From Her Vein to the Floor

"There's a hate inside of me like some kind of master.
I tried to save you, but I can't find the answer.
I'm holding onto you; I'll never let go.
I need you with me as I enter the shadows."
- Red

On instinct, Torryn turned to run from the grinning vampires on her couch. They shouldn't have been there, couldn't have been there. It was broad daylight, for Christ's sake! Before she could even make it to the stairs of her front porch, however, Caesar appeared in front of her at the porch's edge, teetering dangerously close to the sunlight beyond the roof. He still smiled, fangs peeking out between his lips, and she took a shaky step back.

"Please, sit down," he said casually, almost as if her were talking to a friend instead of a tool with which to turn a profit. "This doesn't need to become a violent matter." She felt a hand slip into hers, smooth fingers wrapping around her hand, and Antony guided her into the house. She stayed close to him as they walked, and she refused to release his hand once they'd sat down on the love seat.

"That's better," Antony's father said with another joyous clap of his hands, then shut the front door behind him and went back to his seat beside Samuel on the couch. "Now, we can get down to business. Like adults."

"What do you want?" Antony asked in a forcedly relaxed tone, a certain strain to his voice that told of buried annoyance, buried anger, maybe even buried fear. "Why are you here? And why are you here now?"

"Well, my boy, this is an urgent matter," Caesar smiled. "It couldn't wait until nightfall." Samuel chuckled wickedly, and Torryn shuddered. Whatever that matter was, she wasn't looking forward to it. "You see, Antony, Torryn, we're under the impression that you're not happy with your current positions in life. We think that maybe, just maybe, you'll try to escape these positions, and this – this is something we can't allow."

"I have no position to escape," Antony all but growled, staring coldly at his father and refusing to acknowledge Samuel's existence in any way, "and Torryn doesn't, either. You can't keep playing with her like this. She's not yours to do with as you please."

"If she's not mine, boy, then whose is she?" Caesar snapped, leveling the boy with a nasty glare of his own. "Certainly not yours. You're too weak to handle her, too pathetic to do what needs to be done."

"What needs to be done?" Antony said quietly at first, then yelled, "What needs to be done? What is it, exactly, that needs to be done? Do we need to permanently sell her to the highest bidder? Do we need to keep loaning her out to the rich until she's completely used up? Do we need to force her into the Arena every night until she can't fight anymore? Do we need to do it all?" He was on his feet, now, eyes wild and teeth bared. "She's not yours! She's not some toy, some commodity, some will-less, soulless thing!" He threw a hand out in a sloppy gesture toward the door, and his voice dropped to a low, dangerous snarl. "You need to leave. Now."

Caesar laughed lightly, his cool smile returning as he regained his airy, pleasant composure. "I will do no such thing, my boy, and you don't have the power to make me."

The next moments passed in a blur, a flurry of hands and feet and fangs. Antony leaped from his spot beside the love seat at Torryn's side to where his father sat smiling pompously on the couch; Caesar rose swiftly and gracefully to his feet to meet the boy standing. Antony swung at his father, but Caesar caught his fist and cast it aside as if it were no more than a tennis ball that had flown off course during a match. He then slammed an open-palmed hand into the boy's chest, fingers splayed spidery across Antony's dark shirt, and Antony went flying across the room. He crashed into a shelf filled with knickknacks and fell to the floor with the splintering of wood and shattering of porcelain.

Caesar began to advance, his lips pulled back in a disgusted snarl, but Torryn quickly leaped from her spot upon the love seat to stand between the two. She'd expected him to stop or, at the very least, slow, but he didn't. He caught her by the throat and swung her around, flinging her right into the waiting arms of Samuel.

She imagined that Caesar had resumed his angry advance toward his son, but she no longer had time to worry about Antony. Samuel grinned down at her with white, glistening fangs and said, "Well, now, what shall I do with you?" He gripped her upper arms so tightly she didn't even bother to struggle. She merely stared up at him, gray eyes wide in fright, until some completely unveiled instinct brought her knee to his groin in a quick jerk. His breath left him in a hiss, and she slipped away as he doubled over in pain.

"You brat," he growled, and she took only a second to marvel at the surprising tameness of the insult. She'd been expecting something more along the lines of "You bitch!" or "You dirty vampire whore!", but "You brat" worked, too, she supposed.

