I bit into my tongue to keep myself from speaking again, the feeling of my teeth slicing through making me grimace. It hurt like hell, but I think we both knew that if I spoke out of term again we were screwed beyond what was already taking place, as if that was even possible.
Or was I on my own in worrying about that?
Serene stood before Stephan with her feet spread apart to match the breadth of her shoulders, hands resting at her sides, flaccid from the look of things. We all knew that was due in part to the earlier incident… Yet as I watched her injured, earlier useless hand almost appeared to twitch with life. But that wasn’t possible, right? Ugh, I needed blood; my eyes were starting to play tricks on me again. That aside, her calm was almost disturbing, considering the present situation.
Stephan took a step forward, Serene didn’t budge an inch. I couldn’t see her face from where I was being held, but judging by the slight faltering of the predator’s usually ever present smirk I could guess that she wasn’t as scared as he felt she should be. His eyes narrowed into an acidic glare down at her as he stopped a mere two or three feet from her, arms behind his back, head held high. As always, his posture was perfect. Too perfect. Just looking at him, feeling that air of superiority that emanated from him as he looked down at her made me want to slap him.
His smooth voice drew my blood deprived mind back into focus. “Care to answer the question you were asked, my dear?” That British accent of his only made the words sound that much more demeaning. “We don’t have all night,” He smiled what appeared to be a genuine smile, but it didn’t reach his glaring eyes. “We have other things to do, after all. You understand.”
I watched in silence as her head bobbed up and down in a nod, making her wavy, tousled hair bounce. And then I watched as Stephan’s smile grew wider, returning to his former wicked smirk. “Yes,” She replied, her voice quiet, reminding me of the first time I ever heard her speak. “Yes, I understand.”
“Good, good!” Stephan sounded eager, pleased to no end that she was cooperating, though I’m sure that didn’t completely outweigh his grudge against her for not cowering in his presence. “Then do tell us, where has dear Travis hidden the ampoule? Clearly nothing we do to him will cause him to break.” A light chuckle escaped his throat after finishing.
“I think we’ve reached a bit of a misunderstanding.” Stephan lifted a brow as Serene lifted her head higher, looking him in the eyes by my bet. “I said that I understood you have other things to do, not that I know where he hid the ampoule,” Her voice had one of her sweet, in this case mocking, smiles in it. “Or whatever it is that you’re looking for.”
Stephan’s smile faltered again, only this time it didn’t return to a smirk. Rather, his alabaster face fell into a small frown, his brow furrowing, creating creases across his forehead. “My dear,” He began, not sounding anywhere near as pleased as before. It made me want to smile. “We know that you were present when he had the ampoule. We saw you.”
Her head cocked to the side in that way I had come to know and love. Yet, this time, the meaning of that motion burned a hole in my stomach. When she spoke her voice was dripping with sarcasm, “Well, then perhaps you should–”
“Serene, don’t–” Just as soon as I cut Serene off I, in turn, was silenced with a blow to the head. White spider webs and red spots flashed across my vision, overtaking everything else. My stomach churned and I let out a groan.
But I had to cut her off. Her sarcasm, though amusing, would be extremely misplaced here. She didn’t seem to realize the gravity of the situation at all!
Though I still couldn’t see straight through the boiling red light filling my vision and the aching slowly building up in my head I could hear just fine as Stephan continued. “You try my patience, little girl.” Just by listening and knowing the kind of guy he was I could tell he was peeved, but trying to keep his sophisticated façade in place. “We need that ampoule. And we’ll get it, one way or another.”
“One way or another? Meaning what, exactly?” She sounded speculative, not to mention a little less audacious than before. No doubt because she was afraid I would get hit again, which I’m pretty sure I had to agree with her on. Getting hit again wasn’t exactly high on my list of priorities at the moment.
As my vision cleared I looked up and watched as Stephan’s displeased frown curled upward in a sick grin. He had been waiting for her to ask just that question, it seemed. “What say I show you, hmm?” Very calmly, he reached forward at a near human speed to grab her.
Just as he did so she took half a step back and his hand froze in midair. His smile widened beyond what most people would consider possible. “Are you scared, little girl?”
In a movement more than ten times too fast for Serene to see his hands had grabbed her, spun her around and locked her in place in his arms. One arm was wrapped around her middle, pinning her arms down against her sides, while his other hand reached up and bunched up in her thick hair. With a sharp yank her head jerked back against his shoulder, baring her neck to him.
It’s safe to say that all of our mouths, I regret to say mine more than most, were watering as her heartbeat quickened audibly. The edges of my eyes darkened as my mind honed in on her; I constantly looked from her jugular to her wrist to her chest - where her beating heart was crashing against her ribs - and back again. I was getting tunnel vision.
As we all watched on and salivated Stephan dipped his head down to press his lips to her ear, whispering so low that I couldn’t discern his words from where we stood. Then his lips peeled away from his perfect teeth into a natural snarl and his upper fangs unsheathed themselves. Surprisingly, it was my eyes that widened in horror, not Serene’s. She couldn’t see what was going on. She couldn’t understand why his lips wandered so gracefully down from her ear, along her throat, searching for the perfect entry point.
Every bone in my body quaked with rage. That bastard was really gonna do it!
