To Bleed for Him

"Every day, I'm like a soldier
Waking up inside the battle.
And through the haze, I live a dream that's better
Than what I feel inside,
Diggin' in me."
- Lacuna Coil

"Oh, Antony," Becca purred as the boy burst into her room, a guest room that she had deemed her own after he gained power — all the better to seduce him with, you know. The door banged noisily against the wall, but she did nothing except smile provocatively as she rose to her knees on her bed, still clad in that slutty nightgown. "I didn't expect to see you in here anytime soon, especially so hot and bothered."

He bent over her, forcing her to arch her back in a way that he hoped was incredibly painful so that he could rest his hands to either side of her on the rumpled bedspread, essentially pinning her in place. His front pressed against hers, their faces only inches apart, and in this bitter, angry haze, he hoped for a moment that Torryn was jealous. He hoped she felt just like he did every time he saw her with that damned human. But his mind left the thought quickly and returned to the matter at hand — the whore beneath him. He could see the fear in her face now, though she tried to hide it with a coy smile.

"Antony," she moaned, sex probably the only thing on her tiny little mind at the moment, "what are you doing?"

"Do you know who ordered the hit on Torryn?" he all but growled.

Her smile fell away, and her eyes widened in surprise, fear still dancing in their depths. "Of course not," she said instantly, her captivating tone long gone. "Why would I?"

"Torryn says that you told her you knew," he said, and the rage was gone from his voice now, leaving behind something deathly calm. "Now, do you know who ordered the hit on Torryn?"

"N-no," she stammered, her eyes flicking past him as if she hoped to catch the eye of someone who might save her; but he knew Torryn. Even if this bimbo managed to catch her attention, she would never capture her pity. "I was just making up a story." Her eyes returned to his, still widened in fear, and he tried to gauge whether she was lying or not. "I wanted to...to prove that I knew more than her."

"I'm going to ask this one more time," he growled slowly, as if he was speaking to a child who was too stupid to understand — and in a way, he guessed he was, "and the answer you give me had better be the truth. Do you know who ordered the hit on Torryn?"

She shook her head vigorously, her hair whipping back and forth to nearly hit him in the face repeatedly. "No, sir," she said meekly. "I swear. I would have come to you if I knew."

He stayed where he was for a moment, looming over her threateningly as he searched her face for any signs of a lie, but he discovered nothing and quickly got to his feet. Her body instantly relaxed, and she resumed her position on her knees on the bed. "Great," he muttered, watching her grimly. "Now how am I going to figure it out?"

"You wanted to prove that you knew more than Torryn?" Skylar said suddenly, sounding simply incredulous. "What are you, fucking five?" Becca scowled at the boy but said nothing, and Torryn merely smiled.

Antony stared at the girl's smile for a moment, a smile that reached her eyes with none of the effort it took him, and he frowned softly. Ah, to be alive again...

"Do you have any idea who it might have been?" he asked, quickly turning back to the vampire and forcing the darker thoughts from his mind. "Have you noticed any suspicious activity around the house lately? Heard any talk of something like this? Anything?"

She shook her head. "Nothing that you aren't already aware of. Half of the house is against you, and the same half is against her. Caleb is my only guess, but I think he likes doing things himself too much to hire someone else to do it." Her eyes flicked to Torryn, but her expression never changed. "He'd want to taste her, you know?"

"Yeah, I do," he said darkly, stepping directly into Becca's line of sight. "Let me know if you hear anything," he added, his tone just a bit lighter than before. "And don't go around telling lies to make yourself feel better." She pursed her lips and nodded, and he turned, sweeping past Torryn and Skylar to enter the hall beyond.

"Well, that was a waste of time," he remarked dryly as he entered his own bedroom.

"Do you actually believe her?" Skylar asked, stopping beside the door to cross his arms and study the vampire.

Antony dropped onto the edge of the bed with a sigh, his eyes on Torryn as she shut the door and took her place beside the human. "I have no reason not to," he answered. "If she had any idea who it was, she probably would've told me so by now. She'd do anything to get in my good graces."

"Except for the fact that she wants me out of the way, too," Torryn pointed out. "Maybe she does know, but she wants to give them time to try again before she spills the beans." Her face twisted in a look of disdain. "Did I really just use the phrase 'spill the beans'?"

Antony smiled inwardly. "That's possible, but not very probable. If she denied having any knowledge even when I was seconds away from ripping her head off, she probably really doesn't know. Most people don't lie when I'm wearing my bitch-face."

"Do you think whoever attacked you earlier had something to do with it?" Torryn suggested, frowning.

