From Her Vein to the Floor

"I got a one-way ticket on a hell-bound train,
With nothing to lose and nothing to gain.
Nobody ever taught me how to live.

I'm feeling like I'm lost, like I'll never be found.
I'm twisted and I'm turned around.
Nobody ever taught me how to love.

I'm hurting everybody.
I'm hurting myself.
I'm desperate."
- Papa Roach

Antony paced the kitchen, moving so quickly from one end to the other that he was only a blur of black and white and red. He couldn't stop moving with his vampire speed, fueled as he was by rage and guilt and confusion, and the scent of sweet blood that still hung in the air wasn't helping the situation.

"Why?" he asked himself, his voice the soft whisper of a lost man. "Why hadn't I gotten up in time?" His pacing ceased for a moment as images of Torryn being jerked from the counter flooded his already-buzzing mind. He put a hand to his forehead and leaned heavily against the stove, squeezing his eyes shut as if it would help. Jerked from the counter, dragged out the door, kicking and screaming and crying, calling for him all the while...

With a cry, he spun and knocked the pot of water from the stove. Lukewarm water spattered across his socks, accompanied by a splash and the clang of the pot's collision with the floor. He wished it were hotter, wished he'd left the burner on. He would've welcomed the pain.

"Why?" he asked again, his voice stronger now. "Why did I-" His voice cracked, and he fell silent, his eyes on the pool of water on the floor. He bit his lip until it bled.

A moment passed, a moment filled with still water and dripping blood, then he finally lurched into action. Still moving with vampire quickness, he grabbed Torryn's pants from the floor, doing his best not to breathe in her scent as he rummaged through the pockets, but her scent was everywhere. There was no avoiding it, not even if he held his breath, because it was there, always, stuck in his nose, in his mouth, in his mind. He almost stopped then, almost lost himself in that dreadful memory of her abduction – could you call it an abduction? – but he pressed on until, finally, he found her cell phone. He flipped it open, opened the contact list, and selected a name, hitting the call button even as he brought the phone to his ear.

"Skylar?" he asked, and tried to keep his voice from cracking. "I...Something happened."

-?-

"Get off!" Torryn screamed, struggling against Samuel as he dragged her out of the car and toward a building she'd never seen before. "Let me go!" She kicked a couple of times even though she knew she couldn't reach him, but something caught her foot as she went for a third swing, squeezing it tightly. She looked up to find Antony's father, the infamous Caesar Warren, smiling down at her in that cold, fangy way that only he could.

"Samuel, you really should secure her a bit more while you're carrying her," he said, and promptly pulled Torryn from the darker-skinned vampire's arms. He slung her over his shoulder, an arm around her thighs and an arm around her calves to keep her from kicking.

"I don't think that's very secure," Samuel commented dryly, an eyebrow arched at his know-it-all boss.

"Because she can hit me in the back?" Caesar retorted coolly, the ghost of a smile just barely curving his pale lips, just as Torryn raised her hand to strike. "She wouldn't dare." But she did dare, landing a punch to his kidney that was backed by every ounce of strength she had, which, sadly, wasn't much at the moment. The vampire didn't react at all, continuing to smile as he said, "Or maybe she would."

She was drawing her arm back for another punch when she began to feel the tell-tale lull of vampiric pheromones entering her system. She kept her arm raised for a moment, once again using what little strength she had left, but it wasn't long before it dropped to dangle behind his back, her body going limp across his shoulder.

"There we go," Caesar said rather pleasantly. "Secure as can be." He then continued down the sidewalk, striding into the unfamiliar house when someone opened the door for him. Samuel lagged behind for a moment, but soon forced himself to follow.

Torryn cringed, the combined scents of old and new blood strong enough to penetrate her pheromone-induced haze. Beneath the coppery smell hung a dingier one, fainter and softer and just barely there: the scent of death. She would've been filled with fear, would've struggled and fought until she was free, but as it were, she couldn't register the connotations that these scents carried; all she knew was that they stank and that she didn't like it one bit.

"How much do you think we'll get out of her tonight?" Samuel asked as they began to ascend a flight of stairs, their passage silent but for the occasional creak of old wood. Torryn's eyes were half-shut and stuck on the dark-skinned vampire's shoes. They were nice shoes, polished black leather that was obviously very well cared for. Not a scuff or a speck of dirt in sight.

"I'm not sure," Caesar replied, and Torryn's head bumped the wall as they rounded a corner at the top of the stairs. She grunted, but, as usual, nobody cared. "We've never had the opportunity to deal in Progeny blood before. I imagine we'll get quite a bit out of her, though. Even if she were only a human, such a young, pretty girl would fetch a good price. As a Progeny, she'll likely double that."

