“Poetic revolutionaries,” she remarks, as she sharpens her knives, “are the worst kind. People who’d rather draw a picture of a cop getting shot, who’d rather sing a song about it, instead of just going out and doing the actual deed.”

She just likes to try to get a rise out of me. She says all kinds of stupid shit. It’s part of her psyche-up techniques, like revving up an engine before a race.

I want to judo-chop the universe. I want to do a backflip across the city. I want to see them flinch before I hit ‘em, and I want to ‘em faster than they can flinch. I want to be the thing that goes on that you miss when you blink. 

We’re friendly little shadows, lined with razor-wire. We’re the invisible part of the city that wraps itself around streetlights and under the seats of busstops. We’re the protectors of the righteous and the punishers of the wicked. Call us vigilantes, vampires; call us things gone wrong, doing right by the night. 

Necks snaps and lives get changed. We go out and have a positive impact on our environment, and then we go back home, and wash off all the blood.

“Never forget,” she warns me, all sticky red in the warm of the shower, “how much blood it takes to really change the world.”