so much right now, babe,” she whispered, heading for the club.

“And I, you,” Val replied, holding the jewel at the ready. “I plan to prove it to you several times this evening…”

The fire alarm rang out in the darkness.