As I watched, helpless, his eyes flashed to meet mine, smoldering with an air of smugness like no other. ‘You can’t beat me.’ His eyes sneered. Then his eyes returned to her neck as he sealed his lips around the ideal point of entry and…
“Stop!” Before I knew it I had cried out. Stephan’s eyes met mine again just before a blow to the gut, followed shortly by a crack to the back of my skull, sent me tumbling forward to my knees. Had it not been for the thick hands holding me up by the arms, I would no doubt have fallen further to land on my face.
As my vision cleared for the most part a few cold fingers curled around my chin and eased me into looking up with impossible strength. Stephan’s face leered down at me, bright eyes simmering just beneath the surface, waiting to take to flame. “Yes, Travis? Is there something you need?”
I tried to avert my gaze to look around him, to see if Serene was alright, but his hold on my chin kept my head in place. Was she alive? Had he snapped her neck before coming over? No. I would’ve heard that, right? Yeah… she had to be alive. Or, at least, that’s what I kept telling myself.
Reluctantly, I allowed my gaze to meet his again. My voice wavered, though I tried my best to keep it from doing so. “I… I’ll show you where it is. I’ll take you there.” Judging by the way his smirk widened my guess was that the desperation I felt carried over into my expression. “Just don’t hurt her. Please…”
“Are you… begging, Travis?” That musical tone of his drove through my mind like a nail into a cross. When I nodded he laughed aloud, his pale eyes sparkling with sadistic glee. “It would seem all that training didn’t go to waste after all.” He released me and let my head fall, eyes on the ground.
He had won and we both knew it.
There was still a chuckle in his voice as he spoke again. Would the gloating never cease? “Very well then, my dear boy; tell us where you hid the ampoule and I’ll not harm the girl.”
I didn’t believe him. “Do you swear it?”
His grin widened, like he knew something I didn’t. “I swear it.”
I nodded once and glanced up at him. We stared at each other in silence for a long moment before either of us spoke again. I was the first to say anything. “The ampoule is back at the house… it’s in the back of the picture frame with pressed flowers.”
His eyes narrowed at me, as if to say ‘If you’re lying I’ll kill her.’ “Are you positive?”
I nodded, eyes staying on his. “Yes.”
He smirked and turned his eyes from mine, looking to one of the other sanguines across the room. “Drain the girl, just to be sure.”
I shudder wracked its way through my chest and up my throat, coming out of me in the form of a snarl. My captors hesitated for a split second before tightening their grips on my arms. “You said you wouldn’t hurt her!” Reflexively, both my upper and lower sets of fangs unsheathed themselves and I bared them at him.
Pausing in mid step, as he had begun to head for the exit, he turned back around to face me, eyes glittering in an evil way. “And I haven’t harmed her yet, Travis. It’s Piotr that’s going to kill her, not I.” He chuckled again and I snarled viciously. Stephan didn’t even flinch in the least. “You should be more specific next time, now shouldn’t you?”
I looked around him at Piotr. The massive vampire stalked all too gracefully over to Serene’s crumpled form, which I now saw for the first time since Stephan released her, and knelt down to grab her, once again shielding her from my sight.
Terrified for her, I roared and struggled against the men holding me, but it was useless. I was just too weak to save her.
Across the room Piotr screamed and reeled back, clutching the right side of his face. Everything else going on in the room stopped and everyone’s attention was on him, more specifically his face. Smoke seeped out from the gaps between his fingers, the scent absolutely vile and overpowering even from this far away. I wrinkled my nose against the loathsome stench of burnt flesh, keeping my eyes on him.
“What’s wrong?!” One of the other vampires raced to his side and pried his hand from his face while he continued to howl in anguish.
I heard Stephan take in a hiss of a breath when he saw what was beneath. A large portion of Piotr’s face was burned thoroughly, the affected skin shriveled, black and still smoking. Yet the odor of fire was nowhere to be found. As we watched, dumbfounded, his skin continued to sizzle and bubble, crackling as it shed away layer by layer until the pale crests of his cheek and jawbones peeked through the filth. And still he screamed.
“The girl,” He wailed, “It was the girl!”
Like a pack mentality ran us, we all looked to where Serene had last been. She was gone.
“Impossible!” Stephan shouted back at him, his smug expression nowhere to be found. “Humans are incapable of wielding holy auras!” He paused for an instant, staying completely silent, then turned to face me, his fangs unsheathed and bared. “What’s going on?”
I stared up at him, dumbfounded, mouth agape. “How should I know?!” My tone was frantic, bent on self preservation.
In a flash he had grabbed me by my shirt’s collar and lifted me up off my knees, inching my face closer to his fangs. “What the Hell did that bitch do to him?!” He spat. The hand holding my collar was trembling, though whether it was out of fear or anger I couldn’t say.
“I don’t know!” I insisted. “She couldn’t have–”
My statement was cut short as a blinding light overcame my vision. Stephan let out a shout and released me, as did the other sanguines, sending me to the ground. Confused and fatigued, I stumbled away a few feet on my hands and knees before looking back at the scene, eyes narrowed against the painfully bright light.
Looking closely I found that the light was only in a concentrated area… that area being in a ring around Stephan’s throat. My eyes widened in horror as I watched him writhe and struggle against it, but there was really no way for him to escape something like this noose. His hands reached to claw at it, but to no avail. Shrieking, he pulled his hands away to find them smoking and sizzling just like Piotr’s face had done.
