His Stoic Mask, Her Bleeding Heart

A knock at the door jerked Elyria from her half-sleep upon the couch. Kyrianna was out getting groceries, having left Elyria alone in the apartment to get some more rest. A glance at the sliver of window that peeked out from between a pair of dark curtains told her that it was still early evening, just after sunset. Kyrianna had left only half an hour ago.

Elyria got to her feet and headed toward the door. She paused for a moment before opening it slowly, cautiously, as if she expected some monster to be waiting for her on the other side – or maybe even Eli.

The tall man before her wasn't a monster or Eli, however. Dark, shaggy black hair, equally dark gray eyes, pale white skin, and a look of arrogance on his face, it was just Brandon. She hadn't fed him for quite some time, even before her transformation. She hadn't even known whether he was alive – well, as alive as a vampire could be – or dead until just now.

Surprised, she said, "Brandon, what are you doing here?"

"News of your return has spread quickly," he responded, no particular emotion to his handsome face as he looked her over. "I just wanted to see whether it was true or not." He pushed past her and into the apartment, and she moved aside as the rough cloth of his black T-shirt brushed her shoulder. It was odd seeing him in a shirt, not to mention a bit disappointing.

"Well, now you know. What else do you want?" she asked, studying him as she closed and locked the door. He looked the same as always, the dark, tight-fitting fabric of his shirt clinging to his lightly muscled torso and a sexily cold look to his eye.

"I haven't tasted your blood in nearly two months," he pointed out, turning to face her with his arms crossed. "What do you think I want?"

"Really?" she asked with a tired sigh. "I've only been back for a matter of days, and you already want to feed from me?"

He shrugged, the coldness not leaving his expression. "What better way to welcome you back to your old life?"

Again, she sighed, but she had nothing else with which to argue. "Fine. But blood is all you're getting from me. I haven't been feeling particularly sexy lately." She turned and led the way to her bedroom, and Brandon followed without protest. The moment they entered the room, the vampire nearly tackled her onto the bed with a soft growl, his fangs cleanly piercing her flesh.

She let out a quiet groan, her hands sliding beneath his shirt to rest upon the cool skin of his lower back. Some part of her had missed this...

Brandon finished after only a couple of minutes, and he pulled away from her neck with a deep, throaty rumble that sounded almost like a purr. His eyes were half-closed as he gazed down at her, staring into her tranquil amethyst eyes.

"Now I remember why I missed you so much," he murmured, then rolled off of her to lie on the bed beside her. His legs hung off of the bed, his feet resting on the floor, but he seemed perfectly content with his current position.

"You missed me?" she asked in a taunting tone, looking over at him as she began to gingerly touch her neck where she'd been bitten. The holes were surprisingly small and neat, not Brandon's style at all, but she wasn't complaining.

"Well, not you so much as your blood," the vampire replied, his half-lidded eyes turning to her for a moment before drifting completely shut. "To be honest, I didn't have much of a reason to miss you yourself. We're not exactly 'friends' or anything."

"Wow," she remarked dryly, a sneer shifting her delicate features. "Aren't you sweet."

He shrugged. "I don't like to play with my food."

She wanted to make some indignant, bitchy remark, but she was too tired for that. Instead, she merely sighed and moved on to a much more interesting subject. "What does everyone think happened to me?"

Again, the male shrugged. "Most of us aren't really sure. We know that James had something to do with it, but not much more than that. There are a few vampires who think you turned into some half-vampire creature or something, but we don't really believe them."

Silly, silly vampires. Can't even see the truth when it's right in front of you. But she had no desire to change that, considering she wasn't exactly proud of what had happened to her. She went on with her questioning. "Who talks about me?" she asked, rolling onto her side and propping herself up on her elbow. "You had to have heard this from several people to know that other views of the situation exist."

"Those who have fed from you frequently discuss it. They got their information from James' cohorts and even from a few werewolves." He opened his eyes and looked up at her, the look of a sated vampire still heavy in those gray depths. "You also make regular appearances in conversations about Terrence."

She grimaced upon hearing the name. She hadn't thought of him in a long, long time. The man who abused her, took advantage of her, tortured her by killing something dear to her, who met his own end while trying to kill her...No, she didn't want to think of him.

"Now that James is dead," she began, attempting to steer the conversation from Terrence and anything related to him, "who do you think will take over as ruler of the vampires?"

He shrugged yet again and sat up, slowly turning to look down at her. "I have no idea. Terrence and James were the only prominent vampires I knew of. You would have to ask someone more involved in that particular empire."

