As She Fades

"Down under the night sky, I lay in wait,
Praying to whoever will listen to me.
I fashioned my own cross,
Been crushed by its weight.
There's no stronger message
Than dirt in your face.

I've seen down the end of the road.
I deal in a different story.
Oh, I will never let go again.
I feel it in my bones, bones, bones, bones.
I feel it in my bones, bones, bones, bones.
I'll do this on my own."
- Young Guns

Skylar couldn't move, couldn't see, couldn't feel the solidity of the hardwood floor he knew he must still be sprawled upon, but he could hear. Through the sensation of Torryn's nails in his back, through the feeling of her slick, warm body beneath his, through her quick, panted breaths in his ear, he could hear, and he'd heard everything.

When did she turn into…this? He'd never thought of her as selfish before, even if she had only risked her life for those she already knew she loved. Toward him, she'd always been selfless to the point of recklessness, and that had been enough to win his affection. But now, listening to her plead for the lives of a bunch of strangers she'd likely never even meet, never get to know, never get to like, he couldn't believe how self-centered she'd been before.

What had changed?

"Wait!" she screamed suddenly, breaking the lull left behind by the Lord's rumbling voice, and with the crack of the final consonant, Skylar felt the wanton fog lift from his mind as if sucked away by a vacuum.

He returned to himself with a gasp, and the darkness beneath the armchair became visible before him. He blinked rapidly, trying to orient himself. The hardwood was hot beneath him, damp with his own sweat, and he cringed as he raised his head from the floor. Besides the crackling of the fire and the soft murmurs of the vampires downstairs, only Torryn's ragged breathing could be heard, and he looked toward her slowly, doing his best to avoid attracting the Lord's attention.

She was in the same position that she'd been in when he'd last seen her and in much the same shape as he was. The flickering flames in the fireplace were reflected and intensified by the thick layer of sweat that coated the floor around her, illuminating the dark wetness that stained every inch of her forest green tank top, and her eyelids convulsed as her eyes roved beneath them. The Lord stood over her, smirking in a way that was both cold and hot, coolly detached but perversely enjoying the scene — too wrapped up in his silent debauchery to keep Skylar properly contained.

Skylar's nose wrinkled, his eyes narrowed, and he longed to lunge at the man, to strike him, to tear his head from his shoulders and put an end to what he was doing to Torryn; but he knew better. He knew, though he hated it, that he didn't have the physical strength to take an undead on in hand-to-hand combat — not like Torryn did, not like Antony did. Luckily, he'd spent enough time in this room over the past couple of weeks to know just what could aid him, and his eyes quickly landed on one of the many bookshelves across the room.

There were no weapons here — for the Lord's own protection — but there were hundreds of books…and an eternally lit fireplace.

Grabbing Torryn's phone from where it still lay open on the floor in front of him, he flipped it noisily shut and rose to his feet with the help of the armchair. The Lord turned, drawn to the noise, and Skylar pegged him with a cold stare as he shoved the phone into his pocket. "I think I might be able to sweeten the deal for you, if you're still in the mood to bargain."

The vampire's eyebrows rose sharply. "Oh?"

Skylar nodded, steadily holding the Lord's gaze as he pulled several books from the shelf slowly, silently, and began to guide them across the room. It was a challenge, fighting the urge to look, easing two dozen texts through the air with only the direction of his spatial intelligence and his memory, but he'd been practicing this since he was a child. I can do this. I've challenged myself just like this a thousand times before.

"What if I help you kill Antony Warren and take all of the willing humans he has listed in his little black book?" he asked.

The Lord's thin lips curled in a smile that was almost predatory. "And just how would you manage that, little human?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Skylar caught the eerie bobbing of the book at the front of the pack, and he struggled to keep his face stern and his eyes on the vampire across from him. "He's not fond of me, as I'm sure you know, but our mutual hatred doesn't extend beyond that: hatred. He still trusts me, mostly for Torryn's sake." The mob of books floated behind the Lord now, edging forward inch by inch. Just another couple of feet… "I could take him out easily. Hell, I could probably get the whole coven in one fell swoop. Sneak in, raise a little telekinetic hell, then finish them all before they even have the chance to touch me. Easy."

The Lord's grin melted away, and his brow furrowed in contemplation. Torryn's writhing eased as he lost himself in thought, and Skylar risked a glance down at her to find that she was relaxed but not any more lucid than before. Torryn.

