For the Hopeless

"Stop looking at me like that," Bailey whispered as they slipped into a new building, an old building, one that reeked of human and misfit Novie to Dameon's wolf's nose. It looked as if it had been a supermarket at one point, but it had been long abandoned; the white metal shelves had rusted and fallen apart, and the ugly orange-yellow tile of the floor was covered in tattered papers and mouse droppings.

"How are we supposed to look at you?" Tawny asked, squinting into the darkness. There was only one light in the store, one way at the back – conveniently illuminating the door to the "employees only" area of the store. Dameon wondered where the stench of Traitor and human could possibly be coming from. Sarcastically, of course.

"Really, Bailey," the werewolf agreed in a gruff whisper, his eyes solely on Bailey though everyone else had taken to scanning the store. "You've lost it."

She spun to face him with a brash scoff that echoed through the empty aisles of the old store. "I'm fine," she argued, her voice barely a whisper now. Dameon heard voices in the back, raised in alarm, and he tried to shush her with a finger to his lips, but it was all in vain. "Yes, the power has gone to my head a little bit, but I'm still the same Bailey you all know and love!" More voices, now, in response to her unnecessary shout. She turned toward the source of the sound, a smirk on her face that told Dameon that she had done that on purpose. He glared at her through the darkness.

"Come out and play!" she bellowed in a sickening sing-song, her lips spread wide in a wicked grin.

A group of Traitors burst through the swinging double doors, two of them already in wolf form, the others baring fangs or flourishing hands coated in fire or ice or whatever their element of power happened to be. All of them spun and danced their way into an energetic and over-the-top fighting stance, posing for the band of Guardians with only the five crumbling check-out lanes in between, and Bailey cackled.

"Dameon, Tawny," she began in an amused purr, casting them a smirk over her shoulder, "get to the back of the store. The humans are escaping, and I'm pretty sure they're some of the big players in this war." Under normal circumstances, the pair would have hesitated, unwilling to leave Bailey alone against so many nonhuman foes, but this wasn't Bailey. They sprinted out the front door without a second thought, planning to head the humans off at their escape point at the back. Bailey's high-pitched screech of a laugh followed them out of the store, like nails on a chalkboard, and they shuddered. Secretly, they were glad that they didn't have to fight at that...thing's side.

"I hope she comes back to us," Tawny murmured as they ran.

Dameon nodded his agreement. "She will. Once she runs out of strength, she will."

Tawny didn't look like she believed him, a frown etched into her delicate features, but she said nothing more, and he had nothing more to say.

They reached the back of the store after a moment, finding the rusted door of one of the loading docks thrown open, a steady stream of humans in police uniforms, military outfits, and finely tailored suits leaping through the opening and onto the cracked asphalt below. Several large, black vans awaited their arrival, the doors on the backs and sides thrown wide to allow them in.

"Maybe Bailey should've taken this job," Dameon grumbled as nearly every man and woman drew a gun and pointed it at him and Tawny.

"Maybe," Tawny agreed in a breathless squeak, and the pair dove behind the corner of the brick building just as the first barrage of bullets began. "What are we supposed to do now?" she asked when the bullets continued to rain for far longer than she'd expected.

"I don't know!" Dameon shouted over the sounds of guns being fired and brick shattering. "Use your feminine wiles or something!"

"My feminine wiles?" She glanced at him, a confused frown on her pink lips, and he nodded vigorously.

"Yes! Your feminine wiles! You're too cute to be shot!"

She rolled her eyes, but he knew he had her.

The rain of bullets slowed to a stop, and Dameon watched as Tawny closed her eyes, no doubt picking through their thoughts for any signs of lingering hostility. She opened them after a moment, and with a curt nod to the werewolf, she tiptoed around the broken brick corner and into the line of fire.

He didn't dare look around the corner to watch her progress, but he heard several clicks as the humans readied their guns once more. He squeezed his own eyes shut now. Please, don't die, Tawny. Please, don't die.

"Who are you?" came a man's gruff shout. "What are you doing here?"

"I just...I just wanted to see if any of you had a cigarette and a light I could borrow," Tawny stammered, her voice quavering. She sounded very convincingly frightened. "I heard voices, and I thought maybe one of you..."

There was a moment of silence, then the man sighed, the exhalation just as gruff as his words had been. "Really, girl? That's all?" There was another pause, and Dameon assumed she was nodding. "You scared us to death, little girl!" He heard the shifting and creaking of metal – the man jumping out of the back of a van, perhaps? Footsteps followed the squeak, and the man said, "Here you are. Just be more careful next time, all right?"