He didn’t continue fighting for much longer though. Soon the loop around his neck tightened; the rope of light pulled through his neck cleanly with hardly any resistance. His body tensed briefly, then went limp and fell to the ground in a disarranged manner, neck cauterized and smoking where the rope had cut through.
With a mild thump his head landed soon after his body and rolled a little way over towards me. Crying out in fear, I scrambled away and dove behind one of the concrete columns holding the ceiling up. Heart pounding in my chest even faster than normal, I peeked my head back out to watch what was happening.
Serene stood just behind where the body had fallen, expressionless; in her hands was a rope of what seemed to be pure light. It hurt my eyes to look at it for any length of time. Gazing down at the body, she examined her work with care, as if to make sure he was really dead. As if he wouldn’t be with his head cleaved off!
Her body twisted lithely and she turned to face one of the other, larger vampires as he came for her at a speed I thought impossible for her to perceive. Though still nearly as slow as any other human, she managed to leap to the side, out of the way as he lunged for her. With a deft flick of her wrist and careful placement of her bodyweight she swung the rope around his torso and spun on her heels as if to fling him. The rope sliced through with little more effort than it took to remove Stephan’s head, sending the vampire to the ground in two pieces.
The last two able bodied vampires – Piotr not included, due to his present state of pain – hesitated and looked to each other, as if to seek guidance from one another. Neither of them seemed to know what to do, so they went with their greater instincts and turned to flee, leaving Piotr cowering in pain in the corner.
Undeterred by the sudden turn of events, Serene readied her light rope like a whip and headed towards them at a controlled pace. From my place behind the pillar I could see when her skin briefly shimmered with light, then returned to its normal condition.
Almost immediately after, the sound of screams drew my attention to the door. The two vampires leapt away from it with shrieks and hisses of pain, hands smoking. The handle on the door glowed with the same brilliant light that made up Serene’s weapon. As we watched the light spread from the handle and engulfed the entire door, barring their exit.
Looking extremely uneasy, not to mention infuriated, they turned and charged towards her, moving in perfect synchrony. Even with her apparent ability to perceive their movements there was no way she could dodge their movements.
But then, it appeared as though she didn’t plan to avoid them. As the vampires headed for her she stopped dead in her tracks and closed her eyes. Bracing herself as she had done when she was standing before Stephan earlier, she lowered her hands to her sides and lifted her face towards the heavens, lips moving in an unheard flurry of words.
In the split second it took the vampires to reach her fear clenched in my gut. What was she doing?! She was going to get herself killed if she didn’t move! I had to get out there; had to do something to save her. But no matter how noble and desperate my thoughts to rescue her were I couldn’t force myself to move. I… I was just too scared. The coward in me reared its ugly head and kept me pressed up against the column, forcing me to watch as the vampires prepared to consume her.
As they reached her one moved around her to grab her from behind in a headlock, the other reaching to snap her arm – the one that was supposed to have been broken already. Both shared the same grin, that of victory.
But victory was far from theirs. Right when the vampires came into contact with her Serene’s eyes flew open and they flinched away in an immediate onslaught of terror. Looking to one and then the other, she revealed the golden glow that took up both of her eye sockets. It sent a shiver of fear down my spine just as it did theirs when I managed to catch a glance. When she spoke we all took notice of the fact that the inside of her mouth was glowing gold as well, but unlike her eyes, the glow of her mouth spewed out like flames with every word she spoke, every breath she exhaled. Unfortunately, I understood none of what she said; it was all in some other language I didn’t recognize.
But even if I didn’t understand the meaning of it, whatever she said was enough to make her would-be assailants attempt another escape, even though there was nowhere for them to run. She stood still and watched in silence as they ran about, trying to find some other means of escape, but it was just as Stephan had pointed out when we first arrived. There was only one way out.
After a few moments of letting them scramble about Serene’s mouth began to spew golden flames again as she spoke in that other language. The sound sent pain through my ears and into my mind ten times worse than anything I had ever felt. I cried out once in pain, but kept it muffled by putting my hand over my mouth. Still, I continued to watch.
The vampires seemed to also be suffering under the influence of her voice, but the severity of their pain was clearly worse than mine. Blood seeped from their ear canals, dripping down their jaws and the sides of their necks and they both fell to their knees with screams of pain beyond pain. Bowing under the weight of the agony, they clenched their eyes shut.
They weren’t watching when Serene started to head in their direction. They didn’t see the way the light from her eyes and mouth began to spark and snap, how it spread in the form of a white light over her entire form, putting the glow of her weapon to shame. When she swung that rope through the first one’s skull he barely had a chance to yelp in pain before falling sideways onto the ground, dead and motionless.
The second vampire looked up when he heard that tiny yelp and barely avoided having his head lopped off just below the ear. As he leapt out of the way her rope skimmed the skin of his arm, causing it to sizzle and pop in a way I knew would cause him pain, according to everything I had seen so far. Sure enough, he cried out, but he turned and ran, trying in vain to find somewhere to get out through, or at least somewhere to hide.
Serene followed at a controlled pace, her body as brilliant as a condensed mini-sun. I put a hand over my eyes to shield them from her light, but it eventually became too much and I had to look away.
The man let out a hoarse cry of horror that was followed by a sound unlike any other I’ve ever heard. It was inexplicable. The battle cry of an angel, perhaps… I don’t really know how to explain it. It was beautiful, but terrifying beyond anything else I’d ever heard. Whimpering, I placed my hands over my ears, sank to the floor and closed my eyes, not unlike the way the other vampires had done, except that I did so out of fear, rather than pain.
