Eyes Like Ice

I went home and showered, using my own shampoo and conditioner and soap in order to make the scent of Dominick's go away. I also put on some of my own clothes, a T-shirt and a pair of black jeans, trying to forget what it felt like to wear a dress borrowed from Dominick or Spike. I even put in my damned color contacts so I wouldn't have to look at those pale eyes Riley seemed to like so much.

I wanted to stop thinking about those bastards. I wanted to forget everything about them, just for a little while, at least.

They had pissed me off and made me all confused, and I didn't like it.

After I had showered and gotten dressed, it was nearly two o'clock in the afternoon, so I went to see Miss Lumberton in her study. I knocked on the door a few times, and she called calmly, "Come in."

I entered the room, closed the door, then immediately turned and bowed to her. "I'm sorry I've been gone for so long, ma'am," I told her quietly.

"Where were you?" the woman asked, sitting behind her desk and remaining utterly calm.

"Mr. Carpenter had a Levellua kidnap me from my room last night."

Though I was still bowing, I could see her eyebrows raise. "Right from your own bed, too?"

"Almost, ma'am. I apologize for not being quick enough to stop the man."

She shook her head, sighing. "Don't worry about it. I'm sure there wasn't much you could've done." I didn't really start wondering why she was being so nice to me until she told me to straighten from my bow.

As I stood, I said, "If you don't mind my asking, Miss Lumberton, why are you being so kind to me?"

"Do you not like it?" she asked, her eyebrows raising once more.

I shook my head. "I merely wondered whether there was a reason for it or not. I don't mind it."

"Good," Miss Lumberton said with a nod, not bothering to answer my question. "Now, give me the details of last night."

I obeyed, keeping my eyes on her desk as I told her about what had happened to me. Being kidnapped, Carpenter's offer, the fights...I decided to leave out the ending that involved the males, instead finishing the story by saying simply, "And then, I recovered, so I came home, and...here I am."

"That doesn't explain why you seemed so angry when you came home, though," Miss Lumberton pointed out coolly.

"I wasn't angry," I lied.

"Yes, you were, and I do believe you still are." I sighed, and when she realized I wasn't going to argue, she asked, "Why?"

I thought over all of the lies I could've told her, all of the things I could've made up, but I eventually just went with the truth. "Apparently, three guys are in love with me, and they expect me to love them all back or choose one of them or...something."

Her thin brown eyebrows raised yet again. "Who?"

"Dominick, Riley, and a vampire I don't think you've met yet, Spike."

"Ah..." Then, surprisingly, she said, "I want you to bring them all here tonight."

"What?" I asked, my eyes moving to meet hers.

She didn't do anything to tell me to look away, so my eyes remained locked with hers as she said, "Bring those three males here tonight. I'll try to see how honest they're being about their feelings for you so you can hopefully choose one."

"But...why?"

"You like them all, right?"

"I'm not really sure."

"You do. Otherwise, you wouldn't care about this so much, and you wouldn't have gotten so angry."

I dropped my gaze to her desk, now deep in thought. "But...I'm really not sure..."

"Stop fighting your emotions, Raven." My eyes immediately went to hers again, showing at least some surprise now that she had used my name. She never used my name, so...why was she saying it now?

"There's nothing to fight," I told her. "I can't feel, so-"

She shook her head. "No. You couldn't feel, and though you probably still can't to some degree, I'm sure these guys are making you feel something. You're just refusing to accept it."

"How do I accept it?"

She shook her head once more. "Just stop fighting your emotions and let yourself feel. As for how to do that...You're going to have to figure it out on your own." I nodded, and she said, "Now, if you don't want me to get involved in this, you're going to have to talk to those men yourself. See how honest they're being about their feelings for you, find out why they feel however they feel for you, figure out the extent of their feelings for you, whatever. All right?"

I nodded again. "Yes, Miss Lumberton. I'll meet with them tonight."

"Do you think you can handle them all if they're together?"

