To Bleed for Him

"I'm not the one who's so far away
When I feel the snake bite enter my veins.
Never did I wanna be here again,
And I don't remember why I came."
- Godsmack

Skylar's throat stung as he swallowed, hot and raw, and it had nothing to do with the battle he'd just been through and the $300 he'd won. He kept reliving it in his head, the shouting match with Antony…

"How could you do that to her?!" he roared, and he saw nothing but red for a moment as he whipped his car around a corner and doubled the posted speed limit. "She's done everything she possibly could for you, and you cheated on her?!"

"Like she cheated on you?" the boy snapped defensively, and Skylar felt his chest tighten, emotion taking his heart in an unshakable iron grip. "Yeah, that's exactly what I did. Except, wait! I did it for survival! What a terrible man I am for doing what's required of me."

It was times like this when Skylar wished he was a vampire, just so he could do that nice little growl thing they did. "I get it, dude. I fucking get why you did it. But that's not the fucking problem here, and you know that!"

He expected some scathing retort, but there was only silence, then a soft, tired sigh. "Whatever. I did what I had to, and if no one's willing to forgive me for that, so be it," he said forlornly. "Just find where she is, and get her out of there. I'll be there as soon as the sun sets," he went on, and his voice dropped to the very growl Skylar wished he could mimic, "and I will slaughter everyone who even laid eyes on her." Click.

Skylar grunted to himself, the shiny green sign bearing the words Richland Terrace finally coming into view as he sped along the nearly empty street. "If anything's happened to her, I swear I'll kill him."

-?-

"What are you doing?" she asked, her tone guarded. Maybe if she pretended it didn't bother her, he would stop. Her eyes again darted to the blade that flickered orange and red in the light of the fire at her feet. She was going to need it, wasn't she? She was going to have to try to kill the Lord.

"Repaying the favor," he replied stoically, sinking into one of his fluffy arm chairs and keeping his dull eyes trained on her. He knew she planned to go for the knife — of that there was no doubt in her mind — but he seemed entirely unfazed by the knowledge. She felt her jaw tighten, her teeth grinding together, ire lancing through her being. He didn't think she could take him. She'd taken out six of his own, yet he didn't think she stood a chance.

Oh, you're fucking dead, you bloodsucking prick.

"There isn't a favor to repay," she remarked darkly, keeping her eyes locked on his as she crouched to retrieve her knife — his precious Clara's knife. "You sent a horde of vampires to kidnap me. They harmed my mother and threatened to do the same to me. If you expected anything less than a bloodbath, you're dumber than —"

Air wafted over her, ice cold and reeking of vampire, and he was suddenly crouched before her, at eye level, his eyes narrowed in a dark, dark glare. "I expected you to be easily overpowered, just like your father," he hissed, and she swore she could make out the barest hints of a British accent emerging beneath his words. "I expected you to give in to the threats and urgings of your betters, just like your father." The accent was growing thicker, more noticeable, but she could barely notice it as ice raced down her spine — pheromones were beginning to ease into her. "At the most, I expected you to flee, just as your father did. I expected you to betray your mother, and I expected you to use her as bait — just as I did with your father." The fiery heat of her own indignant anger sprang to life, at war with the pale ice of his chemical control, like tiny fingers reaching into her very core and plucking at her brain stem. It was strong, stronger than anything she'd felt as of late, and visions of Antony's late father, of that son of a bitch Caesar, burst to life and sashayed through her mind — his cold smirk, his cold glare, his cold grip on her very being — whenever he wanted it, for whatever reason he wanted it…even for no reason at all. Her breath caught as she toppled headlong into a heavy haze. The ice was cooling her fire.

"I believe," he went on in an angry British snarl, "that it was very reasonable of me to believe that my darlings would be returning to me. And I believe, now, that it will be perfectly acceptable to repay the favor." The door creaked open, and she could make out the sounds of three pairs of feet as a group of people stumbled and stomped into the room. The Lord rose to his feet, leaving her to stare at the back of his stockinged feet.

She swallowed, hard, and tried to get a hold of herself. Through the fog, she felt her fingertips brushing against the hilt of the fallen knife, and with a focus on her anger, with a focus on indignity after indignity that he'd just lain upon her, she purposely closed her fingers around the handle.

"Ah, Ripley," the vampire drawled in mock pleasantness, his English accent fully forgotten now that he'd regained control of himself. "I'm glad you've come."

She lifted the dagger, let its weight awaken her slowly numbing fingers, then she lunged, springing from her crouch to embed the blade's sharp tip in the middle of the man's wide-open back. It sank in, the familiar feeling of a knife through half-melted butter that she remembered from all of her previous stabbings, but in a heartbeat, she was flung back against the marble mantle with a burst of pain in her shoulder blades and the heat of the fire dancing along her calves, and a deep throbbing in the perfect shape of the Lord's large hand took hold of her middle. She dropped to her knees in a fit of coughing, tightly clutching her twinging stomach, and the world was no longer a blur because of his pheromones but instead because of the pain. She didn't know whether to be thankful for the lopsided reprieve or not, but she didn't really have time to care.