Still bent over, back hunched, he reached for her. She danced out of range, then darted back in to deliver a swift, powerful kick to the side of his skull. He crumpled to the floor, unconscious, his hand still stretched toward her, and she spun to face Antony and Caesar.

The boy now lay on the floor a few feet from the broken remains of the shelf, panting as he glared up at his father. Blood stained the carpet around him, but she couldn't see where it was coming from. Caesar smiled coldly down at him from beside the splintered wood and shards of porcelain.

"...think you can do?" she caught the end of a question, spoken in an infuriatingly calm voice by the infuriatingly calm man.

"I'll do whatever I have to to protect her," Antony all but shouted, and he was on his feet again a second later. He lunged toward his father with quick, lurching steps, tapping into his vampiric speed, but the man knocked him aside with a single backhand to the cheek. Antony sailed back into the opposite wall, landing just shy of the television, and Torryn hurried to stand between the two, just as she'd tried to do before.

"Stop it!" she yelled at Caesar, who'd started toward her with slow, decisive steps. "Just leave already! You have no right to be here!"

"But dear," he began, a cruel smile once again curving his pale lips around his fangs, "I have every right to be here. I have every right to you." He was before her now, reaching a hand out calmly, casually, to take her arm; but before he could even lay a finger on her, Antony was between them, landing a blow to his father's face that knocked the man back onto the couch several feet away.

"You have no right to her!" he screamed, his voice a gravelly snarl, deeper and meaner than anything she'd heard from him before. There wasn't time to be impressed, however, or even to feel like some pathetic woman being saved by the big, strong man; moving much more quickly than Antony ever could, Caesar leaped from the couch and landed a blow to the boy's stomach with thrice the power of Antony's strongest punch. He flew into the wall above the rubble of the shelf with a crash, cracks instantly appearing in the pale paint and spreading outward from his body. His body dropped to the floor with an almost comical slowness, peeling away from the cracked plaster like an old sticker popping free. He was out cold, blood beginning to seep slowly from between his parted lips before he hit the floor.

"There!" Caesar said joyfully with another delighted clap of his hands, but Torryn couldn't tear her eyes away from Antony. He shouldn't have been bleeding like that. He shouldn't have been just lying there. Something was wrong. "Now, Torryn, how about we get down to business? This should go much more smoothly now that that little pest is out of the way."

"Did you...Did you kill him?" she whispered, gazing unblinkingly at the living vampire's still body, bleeding slowly upon her mother's carpet. She heard a groan and mutter from another part of the room – a grumble from Samuel Abrams, no doubt – but she wouldn't turn, wouldn't look away. Was Antony breathing?

"Why?" Caesar asked, just as composed as always, as if they were merely discussing possible dinner plans instead of his own son's life or death. "Would it really be so bad if I did? He has to become an undead eventually, you know."

Finally, she turned to meet the man's gaze, and she knew that the expression on her face was something twisted and ugly, something unfathomably angry, something that predicted the man's own final death. "Not this soon," she said, her voice caught somewhere between a conversational tone and something of a darker, more threatening nature. "Not for him." She was teetering on the brink of insanity; the Progeny half of her was filling her mind and body with urges and impulses that the human half of her was just barely able to ignore. He needed to die that final death of which her face spoke. Now.

He began to say something, the pleasant smile on his face like a ray of unwanted sunlight in the midst of a violent thunderstorm. She didn't bother to listen. Her body lurched into action almost as if of its own accord, aiming a swift kick at his side. He caught her foot, and his lips finally stopped flapping away. His smile grew.

Balanced on her remaining foot, she aimed a quick punch at his face. He dodged, head tipping to one side almost languidly, and his placid smile remained as he used her foot to shove her roughly backward. She caught her balance quickly and lunged again, swinging a knee toward the opposite side this time. He blocked it with an arm, and she shifted her footing to attack his other side with her other knee. He blocked just the same as before, then lashed out with a swift punch at her face. She ducked beneath it, though, and simultaneously threw her leg out and spun in an attempt to sweep his feet from beneath him. He leaped into the air and spun just as she had. His foot caught the side of her face and sent her sprawling across the carpet, her hands and cheek scraping against the coarse flooring.

"Sir," she heard Samuel say, his tone unsure, but a laugh from Caesar told her not to worry about the other man.