She nodded, having expected such an answer. Even she wasn't sure who else had the power and charisma to take over, and she'd spent years observing the inner workings of Terrence's empire. Only time would tell her the identity of the new leader and, in turn, whether she would once again find herself in danger.

"Thank you for the blood," Brandon said as he got to his feet, and Elyria realized that she'd gotten lost in thought. He pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans, and the girl offered him a small, tired smile.

"No problem," she told him, watching as he counted out several twenty-dollar bills. "Feel free to call on me any time. I don't plan to disappear again."

He nodded, handing her what amounted to $600 in twenties. "Will do." He then paused, merely staring at her for a moment. "You look good," he said finally, sincerity entering his previously stoic gaze. "Much better than I think you feel." Before she could thank him, he left the room. She heard the front door close a second later, and she knew she was alone – just like old times.

She sat up on the edge of her bed and sighed, glancing at the clock. Only another half hour until Kyrianna finally returned with groceries...

-?-

I raised my hand to knock but let it fall to my side after a short pause. Elyria was already terribly angry with me, and after seeing Brandon exiting her apartment building, I wasn't in too great of a mood myself.

How could she still be doing this? I wondered as a soft growl slipped from my throat. After all that she's been through, how can she still be playing this game? That's all it was: a game. She wouldn't admit it, but she only did all of this because of the rush it offered her, the thrill. She didn't need the money; she never had. It was the adrenaline that she was after.

Anger continued to swell within me at the thought of it, of her blood being devoured by another just because it felt good, and I couldn't quell it. Using it to my advantage, I raised my hand once more and finally knocked on the door.

There was only silence for a moment, and my anger slowed as I began to worry that Brandon had just left her for dead; but I soon heard the splashing of water from the kitchen sink, and the door opened a second later. Elyria stood before me, a wearisome look to her eyes and a wet hand rubbing at the small bite marks on the side of her neck. Her weariness quickly left her upon seeing me, however, quickly replaced by a hard glare.

"What do you want, Eli?" she asked in what could almost have been described as a snarl, her voice harsh to match her narrowed, glowing eyes. "Kyrianna's not here for you to backhand."

"Oh, sorry. Were you expecting someone else who wanted to pay you for your blood?" I snapped back at her, not even bothering to put up my usual cool, calm front. "Here," I went on as I pulled my black leather wallet out of my back pocket, beginning to flip through the bills I had stashed there. "I have a few twenties. Can I have a bite?" The words had barely left my lips when her open-palmed hand slammed into my cheek, jerking my head to the side and leaving the taste of blood in my mouth. Now I remembered why I never crossed her: she slapped harder than my words could sting.

"I've only been normal for a matter of days," she said, rubbing her hand as I turned back to her. A look of blatant shock was plastered upon my pale face, but her glare had vanished to leave her usual emotionless expression. "What's your excuse?"

"You had sex with Kyrianna when you wouldn't even let me touch you, you've been completely denying the existence of our entire relationship since you returned, and you continue to take her side without even listening to me," I told her without missing a beat. "Is that a good enough excuse for you?"

Her eyebrows rose the slightest bit in a show of surprise, but besides that, there was no change to her expression. "You're jealous, then," she remarked. "Jealous because I've been choosing Kyrianna over you and refusing to acknowledge that you and I ever had anything." She paused for a moment, her eyes going to the reddened palm of her silvery hand. "I suppose that is a good enough excuse, yes," she finally admitted, returning her attention to my face, which had finally regained its calm, empty look. She stepped to one side and gestured to the interior of her apartment, silently inviting me inside.

I stepped into the dark space, eying Elyria curiously as I went. "She's been acting oddly since your return," I remarked quietly as she closed the front door, and her glowing eyes lingered on the golden handle. "She obviously doesn't want me anywhere near you, and she's been lying to both of us in an attempt to pit us against one another."

Elyria was silent for a moment, her gaze remaining trained upon the doorknob. When her eyes finally met mine once more, they held an intense emotion that I'd never seen there before, one that I couldn't quite place. "That werewolf girl, Bethany," she began. "Are you interested in her?"

The question took me completely by surprise, but in retrospect, I should have expected it. "Er," I started unintelligibly, unsure as to how to answer. Deciding to be completely honest, I finally admitted, "If it weren't for you, maybe I would be; but as it stands, no, not really."