He fell back on the bed, arms crossed behind his head as a pillow. Skylar made a noise of disgust, likely getting a flash of something he didn't quite want to see, but the vampire ignored it. "I wasn't attacked earlier," he admitted. "I was antagonized until I snapped and started a fight. And if it was one of them, good for us, because they're all dead."

"But you don't think it had anything to do with them," Torryn said, nearly reading his mind — or maybe just his tone of voice and body language. He liked to think she was in his head sometimes, though.

"No," was the short answer. "I'm pretty sure these vampires only had a problem with me. It was my running of the Arena they didn't like, nothing to do with you." He sat up with another sigh forced from airless lungs. "But I think we should let the topic go for the night. I'm tired, and I'm sure the two of you are, too."

She and the human glanced at each other, then turned back to Antony, Torryn's shoulders shifting in a small shrug. "I don't think either of us will be able to sleep with all of this going on, and I think you'd get more rest if we just left you alone." She smiled gently at him, and he wondered just what that emotion was behind her eyes — was it the love he'd been so desperately longing for? She'd never said it to him, never said the words "I love you," and he hadn't said them since that very first time in the shower. He wasn't sure what was happening anymore. He wasn't sure what she felt. "Do you mind if we maybe go out for some breakfast?" He felt his face instantly darken, the tightening of his features and the pursing of his lips, and as he quickly sat up on the bed, she hurried to add, "You said yourself that I'm not safe here, around all of these vampires. It'd be more dangerous for me to try to make a meal in the kitchen than it would be for me to just go to a McDonald's somewhere."

"No," he answered the moment she'd stopped talking, his tone much sharper than he'd intended, though he didn't regret it for a second. "I'd feel much better if you both stayed here, in the room, with me."

She rolled her eyes, crossed her arms, and cocked her hip, very much the picture of the annoyed teenager being far too restricted by her overbearing parents. "We need to eat, Antony."

"Then I'll come with you," he said, rising to his feet.

"You need to sleep."

"It's not a big deal," he said, crossing his arms over his chest. "It's not even dawn yet. I can spend a few extra minutes in the kitchen with you before I go to bed."

She stepped closer to him, resting a hand on his arm, and her tone was much gentler when she next spoke. "I don't want to be a burden to you, okay? You've had a rough night. You deserve to have a little break."

He stared down at her for a moment, searching her face for something he couldn't discern, and he soon slipped a hand from its position tucked against his chest to rest it atop hers. "Don't go any farther than the kitchen, all right?" He grinned. "McDonald's breakfast is shit, anyway."

She chuckled and leaned up to press a quick kiss against his lips. "Yes, sir," she said laughingly, already starting for the door.

"Aren't you going to get dressed?" he asked, but she pulled the black silk robe from the hook on the back of the door and shot him a smirk. She grabbed Antony's black cotton robe, too, and handed it to Skylar, who made a face but put it on without comment.

"I'll see you later," she said as she slipped her own robe on, still smirking at Antony. "Sleep well, okay?"

He nodded, just barely smiling. "Enjoy your breakfast, and don't get yourself into any trouble."

"Yes, sir," she laughed again, then slipped out the door and into the hall with Skylar right behind her, fumbling with the ties as he tried to close his borrowed robe.

The door finally shut, and Antony sank onto the edge of his bed with a sigh. I should follow her, he thought as he stared at the door. But he knew better than to obey his overprotective mind, so he settled for shutting off the light, lying in bed, and worrying in the dark where no one would bother him.

-?-

"Maybe we should've stayed in the room," Skylar mumbled as he followed Torryn down the stairs, and she looked back to find him uneasily eyeing the pair of vampires glaring at him from the foyer. Probably one of the few left, too. Most of them tended to leave around this time, but of course the bitter ones just had to stay behind.

"Don't worry about them," she said laughingly. "As long as we're in the house, no one will touch us." Her smile fell as she looked forward and started down the hall toward the kitchen. "That's why I don't get why he wants me to leave now. I wouldn't be any safer back home."

"You'd be safer with me," he said softly.

She shook her head as she stepped into the kitchen, finding it blessedly empty. "We both know that that would be a bad idea." She rounded the island counter in the center of the room, and he frowned at her from the other side. "Lindsey and Madison wouldn't want me there, and you and I are in a weird place right now." She smiled wryly, resting her hands on the counter's cool edge. "I'd be safer with the vampires."

"That's not true," he said with a shake of his head, his voice and his features suddenly stern. "You know that I could protect you. It doesn't matter what our relationship is." She rolled her eyes. Great. Another man who feels the need to pretend he's my father.