"Yes, sir," came Tawny's meek but cutely pleased voice. "Would you mind if I lit it myself, though?" she asked, and Dameon imagined the man holding a shiny Zippo out to her. "Something about someone holding an open flame near my face makes me nervous," she added with a nervous giggle.

"All right, sweetheart, but make it fast. We need to be going."

"Didn't she have a man with her, sir?" a woman asked hesitantly, her voice much softer than the man's, more afraid.

"Hm?" the man grunted, then asked, "Did you, girl?"

"Mhm," Tawny answered, the clanky sound of a lighter flipping open accompanying her words. "My friend. You scared him off." Her words were followed by an abrupt cry. "Oh, no! The wind caught it." Dameon heard her tiny feet scurrying across the broken asphalt, and he just barely kept himself from peeking around the corner. What the hell was she doing?

"Hurry it up, Clutzy!" the man growled, irritated. "Catch the damn cigarette and gimme my lighter back so we can go."

"I'm sorry, sir," she said, her voice even more meek and nervous than before. "I didn't mean to-" But the sound of rusty metal splitting cut her off, followed by the telltale whoosh of a flame bursting to life. Tawny shrieked.

Dameon sprinted out of his hiding spot, nearly slamming into Tawny as she rounded the corner. She was pressed roughly against his still-naked body as a van exploded behind her, and he held her tightly as he struggled to keep them both upright. He squeezed his eyes shut to shield them from the bright orange light and the debris scattering through the air, but Tawny's soft voice brought them open an instant later.

"Now's your chance," she whispered as the debris settled, and the look of devilish determination in her cloudy-sky eyes sent a shiver down his spine. "Most of them are dead, and the rest are stunned. Hurry." He paused to stare at her, an unlit cigarette hanging from the corner of her pink mouth, but he soon released her and rushed toward the slowly burning scene, transforming into a large wolf as he began to run.

His canine lips drew back in a sudden smile. Tawny had blown up a van.

Feminine wiles, indeed.

-?-

Bailey crushed a skull beneath her foot, and it popped open like an overripe tomato, red and pink goo spattering everywhere. She shook what she could off of her bare foot and scanned the area nonchalantly.

"So boring," she mumbled, taking in the dozen or so corpses that littered the grocery store, sprawling across the floor, lying atop broken shelves, even slumped over old checkouts. "So, so boring." She didn't have a scratch on her, and she'd even tried to go easy on them. How weak were the humans' henchman? How strong was she?

The thought of Dameon and Tawny fluttered into her mind, an afterthought that barely came, and she frowned guiltily. How could she have forgotten them, the two people she loved most in the world? But then, she smiled. Because she didn't care.

She grunted, dropping to a crouch and hunching over, her head in her hands as Hayden's face flooded her mind. What was she doing? Why was she being this way? She loved them all, and she didn't want what had happened to the teenager to happen to any of her other companions.

But they were nothing to her, she realized, and smiled again. Maybe she could just leave them outside to die alone, to get them out of her way. Maybe they were already dead. She'd heard plenty of gunshots, and both of them were pretty susceptible to those.

She threw her head back and shrieked, a grating scream that echoed off the peeling-paint walls and came back to doubly assault her ears. Something was in her head. Something was in her head that wasn't her. She would never think like this about Tawny and Dameon. She would never want them to die. She would never...

Hayden entered her mind again, but this time, it wasn't her face; it was her bloodied corpse, limp in Bailey's arms, her beautiful eyes wide open and terrified. Bailey lifted her head from her hands and looked down at her arms, as if expecting to find the girl's body resting in the crooks of her elbows once more.

"I should never have taken that power," she whispered to herself, still staring down at her arms as if she'd seen a ghost. In her mind, Hayden was there, staring up at her with cold, dead eyes, eyes of the most beautiful blue. "I should never have let myself become like him."

"You're right," came a familiar voice, and she lurched to her feet and spun, coming face to face with the very devil she spoke of. He smiled down at her, baring teeth that were much too sharp and much too white. "You obviously can't handle it. You're much too weak to be a devil." He began to circle her, his steps slow and silent. A crimson red finger trailed languidly along her own blood-colored skin, creating a line from one shoulder to the other, his nail dragging along her back in between.

Was it really him? Was he really here? Had the Hayden in her arms been there? Where had she gone? What was happening?

She searched the room frantically for Hayden, expecting her ghost to be waiting in a corner, haunting her. When she turned back to the devil, he was gone.

"What's happening?" she shrieked, dropping to her knees and burying her face in her hands. "What's...what's happening?" she said in a whisper now, her shoulders jerking as sobs rocked her small, winged body.