"I think so."

"All right. Get them all and drag them somewhere, then sit them down and try to figure everything out."

"Yes, ma'am." Then, I bowed and said softly, "Thank you, Miss Lumberton."

"You're welcome. Now go find something to do until sunset. I don't have any more time to waste on you." And just like that, my master turned back into a bitch. Lovely...

I turned and left the room without a word, though, still trying to figure out why she had been being so nice to me to begin with.

-

Just after the sun sank below the horizon, I left Miss Lumberton's mansion. I was heading in the direction of Riley's house, planning to get him first.

When I reached the human's house, I knocked on the door a few times, and Riley's father was the one who answered.

"Where's Riley?" I asked calmly.

"I don't know," the man answered, shaking his head. "I haven't seen him all day."

"Oh...All right. Good bye." I walked away from the small house, now wondering where the hell Riley was.

My next stop was Dominick's house. The man who answered the door told me that Dominick hadn't been home since he'd left with me earlier that morning. This left me even more confused, though I thanked the gray-haired human before walking away from the mansion.

My final stop was, of course, Spike's mansion. No matter how much I knocked on the door, though, no one answered. I opened it, surprised to find it unlocked, and cautiously went inside.

It was pitch black, so dark that even I, with my perfect night vision, couldn't really see anything. The all too familiar smell of blood reached my nose after no more than a second, however, and immediately sniffed the air and followed the scent to its source in the closest sitting room. I was relieved to find that there weren't any bodies laying around or anything, but horrified to realize that it was Riley's blood I could smell.

What the hell had happened after I left earlier? Did Dominick and Spike kill him? Did someone else? But...where were they?

As all of these questions rushed through my mind, I found that the scent was coming from the wall across from the door. Just that surface and nothing else.

I reached over and flipped the light switch, hissing when I saw the words written on the wall in the deep crimson of blood.

Come back to me or I'll kill them all.

Fuck.

Carpenter.

Now I had no choice but to go to him.

With a little growl, I strode out of the mansion, breaking into a run once I got outside.

-

I stopped running only when I reached the front door of the mansion I had escaped from earlier that day. I didn't even bother knocking on the door, instead just walking right into the house like I owned the place.

The entrance hall was empty, but I had figured that that would be the case before I even entered the building. I just had a feeling that they would be in the basement. So, naturally, that was where I went.

It took me a while to figure out which door led downstairs, but when I finally found the right one, I went down the stairs into the darkness without hesitation. While most people would've found the lights flickering into life as they walked under them kind of creepy, I simply found it annoying. I was thankful for the illumination once I reached the group of cages at the far side of the room. There were cages all along the walls, of course, but all but the last three were empty.

The one in the center held Spike, who looked to be only slightly injured, but drugged all to hell. It had undoubtedly taken a helluva lot to subdue him. To the left of this cage was the one holding Dominick. The Levellua seemed to be in almost the same shape as Spike, though he was a slight bit bloodier. When my eyes, now lacking their dark-colored contacts, finally reached the third cage, I almost screamed, more in rage than anything else.

Riley was laying on the floor, barely conscious even though I doubted he'd been drugged at all. He was covered in his own blood and several bruises, and he just looked...horrible. His breathing was shallow, too, and I was halfway into panic mode by the time I felt a hand on my shoulder. I spun, my fist ready to hit someone, but I stopped when I realized that it was just my mother.

"Relax, Raven. He'll be all right," she told me, trying to sound calm despite the fact that her pale eyes showed just how worried she was. "If you just give yourself up to Carpenter, I'm sure he'll let his healer mend your human. Even though the vampire and the Levellua only have minor injuries, I'm sure he'd heal them as well, if you asked him to."

I growled and looked back at what my mother was calling 'my human.' "What does he want this time?"

"Your master won't hand you over to me no matter how much money I offer to give her, so, basically, I need you to willingly do everything I ask you to do," Carpenter answered, walking toward me with his other five Levellua in tow. They all looked pissed at me, too, which made Carpenter's smirk stand out even more.