She merely stared at me for a moment, pinning me with that same intense gaze as before, until she took a step forward and punched me in the stomach so hard that I oh-so-sexily doubled over and said, "Ergh." But barely a second passed before she had a hand on either cheek, pulling my face roughly to hers until our lips met in a delightfully painful crash. I brushed the pain in my abdomen aside with ease as lips parted and tongues began to slide against one another in a bloody, lustful tangle.

I was finally getting what I'd wanted all along. Elyria was acknowledging my existence, my need for her, and remembering what we'd had before. Sure, she'd had to punch me in the stomach to get there in a merciless wave of emotion, but as a vampire by the name of Carl had once said to Terrence, "Bitch be crazy, and damn, is that hot."

As her hands tangled in my copper-colored hair, I guided her backward until she bumped into the nearby end table, knocking a glass vase filled with half-dead roses to the floor. It shattered, but the noise went unnoticed as I lifted Elyria onto the table, the nails of one of her hands digging into the back of my neck as we went. I growled, pleased, and a soft, throaty chuckle escaped her. I began to teasingly kiss and nip my way down her already-bitten neck, my hands sliding up her shirt to feel the smooth, inviting skin beneath, but I'd only just begun to slip my fingers into her bra when the sound of breaking glass once again met my ears, this time through no fault of my own.

"Eli, move!" Elyria shouted just as I'd begun to turn, but it was too late. Even as she reached behind my back in some vain attempt to save me, I felt something pierce my back just to the right of my spine, sending a jolt of pain through my body as the weapon slid in deep. It was withdrawn soon enough, though, and I turned with a grunt to find Kyrianna wielding the top half of a broken jar like a weapon, her lips drawn back in a snarl. With blood and spaghetti sauce dripping from the jar's jagged edges, the girl stabbed at me again; this time, however, I was prepared.

Quickly, I gripped the girl's wrist and jerked her arm toward the wall repeatedly, smashing her hand against it until she finally released the jar. It fell to the floor, and, panicking, she tried to claw at my face with her other hand, the one I wasn't holding. I caught that one, too, though, clasping her wrists tightly together in order to restrain her. Elyria got to her just as she began kicking at me, tugging the girl's small wrists from my grasp even as she drew her hand back in preparation for a blow of some sort. She slapped Kyrianna just as she'd slapped me, and the apartment became completely still.

Kyrianna's jaw had gone slack, hanging open as she stared at Elyria in pure shock. Elyria gazed back at her with no hint of emotion to color her expression but the tightness of her pale lips. I watched the two of them while leaning against the wall and reaching back to touch the deep stab wound with a soft grunt. I never would have suspected that a jar of spaghetti sauce could do so much damage...

Suddenly, Elyria turned from Kyrianna and strode calmly to where a couple of bags of groceries lay forgotten by the door. A couple of boxes of instant mashed potatoes rested amidst the splatter from the broken jar of sauce, which had likely been broken over the door handle, as the deep red of the sauce had left a trail all along the bottom of the door as well. Elyria knelt beside the pool of sauce and picked up the two boxes along with the pair of plastic grocery bags, heading into the kitchen without a word or a glance at Kyrianna or myself.

"Elyria," Kyrianna called the second Elyria had disappeared into the kitchen, rushing to follow her in to the dimly lit space. I followed, too, curious to see what Elyria would do or say to the girl. My back still throbbed in pain, the cold stickiness of my blood clinging annoyingly to my skin. If Elyria didn't put the girl in her place, I surely would.

When Elyria didn't respond to Kyrianna's initial call, instead continuing to put the untainted groceries away in an open cupboard overhead, the pink-eyed necromancer grabbed her wrist and pulled it away from the cupboard. A jar of Spaghetti-O's fell from Elyria's fingers, hit the counter, then fell to the floor to roll to where I stood beside the door. It bumped against my shoe, but I didn't pick it up quite yet, engrossed as I was in the scene already unfolding before me.

Elyria had pinned Kyrianna to the counter almost the instant she'd touched her arm, her body pressed against the smaller girl's and a hand to either side of her slender body. Their noses were nearly touching, and the combination of glowing pink and glowing amethyst was nearly blinding, even from where I stood. Their breasts pressed together in low-cut tops, their lips only centimeters apart; I might have found it pleasantly erotic if I couldn't see murder written all over Elyria's face.

Am I pig for thinking about this? The answer came almost immediately, requiring no debate. Yes, yes, I am.