Samuel chuckled evilly. "So we're talking in the thousands, then."

Torryn heard a door squeak open, and a wave of new pheromones bombarded her system, accompanied by an even stronger smell of fresh, tangy blood. Her eyes drifted shut for a moment, the barrage of pheromones nearly powerful enough to knock her out, but she fought to get her eyes open again, to be just a little bit less helpless. Still, all she could see was Samuel's shoes, and she vaguely wondered why she'd even bothered to look.

"Perhaps," came Caesar's cool, soothing voice, and Torryn's eyes slipped closed again. "Hello, gentleman," he said in a much more lively tone. "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. My assistant had a bit of a hard time tracking her down." She felt herself being lowered to the floor, the feel of rough wood against her bare bottom half almost orgasmic. If she'd been coherent, she would've tried to cover herself or, at the very least, felt a bit of shame that she was naked from the waist down, but right now, she had not a care in the world. "So, is anyone interested in spending a night with her?"

There was a shuffling about her, an array of light footsteps on the wood to either side of her. The air around her grew heavier with the scent of blood and the subtle undertones of that death-smell. She forced her eyes open just a crack, spying a cluster of judgmental faces above her; but they were just a half-there blur, and her eyes closed again.

"What happened to her?" a masculine voice asked from her left. She felt a cold wetness along her bloodied neck, and she shivered in delight.

Samuel cackled from his spot by the doorway. "I caught her having sex with Caesar's boy."

"I thought she smelled odd," came a puzzled voice, the first feminine one she'd heard in a while. The voice dripped with cool disdain as it said, "And you didn't think to clean her up a bit before presenting her to us?"

"Really," another man remarked, a similar disgust to his tone. "Why would any of us want to pay for a recently used cum-dumpster?"

"I don't mind it," came another feminine voice, this one oozing with a natural seductiveness that the other female lacked. Torryn felt another cold wetness between her legs, and she groaned softly. The woman giggled. "Look! I think she likes me."

"If you can't be bothered to do a bit of cleaning up before you play with her, then you can't be bothered to pay the price for her," Caesar remarked, his voice just as calm as ever. "If you're not interested, no one is forcing you to stay here." There was a pause, but nobody moved. Torryn felt chilly fingers sliding into her, and she moaned, wishing she had the energy to squirm against them.

That same woman giggled again. "I'll give you a thousand for her, just for tonight."

"I'll give you two," a new voice chimed in, deep and dark, and Torryn shuddered at the sensation of a tongue against her neck.

"Two-five," the first woman said with a sigh, half dreamy and half disappointed. "She does smell quite delightful. Except for the boy's scent, of course."

"Five," the deep-dark voice growled, right beside Torryn's ear. She let out another soft groan, the only sound in the silence that followed the dramatic price increase.

"Ten," the seductive woman said after a moment, hitting the consonants hard. Torryn felt another finger sliding in between her legs, and her back arched as they were slowly, teasingly, drawn out. The pheromones lingering in the air were becoming nearly palpable now, the vampires pumping out more and more in an unconscious competition with one another. Torryn was just barely holding on to her consciousness.

"Twenty," the deep-dark voice said, "ten each. We'll share her tonight."

The woman's sexy giggle rang out once more, filled with childish glee. "I didn't know you were into that sort of thing."

"Is it a deal?" the voice said, farther away from Torryn's ear now.

"Unless anyone can top twenty thousand," Caesar prompted, but nobody took the bait. "Well, then, we have a deal."

Torryn finally passed out.

-?-

"I'd prefer it if we did," came the deep-dark voice, just as Torryn awoke. There were no pheromones in the air here; she was free to open her eyes and look about her.

"But why?" the seductive woman whined, and Torryn found her giving the man puppy-dog eyes from the right side of the bed she'd been placed upon. "Leaving her this way will give her so much more flavor!" She was quite a lovely woman: perfectly pale skin so white that it was nearly translucent; flaxen hair a mass of free-flowing, carefully curled tresses; thin, delicate body wrapped in a mini-dress of deep purple chiffon. Her eyes were of the most beautiful blue-gray that Torryn had ever seen. In spite of the obvious danger she was in, all she could think was, Why don't I look like that?

"It's not a flavor that I find particularly appealing," the man drawled from across the bed, his nose wrinkled in disgust. He wasn't quite what Torryn would have expected based on his low, commanding voice. She'd imagined a tall, well-built man with broad shoulders and a handsome, masculine face; what she discovered was actually a man of average height and average build with a delicate, almost feminine nose and no other features worth mentioning. His eyes, though...They were of a dark, dark brown, nearly black in the room's dim light, with a piercing gaze that would've made her heart stop if he'd been looking at her instead of the other woman. This...This she'd expected, based on that deep, dark voice.