"Fine," I answered without really thinking about. "Just as long as I can occasionally refuse to do something."

"All right, but you can only refuse things that involve killing."

All of the conscious people in the room seemed slightly surprised when I said, "Okay." I turned to my three companions and added, "I also want you to heal all three of them, though. Right now. And then I want you to let them go."

Carpenter thought about this for a moment, then he actually agreed to it, surprising everyone even more. "All right." What he added to this wasn't too surprising, though. "If I have my healer do this, however, I'm going to need you to do something for me. Upstairs. Just the two of us." He smirked when I sent him a slight glare. "But if I happen to die, my healer has specific instructions to torture your friends to death. Understand?"

I growled, realizing that I was screwed either way, possibly in a literal sense. "Fine. Let's go."

"Yes, ma'am," Carpenter said, continuing to smirk as he took my hand and led me toward the stairs. I glanced back at my human, my vampire, and my Levellua one more time before we disappeared through the door.

We made it up to Carpenter's bedroom rather quickly, and he closed the door behind him the moment we were inside.

The first words out his mouth were, disgustingly enough, "Take your clothes off."

I somehow managed to keep myself from saying, "Fuck you," and did exactly what I was told to do. First I slid my shoes off, then my socks, followed by my shirt and pants. I paused when I got down to my black bra and panties, though, noticing his hungry, lust-filled expression. The urge to say some bitchy things to him strengthened, but I kept my mouth shut and slowly took off my bra. Next went my underwear, and then I just stood there, naked and pissed off.

The twenty-five-year-old man approached me slowly, his blue eyes wandering to whatever body part interested him most at the moment. He then reached me, and I tensed as he let his hands rest on my hips. Slowly, they moved upward, and I couldn't help but shudder when he cupped my breasts and allowed his thumbs to brush my nipples. I knew I shouldn't have been enjoying this at all since I hated Carpenter more than I hated anyone or anything else in the entire freaking world, but I just couldn't help it. I closed my eyes and tried to make myself hate everything about this, but my back arched slightly, a hiss escaping me, when I felt his tongue on one of my nipples.

He chuckled at my reaction and pulled away, no longer touching me. "Why don't you just stop fighting it? You know you like it."

"I couldn't possibly like anything you're involved in," I replied while opening my eyes. I glared at him, but he just smirked.

"Are you sure about that?" Next thing I knew, the human had me laying on my back on his bed, his tongue already deep inside me.

I let out another hiss, weakly aiming a kick at his shoulder. He caught my foot easily and eased it back down to the bed beside him, his tongue never stopping its quick movements within me.

"Stop it," I growled.

Carpenter withdrew his tongue and said simply, "All right."

I watched as he stepped back and began to remove his own clothes, revealing those amazing abs of his along with some other things I didn't really care to see. He then got on top of me, gently forcing my legs apart while staring down at me.

"If you don't want that, you get this," he told me. Just as he was about to begin giving me this mysterious 'this,' the door burst open, nearly flying off of its hinges. Carpenter turned to find Spike in the doorway, snarling, looking rather demonic, and covered in the blood of a couple of the Levellua I had fought with before as well as that of Carpenter's healer.

"Get away from her," the vampire growled as he took a step toward Carpenter and me.

"Holy shit," I heard the human mutter before he did as he was told, getting off of me and moving away from the bed as well as the pissed off vampire. Before the human knew what was happening, he had Spike's teeth in his throat. He screamed at the top of his lungs until the vampire had completely torn through his neck, the head and the body hitting the floor with a couple of dull thumps.

Spike then turned to me, now literally covered in blood and still looking slightly crazed. "Raven," he said softly, his gentle tone not matching his psychotic appearance. "Are you all right? He didn't..." His voice cracked, but he forced it to stop and tried again. "He didn't hurt you, did he?"