"You made good use of that jar," Elyria remarked in a low murmur, the emotion slowly draining from her face to leave behind an empty mask much more intimidating than her anger ever could be, "but harming Eli was stupid. It's taking all of my willpower not to rip your intestines out through your belly button right now." She paused, and I noticed that Kyrianna wasn't breathing, though her mouth and eyes were wide open. "I believe you owe him an apology and a bit of assistance cleaning his wound." Here, she finally leaned away, and Kyrianna took a deep breath. "So, go," she said in a normal tone. "Help him."

Elyria turned from the girl, returning to her job of putting the groceries away, and Kyrianna left hurriedly. She slipped past me and out the door, and I followed her down the hallway to the bathroom, leaving the can of Spaghetti-O's forgotten on the kitchen floor.

I noticed that Kyrianna's hands were shaking as she flipped on the light switch and began to rinse her hands. Her entire body, too, was trembling, I realized when she attempted to stand still before the sink. Elyria must have really frightened her; and if that was the case, if she was so easily frightened by the girl, why was she still so interested in pursuing a relationship with her?

"Wooden stakes, right?" she said suddenly, jerking me from my thoughts.

"Excuse me?" I asked, confused.

She turned to me, and the sudden coldness to her expression chilled me to the bone. "A wooden stake through the heart will kill a vampire, right?"

"Actually, no," I told her, doing my best not to let my discomfort show in either my tone or my expression. There was no doubting what she meant to do with such knowledge. "That's just a myth." I offered her an icy smile of my own now. "There are only a handful of ways to kill a vampire, and I doubt that any of them are in your power to complete."

"I don't think so," she said as she turned the water off, quickly drying her hands on the clean white towel beside the sink. Her hands were no longer shaking, I realized, and a cool confidence had replaced the worry and the fear in her face. "I'm sure that I'll be able to find a way to pull off one of those few ways."

"Why are you doing this?" I finally asked when she turned to face me once more. "What reason do you have to kill me? And if you wanted to kill me so badly, why didn't you do it before Elyria's return, when she wasn't around to stop you?"

"I had no reason to kill you before," she answered, smiling calmly up at me. "Now, I see that you're my competition, and the only way I can even compete against you is by killing you."

"Have you lost your mind?" I asked softly, sincerely, gazing intently into her bright pink eyes.

How foolish of me.

I didn't realize until too late that the glow of her eyes was increasing in intensity, signaling the use of her necromantic powers to force her consciousness into my body, right alongside mine. She wasn't particularly skilled at this art, but she managed to squirm her way into my mind even in spite of my struggles against her. My face went slack as she fully took over, and the glow of her eyes dimmed back to a normal level.

She'd won.

"See?" she said with a soft, mocking giggle. "This way, that entire handful of methods for killing a vampire will be open to me." I took a couple of steps forward, coming to a stop in the center of the small bathroom. She began to circle me, laughing softly every now and again, and I could do nothing to stop her. "Now, how shall we do it? Should we sneak past Elyria to go get a tub of holy water to drown you in? Or should we just go right into the kitchen in front of her and get a big knife to chop your head off with? Oh, oh!" She jumped up and down now, finding this thought particularly exciting. "How about I just knock you unconscious until the sun comes up tomorrow morning and have you walk right into the sunrise?"

"How about we just knock out the crazy girl until she comes to her senses?" came Elyria's voice from the doorway behind me, holding a fake cheer that just sounded creepy coming from her.

I turned, once again against my will, to stand shoulder to shoulder with Kyrianna, whose face no longer held that mocking grin. She was serious now, determination mixing with a hint of fear in her expression. "I'm trying to help you," she told Elyria, the sincerity to her tone simply sickening. She genuinely believed that killing me off would be to Elyria's benefit. What the hell had happened to her sanity?

"I highly doubt that," Elyria argued, arms crossed and hip cocked in a typical bitch stance. "Killing Eli isn't going to help either of us, especially me."

Kyrianna could only stare for a moment, wide-eyed in a panic and at a loss for words. I could nearly hear her thoughts of disbelief, of "How could she not believe me?" All she said, however, was, "You don't know that," and nothing more.

I thought this might all have been over now, with Elyria crushing Kyrianna's good-intentioned dreams as she had, but then, I took a step forward, toward Elyria. Another step soon followed. I still had enough control of my face to allow my eyes to widen in shock, though Elyria's expression never changed, and her eyes never left Kyrianna's face.

"You don't know that," the girl said again, now in the whisper of a broken-spirited girl. I took another step forward, and Elyria's cold eyes finally met mine.

Things were about to get serious.