To Bleed for Him

"Give her a chance to explain why she's here.
She will interfere with all that we are.
Maybe her fear is a sign she's for real.
Her fear is too late; she is to blame."
- After Forever

Antony paced in the hallway, glad for the thicker curtains that now covered the windows to either side of the front door as they barely shifted in the heavy breeze from his too-quick passing. He wanted nothing more than to burst through that door, hop into his car, and flee into the low sun of the late afternoon, but he couldn't. Never again. He was starting to forget what the sun even looked like.

What am I going to say to her? he wondered when a memory of Torryn's smiling face in the sunlight ghosted through his mind, and he began to pace faster. Tell her the truth? Pretend nothing happened? But Becca had been waiting right outside his door when he'd opened it. There wasn't a doubt in his mind that she'd heard everything. And he'd already decided that he wasn't going to be a scumbag about this, not any more than he already had. She deserved to know what had happened.

And how will she handle it? He hoped she'd understand that he'd just been doing what nature had intended, that he needed more than what she could offer. But if she didn't… "Lord help me," he muttered as the sound of popping gravel reached his ears along with the soft whine of a car's engine, quickly cut off.

She was home.

He hurried into the kitchen, far out of reach of the sunlight that spilled through the door a moment later. His eyes narrowed against it, but they shot wide open when Torryn stepped into the hall. "Torryn!" he exclaimed, rushing forward and just barely managing to stop himself at the edge of the light's long presence upon the floor. He took in the sight of her bruised jaw, the dried blood on her bottom lip, the blood spattered across her arms and her face and her clothes, her…bloodied hunting knife? He wanted to reach for her, to pull her to him, but she only looked at him with hard eyes, dead-center in the rectangle of sunlight.

Was she staying out of reach on purpose?

"Torryn," he said again, more calmly now, "what the hell happened?" His mind flashed to Skylar, the weak, pathetic human she'd gone to meet, and his mood darkened abruptly. He opened his mouth to speak, but faltered when her mother appeared in the doorway behind her, a bulging black duffel bag in either hand. What the…?

"He's an undead?" the woman remarked dryly, eyeing him from the threshold. "That's new."

"Yeah," Torryn responded, her voice empty of emotion but for the barest tremble. "I'm still getting used to it myself." She stayed at the center of the sun stream as her mother took a step deeper into the house, and Antony searched her face desperately, trying to find any hint of emotion, of fear or anger, anything beneath the crusty blood. But there was nothing — not until he met and held her eyes. The silver sheen that he'd only just noticed across her irises shifted to a duller gray, and they suddenly shone with unshed tears.

"Becca!" he called, shifting forward only an inch, his toes at the very edge of the pool of sunlight. "Becca, do you have a second?"

The top step creaked softly, followed by her dainty steps descending the stairs. "What do you need?" she asked as she came to a stop halfway down the stairway, her nose wrinkling at the light that stretched along the floor. Wet blood glistened at him from the back of her hand, resting on the railing.

"Would you do me a favor and show Torryn's mom to one of the open guest rooms?"

Only then did she notice the woman waiting beside the open front door, and she forced a tight-lipped smile. "I let Coral and Slink borrow the other two guest rooms. Is it all right if I take her to your parents' old room?"

His fangs dug into the inside of his lip as he gritted his teeth. She could've at least told him that she was letting two underlings sleep in his house. Quickly remembering Torryn's crumbling facade, he loosened his jaw and gave a short nod. "That'll be just fine, thanks."

"If you'll follow me, please," Becca said with a graceful, sweeping gesture up the stairs, and Torryn's mother followed her to the second floor without more than a final glance his way.

Torryn was on top of him suddenly, knocking him a foot back from the sunlight, her hold on him tight as her scent washed over him — the heady scents of blood, fear, and an iron resolve. "Thank you," she whispered, and he felt the chill of her newfound blade seeping through the thin fabric of his T-shirt, pressed flush against his back beneath her eager fingers, "for letting her stay here."

"How long will she need to stay?" he asked in a murmur, gently returning her embrace. His hand landed on a massive sticky spot, and when he peered at it over her shoulder, he found his palm covered in crimson. "Torryn, you're hurt," he said, alarmed, as he jerked back from her. He reached for the hem of her shirt, but her fingers around his wrist pulled him to a stop.