I shook my head and slowly sat up, focusing on nothing but the blood-covered vampire who would undoubtedly do anything for me. "No. You did far more damage than he ever could have, anyway," I told him emotionlessly.

He looked down at the gruesome corpse of Mr. Carpenter, seeming almost sad now. "Yeah...I know...I'm...sorry..."

"Sorry?" I said questioningly as I slid off of the bed. I walked over to him calmly, not caring that my feet were getting bloody. "You have nothing to be sorry for." I leaned up and licked some of Carpenter's blood away from the skin around the vampire's mouth, then I gave him a gentle kiss, which he returned instantly. I pulled away after a moment and said, "Now that I'm covered in blood, I think I'm going to go take a quick shower in Carpenter's bathroom." I headed for the bathroom door, but Spike grabbed my wrist and stopped me.

"No," the vampire growled.

"Why?" I asked, calmly arching an eyebrow at him.

"I don't want you to be anywhere near his bathroom."

"Fine, then. I'll use one of the guest bathrooms." I headed out of the room, and Spike followed, still holding my wrist. "By the way, where are Dominick and Riley?" I asked as I led the way to the nearest bedroom.

"Downstairs trying to kill the other Levellua," Spike answered simply.

I immediately turned and headed for the stairs. "Forget the shower, then. We need to help them...or stop them...Whichever comes first."

"But you're-"

"Naked. Yes, I'm aware of that." We reached the basement a minute after I said this, and what we found was not pretty.

Only two of the weaker Levellua were dead, having obviously been killed by Spike since they had their throats pretty much ripped out, and the remaining three were fighting viciously with a severely injured Dominick, who appeared to have a broken arm as well as several deep gashes going across his abdomen, and a rather cut-up Riley. The three Levellua were obviously winning this fight. My mother was standing a few feet away, not sure what to do. When she saw me, however, she instantly rushed to my side.

"They know that Carpenter's dead and they're free to go back to their other masters, but they won't stop fighting. They wouldn't stop fighting even when Dominick and Riley said they would stop," the woman informed me quickly.

"Which means I can kill them, right?"

"Um..." She just seemed confused by my question.

"They're doing this willingly, correct?" I asked, receiving a nod from my mother. "Then I can kill them."

"Wait, Raven. Let me do-" Spike stopped when I ignored him and lunged at the Levellua, who were all armed with a single katana each. I quickly recognized the two guys who had wielded swords during our last fight as well as the competitive bitch who had refused to give up. The female was the one I went after first.

I came up behind her silently, reaching around to grab her jaw just before she tried to attack Riley again. A quick yank and twist produced a nice cracking sound, and I let the woman fall to the floor, dead. The noise caught the attention of the males, causing both of them to stop fighting Dominick and glance at me. I took the katana out of the dead girl's hand and charged at the guys without hesitation.

Riley, Dominick, Spike, and my mother all watched in awe as I easily ducked down under a few sword swings and spun quickly while I popped back up. One of the males wasn't quite smart enough to evade the attack, so he ended up getting chopped into a bunch of bloody pieces as I whirled. All of the pieces hit the floor at separate times, and I was pretty damn sure that the poor dumbass was dead. I stared at his twisted remains for a moment before I turned to the other male, who now looked like he was ready to run from the naked chick with a sword. I didn't give him the chance to, though.

I rushed forward, quickly moving behind him to aim my katana at his back. He managed to block it as he turned to face me. Our swords clashed a few times, but as I allowed myself to speed up, it became obvious that he was going to be too slow for me. He leapt back when I went for his stomach, though, then he lunged at me again. His blade got dangerously close to my stomach, but I blocked it with my usual frightening ease. I then shoved the weapon aside and attacked before he could do anything. My katana tore through his middle neatly, nicely cutting him in half and killing him instantly. The two separate pieces of Levellua fell to the floor, and I let the sword slip from my fingers with a sigh.

"Now I can shower," I said casually while heading for the stairs, covered in blood and now feared by my own mother as well as the men who claimed to love me.