"I'm fine here, Skylar. I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself," she said dully, turning from him to open an overhead cupboard. "Besides, I couldn't bear to let them think they'd scared me off," she went on as she pulled half of a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter from the shelf.

"I'm just saying, it'd be so much easier for you at my house, away from all of this." She looked back just in time to catch his vague gesture toward the rest of the house. "I'm sure it's not very fun having to worry for your life all the time."

She dropped the bread and the jar on the counter and offered the boy a tight smile. "I've been worrying about it for quite some time now, no matter where I lived. I'm perfectly fine here." She turned away again, opening another cupboard and pulling out a couple of plain white plates, and she could just imagine the fatherly look of disapproval Skylar wore when he sighed heavily at her back.

"My door's always open," he settled with saying, frowning at her as she placed the plates on the counter a bit harder than necessary. "I just want you to know that."

She exhaled slowly through her nose, trying to get herself to calm down. He was just trying to help, after all. He and Antony both were, and she just had to react like a total ass to both of them. "Thank you," she said after a moment, smiling softly. "I really do appreciate your concern."

He nodded, offering her a small smile of his own, and she turned away to pull open a drawer with the telltale clink of silverware. "Anything you need, it's yours, Boo-Boo Kitty Fuck," he said lightly, and she chuckled as she took a butter knife from the drawer and turned to face the counter. "So, what exactly are we having for breakfast, ma'am?" He made a face at the jar of peanut butter, and she scowled at him.

"Peanut butter sandwiches, okay?" she all but snapped. "You know I can't cook."

He grinned. "Why didn't you just ask me to make something?"

"Because I —" But the sounds of voices in the hall — new ones, not the voices of the vampires who had been there upon their arrival — brought her to a stop. One was Caleb, she knew, and she felt her expression instantly sour. She peered around Skylar to see what was going on, discovering Caleb with his back to the door, facing a vampire she only vaguely recognized from a couple of passings throughout the house. Their words were barely above a murmur at first, but suddenly, Caleb was smirking at Torryn over his shoulder and speaking pointedly loudly.

"Yeah, I know," he drawled. "Antony isn't half the ruler his father was. Too weak, you know? And his affection for that filthy half-human is just disgusting."

Her fingers were suddenly throbbing with a dull pain, and she looked down to find herself clutching the edge of the counter in a white-knuckled grip. "He's trying to bait you," Skylar said softly, no doubt noticing the spike of rage, and his expression was earnest when she looked at him. "Just ignore him."

"She's weaker than he is, too, you know," Caleb went on matter-of-factly, a fang glinting in the low light of the room as he shifted his stance, leaning against the door frame. "They'd be perfect for each other if he wasn't supposed to be a big shot."

Something inside her snapped, that tiny tendril of self-control she'd managed to maintain for the past few weeks, and she let out a low growl. "Your insults suck," she said icily, "but if you must keep spewing them, would you at least have the balls to say them to my face?"

"Now, now, Torryn," he taunted, turning to fully face her with a broad, fang-baring grin on his face. "I don't think Antony would appreciate you starting a fight like this."

"Torryn, just calm down," Skylar said lowly as she made her way around the counter and started toward the door.

"Shut up and don't interfere," she murmured as she brushed past him. "I don't care if he's about to kill me." He made a noise of disapproval, but his presence was already a forgotten memory at the very back of her mind. She stopped a few feet from the doorway, arms crossed and hip cocked, and offered the vampire a saccharine smile. "Who cares what Antony wants? You certainly don't seem to give a shit."

"Why would I?" he asked, all smiles. "Even if he wanted to punish me or whatever it is he does to his disloyal followers, he couldn't. He's too weak."

Her smile widened. "You didn't hear about the vampires he took out at the Arena, then? The ones who decided to be disloyal?"

His smirk widened in return. "Oh, I did. Weaklings, all of them. I'm surprised he didn't send you in to do his dirty work."

"I'll do his dirty work right now, if that's what you want," she said sweetly. "I'm sure he won't mind it if you ash on his floor a little bit."

He spread his arms wide, his elongated fangs bared in an over-sized grin, and said, "Feel free to try at any time now."

She vaguely heard Skylar say her name in warning, but she was already moving forward. A distant part of her was glad that Caleb's vampire friend had disappeared when she sent the man sailing backward with the force of a fist to the stomach. His back met the wall at the side of the stairwell, his hand on his abdomen, and he was laughing — mocking her, taunting her, making her angrier.