The woman pouted. "So? You don't have to go down there. You can have her upper half, and I'll enjoy what she has down below by myself."

"His saliva is all over the upper half," the man nearly growled, becoming very obviously annoyed. "I don't want to touch her until he's completely off of her."

"Oh, boo," she whined, crossing her arms to intensify her pout. "You're no fun at all."

"I will be later," he countered, his voice even again, now that he'd gotten his way. "I just don't want to play in someone else's juices while I'm trying to enjoy myself."

"Fine, fine," she said with a sigh and a dismissive wave of her hand. "But if you want her so clean, you can be the one to clean her. I'll have no part of it."

"Fine," the man said, turning his attention to Torryn.

The second his eyes landed on her, she bolted in a blind panic, leaping off of the bed and starting toward the door. He caught her in a heartbeat, however, grabbing her arm and jerking her back onto the bed. She kicked at him, punching at him with the arm he didn't have a hold of, but he had her pinned to the bed even more quickly than he'd caught her arm the first time. She squirmed beneath him, struggling her hardest. He only sighed.

"Calm down, girl," he said as gently as he could with such an intimidating voice, but she didn't stop struggling. He turned his gaze to the woman, giggling on the edge of the bed, and said, "I take it Caesar couldn't be bothered to tell her about all of this?" Torryn's struggles slowed as pheromones spilled into the air around her, just enough of them to stop her panicking. She was still aware of everything that was going on around her, everything that was being said and everything that was being done, but none of it seemed to be of any importance to her for the moment.

"Of course not," the woman said laughingly. "And why would he? Telling someone that they're being sold as a blood-slave really wouldn't do anything but incite more panic."

"I'm not a blood-slave," Torryn said, lying still beneath the man, though she glared up at him – or, at least, she thought she was glaring; in reality, her facial expression hadn't changed at all.

"No, no, I suppose you're not," the man murmured thoughtfully. "You haven't been definitively sold to someone like a slave. You've only been loaned to us. You're more of a..."

"Prostitute?" the woman giggled, leaning closer to Torryn. The chilly breath of her words smelled of blood and semen and saliva; it smelled of Antony. "Only you're not the one making money off of your endeavors!" She cackled as if this were the funniest thing in the world, and Torryn once again thought she was glaring.

"I'm not a blood-slave, and I'm not a prostitute," she snarled. Or, rather, as with her glaring, she thought she did. Really, she was just speaking in an empty, monotone voice. "I'm a person. You have to let me go."

The woman let loose another one of her wretched cackles. "Oh, no, honey. We've paid $20,000 for you, and you're not going anywhere until we get what we paid for."

"But you need to clean yourself up a bit first," the man said, finally getting off of Torryn, only to lift her off of the bed a moment later. "You smell terrible." She began to struggle again, but another rush of pheromones wafted over her, and she stilled. "There we go," he said, starting for the bathroom across the hallway from the bedroom. "That's a good girl."

-?-

The doorbell rang at the Warren residence, and Antony stopped pacing before the front door. He rushed to it, quickly pulling it open, only to receive a blow to the face that knocked him back a couple of feet. He clutched his now-aching jaw and glared through the open doorway at Skylar, who glared back with twice the anger. He stepped into the house and took Antony by the front of his shirt, swinging him around to slam his back against the wall beside the door.

"How could you let that bastard take her?" he snarled, and Antony saw murder in the boy's eyes. "Do you have any idea what they're probably going to do to her?"

"You think I haven't thought about that?" Antony yelled, shoving Skylar so hard that he sailed through the air and hit the floor several feet away. He was still having a hard time getting his vampiric side under control, but he wouldn't apologize for it. "Do you really think I don't care about what happens to her?"

"All you are is a manwhore who takes advantage of pretty, helpless girls, girls like Torryn," Skylar spat, getting to his feet. "She was just a lay to you. You'd be lying if you said she was more."

Antony took a step forward, a cold calm to his demeanor now. "Torryn isn't pretty," he said, shaking his head slowly, surely. "She's beautiful. And never, ever has she been a helpless girl."

Skylar looked taken aback by this statement, only able to stare at the boy for a moment before he finally whispered, "Oh, no. No, no, no. You're not..." He shook his head violently, taking a horrified step back, as if he could escape this inevitable truth. "You barely know her! You were using her, for Christ's sake!"

"I know her enough," Antony said simply, sounding almost resigned now. "You don't have to know every little thing about a person to know whether you like them or not."