"Stop!" Ripley roared, but her attention was on the Lord as he knelt gracefully before her, the grim smile on his face eclipsed by the knife as he held it up for her to see. His blood coated the entirety of the blade, rolling down the handle in dark, dancing droplets, but he didn't seem even a little bit fazed by it. She gritted her teeth once her coughing fit had subsided, glaring into his dead eyes, and he only smiled wider.

"I'm surprised you even recognize her, Ripley," he said in a smooth murmur, and the scuffling, shuffling sounds of a struggle were cut short as his pheromones eased into the air. She breathed them in, and they relaxed her just a hair, but beyond that, they had little effect on her. When she looked past the man's shoulder, she saw her father for the first time, sagging in the arms of two other vampires.

Dad? His hair was a vibrant, almost impossible shade of red, short and unkempt, and his half-lidded eyes shone a silver that she would never have imagined, not even in her wildest dreams. Pale porcelain flesh, a square jaw, tall and broad and not a blemish in sight — was this what she was supposed to be? Was this the beauty the vampires sought? He looked to be barely in his late twenties, but she knew that he had to be much older than that. Was this…Was he really her father?

"It's been, oh, nearly eighteen years, hasn't it?" the Lord went on, twisting to look at Ripley — at her father — and letting the bloody knife drop to the floor with a clatter. "Eighteen years since you abandoned her and her mother?" He stood and turned to put his back to her, and her eyes dropped to the knife, leaking blood onto the hardwood only inches from her knees. Was he doing this on purpose? Did he…want her to stab him?

"They were precious to you back then, weren't they?" he went on in a murmur, and she forced her focus from the throbbing in her stomach as the weight of the knife fell upon her fingers once more. "Back when she was just a wiggling parasite in Mommy's stomach and not a reality?" She started to rise, slowly, every muscle straining to keep herself a secret. "Back before you left them to chase your own selfish desires?" That stilled her, and she remained there in a half crouch, her eyes flicking from the back of the Lord's head to her father's face. But there was no emotion there, no change — just the look of a stoned porcelain doll, all half-lidded eyes and an empty, immobile visage. Had he really left them to sate his own needs and not to protect them, as he'd told her mother? Did he even care?

Or was all of this merely the pheromones grossly overpowering him to prevent a righteous outburst? Was that the Lord's plan?

Was this the fate her mother's human blood had saved her from?

What was going on?

-?-

A vague thought sent the front door creaking open, and Skylar stepped across the threshold silently, already squinting into the overwhelming darkness of the room, safely hidden away from the sun. He glanced behind him as a bad feeling settled into the pit of his stomach. The sunlight only barely brushed the street now, just the faintest glow of gold on pavement, and he tried to relax. Antony would be here soon. He was probably already steaming in the sun, flailing his way down the driveway to his car, and a smile tickled his lips at the thought. He would be desperate to get here, desperate to get to her.

His smile faded just as quickly as it had come. He was sure she would be just as eager to see him. Skylar could rip through every single one of the bloodsucking bastards that terrorized her here, and she would still fall right into the arms of her own personal bloodsucker.

But if he was so eager to feel sorry for himself, standing so close to where she stood, so close to saving her, maybe he didn't deserve anything more than that.

Shaking himself, he turned back to the interior of the house, and he leapt nearly a full foot backward when he found a pair of dark eyes only inches from his own. "Jesus Christ!"

The strange man smiled, straightening from the crouch he'd taken to put him at the boy's level. "So sorry," he drawled, and Skylar's eyes dropped to the ivory fangs that glistened in his proud, showy grin — fully extended and ready. "I didn't mean to scare you." An obvious lie, considering those teeth. Skylar shuddered. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"Ah, yeah," the human said, drawing himself up and looking the man squarely in the eye. "That's my girlfriend's car out there," he went on conversationally, throwing a thumb over his shoulder in a gesture toward the vehicle in question — and it was only half a lie, really, when you got down to it. She was and always would be his girl in his mind. "I was wondering if she was in here, since I got a call about her running off a little while ago, and I know she has a tendency to do the stupidest shit imaginable." The vampire chuckled, and Skylar let his gaze drift over the dark room once more. There had to be more of them here somewhere. A master vampire wouldn't leave his front door so unguarded…unless a bigger threat was already present, anyway. A 5'7, 130-pound threat with a secret death wish, perhaps?

"Do you have any idea where you are?" the man asked, his teeth bared in something that fell just shy of a pleasant grin. "Do you know whose domain you've stumbled into?"

