* * *

Bridge

* * *

"It's all right," Clark was saying when Otto jogged up. "You're safe now."

"Yes, but I'm also filthy," said the girl to whom Clark was talking. "What are you going to do about that?"

Clark's reassuring smile froze and tilted sideways.

"I could suggest that you take a bath," he said evenly.

The girl opened her mouth. Clark somehow managed to wince without moving a muscle. Otto decided to cough.

There is a peculiar quality to a vampire's cough. It reaches into the dark, embarrassing parts of the human brain and sparks off ancient racial memories of haunted grey-stoned castles, endless draughty passages, thin nightgowns, flapping curtains, a predator lurking on the edge of the balcony . . .

Admittedly most of them hadn't coughed before lunging for their prey's throats, but Otto had liked to be polite even when he'd been a soulless b-vord drinker.

It worked. The girl spun around, spattering mud. Clark beamed, and the light of it had Otto absently reaching for his iconograph before he realised what he was doing.

"Otto!" said Clark. "Amelia, this is the iconographer. Stay with him and he'll take lots of pictures of you, okay? I'll just, uh, go look for the groceries now."

He barely took the time to mouth "sorry" at Otto before darting off to the bridge. Otto gaped.

"Are you the iconographer?" said the girl. "Finally! I'm Amelia Puddingsworth (14), and I fell into the river and I could have drowned -- "

Otto resisted the urge to hide behind the tripod.

"Clark vas interviewing you?" he asked.

"Oh, he pulled me out," said Amelia. "But he didn't even get the groceries. There were half a dozen eggs in that bag! My mum'll kill me, she'll never believe I didn't take the money to buy something, she's always having a go at me, it was only the one time anyway and I never get any money so I don't see why I shouldn't . . ."

"Smile!" said Otto. The flash went off.

All in all, an ordinary day. Otto could hardly blame himself for not noticing the carriage thundering down the bridge. After all, it wasn't like you didn't see carriages breaking the new speed limit everyday. The traffic division did what it could, but there were still carriages even the Watch didn't dare clamp. If those just happened to be the carriages with the shiniest liveries and the coats of arms of families that would only acknowledge the more respectable gods as relations, well, that was life.

Otto did notice what happened next, however. It would have been difficult not to. Even in Ankh-Morpork, a state-of-the-art carriage plunging over the side of a bridge into the Ankh tended to attract notice.

He started fumbling with the iconograph, but it was only when he realised that it'd taken Clark with it that he really started to run.

* * *

Clark was . . . not sinking.

He'd heard the stories about the Ankh, and he'd certainly smelled the evidence for their probable truth, but they still hadn't prepared him for how gross it was.

One moment he'd been standing at the side of the bridge, wondering if by "helping people" his dad really meant he should drag what passed for a river here in the city for six eggs and a pat of butter (the girl hadn't even thanked him; it wasn't like he was doing it for the glory, but you'd think she'd have at least refrained from yelling so much). The next moment he'd had a horse's hoof in his back, and before he could think "oh shit" he was in the river.

Well. On top of the river. Same thing.

It took some undignified thrashing to get on his feet, but Clark figured it was too late in the game to hope for dignity anyway.

As if it had ever been early enough in the game for that. Gods, his life sucked.

A flash went off in his face, and he stumbled onto land, squishing.

Dignity. Hah.

"Are you all right?" said Otto anxiously. He looked Clark over, then blinked.

"You know," he said. "I could have svorn that carriage hit you."

"If it had," said Clark, "I would be in a lot more pieces than I am right now."

"Ah," said Otto carefully.

"I don't see why you're so concerned anyway," said Clark. He looked pointedly at Otto's iconograph. Otto looked embarrassed.

"Vat can I say? It vas a vunce-in-a-lifetime composition," he said. "Zer carriage, zer man emerging from zer wreckage, zer light on your head -- "

"Your head is smoking," Clark said.

"Zer pattern of shadow, vat does not kill us makes us stronk," Otto said.

"Yeah, well," said Clark. "You might like to put out your hair anyway." He supposed he could have just blown it out really fast, but he didn't feel in the mood today.

It had been a bad day. A bad month, actually, and he really hated Ankh-Morpork. So many people to save, and so many of them were complete jerks. And right, he liked his job, but William was beginning to give him funny looks and asking leading questions about how he managed to be in the right place at the right time to witness so many near-fatal accidents, and "just lucky, I guess" wasn't going to cut it for much longer.

It wasn't like his soul was roiling in epic misery or anything. Clark would almost have preferred that. Grown-up life was a lot more boring than he would've expected. Boring and annoying and mundane.

Pete said that normal was more boring than he thought. What he didn't know was that abnormal wasn't exactly nonstop excitement either.

Then,

"Fucking fuck!" said a voice from the general direction of the river. Clark looked up at the man who was getting out of the carriage . . .

. . . And suddenly life got a lot more epic.

* * *

It took some time for Lex to realise he wasn't drowning.

The smell didn't help. The way you knew you were in the heart of Uberwald, they said, was from the way your nose had dropped off. The way you knew you were in the heart of Ankh-Morpork was that your nose was still attached to the rest of you; it just wished it wasn't.

When Lex had graduated from the Assassins' Guild, he'd thought he'd never have to see Ankh-Morpork again. And yet here he was again, his shoes dissolving in its effluence, for no better reason than that Lionel had had another of his stupid whims and really, what was new?

"Thanks, dad," Lex muttered.

Were his shoes hissing?

Kill the coachman, Lex thought, and then he could have him with . . . no.

He kept forgetting.

Right. The coachman could live, if he managed to extricate himself from the gloopy embrace of the Ankh.

Lex wasn't going to help him out. He might be a reformed vampire, but he was still a Luthor -- and he'd spent an obscene amount of money on these shoes.

He stumbled, sending an arc of the toxic soup that was the Ankh splashing along his leg.

Maybe just a little impaling? It wasn't breaking his pledge if he didn't drink the man's blood afterwards, after all . . .

"Lex Luthor?" said a disbelieving voice. Lex looked into the lens of an iconograph.

"If you set that thing on me, Otto, I will have your guts for garters," said Lex.

Otto lowered the iconograph hastily.

"Zat hasn't been done since your grandfather's day," he said.

"Well, I don't look anything like him," said Lex. "So I must have taken after him in some other way."

He smiled, his fangs glinting.

"You're a vampire," said another voice. It didn't sound frightened or horrified or even surprised, but there was something in it that sounded familiar. Lex couldn't identify it.

He turned and looked up, and realised: it was wonder.

It was all the wonder in the world.

"Ah," said Otto. "Lex -- "

Lex's hand shot out and grabbed him by the collar.

"Introduce us," he hissed into Otto's ear.

"Ah?" Never moving his eyes, Lex shook Otto violently. "Ah. Right. Lex, zis is Clark Kent, my colleague at zer Times, you may have heard of it, it is a hard-hitting controversial broadsheet at only five pence a co -- right. Right. Clark, zis is Lex Luthor."

"Hi," said Clark. He held out his hand.

Lex took it. He could feel the blood pulsing in every vein, and for the first time in his life he didn't want to taste it.

He wondered what Clark's mouth would taste like. He wondered if Clark would let him lick it.

Clark's fingers curled around his hand, and he thought he knew.

This was what destiny felt like.

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