Skylar put his face in his hands, trying once again to make this whole situation go away. "You're such a fucked-up jackass, you know that?"

"And you're a dumbass who lost what was probably the best thing in his life because you couldn't let it go," Antony countered, speaking every syllable slowly and powerfully. "Are we going to stand around and point out each other's glaring imperfections, or are we going to try to find Torryn?" His voice was filled with an awe-inspiring determination, the likes of which no one would ever imagine had come from that spoiled little manwhore, and Skylar could only nod for a moment, dumbstruck.

"How are we going to find her?" he asked.

"When Samuel took her, I think he said something about a new job for her." Antony frowned, brow furrowed as another barrage of memories, images of Torryn screaming and kicking and being dragged away, shot through his mind. "I'm not really sure. I wasn't really all there yet. But I think that's what I heard, and if I'm right, he probably took her to the blood-brothel."

"The blood-brothel?" Skylar asked, and he wanted to spit. The name left a nasty taste in his mouth and a nasty feeling in his heart.

"It's where people are sold as blood-slaves," Antony answered bluntly. He tried not to let it get to him, but panic was already beginning to set in.

"Samuel's going to...to sell Torryn?" Skylar stammered, horrified.

"No," Antony said, starting out the door, the panic refusing to let him stand around and do nothing any longer. "My father is. That's how I know where to go."

-?-

Torryn began to tremble, hunched over in a cold bath with a cold vampire using a cold washcloth to clean away the remnants of cold blood and cold saliva. She wanted to blame her shaking on all the cold, wanted to pretend that she was strong enough to tough this out but for the chill, but soon, the tears began to fall. She was crying; her shaking was due to silent sobs.

The man's eyes flicked to her face as he ran the washcloth over her bare breasts impersonally. It slid lower, scrubbing its way down her belly, and even when he began to clean between her legs, his touch remained void of sexuality. He wasn't interested in her body at all, it seemed; or maybe he was just really good at hiding his urges.

He watched her face for a moment, her eyes unwaveringly focused on the reddened water around her submerged legs, until, finally, he sighed and pulled the cloth out of the water. "You have no reason to cry, you know." He sounded more annoyed than sympathetic, but when she looked into his eyes, she saw a hint of compassion. "We're just going to feed from you, play with you a little bit, and send you on your way," he told her, as if that were going to reassure her. "If you'd been sold as a blood-slave, you would never get to go home again."

"Does he think he can just..." She sniffled, running a hand over her eyes to wipe away her tears but only smearing bloody bathwater across her face. "Just sell me like this?" She hated herself for crying. It made her feel so indescribably weak, so incredibly helpless. "Sell me like I'm some piece of property and not a person at all?"

"How is this any different from when he made you fight in the Arena?" the man asked, reaching between her feet to pull the plug out of the drain. "You were still just his money-making toy."

"I'm gaining nothing from this," Torryn answered with another pathetic sniffle. "Before, I was at least getting something for myself. Money and...and some sick form of enjoyment. But with this, I'm just..." She cried out in anguish, burying her face in her wet hands. "God, I don't want to be used like this!"

He took her by her upper arms and lifted her to her feet, his grip neither too rough nor too gentle, much like his demeanor. "You don't have a choice," he said simply, any pretense of comforting her gone. "You let him sink his dirty little claws into you, and now, you're his to do with what he pleases."

She stepped over the edge of the tub, gratefully taking the fluffy white towel he offered and wrapping herself in it. "Do you think there's any way to bargain with him?" She sniffled again, wiping away what remained of her tears with the corner of the towel, and peered up at the man with such sorrow to her expression that he couldn't hold back a sigh of pity.

"More than likely," he answered, pulling another towel from a silver rack beside the tub and beginning to gently dry her long hair. "He is a businessman, after all. If you offer him something worthwhile, it's very likely that he'll accept any proposal you bring to his attention." He stood in front of her now, leaning over her slightly as he purposefully rubbed the towel along the back of her damp hair. She felt like a child being taken care of, and somehow, that brought a smile to her lips.

"You're different from what I expected," she said after a short pause, still smiling softly up at him from beneath the towel.

His eyes flicked to hers for just a moment, the briefest smile darting across his pale face, and he took a step back, towel in hand. "I won't be soon enough." He let his towel fall to the ground, and with a gesture to the closed bathroom door, he asked, "Are you ready?"

Her smile faltered. "I don't want to do this."

He shook his head once, just once, and frowned down at her. "Please, don't make me force you. It won't hurt for more than a second. You've been fed from before; you know that."

"But you're not just going to feed from me, are you." It was a statement, not a question. She wasn't stupid.

He bowed his head. "It won't hurt for more than a second," he repeated. "I promise."