In a sudden flurry of motion, the army of tomes lurched into the fire and back out in a curving stream, surging toward the Lord like an airborne river of flame, new books being fed into it all the time. At the last second, he spun, but though he dived to one side in a desperate attempt to escape the fiery brigade, he wasn't nearly quick enough. The books followed, raining down upon him like his own personal Armageddon, and he was coated in a flaming shell in a matter of seconds.

The man let loose a roar of agony, and Skylar fell to his knees at Torryn's side just as her eyes snapped open. "Baby, get up," he said, already taking hold of her arm to help her rise. "We need to go."

"What the hell is going on?" she panted in bewilderment, on her feet now but not entirely steady, but he only shook his head. Panic was tearing through him, and he didn't have time to explain. He dragged her toward the door, but before they'd made it more than two feet, she gasped in surprise, and a heavy weight hit them both.

Red-hot pain clawed its way into his arm, where the weight had settled, and for a moment, he was blinded by the bright flames that danced only inches from his eyes, brushing his cheek with blistering fingers. Torryn let out a shrill cry beside him, and without thinking, he kicked at the Lord and let loose a surge of energy. Much to his surprise, the power didn't budge the Lord, didn't even make him flinch. Instead, it seemed to fall over him, a blanket to extinguish the flames that raged all over his body.

He howled in pain though the fire was gone, and Skylar could see why. His skin was burnt, blackened and bloody from head to toe. Just his face alone was charred beyond recognition. Skylar's eyes widened, the sting of singed flesh along his arm fading into the background, and he stared into the wild, agonized abyss of the Lord's eyes.

A flash of pale skin forced Skylar back into himself, and he watched as a fist tore the vampire's jaw from his face with gruesome ease. The Lord fell back, wailing in horror, and Skylar turned to watch Torryn sit up, shaking the melted skin from her knuckles. They exchanged a brief glance, her expression surprisingly grim but delightfully determined, then they lurched to their feet in unison, and, taking her hand, Skylar led the way out of the study and into the hall.

"We have to go," he urged, nearly pleaded, as they thundered down the stairs, but he could see the resolve, the worry, the panic, the utter mania that surged like a whirlwind behind her pursed lips and hard eyes. He knew that she wouldn't budge. He'd been with her for too long not to.

"I'm not leaving without what I came for!" She hurried from the landing of the stairwell, making her way into a room to the side and away from the front door — away from safety, he realized, a lump forming in his throat.

Suddenly, a swarm of vampires surrounded them, appearing almost out of nowhere with fangs bared. Without hesitation, Torryn lunged at the nearest one, a heavily muscled man, and threw a punch that sent him over a dining table, and though Skylar desperately wanted to draw her from the fray and get her to safety, he had no choice but to face the men who had gathered in the doorway they'd just come through.

He ducked beneath a sudden punch and jerked a nearby end table in front of him with a flicker of thought, using it to block another attempted blow, then another, and finally cracking his attacker over the head with it. The man staggered back and fell, out cold, and Skylar quickly sent the table through the air in a wide arc, taking out three tightly packed vampires with it. With the last hit, the legs broke free of the base, and Skylar let them drop to the floor in a shower of splinters.

A woman lunged toward him, managing to land a punch to his nose before he could find a new defense. He staggered back, blood gushing from his nostrils, and jerked a chair from the nearby dining table with a fresh thought. She caught him in the stomach with another punch, then the chair scraped across the floor to stand between them, and another mental command sent it rocketing off of the floor and straight into the woman's face. It shattered on impact, the legs and back dropping away from the thick mahogany of the seat, and the vampire fell back, crumpling to the floor.

As he guided the broken legs of both the chair and the end table he'd broken before into the air, he recognized the sound of Torryn's voice behind him, raised in a series of frustrated gasps and cries. He turned toward her, a vague thought driving the levitating legs through the air and through the throats of eight oncoming vampires, and his chest tightened the moment he saw her. She was still fighting, throwing punches and kicks that struck with relative accuracy, but her strength was obviously waning. Blood streaked her cheek, pouring from a gash just under her eye, and her lip was lifted in a determined snarl, fresh sweat gathering over it.

She staggered back as a fist slipped through her weakened defenses, around the arm she had raised as a shield, and found her jaw with impressive force. She tried to catch herself, to right herself, before the man came any closer, but she wasn't quick enough. Another man grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides, and the vampire before her landed a blow to her stomach with enough force to draw blood from her mouth in a spurt of red alongside her weak cry.