The sounds I had heard haunted me for long seconds, minutes, maybe even hours.
I don’t know when I fell into the oblivion of unconsciousness, but I know that I did. I know because when I opened my eyes again I was curled up on the floor, feeling even more exhausted than before. There was that to tell me, and then there was the fact that Serene was sitting on her heels a few feet away from me, a worried look on her face. She wasn’t glowing anymore.
Seeing her sent a pang of fear through me and I was instantly wide awake, stumbling backwards away from her. I wished so much that I could’ve blamed everything on a bad dream, but you have to be able to have dreams before you can say anything like that, don’t you?
Her concerned expression immediately turned to chagrin and she backed up a little bit, as if to make me more comfortable with the situation. “I’m sorry I hurt you.” Shame filled her quiet whisper and she looked down at the concrete floor to try to hide it from me, but I saw. “I never meant to… I just couldn’t stand it. They hurt you so bad…” She trailed off for a minute, staring silently at the ground. “How are you feeling?”
I swallowed uneasily and spoke. “Tired,” My voice wavered, and I hated myself for it. “Hungry… Really, really hungry.” I could only recall being this hungry a handful of times. And none of those times had been of my own free will.
She looked up at me through her hair and smiled halfway, then pointed across the room at a crumbled body. It was Piotr. “I left him alive so you had something to munch on when you woke up.” Her chuckle was uneasy.
I managed a tiny smile back at her and pushed myself to my feet. I let out a groan and staggered a few steps as a sudden hunger headache overcame me. In an instant Serene was at my side, one arm wrapping itself around my waist and the other wrapping my arm around her shoulders to help support me. At first I almost flinched away from her, but I could sense the guilt radiating off her. She needed to do this, in order to make up for harming me, for frightening me. So I stayed put and let her help me over to the body. “Thank you,” I whispered as she eased me down onto my knees.
She offered a weak smile and nodded. “No problem…” Patting my back, she let me go and stood up. “I’ll go try to figure out where we are while you eat.” Without another word she stood up and headed out the door which, like her, was no longer glowing.
Once she was outside silence overcame the room, aside from Piotr’s shallow breathing and my own. He was unconscious, so I could take all the time I needed to prepare myself to feed, but I didn’t really feel like going through all those time-consuming rituals that the old coven had taught me. I was starving; there was no time for such trivial matters.
My mouth was watering excessively when I finally unsheathed my upper fangs, followed soon after by my lower fangs. I didn’t just want to feed. Bloodlust told me that I wanted to rip his throat out. And I did just that. I dug both sets of fangs deep into his thick neck and tore it open, shredding his flesh like mincemeat. The taste of exotic Russian flesh and tangy vampiric blood egged me on as I plunged my fangs back in and ripped a hole into his throat for blood to pool in.
As it did so I lapped it up hungrily, not bothering with the eloquence and manners that most vampires cared for. That romantic image crap never had made sense to me anyway. The blood felt like the finest silk on my skin, why the other vampires tried so hard to stay clean I would never understand. This was far more gratifying.
I feasted like an animal until Piotr was nothing more than an empty shell of a sanguine. Once there wasn’t a single drop left to be had I removed his head from the rest of his body, so as not to give him any hope of healing from his injuries.
Now, with my meal complete, I felt more refreshed than I had in months. Vampire blood always gave more strength than human or animal blood and after such a horrendous week of starvation and torture it was the best definitely the best thing to be had.
Fuller than I could’ve hoped to be, I stood and flitted out the exit, wanting to be rid of this place as quickly as possible.
The night was cool and the air smelled of asphalt from the nearby road, cheap hot dogs from a vendor down the street and garbage from the dumpsters behind the warehouse I had just exited. Not to mention the myriad of other odors that were stinking the place up. And yet I had never been happier to smell such a disgusting mixture in my life.
Taking a deep breath, I sank back against the grimy warehouse wall and sat down, my forearms resting on my knees and my head resting on my forearms as I waited for Serene to return.
It took a few minutes, but she found me sure enough. When her footsteps caught my attention she was still a good block and a half away, so I had plenty of time to wait before turning my gaze to the corner she would round when she finally arrived. In her hand she held a folded piece of paper and she had somehow found something to pull her hair back with, as it was now in a ponytail. “We’re in the industrial district, on the outskirts.” She explained, sounding a little out of breath. As she spoke she unfolded the piece of paper and walked over to show me, kneeling down by my side. It was a map.
“We’re about right here.” She pointed to a spot near the very edge of the map. “To get home on foot would probably take a few hours, since we live on the other side of town. And I don’t have any money for a cab or the bus…” Her eyes went from the map to my face, as if she was expecting me to come up with a better plan.
I met her gaze with a blank expression. She should’ve known better than to expect anything from me.
Shrugging, I broke the connection of our gazes and looked back to the map. “What do you think we should do?”
Sighing, she folded up the map and stuck it in her side pocket, then dropped her face into her hands wearily. “I don’t know.” Why did I suddenly regret being so indecisive?
“Well… we could try to find somewhere to stay for the night and figure things out in the morning.” I suggested, hoping to make her feel just a little less burdened. Her behavior was starting to worry me. Serene was usually bright and cheery beneath the intimidating façade she put on in public.
