His Stoic Mask, Her Bleeding Heart

I slipped through the back door of James' mansion with no trouble. It was unlocked, unguarded, and far from any inhabited rooms – at least, as far as I knew. No one seemed to notice my soundless arrival, no matter how obvious one would think it would be. What was going on here?

I jumped at the sound of shouts from the front of the mansion, accompanied by the sounds of brief explosions and squealing tires. Hale and his crew had arrived, and they clearly knew what they were doing. Their distraction allowed me to creep through a few more rooms until I finally reached the basement door, also unlocked and unguarded. This was almost too easy...

Without a sound, I made my way down the stairs, descending into the darkness of the oversized basement. My eyes quickly adjusted to the lack of light, scanning the room swiftly for any signs of movement. Luckily, there were none. I was alone.

"Elyria?" I said softly as I crept further into the basement. "Are you still here?" I nearly jumped again when I heard a loud thud several feet ahead of me, the sound of a body hitting a wall. I noticed that a small room had been built in the corner of the basement, a few thick white walls with a single large window facing the stairs. Through it, I could make out a hint of movement, followed by another thud. I crept closer. "Elyria...?" My eyes widened at what I saw.

A slender, nearly emaciated body was leaning against the thick glass of the window, a baggy white tank top hanging loosely from a set of bony shoulders. The creature's skin shone silver-white even in the darkness of the room, and a pair of deep crimson eyes glowed between strands of neatly curled, blood-red hair. Its lips were the same color, glistening the bright red of fresh blood. A palm hit the window with a softer thud, its perfectly manicured nails long enough to peek over the top of its fingertips. Each clean, delicate feature was just a massive contradiction to whatever this thing was.

"Elyria?" I whispered in disbelief, placing my palm against hers on the glass. Her mouth opened in a shriek I could barely hear through the thick walls, her oversized fangs glinting in the light of her red eyes, and she smacked the window much harder than before. It shook violently beneath my hand, and I took a step back, watching the girl with a frown. I had time to watch her slam her entire body into the glass three more times in quick succession before the sound of rapid footsteps on the basement stairs caught my attention. I spun to face the source of the noise, prepared to fight.

A pair of female vampires appeared, both looking thoroughly confused upon seeing me. "Who are you?" one, the taller of the two, said, her voice heavy with a Russian accent.

"I know him!" the other nearly shouted, her accent purely American and much easier to understand. I recognized her as one of the girls I used to feed from on occasion, Monica Stregel. "He's the one who betrayed Terrence!" I cringed at the memory of that horrid man, the man whose legacy James was trying to relive, but quickly forced the thought from my mind. What he'd done to Elyria, what he'd done to me and so many others, was in the past.

"What are you doing here?" the Russian woman asked, snarling at me as if it were going to scare me off. "No one is supposed to be down here."

"That's too bad," I said with a cruel, cold smile, and lunged at the pair, fangs bared.

I ducked a punch from the Russian, popping back up with a punch of my own. I would have classified it as "gentle" coming from me, but she flew across the room with a stream of blood sailing through the air in her wake. She was out cold before she even hit the floor, blood gushing from her nose. I only noticed this out of the corner of my eye, however, as the other female was already aiming a kick at my stomach.

I caught her foot with ease, sending her into the air with a swift twist of her ankle. She hit the floor with a loud, ungraceful "Oomph," and I knocked her unconscious with a "gentle" kick to the back of her head. I probably should have killed them, but for some odd reason, it just didn't feel right. They were almost in the same position as Elyria, in a way. They likely had no choice but to be here, under James' control.

Without sparing another second for this pointless debate, I rushed to the heavy metal door to the left of the window. Elyria watched me with cold, glowing eyes as I grabbed the handle and prepared to heave with all of my might. Much to my surprise, however, the door swung open with ease, nearly sending me to the floor. It had only been locked to the inside.

"This really is turning out to be much too easy," I muttered to myself as I took a single step into the room. Elyria was on me in a heartbeat, her unnaturally long fangs deep in my throat within seconds.

No wonder she wasn't being guarded and held under lock and key. She was dangerous enough in her own right...

"Elyria," I said in the calmest voice I could muster, my back hitting the wall as she began to chew on my flesh, not satisfied with only sucking my blood. "Elyria," I said again, moving to place my hands on her tiny shoulders. She seized my wrists with inhuman strength, slamming them against the wall to either side of my head. Her bite became much more painful when she actually tore a small chunk of flesh from the side of my neck.

I tried to fight my way out of her grip, writhing against her, but with this insane appetite of hers came an equally insane strength. I couldn't get her to budge an inch, let alone free my hands.

"Come on, Elyria," I growled, gritting my teeth against the pain. If I were human, I probably would have been dead by now. "You have to stop. I need to get you out of here." But did she listen? Of course not. No matter how much I wished for her to understand me, for her to be a rational humanoid being again, she would never stop being the monster she was now. At least, not yet, not through my pleas alone.

"Where is she?!" came an all-too-familiar voice, raised in an annoyed shout. I heard more footsteps, the sounds of someone rapidly descending the stairs. "We need her now!" James stopped dead at the end of the stairs, his mouth falling open in a very uncharacteristic show of surprise. "Eli? What the hell do you think you're doing?!" He started toward me, but stopped once again when Elyria removed herself from my bloodied neck and went for him, nearly dropping to all fours as she sprinted toward him.

I could only watch, stunned, as she tackled him to the ground with the force of a linebacker, not of a half-starved, scrawny girl. "No!" he yelled in a very stern, almost fatherly tone. "Bad, Elyria! Bad!" Her mouth half open, fangs only centimeters from his neck, she stopped, leaning back to cock her head curiously down at him. "Off," was his next command. "Get off of me and go back to your cage." She gazed at him for a moment longer, almost looking as if she were going to listen to him; but of course, that was much too good to be true. She went for his throat again, and he had no choice but to grab her by her shoulders and fling her across the room. She flipped in midair, landing gracefully beside the unconscious Russian woman with a pissed-off snarl.