"This is the Lord's place, right?" Skylar said casually, making his way around the massive man under the pretense of studying the old-style decor. "I'm going to assume so, since you can smell the reek of walking corpses from halfway down the street."

A low growl rumbled behind him, and a heavy hand soon found his shoulder, spinning him around. The vampire leaned down to put his face only inches from that of his prey, eyes narrowed. "You're lucky we've been in need of a new food source as of late, or I would tear your throat out right now."

His fingers suddenly clamped around Skylar's throat, smooth and freezing cold, like the hand of an ice statue come to life. Panic lanced through him, and instinct sent a rush of power into the space between their bodies, a tactic he'd grown all too familiar with during his weeks in the Arena. He felt a sharp sting as the man's nails tore through the skin on either side of his throat, and he cringed even as he leapt a foot back to finish the separation. The blow had only been enough to knock the vampire back a few inches, his mass much greater than what Skylar had grown used to, but he wouldn't be so easily discouraged.

The vampire lurched forward, a blur of white skin and snarling teeth, but Skylar dipped below his reaching hands and let loose another burst of power, a stronger one, and as the man tilted off balance, he threw a punch that hit him square in the stomach to add to his distance. The vampire hit the floor with a coarse grunt and a thud that shook the room, and Skylar quickly followed him. Heat seeped through his shoe as he drew more of his energy into it, concentrated it, and finally let it loose as he brought his foot down on the man's ribs. He tried to grab the boy's ankle, to stop the attack, but it was inevitable.

A sickening crack resounded through the room, and Skylar felt the blow reverberate through his leg — the ribs cracking, snapping, completely shattering, sending shards of bone into the organs underneath. Blood burst forth from the vampire's throat alongside a nasty cry, his eyes wide and his mouth wider, and his fingers dropped from Skylar's ankle as his body convulsed.

Skylar took a couple of slow steps back, regarding the man as he twitched once more, twice more, then fell still, his eyes shut and his jaw slack and bloody. He wondered if the man's heart had exploded, or if his lungs had burst, or just what havoc the final tendrils of his personified telekinesis had wreaked. Another technique developed in the Arena — but never with this outcome in mind.

Never with death as his intent.

He inwardly shook himself as he turned from the unconscious man, and, leaving the door wide open, he started up the stairwell to the right. She had to be upstairs. They always took her upstairs…

-?-

"I…" Ripley tried to lift his head, but to no avail. All he could manage was a mediocre shake of it. "I didn't…"

"Hush, now," the Lord said in that murmur of his, that lulling, pleasing whisper, and Torryn wondered where that caring man she'd first met had gone. Did it really take so little to tear the sanity straight from his skull? Was the murder of half of his coven really so little to her? "We both know the truth of what you did. There's no need to strain yourself to deny it."

She stared past the Lord's broad shoulders at her father, trying and trying but all in vain to find some answer to her burning questions in his slack face — was the Lord telling the truth? She didn't understand what he would have left his lover and his child for if not for their own sake. She couldn't imagine that he'd desired to come back here or desired to wander aimlessly throughout the world for whatever reason. And after the scene those vampires had made at her house, it was even harder to discover any selfishness in his motives. Years later, years after he'd disappeared, the Lord had found her and tried to take her — had tried to make her just like Ripley. He'd left them to protect them. He'd left her to prevent just this situation. There was no way that Ripley's motives were selfish. No way!

She felt the ire drawing her muscles taught, saw the red seeping into her sharpening gaze. The vampires holding her father's arms shook him at some distant command from the Lord, but his head only bobbed, useless on his shoulders, and another murmured instruction set the poor man dropping to the floor, face-first into hardwood. He twisted his head slowly to remove his face from the floor, and though his gaze was distant, nearly sightless, she could've sworn that he'd focused on the Lord. He wanted to speak, she guessed; he wanted to glare and give the vampire master at least some semblance of what he deserved. But he could do nothing. Pheromones still tickled her sword-sharp mind, and she knew that he could not disobey.

Her eyes jerked upward at the sound of a gun being cocked, and she bared her teeth at the sight of the silver pistol one of the vampires held, aimed steadily at her father's still head. The Lord was laughing, his back still to her, his arms waving about as he put on some big show.

She'd hesitated long enough.

She tore through the room, quick and graceful, darting past the Lord to set his hair shifting in an impossible breeze. Clara's knife found the throat of the man with the gun, ripping into his flesh as she wrapped her arms around him from behind. The gun went off, the explosion of sound nearly enough to cover the ragged gurgle that burst from his rending gullet, but when her eyes flicked to the body of the Progeny at her feet, she found him entirely uninjured. Still, she froze as his head twisted further and their eyes met.