“And what kind of place is going to take in a pair of teenagers with no money??” She asked, trying to hide the distraught undertone in her voice.
We were both silent after that for a long period of time; I knew her point was valid. No one would take us in.
“Wait,” Piping up suddenly, she lifted her face from her hands, discreetly trying to wipe her eyes on her sleeve; she probably didn’t realize that I could smell the salt. “There might be one place we can go around here.”
“Where?” I queried.
Serene pushed herself to her feet and offered her hand to me. I took it and pulled myself up to stand as well. “I’ll show you.” I knew not to ask any further questions as she pulled me along down the street.
The walk wasn’t terribly long, taking ten, maybe fifteen minutes at most. Just as we broke out of the land of concrete, warehouses and grime we entered the land of hobos, drug lords and, wouldn’t you know it, more grime. I wrinkled my nose against the foul stench of the air and finally had to cover my mouth and nose with my hand to keep from inhaling too much of it. “Where are we?” I choked out through my hand.
“The ghetto,” She replied curtly, sounding very unlike herself. Before I could voice my other thoughts she answered my unspoken question. “We’re heading for my family’s safe-house.”
“Oh…” We said nothing else until we arrived.
The house was small and considerably shabby, complete with boarded up, half shattered windows, graffiti and peeling paint on the outer walls, and a screen door threatening to crash down onto the porch from its precarious perch on the doorframe. Still, it was better than the streets.
I almost leapt out of my skin when Serene shattered the silence around us with her voice. She sounded embarrassed. “It’s not much, but it should hold us over until morning.” I nodded when she looked to me, asking for permission to walk further with her eyes, and she led me up the little concrete pathway to the deteriorating porch.
Only when we reached the first step did she release my hand, at which point I took a step back. Not out of fear or unease, it’s just that I could tell that she was looking for something and I didn’t want to get in her way.
Her eyes scanned over the entire porch and she began to walk in small circles over and over, a few fingers resting on the tip of her chin as they tended to do when she was trying to figure out the answer to a puzzle. “Let’s see,” She muttered to herself, clearly not caring that I was listening to her musings. At least that hadn’t changed about her. “If they kept it like it used to be, then it should be right…” Trailing off, she headed over to the only window within the porch area and reached through a hole that looked to have been created by a baseball or a rock, I couldn’t really tell which. After checking to make sure that her jacket’s sleeve would protect her arm from any potential injuries she reached through the hole and felt around for a minute. A light came on in her eyes and she retracted her hand.
Turning to me, she held up a dirty key and grinned triumphantly. “Got it!”
I couldn’t help but smile back at her; it was so good to see her in a good mood again. “Nice,” I replied and stepped up onto the porch, following her to the door, which she hastily unlocked and opened.
Admittedly, the inside of the house was kind of bare, but in much better shape than the outside was. The walls were a slightly faded white with a few rusty water stains here and there and the faded coffee colored carpet looked like it could use a good cleaning, but the furniture was all intact and the electricity worked just fine when Serene hit the lights, so I wasn’t complaining. “Not bad.” I said as I headed over and collapsed on the couch.
She chuckled and headed through a doorway into another room. “It works for what it’s used for. My family just uses it as a place to crash or hold meetings when they don’t want to go home. You know, for extra security and all that.”
Okay, this was getting a bit confusing. “Wait, I thought you said your parents are school teachers.” I said, trying to verify what she had told me. Had she lied to me? After seeing what I saw tonight it wouldn’t surprise me.
I heard her laugh from inside the other room and looked up over the back of the couch as she came in with a bottle of water in her hand and a granola bar held between her teeth. So the other room was a kitchen, huh? Shaking her head, she headed over to one of the two chairs in the room and sat down, finished her bite and spoke. “Those are my foster parents, Travis. I told you I’m a foster kid, remember? I only entered the system a few years ago. Before that I lived with my biological family.” Now that she mentioned it, she had told me that when we first met for lunch. “This place belongs to my real parents. They’re part of a… different crowd.”
From the way she worded it I could tell she was reluctant to continue, so I pressed on. “What kind of crowd would that be?”
Her expression twisted into a brief grimace when she said the words, “They’re slayers.” To distract herself she took another bite of her granola bar.
I felt my eyes widen in horror. I’d never seen one in person, but I’d heard stories about slayers. My voice wavered when I spoke, “S-so you’re…” I couldn’t finish my sentence.
She nodded. “Yeah, I’m one too.”
My stomach lurched and gurgled like I was about to lose my last meal.
Her eyes went wide when she heard the sound and she scrambled to explain. “I’m not one professionally, Travis, I swear. I’ve just had the training to be one, that’s all.” Her hands moved to try to emphasize what she was saying, to get it across to me better. Still, fear made my throat tighten. “It’s necessity in my bloodline to learn how to protect one’s self! If we don’t learn we die!”
“And what you did tonight?” I asked. “You killed them all! You only had to kill Stephan to get them to back off!” Why I was defending those bastards I would never know, especially after killing one of them myself. I was the worst kind of hypocrite.
At that she looked hurt and I instantly regretted speaking at all. “Travis…” She spoke softly, almost in a whisper to hide the pain in her voice. There was no hiding it from me though. “They would have killed us both if I had left them alive. Maybe not right away, but they would have left and regrouped. They would have found a new leader and they would have come at us in ways more violent than you could imagine.” Her eyes glimmered with tears but she quickly blinked them away. “I’ve seen what their kind can do to people.”
