His Stoic Mask, Her Bleeding Heart

I felt warm breath on my cheek. When I sniffed lightly, carefully attempting to figure out who I was dealing with and where I was, I detected the slightest scent of blood. But luckily, with that scent came the vague scent of dog, signifying that I was in friendly company...hopefully.

"I see you're awake," came a soft, raspy voice, which I quickly recognized as that of Hale's girl, the one who had come to my rescue in the basement. Slowly, I opened my eyes and turned to look up at her.

"Are you all right?" I asked the moment I saw her face. Down her left cheek was a pair of deep gashes that could only have come from a set of fangs, and her right cheek sported a small, dark bruise. If just her face had sustained that much damage, I couldn't imagine what the rest of her body looked like.

She laughed lightly, the sound gravelly and almost painful to hear. "Yeah, I'm fine. Still conscious, unlike a certain someone," she teased with a playful little wink.

She was an odd one, I decided, at a loss for words. Her kind was foreign to me. Optimistic, humorous, seemingly carefree...She almost reminded me of Kyrianna, but she was actually...well...useful.

"Er...Well...that's good," I finally said, unable to think of anything more meaningful to say. Before she could say something else to puzzle me, I asked, "Where's Elyria? Did she make it back?" I was curious as to how I had made it here, where I was, what had happened while I was out, but Elyria's safety was a much more pressing matter at the moment.

The girl, Bethany, nodded, though her smile didn't fade at the change of subject. "Of course. She was our top priority, after all. You're actually lying in her room, if you haven't noticed."

Actually, I hadn't noticed. Even now, as I looked around the dimly lit space, I could barely tell. It had stopped feeling like Elyria's room long ago. Her clothes weren't lying around anymore, the sheets weren't suspiciously bloodstained, and her scent had completely vanished from everything, even the pillows. This was Elyria's room, but it wasn't.

"Where is she, then?" I asked, turning my gaze back to the werewolf. "Shouldn't she be the one in here instead of me?"

"She's not the one that had a chunk of skin torn out of her throat, is she?" the girl countered. "And she's also not the one who nearly died during her rescue, now, is she?"

"But she-" A slender finger to my lips hushed me.

"She's fine where she is. Kyrianna needed more space to work that spell or ritual or...whatever it is she's doing." For the first time, a frown interrupted her normally smiling expression. "I don't really understand what's going on."

I sat up quickly, a shock of excitement surging through me. "Did she figure out how to turn her back?" I asked, already leaping off of the bed and starting for the door.

"I guess so," she answered, getting to her feet behind me. She didn't follow me into the hall, the use of strange magics likely making her uncomfortable, so I was alone when I entered the living room, alone when I received the shock of my life.

Elyria stood by one of the floor-to-ceiling windows to one side of the living room, her back to the view of the sparkling cityscape below. Blood spatters decorated the front of her baggy white tank top, streaks of the same red creating dark lines on her chin, beneath a pair of bloody lips. She was leaning against the window, crimson eyes widened in fright, and the tips of her perfectly manicured nails were pressing into the glass as if she wished she could clutch onto it. I noticed that her chest was rapidly rising and falling in a terrified pant to match her terrified eyes.

What the hell is going on?

When I followed her gaze, I found Kyrianna lying on the floor behind the couch, blood rushing from the various gashes along her neck and right arm. She was conscious, slowly blinking at Elyria. In spite of her heavy bleeding, she seemed perfectly calm.

Hale stood beside the glass-topped table we were all so very fond of, the circle of snow-white candles atop the table creating eerie shadows across his worried face. His eyes darted from Elyria to me, as if he were asking what he should do, but they quickly moved back the red-eyed woman when she moved.

Elyria slid down the window, her mouth falling open as her gasps for breath grew more labored. Her oversized fangs were coated in the same red that colored her lips, but they were very slowly shrinking, I noticed. Had Kyrianna fixed her? Was she going to become what she used to be?

Kyrianna reached her bloodied arm out toward the gasping woman, silent and still utterly calm. Her eyes were locked with Elyria's, the glowing pink oddly inviting.

"Elyria," she whispered after a moment, her arm falling to the floor when she was unable to hold it up anymore. "Elyria..." Her eyes drifted shut, her head lolling to one side on the floor, and Elyria toppled onto her side, her eyes closed as well.

The room was still for a moment, only Elyria's ragged breathing breaking the near-silence. Then, finally, Hale spoke.