She was in front of him in a heartbeat, her fist aimed at his smug face now, but this time, he caught it in a massive hand, still laughing as he looked down at her. "You're weaker than I thought," he drawled, and she lashed out with her other hand, but he caught that one, too. "How pathetic." He shoved her roughly backward, and her body met the wall behind her, the picture frames that lined the wall to either side of her trembling noisily at the impact.

He followed her, a punch of his own aimed at her stomach before she'd even caught her breath. She slid along the wall to one side, and his fist connected with the wall where she'd been, breaking straight through the plaster. Even in her rage-induced haze, she knew to be glad she'd gotten out of the way.

He pulled his hand free, his knuckles scraped and beginning to bleed, and she quickly gripped the back of his head and thrust his face toward the wall. His neck tensed almost instantly, however, stopping his nose just centimeters from the old paint, and the back of his hand suddenly met her stomach in a blow that knocked her across the hall into the opposite wall.

He was quick to follow her again, and as his fist headed toward her stomach once more, she danced off to the side and watched as his hand once again broke through the wall. She took advantage of the situation without a second thought, punching his momentarily trapped arm hard enough to send a sickening crack echoing through the hall. He let out a growl of pain and finally pulled his hand free, already reaching for her with his good hand. His fingertips just barely brushed her throat as she scurried backward once more.

"Torryn," she heard Skylar warn again, but his voice was distant, lost in the same mist of instinct and anger that hid the rest of her surroundings. There was only the man before her, the petty vampire, rushing toward her with a sneer made of pain and rage.

She sidestepped another punch, then ducked beneath another. They came quicker than she'd expected from a man with only one functioning arm, but they didn't come nearly quick enough to catch her. She dodged another, then slammed her own fist into his chest as hard as she could, but the brick wall of a man only staggered a couple of small steps backward. Leaping into the air, she spun, and her foot connected with the side of his head with a dull thud. She listened to the sound of splintering wood as she finished the rotation, then the hollow-sounding thumps of the shattered pieces as she landed, crouched, and looked back at him. It was almost humorous, watching the giant man pull his head free from what remained of the thin wooden supports that held up the banister, but she was in no mood to laugh.

He turned to face her, positively seething as blood dripped down his cheek from a pair of long gashes under his eye, and she rose to her full height. "Weak, am I?" she sneered.

But instead of the aggravation she'd expected, the man only smiled, once again more than happy to bare his long fangs. "I haven't even gotten started yet." It was then that she noticed it — the lightheadedness, the breathlessness, the slight loss of self that signaled the start of the pheromones entering her body. She took a swift step back, then another, and another, but he followed her with quick, long, powerful strides, a nasty smile distorting his features. "You haven't forgotten, have you?" he laughed, and he stopped following her only when her back met the wall beside the front door, slapping his functioning hand forcefully against the surface to one side of her head. His fangs were fully elongated, glistening with the threat of approaching pain only inches from her face. "I'm your Kryptonite."

Her mind started to drift, the haze of her animalistic instinct being pushed away by the miasma of impending pleasure, and she sagged against the wall. She heard Skylar call her name, and though it echoed faintly and was nearly lost, she had the sense to raise her hand to him, a silent command for him to stay out of the battle. I don't need him, she thought, though her words were distant even in her own mind. I don't need to be saved. Not again.

"I hate to be the one to break this to you," she said, doing her best to keep her words crisp and clear though her lips didn't even want to form them, "but I have no Kryptonite." A jerk of her leg sent her knee into his crotch, and she knew she'd hit that sweet spot when he stumbled back just a step, his teeth grinding together though his lips were still parted to show off his fangs — as if she would be afraid of them.

But maybe she should've been, she realized when her mind only grew fuzzier, more and more pheromones entering her system with each passing breath. She lost her balance, her legs refusing to hold her weight any longer, and she slid slowly down the wall, clutching at it with one hand as if she could catch on to it and hold herself up. And there it was again — that nasty, mocking smile, full of fang and snark. It should have angered her, should have kicked up her battle instincts a couple more notches, should have sent her lunging right at him, but instead, she only dropped to the floor in an ungraceful flop on her ass and looked up at him, numb, her hand still ineffectually gripping the wall.

"Are you sure about that?" he asked in a mocking purr, stepping forward and dropping into a crouch before her. He was close enough that she could've knocked his head off, and some part of her knew that that was what she should do, but she couldn't move. She wanted nothing more than to give in to the dreamy lull that the pheromones offered her; they stood waiting for her at the gates of Heaven, arms open wide in invitation and smiles on their pale, dead faces. All she had to do was let go. All she had to do was give in to that growing tingle that trilled through her heavy body…

"Say it," he told her softly, his voice like thunder to her muted ears, the only thing she could hear and the only thing she wanted to. He reached out to her, and her eyes never left his as his fingers brushed her cheek. It sent a burning thrill through her, straight from her cheek to her groin, and she squirmed helplessly against the wall, but she didn't pull away. She didn't want to. "Say that I'm your Kryptonite."

