For the Hopeless

Hayden spent an hour walking through the harsh chill of the dark, dreary morning, numb to the world around her. Her head was still spinning from the vampire's proposition. Combine that with the bit of a buzz she still had going from her drunken night at the bar, and there was no way that she could teleport herself home.

She didn't know if she would have even if she'd been able. She needed time to think, alone, away from Madeleine and Aven and Dameon and Bailey.

Oh, Bailey...

"Where have you been all night?" came Madeleine's small, snarky voice the moment Hayden reached the top of the stairs. She'd just emerged from the bathroom, Hayden guessed, as she stood close to the bathroom doorway, clad in her set of cute pink-and-white bunny pajamas.

"Nowhere," she tried to say once, though the words came out in a raspy screech that was impossible to understand. She cleared her throat and said again, more clearly now, "Nowhere."

Madeleine frowned, her innocent blue eyes much too knowing as they scanned Hayden's usually vibrant face. "Why are you so pale?" she asked softly, no longer such a snide know-it-all. "You look worried."

"I'm fine," the teenage girl stated – a lie obvious even to the seven-year-old – and hurried past her down the hall.

"Hayden-" But Madeleine never got the chance to finish the sentence, her voice blocked out by the slam of Hayden's bedroom door.

Instantly, the witch began to panic. What if she'd woken everyone up? What if they came looking? What if she couldn't hide her encounter with the vampire?

Suddenly, her eyes widened, and she realized...

Fuck. Tawny.

She immediately began doing her best to think thoughts unrelated to the events of the evening. Kittens popped into her head, cute and fluffy and so very lovable, and she began to calm down. She wasn't proud of it, but kittens comforted the hell out of her...with their wet little noses, and their tiny little toes, and their cute little mews...

She snapped out of her kitten-centric thoughts and glanced about her room, wondering what her next course of action would be. She thought nothing explicit, however, just in case Tawny was nearby and listening as she always did.

Just go to bed, she told herself, slowly pulling her coat off and kicking off her shoes. Just lie down and sleep and pretend you've been here all night. So she did just that.

Still fully clothed, she curled up beneath her crimson-red comforter and closed her eyes, forcing the memories of the evening's occurrences from her mind. Things would be clearer to her when she awoke.

-

"What's her problem?" Bailey asked as she came to a stop behind Madeleine, joining her in gazing at the closed door in confusion. The crack of a carrot being bitten brought the young girl around much quicker than she'd originally planned. She couldn't help but smile a bit at the odd image of ash-skinned Bailey holding a bright orange carrot and chomping happily away at it. What's up, Doc? She was probably too young to know that, but Cartoon Network still occasionally showed the old classics.

"I'm not sure," she responded with a shrug after a moment of silent musing. "Guess she just doesn't want to talk this morning."

"She never has been a morning person," Bailey pointed out, then took another bite of her carrot. Madeleine's smile grew. "Is Dameon in his room?"

"Probably," Madeleine answered, unable to shake her smile. "I haven't been up for very long, but I don't think he's left yet."

"Good. I wanted to talk to him again." Bailey finished off the last bit of her carrot, then offered Madeleine a small smile. "You should get into your room and start watching some cartoons. It's Saturday morning, isn't it?"

"Sunday, actually," Madeleine corrected her, now flat-out grinning.

Bailey waved a hand to dismiss her mistake. "Once you've been alive for a few hundred years, the days really start to blend together." And with that helpful bit of information, the woman slipped through Dameon's door, leaving Madeleine to go to her Sunday morning cartoons. They were the same as Saturday's, only they sucked.

-

Upon seeing Aven perched upon the edge of Dameon's bed, Bailey had to do a double take. Then, upon noticing that the woman was topless, she had to do a triple take. Then, upon realizing that she was kissing Dameon, she had to do a freaking quadruple take. In a rush of warm, red-tinted air, she disappeared from the room.

She reappeared in a nearby alleyway seconds later, instantly leaning against the wall and musing at her own jumpy reaction. What was that all about? she wondered first about herself, then about what she'd witnessed. She felt her lip curl in...disgust? There was something else lurking in her expression, but even she couldn't quite place the feeling.