"I was stabbed," she said softly, and when he met her eyes, he found that her tears were long gone. She laughed lightly and rolled her eyes, dropping them to his blood-covered hand, still held tightly in hers. "And punched, kicked, thrown around. The usual, really. It's not a big deal."

"Why?" he asked lowly, an all-too-familiar heat rolling through him. He found his thumb gliding along her bloodied lower lip suddenly, gingerly tracing the cut there, his fingers just barely brushing against her bruised and swollen jaw. He watched himself through red-tinted vision and growled, "Who did this to you?"

She caught his wrist with her free hand, the hilt of her knife pressing into the back of his hand, but she didn't pull him away. "I know where my dad is, Antony," she said softly, excitement warming her skin beneath his fingertips. It was a spice upon the air, an overpowering cinnamon that all but pushed the lingering scent of fear from his nostrils. "My mother had to bring a horde of living vampires down upon us for me to get the information, but I know. I'm going to get him now."

"No, you're not," he said shortly, and she pursed her lips. "We'll put together a team later and go get him tonight, but for now, you need to rest." He tried to use his captured hands to give her a gentle nudge toward the stairs, but she didn't budge an inch, merely throwing his hands out of her grip.

"I'm going whether I have your permission or not," she snapped.

He wiped his bloodied hand on the leg of his jeans and glared. "You've been stabbed, Torryn. Punched, kicked, and thrown, too, you tell me. You need to recuperate before rushing into battle, and you're not rushing off alone."

"I killed them all, Antony," she said, nearly yelling now, as she gestured wildly to some invisible point behind her. "Five of them. I fought their pheromones — three of them at once, even. I fought through being stabbed. I fought through it all, and you want me to sit pretty while you gather a bunch of support I don't want or need!" His eyes widened, his anger momentarily halted, but she barreled on before he could speak. "Do you see this knife, Antony?" she said, holding the blade before his face, and he leaned back to keep his eyes on it. "Do you fucking see it? This is the knife a woman stabbed me with. Some of the blood on that blade is mine. I fought the pain, and the blood loss, and the fucking pheromones, and I used this knife to kill them all. I will not —" Her voice cracked, and she tried again, louder now, gruffer, fueled by a wall of emotion that flooded the air with an intoxication to rival that of even his own pheromones. "I will not let myself be protected anymore. I will not let myself be weak ever again."

Jesus Christ. He was in awe of her, of this warrior woman who fought the pheromones of three vampires at once, who took a knife to the back and used it to kill her tormentors. He knew she was strong — she always had been — but this? What had happened to her?

But he knew the answer. He thought about it whenever he saw her fight. Caleb had happened to her. Caesar had happened to her. Two nameless vampires with enough money to pay for her blood. The Arena.

Her own mother.

"Torryn, just slow down," he pleaded, but when he reached for her, she jerked backward, into the safety of the sunlight. "Please, Torryn. Please."

"You don't think I can take care of myself," she whispered darkly, the knife dangling at her side, trapped in a white-knuckled grip. "You don't believe in me."

"It's not that." He tried to take a step forward, but his bare toes found the sunlight, and he leaped back with a hiss.

"Antony?" came a gentle voice. "What's all the yelling about?" He spun toward the voice, and his eyes widened.

Alexis. No.

-?-

Torryn boldly met the puzzled gaze of the woman who gawked at her from the top of the stairs. She was tall, a bit plumper and tanner than any of the women she'd seen here before, and utterly unfamiliar. A new human? she guessed, looking the girl over. Why? But when her eyes dropped to the thick bandage covering one side of her throat, to the blood that stained her once-pretty top, to the drunken confusion that clouded her dark eyes, she knew.

She knew.

"Is this her?" the girl asked as she started slowly, carefully, down the stairs with the help of the railing, and Torryn turned to look at Antony's horror-stricken expression, emotions cascading through her like the debris carried by a waterfall, her eyes narrowed but her mouth hanging open. "Is this that girlfriend I've been hearing so much about?"

"Now's not a good time," the vampire said softly, but the girl was already at the bottom of the stairs, only feet away from Torryn.

"Have you explained the situation to her yet?" the human asked, glancing at him. "Have you told her that all of this was as much for her as it was for you?"

"Did you fuck her, too?" Torryn asked dryly. She couldn't believe this. She just couldn't. He wouldn't do this to her. He wouldn't…

His eyes snapped to her, already begging for forgiveness. "No, of course not," he said quickly — too quickly, if you asked her. "It's nothing like that."