Impulse drew the makeshift stakes from the necks of the vampires they'd impaled, and Skylar pressed his lips together in an angry glare as he guided them through the air and into the men who took advantage of her weakness. The stakes pierced their throats, stomachs, even chests, stabbing into one side and bursting clean out of the other before the men even had the chance to cry out. They dropped instantly, blood spurting from their wounds but sweet ashen death not yet claiming them, and Skylar rushed forward to catch Torryn before her knees met the floor.

She alternately coughed and gasped for air, but she didn't hesitate to follow his lead as he drew her upright. When he started for the door, however, she jerked her arm from his grip with a glare. "No, I can't leave. You know that." Another vampire rushed toward her, and she caught the woman in the throat with a punch that didn't showcase nearly enough of her incredible strength. The woman fell back a step but sprang forward a split second later, and this time, it was Skylar who sent her sailing back with a punch of his own. Her back hit the dining table, and she slid the length of it until she finally toppled off to hit the floor on the other side. He grimaced.

He wasn't supposed to be so much stronger than Torryn. It felt…wrong.

"We have to go," he told her, drawing the table between him and a group of oncoming vampires with the most obnoxious shriek of wood on wood he'd ever heard in his life. "You're not up for this right now." And neither was he, he found, when a vampire caught him from behind and slammed his face into the table he'd just maneuvered in front of him. Pain exploded in his nose, darkness dancing in front of his eyes, but he felt the vampire drop her hold on his hair, and a grunt from Torryn and another crash told him why.

"Damn it, Skylar," she growled, though the exhaustion was plain in her voice. "I need to do this."

His vision returned to him, a burst of light and color, and he could only watch her brace herself on the table's edge, a hand clutching her ribs as she panted, before his out-of-control need to keep her safe overtook him. With a surge of power, guided gently into her brain, he set her eyes rolling back into her head and her legs buckling beneath her, and he gently scooped her up in his arms.

A fresh army of vampires was bottlenecking in the doorway to the entrance hall, and he shoved the table at them none too gently. They scattered like bowling pins, and with the help of a running start, he managed to leap onto the table and sprint across. He tore the door open and, with a final glance at Torryn's limp body in his arms, with a cacophony of angry voices hot on his tail, he burst into the night.

-?-

The car jerked to a stop with the screech of tires on asphalt, and Antony threw the gearshift into park. When his eyes found Skylar on the front porch of the Lord's home, however, an unconscious Torryn visible in his arms through the thick raindrops that streaked the sky, Antony completely forgot to turn the key in the ignition and lurched from the vehicle, accompanied by the near-nothingness of his Jaguar's idling engine and the gentle rhythm of rain beating against the asphalt. With the aid of his vampire quickness, he came to stand in front of the boy before he'd even reached the stairs.

"What happened?" Antony asked instantly, focusing fully on Torryn — on the blood that dampened her cheek and chin, on the light purpling of an incoming bruise along her jaw. "Is she all right?"

"She's fine," Skylar answered irritably. "But you need to get the Progeny out of here, away from the Lord, or she'll just come back here again to do it herself."

Antony nodded, and only now did he meet Skylar's eyes, narrowed in annoyance. "Right. Of course. I'll take care of it. Just get her to my house. I left a bit of my coven behind, and they'll make for good protection." The human nodded and hurried past him to where his own car lingered on the curb, and Antony turned to the house.

He faced the vampires as they filed out to fill the doorway, and though most of his attention was on the sound of Skylar's tires squealing away down the road, he offered the bloodied and beaten men a cool smile. "I need to speak with the Lord."

"He's not seeing visitors right now," a man growled.

Antony's smile didn't falter. He could hear the car doors slamming, the footsteps on the sidewalk, the ones climbing the stairs. He could feel his army gathering at his back. "Are you sure about that?"

The man scanned the amassing crowd with his dark eyes and begrudgingly stepped aside. "It's not a pretty sight," he warned as Antony started past, his smile still unshakably in place, "and he's not happy."

"I think I can handle him, thanks," Antony replied, making his way past the vampires that lined the hall and starting calmly up the stairs. With his back to his enemies, he finally let his smile die away.

Under normal circumstances, he would never come to the Lord like this. Under the current circumstances, with the Lord beaten so badly that even his own men were wary, he knew this was outright insane. But for Torryn, especially after how he'd hurt her, he would do anything. Anything.

And if a war with the Lord was what it took…

So be it.