She had nice tits. Yeah, she'd looked. Whether for her own enjoyment or simply to compare herself to the elf, she would never tell.

She glanced around, attempting to figure out where she'd ended up. She hadn't exactly made any plans before vanishing from Dameon's bedroom. A frown altered the curl of her lips, but she still couldn't place its cause. There was a bitter, heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach, the sensation of a hand clutching at her heart and trying to squeeze it until it burst, a heat spiking through her body that she didn't like – nothing that she'd felt before. Or, at least, nothing she'd ever felt quite like this. But she shook it off and turned her attention to the task at hand.

Speedway, she realized after gazing at the street by the alley's entrance. I'm not too far from the house. She began to exit the alley, but paused when a strong, unpleasant scent tickled her nose. She turned, only to discover a rotting corpse barely a foot from her. It lay next to a Dumpster that smelled nearly as foul, and it had obviously been there for quite some time.

Bailey took a step closer, her expression completely stoic in spite of the overwhelming stench of death. It took her only moments to identify the corpse as that of a young man, probably a werewolf, judging by the bit of fur still present along one arm and the claws protruding from his fingertips. He'd died in mid-change.

Probably the humans, she thought to herself as she knelt before the corpse, her eyes searching for some sign of murder. Or possibly Traitors. She found what looked like several bullet holes near his shoulder, and her frown returned. Definitely humans. But why did they leave him out here? They usually take the bodies to avoid spectacles like this.

Suddenly, the corpse's head snapped toward her, its gruesome eyes on her face. "This is the way now," it said hoarsely. "They leave them in the streets without a care, without respect." An odd energy hung in the air around the body, and Bailey recognized it as the same power she'd felt at the police station the other night, just before the trip she'd taken with Dameon to the DSW.

"They never gave them much respect before," she said to the corpse, though her ears were perked, listening intently for any other noises in the alley around her – footsteps, the scuffling of rocks, anything to hint to the location of the hidden necromancer.

"But they had the decency to burn them, or at the very least bury them in mass graves," the corpse told her, and she kept her eyes on its half-rotted visage. "Now, they kill them, they loot their homes, and they leave."

"They're done caring about the image they convey to the rest of mankind, perhaps?" she suggested, her eyes darting to one side at the sound of two rocks ever so lightly bumping one another. All she saw was a cat, however, skinny and covered in short black fur. "Or maybe they're through with capturing nonhumans and no longer need the bodies."

"They're scum," the dead boy hissed in its raspy voice, the barest hint of scorn entering its tone. The person speaking for it must have been truly angered to manage to give the corpse's voice even that much emotion. She knew little about the workings of necromancers, but she'd read somewhere that their control of a body's vocal cords was very limited. Only the most powerful could make them talk at all, let alone with any form of emotional inflection. Whoever this necromancer was, Bailey hoped they were honestly on her side.

"They are," she agreed, finally straightening from her crouch before the corpse. She glanced about the alley and added, "Now, if you would be so kind as to show yourself, we could talk about how to rid the Earth of its human scum."

Something rubbed against her leg, and she nearly jumped away from it. It was only the cat from before, its fur shining blue-black in the dim light of the early morning. It meowed up at her, flashing sharp white teeth, and circled her legs, rubbing against them in an effort to pet itself. She wasn't sure whether the lighting was just playing tricks on her or whether the cat's eyes were really bright amethyst.

"She likes you," a feminine voice said from behind her, near the entrance of the alley. The corpse's head lolled and sagged against the Dumpster. "She usually doesn't like people, especially people emanating the evil energy that you are." Bailey turned, eying the small figure at the alley's end.

The girl couldn't have been more than twelve, yet her big, round eyes shown with the telltale amethyst of a necromancer, a purple to match the cat's eyes. Her hair was greasy and streaked with dirt, but beneath the dusty brown were fine, elbow-length strands of blue-black, much like the fur of the feline still dancing about Bailey's legs. Her face was oval-shaped and hollow-cheeked, streaked with the same dirt that coated her hair, and fair, almost pale, skin showed from underneath. She was thin, tall, lanky – a dirty version of what Bailey had been in all her emaciated glory.