Where had her mind gone?

-?-

Tawny fell to her knees and put her hands over her ears as if that alone could stop the onslaught of visions and voices that entered her head. It was Bailey – she could feel it. But how? How was all of this reaching her out here? They were too far apart. This wasn't even possible!

She saw Dameon and herself, smiling and perfect in the devil's mind. Then Hayden's face, Hayden's body, flashes of murders and memories filled with blood. Screams, so many screams.

And most of them were Bailey's.

Something was happening to her. Not physically, but mentally. Something was going wrong inside Bailey's head, something to do with the power she'd taken from that devil and maybe, possibly, her own overwhelming guilt and fears.

"Dameon," Tawny whispered, raising her eyes from the asphalt to watch the wolf dodge a bullet and pounce on a man. He tore his throat clean out, then leaped onto a woman who sat off to the side, leaning against the back of the grocery store and trembling violently. She shrieked as Dameon fell on her, and Tawny looked away. She'd seen too much gore today.

"Dameon," she tried again, louder, when he left the woman lying limp on the ground. He turned to her, then, and she knew that their enemies must all be dead. He wouldn't pay attention to her if they weren't. "Dameon," she whispered as he began trotting toward her, "I think something's wrong with Bailey."

He shifted to his human form in a heartbeat and knelt before Tawny, his eyes wide with fear and worry. "What is it? Is she hurt? Did something happen inside the store?" he asked rapidly, his words rolling out in a rush.

Tawny almost smiled at how much he cared about her, but then, she remembered that Bailey cared about him, too. Probably just as much. "I don't know," she said softly. "I don't think so."

"We need to get to her," Dameon said, taking Tawny's hands and pulling her to her feet. She wanted to collapse, to put her hands back over her ears to try to drown out Bailey's disorganized and brutal thoughts, but she knew that she couldn't. Not right now.

"Are you sure that's such a good idea?" she asked. "I'm not sure if seeing us would help her or hurt her."

"What do you mean?" Dameon asked, and she could barely hear his words beneath the sudden onslaught of cries from Bailey. "It would help her, of course. She loves us, right?" He said it so meaningfully, so earnestly, that she almost didn't want to tell him part of what she'd seen and heard.

"A moment ago," she began in a gentle whisper, "she thought about leaving us out here to die." She paused to watch the impact of her words, expecting a frown or a glare or some form of change, but nothing ever came. He just kept his eyes locked on hers with that same serious, steady gaze.

"Then she definitely needs to see us," he told her, his words holding a grave surety that she could not and did not want to argue. "Let's go," he whispered, and with his hand still in hers, he led the way toward the front of the store.

-?-

"Take it back!" Bailey screamed at the devil across from her, perched upon a checkout beside a corpse that was missing a few limbs and still spurted blood every now and again. "Take back what you gave me and leave me alone!"

The devil smiled. "What you stole from me, you mean?" He slid from atop the worn conveyor belt and reached her in three long, graceful strides. "My dear, I can't take it back," he murmured as he cupped her chin, tipping her head back so that he could get a better look at her glowing red eyes. "You devoured my heart, and now, there's nowhere to store the power."

"Just take it!" she shrieked and shoved him away from her, but he was already gone. Her palms met only air.

"I think you need more, actually," he said from behind her, and she spun to face him. He was leaning against the wall beside a row of dingy windows, smiling to show all his shark-like teeth. "You were doing so well when your meter was full, but now..." He tsked and gave a shake of his head. "Lost your mind, haven't you? Yelling at me like I'm real when you know full well that you killed me."

She leaned heavily against the checkout and hid her face in her hands. "Just go away," she whispered. If this was just her imagination, things would have to go back to normal if she willed them to, right? "Just...please, go away." But when she lifted her face from her palms, Hayden was before her, smiling in that same cold way as the devil had.

"Bailey, honey," she purred, resting her hands on Bailey's shoulders. Her fingers were freezing, her touch like ice cubes pressing into her flesh. It almost hurt. "Don't you want that feeling of power back? Don't you want to be in control again?" Her smile grew, and a bit of blood rolled down from the corner of her mouth. "Remember what it felt like to kill me? Don't you want to feel that way again?"

"It hurt to kill you," Bailey whispered, blinking rapidly. It took her a moment to realize that she was blinking back tears. "I don't ever want to feel like that again."

Hayden let loose a joyous, melodic laugh, spinning down the aisle away from Bailey. "Don't lie to me," she said cheerfully, and a splotch of blood appeared on her white blouse, seeping through and blooming slowly like a red, red rose on her stomach. "I know how you liked it." She dropped her voice to a low purr now, and her smile was more of a wicked smirk. She leaned against an old shelf about a foot away from Bailey. "I know how you liked getting revenge on the little witch who tried to outsmart you."