“I’m one of them,” I continued, still stupidly defending my own species over my best friend. “I would never hurt people like they do.”
“I didn’t mean vampires as a whole!” She exclaimed, the sudden raising of her voice making me flinch. “I meant vampires like them! Covens, gangs, whatever you want to call them. They can hold grudges like nothing else. Killing one of their strongest and leaving witnesses to tell of it would only have made things worse for both of us.”
“…” I didn’t know what to say. I knew she was right and I felt like an idiot for defending them, but for some reason I felt that I would continue doing so if I opened my mouth again. So I just bit my tongue and let her win the argument with her last statements.
An awkward silence fell over the room. Neither of us looked at the other or said anything easily for half an hour. Finally, after finishing her granola bar and sipping her water down to nothing she stood and my eyes were drawn to her, but she didn’t look back at me. “You should probably take a shower before you go to sleep. You’re a mess.” With that she headed back into the kitchen. “There are spare clothes in the closet of the second bedroom down the hall and the shower’s just across the hall from there.”
I nodded, though I knew she couldn’t see it, and stood up as well. “Okay,” I replied. Saying nothing more, I went and grabbed some clothes from the bedroom she had told me about and then made my way into the bathroom.
While the water heated I undressed, choosing to throw my filthy clothes away, rather than keep them and try to wash them off. After completely undressing my reflection in the mirror above the sink caught my eye. My face was covered in Piotr’s blood still and as I looked down at my hands I came to realize that they were as well. The fresh blood within me allowed me to blush in embarrassment as I met my reflection’s red gaze. I had spent this entire time looking like a monster in front of Serene and hadn’t even known it. Vampires like me were probably the whole reason she had to learn how to be a slayer in the first place; filthy, horrible creatures with no self control once blood was spilt within their range.
Repulsed by my own appearance, I looked away and hastily made my way into the shower.
The water was scalding hot, but felt good as it buffeted and numbed my skin. I spent half the time in the shower scrubbing away at my face and hands, trying to remove any and every trace of blood that remained on me.
Poor Serene had been looking at me like this for so long now; I felt disgusted with myself every time I thought about it. That might explain why she seemed so upset though. She had been raised to see my kind as bloodthirsty monsters and I had probably done nothing more than reinforce that way of thinking in her mind. I bared my teeth at my own stupidity as I rinsed cheap shampoo out of my hair.
Once I was out of the shower, dried and redressed I opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. The lights in the living room and the kitchen were off, so I assumed that Serene had already gone to bed. However, when I turned to head across the hall to the bedroom she had pointed out to me earlier a light caught my eye.
It wasn’t much of a light, just a sliver coming out from under one of the doors down the hall. My brow furrowed and I looked down to check my watch; it was nearly two thirty in the morning. I was naturally nocturnal, so of course this didn’t bother me. But what was she still doing up? If we were going to get anywhere tomorrow she needed rest.
So, in order to give her the hint, I headed down the hall, intending to tell her goodnight.
I stopped in front of the door and listened closely for a minute. There was a lot of shuffling going on behind the door, like she was moving around a lot. Her breathing was slightly shallower than normal, like she was suffering from pain. The thought made my jaw and neck muscles tense. What had they done to her while we were separated?
When she sucked in a sharp breath and her breathing stopped I couldn’t stand not knowing any longer and I opened the door without knocking. “Serene, are you alri–” What I saw stopped me dead in my tracks.
Serene’s back was to the door. She seemed to be treating wounds of some kind, as she was standing in front of a vanity mirror to better see herself. Her eyes stared into the mirror, wide and locked on my face. My eyes, however, were on her back.
Beneath her bra were two small appendages that no human I’d ever seen had. A pair of tiny, ash gray feathered bunches were pulled in against her back. “What the Hell…” My voice trailed off into nothing as I tried to process what I was seeing.
Frantic, she darted for the bed and grabbed her t-shirt. As she was trying to pull it back on to hide what I was seeing from me I flitted forward and grabbed her wrists to stop her. She whimpered and struggled against me. “Let go!”
“Calm down!” My voice was just a tad louder than hers. I had never seen her behave like this about anything. What was I supposed to do? Not sure of what the answer was, I wrapped my arms around her and held her close against me. She instantly stopped struggling. “Hush,” I whispered comfortingly to her. “Calm down. Everything’s alright.”
“No it’s not.” She whimpered. “You weren’t supposed to see. You were never supposed to find out.”
“About your wings,” I clarified.
I felt her nod and shrink further against me. “Yeah…”
I had to admit, it was definitely not what I had been expecting to see when I came in. And it didn’t make any sense. “…Why do you have wings?” I just had to ask. “I thought only priests and witches had them.”
When she pushed away from me I didn’t stop her. She turned her back to me and unclipped her bra. I opened my mouth to argue, but she quickly shushed me. “Just look.” I did as she ordered as she held her bra in place over her chest and extended her wings.
They weren’t really what I would call wings, to be honest. They were smaller than I thought they would have been at first glance. At most she had a three, maybe a four foot wingspan. Compared to the witch wings I’d seen before these were midget wings. Not to mention one of them looked a bit disfigured, like it had been broken and healed in the wrong way, preventing it from spreading to its full length.