"She must know that I'm not an evil person, then," Bailey said, her eyes still scanning the girl's small frame and delicate face. She was clad in a tattered sky-blue T-shirt and a pair of blood-spattered and dirt-splotched jeans, both of which were a size or two too large for her. Homeless, she thought as her eyes fell on the girl's face and stayed there. Her parents were probably killed by humans. It wouldn't be the first time she'd seen such a situation. It would, however, be the first time she'd seen such a child roaming about on her own and fully capable of defending herself. The girl said nothing, even after Bailey had gazed into her amethyst eyes for a moment, so the woman asked, "Have you been following me? Or am I supposed to believe that this is a mere coincidence?"

"I've been following you," she admitted unabashedly, her gaze much more powerful than that of a normal child. The strength of her stare almost mirrored Bailey's. Almost.

"How did you know I would appear over here?" was Bailey's next question. "How did you know I was going to leave the house at all?"

"Your power is strong, even to one outside of your race," the child answered, continuing to hold Bailey's gaze. "It wasn't hard to feel the movement of your energy and track it."

"I could say the same for you," Bailey retorted. "Even the corpses you've been manipulating are laden with it."

The girl's face colored lightly beneath the dirt, and she finally lowered her eyes. "I've been working on it."

Bailey couldn't help a smile, but she said nothing more about the child's obvious power. "Do you have parents?" The girl shook her head and met Bailey's gaze once again, stoic now. "A home?" Another shake of the girl's head, and Bailey sighed. "How do I always attract the strays?"

It was meant to be a rhetorical question, but the child replied, "You're obviously a Guardian, a powerful protector of the innocent in spite of your evil heritage, and I think we're drawn to it."

"I figured," Bailey replied with a smile. That was actually a very comforting answer. If this girl was right, the people knew she was good, and that's all she'd ever wanted.

Her joy was cut short by a shout from just down the street. "There she is!" It was a male's voice, and it grew closer even as he spoke. "The purple-eyed girl from this morning!"

The girl's eyes widened, but she wasn't quite ready to let her fear paralyze her. The corpse of the Were boy was suddenly on its feet, that strange power even stronger around it. It lurched forward, each step accompanied by an odd squishing sound, but Bailey stepped closer to the girl and lay a hand on her shoulder.

"If you don't like gore, close your eyes," she warned the child when their eyes met. "Of course, I'm sure that won't be much of a problem for you," she added with a wry smirk and a tilt of her head toward the wobbly corpse. It fell to the snowy asphalt with a thud at the girl's nod, and Bailey continued forward, her pale fingers slipping from her small shoulder.

Upon catching sight of the older woman, the three men approaching the alley stopped dead. "Is that...Is that...from the surveillance video..." The stammering man blanched, and Bailey grinned wickedly.

Dameon had been right. Being caught on tape hadn't hurt at all.

The air filled with Bailey's trademark red mist, and one of the men pulled a gun. The other two quickly followed suit. They fired in unison, letting loose all of their bullets in rapid succession. It was all a waste, though, as that red miasma grasped them and crushed them as if they were no more than itty-bitty ladybugs. It then surged in their direction, forcing itself into their eyes, ears, nostrils, and, when they finally began shrieking in pain, their mouths.

It wasn't long until steam was flowing freely from their orifices, boiling blood bubbling its way down their cheeks and neck. Their screams ceased, and they toppled as one, just as they'd first fired.

Bailey's mist left the atmosphere, and the menagerie of bullets she'd caught fell to the ground with an array of light tinkles. It was almost musical.

"I'm glad I'm on your side," the girl said softly from behind her. When Bailey turned, she found the child gazing almost in awe at the group of corpses lying in the road, steam still rolling from their boiling blood. Their eyes met after a moment, and the momentary look of fear in the child's eyes reminded the woman to make them lose their telltale demonic glow. She always forgot about that...

"Come on," she said, offering the gentlest smile she could muster. With a trio of smoking corpses as her backdrop, she doubted it was very convincing, but...an A for effort, right? "I'll take you back to my home. We can talk there." The child nodded, and together, they began the short walk home.