She staggered to her feet and spun to face Antony's father once more, barely pausing to glare at his smiling face before rushing at him once more. A punch at his face, blocked. A kick at his side, blocked. A knee toward his groin, blocked. A punch at his stomach, sidestepped. She sprang into the air and whipped around, attempting a roundhouse kick to his precious face; unsurprisingly, he caught her by the ankle and held her there, letting her fall to hang upside down in the air before him. He began to laugh once more, to openly mock her, and she let out a beastly grunt. She placed her rug-burned hands firmly on the ground and kicked back as hard as she could. Her heel caught his throat with enough force to send him staggering backward, a raspy gasp escaping him, though he didn't let go of her ankle.

Taking advantage of his momentary distraction, she let fly another hard kick, this one catching him in the jaw. A crack accompanied this blow, and he finally released her leg. She was quick to tuck and roll, lurching onto her feet the moment she had the chance. She spun, already aiming another kick at his chest, but he sidestepped the attack. In an instant, he was behind her, holding both of her arms behind her back at the wrists.

"That was entirely uncalled for," the vampire growled, breath hot on her ear. His words were a bit garbled – she hoped like hell she'd broken his jaw – but she understood. She recognized the soothing numbness of vampire pheromones entering her system a moment later, and she wanted to yell out "This isn't fair!", but she couldn't open her mouth to speak. The notion to shout was soon completely gone from her mind, washed away by the tingling haze of pheromones, and her body went slack. She would've dropped to the floor if it hadn't been for his arms sliding around her waist. He was stronger than the other vampires she'd dealt with before. Even in her pheromone-addled state, she could tell.

Come on, some small part of her brain nagged, the only sliver of it that hadn't been affected. Cling to your anger! You can't stop now!

"Oh, dear," he mumbled to himself, his words barely understandable once again. "It seems I may have overdone it. I was hoping to coax you into changing into some more feminine attire before completely overwhelming you."

Antony could be dead, Torryn, that little voice nagged. Why aren't you fighting him? Use your anger! She tried to rouse herself, tried to grasp that anger that was keeping that single part of her mind awake and functional. Her head rose just slightly from where it had fallen to loll against her shoulder.

"And you," Caesar grated, "what happened to you earlier? Were you really knocked out so easily by a mere girl? It only took her a matter of seconds to incapacitate you. Could you possibly be any more pathetic?"

Lash out! the voice screamed. Use your anger! She clutched to the sliver of rage she'd found buried beneath the haze. It slid through her body like a stream of magma eager to be freed, rousing the urges and impulses she'd just barely been able to suppress before.

"I mean, really," the vampire drawled on almost unintelligibly. "Look at her." His hands slid from her waist to her shoulders, holding her out from his body to let her hang lifelessly in the air before him, feet dangling inches above the floor. "How could you allow someone so easily overcome to so easily overcome you?"

Her senses jolted to life all at once, eyes snapping fully open and limbs reviving. She swung her foot back and into Caesar's groin, following the first impulse her mind registered. His fingers slipped from her shoulders, and he toppled to the floor with a growl of pain. She landed on her feet, but staggered forward until she nearly fell over again, her mind still in a bit of a haze from the lingering pheromones.

"That's how," Samuel remarked dryly, and made no move to interfere.

Torryn turned to face the men, leaning heavily against the wall to keep from tipping over. "I should..." She paused and swallowed back the numbness that made her words sloppy. "I should kill you right now."

Caesar cackled darkly from where he lay curled into a ball on the floor. "Try it, girl. I dare you." A fresh wave of pheromones entered the air. She felt them spilling into her, beginning to dull the slowly sharpening edges of her mind once more, and she laughed, the sound airy but sincere. He was afraid of her. He wouldn't be trying to put her under again if he wasn't.

"Maybe I will," she said, her words slurring and just barely more intelligible than his own, as she began to crawl along the wall toward the kitchen, clinging to her still-simmering rage to keep her moving. He was before her in a heartbeat, however, all signs of pain gone from his face. His smile was crooked now, though, to match his oddly hanging jaw, and that gave her a hint of sick satisfaction.

"Don't toy with me," he told her, and she grinned. "Don't act like you're anything more than a weak human with a bit of special blood flowing through your veins."

"You've got a little something right here," she said, pointing to the corner of her mouth as she watched a glob of drool begin to roll down from the corner of his. He backhanded her so hard that the other side of her face banged against the wall, leaving her with a debilitating ringing in her ear and a serious case of disorientation.

"You're really going to make me hurt you, aren't you?" he drawled – or, rather, drooled.