"I didn't," Bailey nearly yelled, panicked. What if Hayden was right? What if Hayden was right and Bailey just couldn't admit it to herself? "I didn't like it!" She dropped her face into her sweating palms once again and whispered, "Go away. Go away. Go away."

"Bailey?" came a small, tentative voice from the doorway, and the devil woman looked up to find Tawny there, the frown on her delicate face illuminated by the light at the back of the store. "Are you all right?"

"Are you...real?" Bailey whispered, wide eyed and afraid. "Or are you in my head, too?"

"What's happened to you, Bailey?" Tawny said softly, taking a step forward. Dameon appeared at her shoulder, his lightly muscled arm bathed in the light from the back of the store as well. "What's going on in your head?"

"You can hear and see it all," Bailey told her, her eyes flicking uncertainly from Tawny to Dameon and back again. "Why don't you explain it to me?"

"Let's go home," Dameon murmured, stepping out from behind Tawny to offer Bailey his hand. She could see the blood on it, glinting wetly in the dim light, and Bailey wondered whether he was real or not. "You just need to get some rest."

"I can't rest," she said in a whisper, then, more strongly, "not now." She swallowed, hard, fighting to clear her mind and keep her thoughts on track. There was so much more to all of this than her own withering cognitive abilities, so much more than her own memories and well-being. There was so much more, even beyond Tawny and Dameon, if they were real. But they had to be real, she decided. Only the dead had been coming to her until the pair appeared in the doorway. "We need...I need to find more humans. More Traitors. I need to wipe out the forces that are fighting to demolish us all."

"Blindly murdering them all won't send the message I think you want to send," Tawny told her, stepping forward to stand beside Dameon. The werewolf still had his arm held out to Bailey, his hazel eyes locked on hers in a calm, patient gaze.

"I want them to fear me," Bailey said, her voice growing stronger with each word, and her mind following her voice's lead. "I want to stop them all before they can hurt any more innocent people."

"You can't do it alone," Tawny reasoned. She held her hand out to Bailey, her arm beside Dameon's, trying to coax her along. "You need to come home with us. We need to make a plan."

Bailey's red eyes drifted between Tawny and Dameon, suddenly very lucid. "Alone is how I belong."

"Never, Bailey," Dameon whispered, strength to his voice despite the quietness of it. "Never."

Bailey glanced at the corpse nearest her, one sprawled face-down on the floor with its arms spread wide to either side of its slender body. It was a woman, she thought, though she couldn't be sure. "Do you think Samara can make the dead talk? Tell us their secrets?"

"If she can, you won't want to use a Traitor," Tawny answered her grimly, lowering her arm to her side. Dameon's hand remained extended. "They probably don't know much, and I'm sure they're harder to work with."

"A human, then," Bailey said, her eyes on Tawny, then on Dameon's outstretched hand. "Will you bring me a human?" Her eyes flicked to Dameon's face, and he nodded, smiling charmingly, certainly, lovingly at her.

"If that's what you wish." He left the store, and only then did he lower his arm.

Only then.

-?-

Tawny turned from Dameon's exit to watch Bailey lower her gaze to the blood-spattered floor, and she knew that her expression was likely much harsher than it should have been. "Dameon or me, Bailey?" she blurted, and she hated that her voice cracked. "Dameon or me?"

Bailey's eyes jerked to her face, but they were on the floor again almost instantly. "This isn't the time or the place, Tawny," she responded in a voice that was almost a growl, pushing past her and following Dameon out into the night.

"Then when is the time, and where is the place?" the telepath persisted, following the devil quickly. "I want to know what I mean to you, and I want to know what he means to you, too," she whispered.

Bailey stopped suddenly and turned. Tawny nearly bumped into her, but she remained on her feet, only inches away from Bailey's earnest face. "You mean the world to me," she breathed. "You both do."

"Bailey," Tawny whispered, her voice trailing away as she lost herself in the love those red eyes held, the pure sincerity. She leaned up, and Bailey leaned down, and their lips met in a gentle kiss, warm and chaste.

Bailey pulled away after a few seconds, her nose still pressed against Tawny's as she began to stroke the girl's cheek gently. "Don't make me choose, Tawny," she murmured, and Tawny could see the tears welling up in her eyes. "Please, don't make me choose. Not now, not ever."

"Not now," Tawny promised softly, breathlessly, "not ever."

Bailey smiled.