"How do you usually manage to control her?" I asked James, standing in the doorway of Elyria's "cage" and watching coolly as the vampire got to his feet, brushing off his shirtfront as if it mattered.

"I keep her weak," he told me, though his eyes never left her, even as he pushed a set of dark brown, shaggy bangs out of his face. She was just watching him, her own eyes narrowed in a predatory glare. "Without the proper amount of blood and normal food, she doesn't really have the will to fight us. She only does what she's ordered to do." Here, he glanced over his shoulder at me, not looking very happy at all. "Of course, you've already ruined that for me. She could kill us now."

"Or maybe she'll just kill you," I pointed out, noticing that Elyria was on the move once again, and she wasn't heading toward me. James quickly turned to see what I was smirking at, knocking the girl aside with a powerful, almost entirely instinctual blow. She hit the wall and fell to the floor, unmoving and seemingly unconscious.

"You can't take her back," James said to me, once again keeping his eyes on the monstrous girl slumped against the wall. "Even if I wanted to let her go, you wouldn't be able to handle her. She's much too strong for you."

"There's a way to turn her back," I responded, never losing my calm tone. "I'm sure of it."

James chuckled, a taunting smile spreading across his pale face. "But isn't she so much more fun this way?" he asked, his eyes briefly flicking to me before returning to her again. "You can dress her up like a little doll, and she'll do whatever you tell her to if you handle her properly."

"Have you ever had a real girlfriend?" a feminine voice said from the stairs. I turned to find the black-haired girl Hale had spoken to before I'd left, blood spattered across her smirking face and tight-fitting tank top. "No? I'm not surprised."

"What are you doing down here?" I asked, confused. Hale would never let the werewolves get this involved...

"I came to find you," she told me, her smirk fading into a grim expression. "We're not going to hold out for much longer on the front lawn. We're running out of gas and grenades. If you're going to take her, you need to do it now."

A sudden movement to my right caught my attention, and I turned just in time to watch Elyria pounce on James once more. She went for his neck without hesitation, pinning his arms to either side of his head just as she'd done to me; but he was in a much better position than I'd been in, a knee to the stomach knocking her off balance to allow him to wedge a foot in between them. A single kick had her rolling across the floor, right into my legs.

I staggered back, but quickly caught myself. Before she could recover – or perhaps as she recovered, seeing as she was already lurching to her feet – I did to her what I'd done to the Russian woman. A quick kick to the head had her crumpling to the floor at my feet, out cold and hopefully with as little damage to her head as possible. I picked her up and tossed her over my shoulder rather carelessly, but what more could I do? She was bound to wake up at any given moment, and we needed to hurry out of here, anyway.

"You can't take her," James growled, already on his feet and making his way toward me. "We need her to win this war!" He was forced to stop, however, when he felt my werewolf companion's foot heading for his back. He spun to block the attack, attempting to respond with a punch of his own. She dodged his fist skillfully, bringing a knee up to his stomach. I never got to see whether she managed to land the blow or not, as I was already running up the stairs with Elyria.

The blood loss didn't hit me until I reached the top of the stairs and started for the back door, finding several vampires in my way. Even with my vampire strength and healing, having a hunk of flesh torn from my neck wasn't exactly an easy fix for my body. I was still losing blood that I would need to replenish by drinking from someone else, and the more I moved, the more I fought, the more I acted, the weaker I would get until I got that blood. I could only groan as the four vampires standing before me lunged, prepared to attack.

I kicked the one closest to me, sending her into the man behind her. Another male made it much closer, however, landing a punch to my jaw before I had the chance to react. He blocked a punch I aimed at his stomach, twisting my arm and nearly making me drop Elyria. I kicked backward frantically, managing to land a less-than-manly blow between the legs. He staggered back, temporarily incapacitated, and a woman came at me from the side.

I dodged several attempted punches, only to end up caught off-guard by the first woman, who landed a kick to my stomach that knocked me back into the wall, right along with Elyria's head. I didn't have time to worry about her, however, as the two women attacked once more, both men following closely behind.

Punches, kicks, bites, anything imaginable, all in a jumbled mess around me. I managed to half block some of them, but I felt fangs grazing my arms, a set even coming close to my neck. A foot slammed into my stomach, followed swiftly by several punches to the face. My vision was beginning to dim, a result of the combination of blood loss and too much stress upon my body. With what little strength I had left, I lashed out.

I threw myself at the nearest female, tearing into her neck mercilessly with my fangs. I tore her throat clean out just as one of the males gave me a rough shove, attempting to force me away from her. Of course, it was too late, so I just turned my attention to him. Another kick that I wasn't proud of sent him to his knees, yet another blow, this one to his face, knocking him to the floor, hopefully unconscious.

The only remaining female bit into my neck, latching onto me as if that were the only thing she could think of to do. I responded in kind, my fangs sinking into her flesh, though I didn't stop at a bite like she had. I did to her what Elyria had done to me, ripping out chunks of flesh until she released me and stumbled back with a cry, leaving room for the final man.

His teeth found my neck just as the woman's had, though he obviously planned to go further, mimicking my brutal actions. He managed to tear a single chunk of skin from the previously uninjured side of my neck, but that was all I allowed him to have. A rough shove knocked him back a step, and the hardest punch I could throw sent him to the floor with the rest of his comrades. Without looking for any other vampires, I took off toward the back door at a dead run.

I had no recollection of what happened after that. I was acting on pure instinct, and I swore I was half dead...