There was a commotion behind Caesar, just a quick and quiet shuffling, and Torryn looked over the man's shoulder to find Samuel unconscious beside the couch. No, not unconscious. Dead. Samuel was dead. Deader than dead. He was a dead undead. His skin had turned the stony gray of a statue, small cracks spreading across his face and arms and neck. It took her a moment to realize that his head was separated from his body, the two lying only millimeters apart. What the hell had happened?

"Samuel?" Caesar said, sounding more aggravated than worried. "Oh, God damn it, Sa-!" His words ended with a bellow at the sharp sting of a knife in his back, and Torryn slipped out from between his body and the wall. The pheromones were beginning to clear, both from the air and from her brain, and her mind was rapidly recovering, though she was still having a bit of trouble moving.

She found Antony behind the man, slipping the bloodied blade of a kitchen knife out of his father's back. His fangs were fully extended, covered in his own blood just as his face was, and his eyes were the pitch-black of his pupils, not a hit of his pale irises showing through. His face was twisted into a terrifying look of rage, lips pulled back from his teeth and brows pulled tightly together in a glare. Was that what she had looked like earlier? She barely had time to wonder.

"Antony?" she whispered, amazed.

Caesar spun, arm already extended to backhand his son, but Antony quickly threw the blade up to guard his face. The tip of it went through the man's palm, and he let out another deep growl of pain. Antony jerked the knife free and promptly plunged it into the undead vampire's chest, right into his heart. Caesar staggered back until his back thumped against the wall, reaching for the knife in his chest, but before he could clutch the handle, his eyes drifted shut. He slid down the wall, body limp, until he was sitting lifelessly on the floor. Antony jerked the knife from his chest and let the bloody blade fall to the floor at his father's feet.

"Antony," she whispered again, staring at him with eyes wide in awe. He wouldn't look at her with those big, black eyes of his, but he took her hand in a painfully tight grip and began to drag her toward the front door.

"We have to go," he said, his voice still dark and gravelly. His steps were jerky and too quick, and he nearly pulled her off balance more than once. He couldn't seem to turn off his vampiric reflexes, couldn't seem to calm down. She frowned.

"Shouldn't we clean up first?" she asked. "What if my mom comes home and sees all of this?"

"No time," he said shortly, twisting the knob and jerking the door open with too much force.

"Where are we going?" she asked as they started across the front porch, the door hanging open behind them.

"A friend's," came the short answer. He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sun as they stepped out from beneath the porch roof, and his footsteps became even quicker.

His hand slipped from hers when they reached the car. "Where?" She tugged the passenger's side door open and frowned over the roof at him. A shiver ran through her when his coal-black eyes met hers for the first time since his mysterious return from unconsciousness.

"Somewhere safe," he reassured her, though his tone was rough and empty, anything but reassuring. He slipped into the car, and she followed suit.

"But where?" she persisted, throwing on her seat belt as he turned the key in the ignition and thrust the car into gear. Her body jerked when he pushed down on the gas pedal too quickly, and a car horn blared behind them as his car flew back into the street. He ignored it, though, just as he ignored her, and threw the car into drive and accelerated forward with that same too-quick pressure on the pedal. "Where, Antony?" she asked again, growing both aggravated and worried by his silence.

"Stop asking questions," he barked, turning his black eyes to her, narrowed in a glare. They lingered on her for only a moment, the barest part of a second, but it was enough to leave her cold, to freeze the words that rose in her throat. She turned her face to the window, though she watched Antony out of the corner of her eye.

What was wrong with him? Had his father pissed him off that badly? Was he just craving blood? Or had his injury...had he...

She turned slowly to look at him, taking in his tight grip on the steering wheel, his rigid posture, his blackened, soulless eyes. "Are you dead?" she whispered, her heart beating a painful rhythm in her chest.

His grip tightened on the steering wheel with a squeak, the harsh scraping of sticky skin against hard plastic, and in a tight, fearful whisper, he said, "I don't know."

She studied him for a moment longer – the fangs curving over his lip, the sticky blood along his jaw, those eyes. Her fingers slid over his atop the steering wheel, and his skin was cold even as it was slick with sweat. She opened her mouth to speak, but there was nothing to say. She turned her attention to the road ahead, and she kept her hand over his, and she tried to slow the rapid thrumming of her heart in her chest.

He couldn't be dead. He just couldn't be.