"Did it work?" he asked, his whisper loud in such calm. His eyes once again wandered to me in question, then back to Elyria's limp body. "Is she...going to be normal again?"

"Shouldn't we be more worried about Kyrianna?" Bethany asked from behind me, then quickly rushed by, forcing me to one side of the doorway. She was on her knees at the girl's side in a heartbeat, checking for a pulse as she took in the many bite marks that adorned her body. She nodded to herself and rolled Kyrianna carefully onto her back. "Can one of you bring me some cleaning supplies and bandages?" she asked, looking at Hale for a moment, then at me.

Without a word, I nodded and headed toward the bathroom. But still, my concern wasn't my current task nor all of the curiosities that ran through my mind. I was focused wholeheartedly on Elyria, lying unconscious and bloody by the window.

Was she okay? Was she normal? Was she going to try to kill us all when she awoke?

Only time would tell.

-

It was like a silent vigil, the three of us standing around Elyria's bed as we were, watching but not speaking. Kyrianna and Elyria lay side by side atop the black satin sheets, their silver-white skin clear of blood. Their clothes were still covered, however; we hadn't wanted to strip them down. It wasn't like the blood was hurting them.

Kyrianna was the first to stir, moving her bandaged arm with a wince. Her eyes slowly opened, finding me almost immediately. "What happened?" she asked in a panic, sitting bolt upright. She winced again, pain likely shooting through her neck, but she wouldn't be deterred. "Is Elyria normal again? Did it work?"

Helplessly, I shrugged, gesturing to the limp, emaciated body that lay beside the girl. She turned to Elyria, and her panicked expression turned stoic, though she couldn't hide the worry in her eyes. Slowly, carefully, but as if no one was watching, she curled up on her side and let her cheek rest lightly against her unconscious companion's arm. Her glowing eyes cast a pinkish light across Elyria's skin, and her eyes wouldn't leave the woman's still, hollow-cheeked face.

"Kyrianna, she might not-" Hale began, but she stopped him.

"She might not be safe. I know," she told him, still refusing to take her eyes off of Elyria's face. "If she kills me, she kills me. It's no big deal, really." No sooner had she said that than a hand closed around her throat, a pair of blood-red eyes casting a harsh glow across the girl's innocent face. Kyrianna gasped, but before she could even begin to struggle, Elyria released her and, with a cry like a wolf's howl, fell to the floor.

She tried to catch herself on the bedside table, but she only managed to knock it onto its side, sending a digital clock and an empty glass to the floor. With another howl, she crawled forward, past the overturned table. She convulsed suddenly, slamming into the wall as she began to writhe helplessly on the floor.

I stepped toward her, but Kyrianna held a hand up to stop me without even bothering to look in my direction. Her eyes were wide and focused on the pained beast on the floor, hope apparent in her expression. This must have been a good sign.

Elyria managed to get into a rigid sitting position, only to slam her back into the wall repeatedly with various little whines and whimpers. Her fists were clenched so tightly that I could see blood dripping down her wrists from where her nails dug into her palms. Her eyes, distant and unfocused, had rolled up toward the ceiling. One was amethyst now, though. I could see it between each flutter of her eyelids.

She was coming back to us.

"Elyria?" I asked softly, and Bethany snatched my hand with a fearful gasp when I received a vicious snarl in return. Her eyes, like Kyrianna's, were wide and focused solely on the twitching girl, though hers were filled with terror instead of a slowly growing joy.

Elyria slammed back into the wall hard enough to rattle a couple of picture frames, then stilled, her eyes drifting shut with another flutter of her lids. Her fists relaxed into open hands, and she sagged lifelessly against the wall.

When her eyes finally opened again, after a long, tense moment, they both glowed a soft amethyst instead of harsh crimson. They were sharp, alert, entirely focused, and the predatory rage that had simmered in them before was no longer anywhere to be found. They held fear, yes, and they held a confusion that wasn't characteristic of the Elyria we'd all known before; but this wasn't quite the Elyria we'd known before, now, was it? It was close, though. So close that I felt as if I could just take her in my arms and weep forever.

Oddly enough, the first thing she said upon looking at all of us was, "Why is that girl holding your hand, Eli?"

I was hoping for something a little more dramatic – maybe a "Thank you all so much for saving me!" or a "JK, JK. I'm going to kill you all now!" -- but I would settle with that. After all, it was better than the guttural sounds she'd been uttering for a month now.

