Ice was not the right word for the emptiness. It was a yawning void, gaping, aching to be filled. They were born without emotions, and without emotions there can be no empathy. No true connection. Yet there was one, the twisted twin-bond, which kept them, no matter how they hated each other, from killing one another. And oh, did they hate each other. Though, lacking emotions, even hate was not the correct word. Despise perhaps was closer.

Arissa was cautious, her sense of self-preservation her only concern. She took little, enough to quell the cravings when they grew overwhelming. The blood was nothing, a vehicle, and unnecessary to sustain her. But what it brought with it, in that intimate connection, was emotions, feelings " and she could not forsake entirely that rush. She took what was offered. She took pain, and soul-searing anger, and even love that, unrequited, could not be endured. She took only enough to make it bearable, to blunt the piercing edges and let them regain their balance. When people asked what she did, she told them she was a healer, and truly she was not even lying.

Ariane had no such self-control. Was she hollower than her sister, or only less able to bear the emptiness" She felt no real urge towards self-preservation, only the lack, and the vast cavern that needed to be filled. She took with no caution, draining her victims until she was sated, blood the conveyance, her mind whirling with the passionate glow that was emotion to her. Even ordinary feelings were intense for one who did not naturally feel them ? but the stronger the emotion, the longer it would fill her. When she drained them, when she took all she could bear, sometimes they died. The fear was another experience to be savored, adding a sharp clarity and tension to the rest of the time until it faded. It always faded.

It was in the Dockside District that their paths most often crossed, there and the West End. Both areas seethed with life, with people living fully and passionately because they had so little else but life. Arissa would come from an appointment, her eyes aglow with fervor or aching with pain, a little smile on her lips that never exposed her teeth. Ariane would step from an alley, where behind her a man lay sprawled unbreathing, or a woman lay staring vacantly at the sky emotionless. Ariane's smile would break free as they walked by each other, her painted crimson lips parting to reveal her sharply pointed canines. Their pale blue eyes, so light they appeared white, would meet, lock, and then part, Arissa looking beyond Ariane as if she didn't exist. Ariane sneering briefly after her sister, and then continuing on her way. They both would seek a place to be near people, where they could make the most of the fleeting experience.

The gaping void could be filled, but only temporarily. And they would both hunt again, their methods different, but their reasons always the same.