Silent Restraint

Amare approached the house slowly. She shifted the splintered door and stepped inside and there he was. Right there in the hallway, splayed like a snow angel between the kitchen and living room. His throat was ripped out and there was blood covering the front of his scrubs. It stood in stark contrast to his white skin and dull blue scrubs. His grey eyes stared at her lifelessly. Amare half choked on a dry sob and sat down next to the body. She touched his pale cheek. It was still almost warm, and, always horribly technical, she assumed he'd died only a couple of hours ago.

Ally.

Where was Ally? Where was Xavier? She stood and peered into the kitchen and living room, then the first floor bathroom. Her feet carried her over Syd's body and up the stairs. Nothing in any of the bedrooms.

The sound of tires on gravel pushed her down the stairs. There was a high-pitched scream as she carefully skirted Syd's body, and she made it outside in time to catch Ally from going inside. She screamed in Amare's ear.

"WHERE'S SYD? WHERE'S MY BROTHER?" Tears were blooming in her eyes and she was fighting against Amare with all her might, but Amare was a lot stronger than Ally.

Xavier approached from behind and tugged Ally off of Bayleigh.

"He's dead, isn't he?" She was sobbing now.

"Ssh, Ally, Babe," Xavier said, pressing her to his chest.

He looked at Amare, surprisingly not surprised to see her there. She shook her head with sad eyes. Ally, however, stopped her crying to look a her with wide eyes.

"Bayleigh?" she said with a sniff. "Why are you here?"

She was at a loss for words. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Finally, she spoke up and said she was coming for a visit and found this. Xavier glared at her the whole time and she knew he knew the warning was for her. She swallowed.

"Is he in there?" Ally asked quietly, sniffling.

"You don't wanna go in there," she responded.

Ally's mouth opened and her bottom lip started quivering. Xavier led her to this car and sat her on the hood. He put his hands on either side of her and began talking to her in a tone that was comforting even to Amare. She couldn't stand it. So she turned around and went back into the house and knelt next to Syd's lifeless form again. She sighed and put a hand over his, then straightened him out and got a blanket from the linen closet. She threw it over him and went back outside. She was met by Xavier.

"I just called the cops. You should go. Get out of the state so they don't find you." He gestured towards the bloody words on the house. "And take the dog."

She frowned at him, then remembered. Zeke. "Where is he?"

"Out back of the house there's a run." She nodded to him and turned away, but he stopped her. "I'm going to tell Ally the truth. I'm going to tell her it was your fault her brother died. And I'm going to tell her what I am."

"Why?" she asked. Part of her hated that he was going to tell her, but part of her knew she should know what killed her brother. Plus, if anything Ally was resilient. She would be okay.

"Because she deserves to know. And your friend. Evagoras. He inspired me."

"Evvie came?" She breathed a sigh of relief. "Did he say where he was going?"

"Europe. That's all I know. Now go. You need to go."

Two hours later, she was driving back South West, tears in her eyes and a brindled puppy in shotgun.

<><><><><>

Hayden kept trying to feel guilty about his new relationship with Emma, but he couldn't. He didn't know if stemmed from lack of sleep, or lack of trying, or lack of reasons to be guilty. Whatever it was, he felt like there should at least be something. But even as she crawled out of his bed, shamelessly naked in the Arizona heat, he didn't feel it. Summer was coming on and it was already in the nineties during the day in many places they'd passed through. He was glad to be going home to Reagan soon.

At first, he hadn't quite known where to take Emma. Especially not after that night. And then Reagan had called and told him that the Winchesters had shown up and Garth was there and Gerard on his way and that he needed to take or leave Emma and get back to California, stat. So, course changed and with high hopes that his neck would heal quickly, they took off to California.

He became lost in his thoughts, and then the shower turned on. He rolled off the bed and slipped his boxers off. He checked his almost invisible neck wound and then ducked into the cold shower beind Emma, planting a soft kiss at the base of her neck. She turned around and gave him an evil grin.

Next thing he knew he was being held against the tiled wall by tiny hands. And there wasn't a trace of guilt in him.

<><><><><>

Isa shifted uncomfortably next to Fred. Breezy and Armie and Alex and Denny and Laina and a few others stood behind her. She opened the door tentatively at the knock and eight more vampires strode in looking like they meant to do a great deal of possibly violent business. She skittered back to her place beside Breezy and Fred. Seven of the vampires wore all black and had military haircuts. The final one was a head taller and considerably thicker than the rest of them. He wore a black three-piece suit with a red shirt and a white tie. His face betrayed his age by several thousand years.

He sliced through his entourage like a hot steel knife and approached Isa and Breezy, a frighteningly calm look on his face. If Isa's heart still beat, it would be pounding out of her chest. The door slammed behind them. She shuddered as he began to talk.

"I have recently learned that you lost a valuable asset. One that I was on my way to see," he said cooly.

Breezy, eyes watching her slim feet since he came in, now looked up to meet his eyes. "We didn't know she would run."

"No, no you didn't." His voice was calm.

"We have Ty and Fiona looking for her," Isa said tentatively.

"Then you can expect them not to come back." His voice rose. The nest-mates looked at him curiously. His lip curled and eyebrows raised in anger. "She ran to Hunters, you fools!" he said. His voice was no louder than conversational, but it packed a punch like a shout and a few of them stepped back, including Freddie. Isa and Breezy stood strongly, though, under his gaze.

"What do you mean?" Breezy squeaked.

"She was a spy. A nest in Oregon received another vampire. An only survivor of a Hunter raid in California." He sighed, bored. "We turned him back to our cause before he could do any damage. He is feeding his Hunter false truths. And then we found out about you. And your raid survivor." He turned and began walking, hands clasped behind his back. "The Hunters are smart. Smarter than you would assume for a group of short-lived vengeful monkeys with guns and knives. But they underestimate us, too. They believe we are nothing more than blood-thirsty monsters who kidnap girls for fun. But many of us are much much more than that. We observe and notice. And so, to some of us, it was painfully obvious that there was something amiss when there was not just one, but two and three survivors from that raid, and none from any other.

"The first one was a dear friend of mine," he said in response to some quizzical looks. "I thought him wrongly accused by myself in the beginning, but since he has stayed in hiding, I see now that he is a traitor."

Someone behind Isa and Breezy muttered the name 'Evagoras'. Everyone knew that name.

"And now we are missing a traitor, due to your incompetence." He stopped walking and stood in front of Isa, her eyes growing as big as globes. "And incompetence can not be tolerated in these troubled times."

Isa released a strangled gasp. "Jason, please, you can't-"

His fangs extended an he lunged. Soon, the nest was wiped out. The humans were led into the night and then into a nondescript van. Then the house was doused in gasoline and set ablaze.

A white van and two black Escalades made their was back to Wisconsin.