“What’s wrong with them?” The question came out before I could stop it. Embarrassed, I bit my tongue and looked away. “Sorry. You don’t have to answer that.”
She shrugged and folded her wings back in, then clipped her bra into place and pulled her shirt on. “It’s okay.” When I looked back to her face there was a small smile. “I expected you to ask.” She motioned to the bed. “Sit down.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed and she pulled a chair over from a desk in the corner so she could sit in front of me. It took her a minute to collect her thoughts before she spoke. “You were right about the priest and witch thing. Only someone with blood of one or the other can have wings.” When I opened my mouth to ask another question she put her finger to her lips to silence me. I shut my mouth and she continued. “I come from a mixed bloodline, Travis. My dad’s side of the family is all human and my mom’s side of the family… well, suffice it to say that they’re not. My grandma was a pureblood priestess, but my grandpa was a human.
“The priest gene is always dominant in the first generation of mixed bloods, but after that if the offspring breeds with another human there’s only about a fifty-fifty shot of the gene being dominant. In my case it turned out to be a co-dominant gene,” She smiled wryly, “thus why I have teeny tiny wings.”
“So that’s why you have the holy aura…” I muttered, more to myself than her as I came to the realization.
She nodded. “Exactly. My abilities are nothing in comparison to my mother’s, much less my grandmother’s, but because the priest gene is co-dominant and not recessive I can still pack quite a punch.”
“Not as strong??” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. After what I’d seen her do I found it nearly impossible to believe that there was anything out there with a more powerful holy aura than her. “You blew away an entire group of vampires without even trying!”
Her grin grew wider, showing off her teeth. “You haven’t seen many priests lately, have you?” She laughed, knowing the answer was no without even having to wait for an answer. “Why do you think your kind is so scared of them?”
“Good point.” As I thought back something caught my attention. “I’ve heard that priests can heal. Is that how your arm got better so fast?” It was obvious that it wasn’t broken anymore.
She nodded. “Yeah, I managed to heal it most of the way while Stephan was talking. It’s still kind of fragile though. The bone will have to heal the rest of the way on its own.”
I nodded and stayed quiet, my eyes wide with interest, urging her to continue.
She caught the look and went on. “Anyway, the only reason my power seemed so strong tonight was because I was desperate.” It was her turn to look embarrassed. “I overreacted and released all of my power, plus a little extra.”
“Extra…?”
“You can thank my grandma for that.” Her eyes shimmered fondly at the mention of her mother’s mother. “She blessed me before I went into foster care to make sure I stayed safe. All that praying you heard me doing was how she taught me to tap into the blessing’s power.” Pain replaced the fondness in her eyes and she looked away; she knew that it had hurt me. “I would have focused the power if I could have… but I can only concentrate it so much. The blessing is kind of all encompassing.”
I reached forward and placed my hand over hers, smiling softly at her when she looked up at my face. “It’s fine. You were just doing what you had to.” Now that I understood it was easier to be rational.
The smile she gave in return for mine was riveting.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand though.”
Her brow furrowed in confusion. “And what’s that?”
I pulled my hand back to scratch an itch along my jaw. “Well, it’s just that you seem so close with your biological family. So why are you in foster care?”
Understanding replaced her confusion. “Oh, is that all?” She smiled and shrugged. “I chose it for myself.”
“What? Why?” This answer made no sense!
“Because I don’t want to be a slayer, Travis. The stakes are too high for me to put up with.” She shrugged and went on. “Besides, I like my life the way it is now. I keep in touch with my real family and I see them in church every Sunday, so it’s not like I’m completely separate from them. It’s just that this way I’m no longer associated with them in the slaying community. I don’t carry the clan’s name anymore.”
Well, I guess that sort of made sense. “I see.”
“It’s hard to understand, I know.” Serene chuckled lightly and shifted in her seat. I saw her wince and resituate again. “Most people outside the slaying community don’t get it. My grandma still doesn’t agree with what happened.”
My mind was no longer on our conversation. “Are you hurt?”
She blinked and then looked down to her stomach, where I was looking. “Not really. I’m just a little sore.” The lie in her voice was easy to detect.
“Show me.” I instructed. Looking uncertain, she started to get up to move away, but my words stopped her. “I’ll follow if you try to leave, you know.” With an uneasy frown, she conceded and lifted her shirt, revealing to me what work she had done to patch herself up and what injuries she hadn’t cleaned up yet.
Bruises of varying shapes and sizes littered the majority of her torso, suggesting that she had been tossed around a lot while we were in captivity. There were scabs here and there, looking to be from knife cuts, most of which were inflamed and clearly infected. She blushed again and pulled her shirt down. “I’m fine, really.”
“What did they do to you?” I demanded of her. Before I knew it I had risen from my place on the bed and was looming over her.
She tried to wave me off, but I followed whenever she sidestepped. “It was nothing serious!”
“Don’t lie to me!” A growl laced my voice, I couldn’t hold it back. Her eyes widened a little as she realized that I was getting angry. Hopefully she knew that I wasn’t mad at her, just the bastards that had done this to her.
She looked away and shrugged. “Just a few bouts of torture, that’s all.” Though she tried to make it seem like it wasn’t a big deal I think we could both tell that it wasn’t working, judging by what she was telling me. "They cut me and rubbed salt into the wounds to try and make me talk, kicked me around now and then. It was nothing life threatening.”