-

"So, your blood...?" Bethany trailed off, a look of disgust plastered across her face that she hadn't been able to shake for about ten minutes now. Of course, she hadn't exactly been trying, either.

"It forced the vampire blood from her system, so to speak," Kyrianna answered calmly. Under any other circumstances, she would have likely been annoyed by now, but a look of unadulterated joy wouldn't leave her eyes, and her eyes wouldn't leave the source of her joy.

Elyria sat next to the girl on the couch, a bag of barbecue-flavored chips to one side of her, a package of chocolate chip cookies to the other, and a plate of two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on her lap. She would've looked childish, eating such things, but the look to her glowing eyes was anything but childlike. It was a level of contemplation, of relief, of confusion and worry that I never would have thought such an emotionless girl could achieve.

"If one is bitten by a vampire, then drinks their blood, they turn into a vampire. Since that's essentially what happened to Elyria, I thought that a bit of necromancer blood might reverse the effects," Kyrianna explained after pausing to watch Elyria take a slow, thoughtful bite of a sandwich.

"And that was it?" Bethany asked, still unable to remove the disgust from her expression. "She just...drank your blood, and poof, normal Elyria?"

"Well, there was a ritual to go along with it," Kyrianna went on, her expression turning slightly confused when Elyria tugged at the collar of her clean black T-shirt and peered into the resulting gap. "I found it in one of Elyria's old spell books. It was originally meant to turn freshly infected werewolves back into humans, but I thought Elyria's case was similar enough. That was what all the candles and herbs were for," she added with a gesture toward the table, where a pile of green and red plants lay in the middle of the circle of extinguished candles.

"If I eat a lot," Elyria began, and all eyes turned to her, "do you think I'll get my boobs back?" She let go of her shirt and glanced around the group, a hint of curiosity to her now otherwise vacant eyes.

That was the second full sentence she'd spoken since she'd been brought back to us. While I couldn't deny that the loss of her chest was saddening – she'd had D-cups before, and now she barely had B's – it bothered me that she was only saying such trivial things. Shouldn't she be thanking us? Telling us what it was like to be a little monster? Expressing some form of emotion?

But that just wasn't Elyria's way. I knew that. We all did. But still...

"You'll probably just get fat," Bethany answered, her expression finally losing its disgust.

Elyria shrugged. "I never got fat before. I'll just keep getting all of the exercise I used to." At that, I cringed. Her form of "exercise" had been rough sex with strangers, usually for cash. That didn't exactly sound like a good course of action to me.

"Elyria..." I said simply, a hint of pleading to my tone.

"Did you really think things were going to change, Eli?" she snapped, a harshness to her tone that I had never heard before. It reminded me vaguely of the growls and the roars of rage that she had been limited to uttering only minutes ago. "Did you really think that I was going to come back and we were all going to live happily ever after?" I noticed that her canine teeth were still a hair sharper than they should have been. "Together? Forever?"

"Elyria, you need to-" Bethany started in a stern, angry tone, but Elyria cut her off with a glare the likes of which none of us had ever seen before.

"Thank you for your help," she began in a terse, cold tone, "but I don't really think you're needed here anymore." For a moment, Bethany looked shocked, but her anger quickly returned.

"Ungrateful bitch," she hissed, taking a threatening step toward the purple-eyed necromancer. Elyria stood, tossing the plate of sandwiches onto the table with a clank and a scatter of candles. Even as scrawny and weak-looking as she was, she wasn't about to let a werewolf intimidate her.

"Ladies," Hale said loudly, stepping forward with his hands up, prepared to hold them both back if it came down to it. "Ladies, you both need to calm down. None of us need this right now. Why don't we all just sit down and-"

Elyria spun and started toward the door without another word, the loose fabric of what was once a tight-fitting black skirt swishing around her thighs. She slipped on a pair of white tennis shoes that lay by the door, covered in spatters of blood but wearable nonetheless, and jerked the door open.

"Elyria!" Kyrianna called, rushing to her feet; but Elyria didn't even so much as acknowledge the girl. With another swish of her skirt, she left, the door slamming shut behind her.

Her tiny hands, her tiny arms, her tiny legs flashed through my mind, and I started after her. She was much too weak to be out on her own, especially this late at night, no matter what kind of show she had put on for the rest of us.

I had to protect her, protect her like I should have been protecting her all along, protect her like I should have been protecting her before I'd let her get turned...