"I offered, but he wanted to be faithful," the girl said calmly, as if she wasn't already picking her way through a field covered in land mines. "He only took my blood, and only because he needed to. He needs his strength, you see," she said, nodding sagely.

"I just fed him last night," Torryn snapped, clenching her fists so tightly that blood was beginning to well up in the crooks of her curled fingers. How could she speak to her like that? How could this bimbo talk down to her?! "He doesn't need you."

"Well, he certainly needs more than you," the human drawled. "He was wasting away when I got here."

Torryn was suddenly before the girl, ramming her against the wall with a forearm to the throat. The girl coughed, choking and wide eyed, but Torryn only leaned in close and snarled, "He was fine. He didn't need you, he doesn't need you, and he will never need you."

"You didn't tell me she was crazy," the girl rasped out, and Torryn pressed her arm harder against her throat. Warmth blossomed along her arm — the human's blood leaking through the bandage, she guessed. There's a lot more where that came from, she thought darkly.

She held the knife in front of the girl's face, even the hilt bloody now that she'd ripped her own palms open. "I'm sorry," she said lowly. "Do you want to repeat what you just said? I don't think I heard you quite right."

"Torryn, stop," Antony said, his skin like ice against hers as he gripped her bare arms and pulled her away from the human with a rough jerk. She hadn't even realized she'd left the sunlight. "She's right," he went on as he gently turned her to face him, his hands gripping her upper arms, subtly holding her in place. There was panic in his eyes, she noticed, a frown furrowing his brow as he gazed deeply into her eyes, pleading. "I'm a master vampire, Torryn," he said softly. "I need more blood than you can afford to give."

She knocked his hands from her hard enough to send him back a step. "Bullshit! Bull-fucking-shit! Did that bimbo feed you that steaming pile of crap?" she barked, gesturing back at the girl with a sloppy wave of her hand. "Or do you just think I'm too weak to do everything, even take care of the love of my Goddamn life?"

His eyes widened just a hair. "Do you mean that?"

Her jaw clenched until her teeth hurt, and for a moment, she was silent. "I don't know anymore," she whispered, hurt finally creating the smallest crack in her anger-driven defenses.

"But you know that I needed it," he said softly, pleadingly, his voice cracking. A lot of emotion for an undead. "You know that I can't take enough from you without hurting you."

"You can," she all but growled, dropping her glare to the smear of crimson along his thigh — her blood. Not enough for him. "I'm a lot stronger than you seem to think I am." She met his eyes, jaw tight. "And really, did you have to fall on the first hussy to walk through the door while I was out fighting for my life? Couldn't we have at least talked about it first?"

"This isn't what I wanted to happen," he said quickly, but she was already pushing past him, heading for the door.

"Yeah," she said flatly, her eyes focused on the door — on freedom from his painful presence, from the constant reminder of what he'd done to her, the pain he'd knowingly caused. Is this what Skylar had felt like? Is this what she had done to him? Is this what kind of monster she was? "It never is, is it?"

He caught her wrist just before she set foot in the sunlight, spinning her to face him with a too-rough jerk. The panic in his eyes had risen to a fever pitch, and she wasn't sure he quite knew what he was doing anymore. "Don't go," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "Please, don't leave. Don't go after your father. Not right now. Not while you're still injured. Please."

She frowned, shaking her head slowly in disbelief. "You really have no faith in me, don't you?" she murmured, then jerked her arm free with some effort and walked quickly into the rectangle of light.

She watched out of the corner of her eye as he reached for her again, desperately, but he quickly drew his smoking, lightly bubbling arm back into the safety of the shadows. "Please, Torryn! Don't do this!" She was right there, right in the doorway. He could reach out to touch her, she was so close, but though only feet of air separated them, they were forever distant — miles, continents, worlds apart. "Please!" he screamed. "Baby, please!"

But she couldn't bring herself to look back at him, not as tears blurred her vision, not as she braced herself with a palm against the door frame as the world threatened to give way beneath her feet. A smear of blood on the wood was all that she gave him in parting, and the sun even separated him from that.

"You're going to get yourself killed!" he screamed into the still evening. "Come back! Please!"

"Please let this be a nightmare," she whispered even as his wailing cries reached her through her closed car door, even over the sound of the engine as it rumbled to life. "Please, God, let me wake up."

"Torryn, please!"

Please.