I felt my upper fangs extend in rage. If they weren’t already dead I would have gone back and beat them all to death myself. Breathing heavily to control my anger, I tried to distract myself. “Why haven’t you healed them? Why bother with the antiseptic and bandages?”
Shrugging, she sat down on the bed and looked at the ground. “I can’t right now.”
Well that wasn’t what I had expected. “What?”
“I said I can’t… I exhausted my holy aura when I went after the vampires. Until I get some serious rest I can’t heal myself.” Again she shrugged. “And it’s not like it’s a big deal. I can just heal naturally and save my strength.
“They’ll scar if you do that.” I argued weakly.
“So what if they do?” Serene didn’t sound concerned at all. For a girl, even a girl like her, her lack of vanity surprised me. “It’s not like I care what people think of what I look like. Besides, that part of me stays hidden under a shirt at practically all time.”
I sighed and bit my tongue, blaming myself for this. Had she not come over to my house to hang out the other night she would never have gotten caught up in this mess in the first place. And if she hadn’t come over to begin with she would never have gotten hurt like this.
There had to be something I could do to make up for it. But what could I do?
“Lay down.”
Serene looked up at me in surprise. “What?”
My voice was gentler the second time I spoke. “I said lay down. Please.”
Clearly unsure about this, she slowly brought herself to lie back on the bed, resting her head on the pillow. “Why am I lying down, exactly…?” She inquired.
“You’ll see.” With that said I crawled onto the bed and hovered over her. Reaching a hand down, I pulled her shirt up to just below her bra, revealing her battered stomach.
She stared up at me, stunned; I heard her heart pick up speed. “Wh-what are you doing?”
I had a pretty good idea of what she was thinking, so I put two fingers to her lips. “Don’t worry,” I assured her, putting on a quirky smile. “I’m not going to ravish you or anything. Just relax.”
Her wary gaze bore into the top of my skull as I dipped my head down and pressed my tongue lightly against her skin, running it over one of her injuries. The scab tasted of iron; it made my mouth water, which was a good thing in this case.
Serene whimpered and squirmed beneath me, clearly not comfortable with the contact I was making with her. I had to put my hands on her sides to hold her still. “Calm down,” I whispered as soothingly as possible. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
With another whimper, Serene closed her eyes and nodded to give her consent for me to continue. Still, I kept my hands on her sides, just in case she got scared again. Already I could hear her heart beating rapidly inside of her, pumping that sweet lifeblood through her veins…
No! I had to keep my focus. I promised not to hurt her and I wouldn’t.
Swallowing the bitter taste of hunger that filled my mouth, I lowered my face to her stomach again and continued what I had been doing. Goosebumps rose on her skin wherever I licked and every once in awhile I felt her shiver, but I tried to ignore it in order to do my work.
Knowing how uncomfortable this was making her helped me finish faster. Once I had licked the last of her untreated scabs I gently tugged her shirt back into place and rolled over to plant my feet on the floor beside the bed. Now on my feet, I headed for the door. “Goodnight, Serene.”
“Wait,” Her whisper made me stop and turn halfway. She was sitting up now, hugging her stomach with an uncertain expression. “What… Why did you do that?” I took careful note of the bright blush coloring her cheeks. Did she have any idea how cute she looked when she was embarrassed like that?
I stuffed my hands in my pockets and shrugged. “You’ll see when morning comes.” Sighing in resignation at the look she gave me, I figured it wise to tell her ahead of time. “Vampiric saliva has healing properties. It can’t heal bones or anything like you can, but it takes care of open wounds like nothing else.” I pointed to her stomach. “Since they’re already partially healed it’ll take a little longer for it to affect you, but by the time you wake up tomorrow the wounds I took care of should be fully healed.
“Oh…” Clearly those slayer parents of hers had never taught her about that. “Thanks.”
Smiling, I waved my hand to dismiss it. “Don’t mention it.”
I walked back over to the bed and sat down on the edge of it. When she didn’t inch away I was relieved, so I reached out a hand and stroked her hair. “You know I would never do anything to hurt you, right?”
Though she still appeared a little uncertain, she nodded. “Yeah, I know.” A tiny smile came over her face and she reached forward to hug me. I blinked a few times, surprised, but not opposed. After the surprise passed I hugged her back gently. “Thank you, really.” When I looked down at her she was smiling up at me. “I owe you.”
That was a good one. Unable to hold it back, I let loose a laugh, grinning from ear to ear. “You don’t owe me squat! You saved my butt back there in that warehouse. All I’m doing is returning what little bit of the favor I can.”
I watched as she rolled her eyes and sat up on her knees so that she was looking down at me. “Don’t be stupid. I don’t need anything in return from you.” This time it was her petting my hair, instead of the other way around.
We were at a stalemate, it seemed. Neither of us really felt like the other owed us anything, but we both knew we would try to repay each other in spite of that. It was amusing enough to merit a chuckle from me. “Whatever you say,” I replied, quite enjoying the feel of her hand in my hair.
Smiling fondly, she dipped her head down and kissed my forehead. I blinked several times and stared at her blankly. Needless to say this was a surprise. She giggled and kissed my forehead again, then nudged me off of the bed and went to curl up beneath the covers. “Goodnight, Travis.”
Slightly dazed, I nodded and left the room, closing the door behind me. “Goodnight…”
The taste of her skin was still strong on my tongue as I wandered into the other bedroom and fell into a dreamless slumber.