"Silver," he breathed, his eyes widening, becoming somewhat lucid. Her mouth fell open in something like shock, her knife still just short of the man's spine, still embedded deep in his gurgling throat. "Your eyes…are silver. What have they done?"

A pair of heavy hands closed around her shoulders, and as she snapped back to reality, she jerked the blade through what remained of the vampire's neck and spinal cord. The severed head dropped to the floor with a dull thud, followed shortly by the more hearty thump of the body falling across her father, and the man at her back yanked her away as the corpse fell to dust.

She whirled, tearing her shoulders from the man's grasp, and she was unsurprised to find herself face to face with the other vampire who'd been holding her father's arms. Baring her teeth in her too-human version of a snarl, she sent the tip of her blade through the soft underside of his chin…or, at least, she tried to. He caught her wrist with ease and twisted, hard. She let out a low grunt of pain even as she twisted with it, driven by an instinctual desire to not have her arm snapped. The same instinct urged her leg into the air, her spin taking on an added swiftness as she drilled her foot into the man's head in a powerful back kick. With a tug that sent another sharp pain through her arm, his hand slipped away and his body slammed into the hardwood floor with enough strength to set the room trembling. Her foot returned to the floor a bit harder than she'd intended, but she clenched the knife tightly in her hand and dropped into a crouch at the fallen vampire's side. He would get what he deserved for touching her father, for taking advantage of every other poor soul in this house and in this city.

They all would.

Her arm snaked around the unconscious man, the sharp edge of the serrated blade pressing into the front of his throat just as it had done to his partner's — but suddenly, she froze. A strong surge of pheromones tickled their way down her throat, and she knew when goosebumps began to raise along her arms that these were intended entirely for her and not for her father. The knife felt heavy in her hand once more, her fingers numbed and rapidly becoming unresponsive. The crimson that tinged her vision fought to force away the blurring edges, but her rage, her instinct, faded more and more with each breath she took.

This is wrong, she thought, and she couldn't even muster the will to be angry at her sluggish thought process. It's different. It's…stronger. Why?

"Get up," came the Lord's voice, a low purr, rumbling through her to coil around her very core — unlike anything she'd ever heard before. She rose without hesitation, the knife slipping harmlessly away from the vampire's skin, and she shuddered as cool air wafted against her skin, a sign of the Lord's passing, a thousand times stronger only because she knew it was him and he willed it so. "My, my," he went on in that same tone, but his voice was at her ear now, his breath against her cheek. She felt his finger on her chin, just a single finger, and he turned her face toward him, his skin sliding against hers to send a tingle trailing along her spine. She would've collapsed if he'd given her leave to. "He's right," he whispered with a cruel smile as his eyes studied hers. "Silver, just like one of them. What have we done?"

But…this has happened…before. It had, hadn't it? Skylar had told her so…hadn't he?

She couldn't remember it. He hadn't told her to.

His gaze dropped to her throat as he brushed the tangled brown hair from her skin, and the probing of his eyes, a tacit command, urged her head to lull to the side, urged her to bare it all to him. She watched from the corner of her eye as he regarded her exposed flesh — savoring the sight, she hoped. He stared for a second, then two, then three, and as time continued to bleed on, she could feel the throbbing of her pulse in her throat, right where his attention rested, as if he'd willed it there himself.

Finally, as her heart began to beat too hard and too fast, he smiled warmly down at her and let his fangs extend to curve over his bottom lip. She couldn't tear her eyes from them. He bent toward her neck, and, like a switch had been flipped inside her, her heartbeat slowed to a crawl. This was it. Finally. What she'd been waiting for all this time…

But her certainty faltered a hair. It had only been a minute…hadn't it? Had she really been waiting for so long?

His cool breath wafted over her skin, and she was putty in his icy hands, all thoughts to the contrary of her Master forgotten.

"Stop," came a rasp from the floor, then a loud cry. "Stop!" Her eyes dropped to the man at her feet, a man — her father, right? — covered in the dust of a twice-dead undead, his head just barely raised from the floorboards as he managed to push himself up a matter of inches, a halfhearted glare focused on the vampire. The Lord, too, regarded him, and she felt instead of saw a grimace pass across his face, a wave of distaste rolling through her even as she knew it rolled through him. She felt the burst of wicked glee that followed as well, and she smiled — she knew what was coming. She'd been waiting for it for such a long time.

The door flew open and banged against the wall, but neither she nor her Master paused, not even as Skylar's familiar form filled the space, his voice ringing through the room in some wordless roar. The Lord's fangs sank into her throat, and she moaned — finally! — and began to writhe against him. The knife slipped from her fingers, forgotten, and as his arms snaked around her, warm and inviting, she gripped his forearms fervently.

She tumbled headlong into an ecstasy she never could've dreamed.

She was his.