Her lips parted and quivered as she both fought to speak and fought against it. "Caleb," she finally said, and the word was half moan and half beg.

"Say it," he said again, and his breath was warm on her cheek as he leaned closer. His fingers trailed down her jaw, then the front of her throat, fiery pleasure stabbing through her at every inch of skin he traversed.

"You're —" she started but stopped to swallow, panting as the heat at her core grew stronger.

He was at her throat now, his hand slipping into the front of her robe, and his lips grazed her skin as he murmured once more, "Say it." She felt his fangs, then, just the tips of them skimming across the side of her throat, but even the light touch made her want to scream, to moan, to make some sound that that tiny surviving part of her knew she shouldn't.

She shivered. "You're —" But he was abruptly pulled from his crouch in front of her, and her eyes sluggishly followed his journey from a foot in the air to several, sailing through the doorway into the adjacent room. When she managed to find him again, trying to blink away the haze, he was on the floor with a man standing over him, a man with a spiky head of dark brown hair — Antony.

"Don't you ever touch her," his voice broke through the fog, and though it was still faded and far away, she knew that he was yelling. His fingers curled in the fabric at the front of Caleb's shirt, and he hoisted the man into the air, a foot off of the ground, holding what had to be 300 pounds in a way that looked effortless. "Don't you ever touch her!" he screamed again, his voice cracking with emotion. But what emotion was it? It didn't sound like mere anger…

She felt a hand on her arm, and she knew without looking that it was Skylar, his skin warm and calloused. A shock of heat coiled through her at his touch, but she didn't turn from the confrontation. "Are you all right?" the boy asked in a worried murmur, and she only nodded in response.

"Don't you ever touch her!" Antony cried again, a broken record of some mysterious emotion, and Caleb's smirking face soon met the floor a foot or so from where Torryn sat. But Antony was on him again in a heartbeat, moving faster than she'd ever seen him move before, his fingers tightly wrapping around the back of the man's skull. The fog was lifting, and she wasn't sure she liked the new-found lucidity as she watched Caleb's face meet the floor over and over again. Each crack, each squish, each squirt of blood was more vivid than it would have been only a moment ago, and it made her stomach turn. She wouldn't look away, though, sickly savoring the look of his pained, smirk-less face each time his it was lifted from the tile.

Antony didn't stop until the man was completely limp beneath him, his blackened eyes closed and his lips parted to let blood seep through unhindered. The boy's eyes were wide in a combination of terror and confusion, and Torryn could meet them for only an instant before dropping her gaze to her lap, where her folded hands lay.

"Kill him," Skylar said tightly from beside her, and she watched absently as her fingers twisted around one another, trying to keep busy.

"Why didn't you?" Antony asked in a half-shout, his voice strained and cracking again beneath that mysterious emotion — worry, she now realized. Fear — for her. "You were just watching it happen, weren't you?" he asked nastily. "Did you enjoy the show?" She heard him take a step forward, and Skylar's presence left her as he rose to his feet to face the vampire.

She replayed the encounter in her head as they squared off, her fingers stilling on her lap. Caleb had almost completely conquered her, had almost completely taken her control away. He'd touched her, too, she realized with horror, and she felt her cheeks warm as she pulled her robe more tightly closed around her. Shame flooded her at the memory of his skin against hers, at the memory of how she'd liked it.

Oh, God. She felt the familiar weight of tears welling up in her eyes, and she bit down on her lip before she could utter a sob. How pathetic she was. How broken and weak.

"She told me not to interfere, so I didn't," Skylar said sharply. "I thought that she could take care of herself. She always has some trick up her sleeve."

Antony let loose a harsh laugh, his worry thoroughly gone. He didn't even seem to notice as she rose to her feet, still gripping her robe. "She can't take care of herself against vampires. Or do you not understand what just happened — what you almost fucking let happen?"

She didn't even care about the jab. After all, it was true, wasn't it? She couldn't hold her own against an undead, not unless they wanted to play with her like Antony's father always had.

Skylar was saying something, maybe even defending her, but his words were as muffled as if she'd still been under Caleb's thrall. When the first tear broke free and started down her cheek, she knew she couldn't stand there any longer. She jerked the door open and rushed into the crisp morning air.

She needed to escape the shame. She needed to escape them.