‹ Prequel: To Bleed for Him

As She Fades

Fight Like This

"Feel the pain I'm raining down on you.
You won't deny my will 'cause what I start I'll follow through.
Craving all that I can see,
Making something out of me.

You've never seen a fight like this before.
I'll take you down and leave here wanting more.
You've crossed the line that I cannot ignore.
You've never seen a fight like this before."
- Decyfer Down

A swing of her already-bloodied blade brought with it a shower of blood and intestines, spilling onto the asphalt as the vampire dropped to his knees on the street. He grabbed at the mass of wriggling pink and pulled it to him, but Torryn didn't give him the chance to succeed in putting himself back together — not that he really would have, anyway. With another swing of her knife, she cut through skin, bone, and esophagus, and a fresh spray of blood quickly gave way to a rain of ash.

Torryn stepped back to avoid the cloud of dust that rose with the man's passing, wiping the gore of her knife onto her jeans without a care in the world. She scanned the street around her, but she saw no one from one end to the other. Lights glowed in the windows of houses and closed shops, and cars were parked in driveways and along the curb, but she could see no movement, no signs of life. Not even the twitching tail of a stray cat was in sight.

She tucked her half-cleaned knife back into her belt and shivered as a breeze too cold to have come naturally from the early September air shifted a strand of brown hair into her face. Her hand lingered on the hilt of her weapon, and she straightened her shoulders, straining her ears to hear something, anything, though nothing came.

Someone was there.

"If you want to be my seventh kill of the night, be my guest," she said to the nothingness that surrounded her. Tension tightened her every muscle as a pair of fingers trailed over the deep cut that ran along her forearm hard enough to sting but light enough to tickle, but when she spun to face whoever was touching her, no one was there. Her eyes flicked from one side of the street to the other as she clamped a hand over her still-bloody wound, the one she'd been using to attract this night's prey. "I'm assuming you're one of Emmeline's if you're this sneaky, and if I'm right, you're even more welcome to take your chances with me."

"By assuming that I'm a member of Emmeline's coven," came a feminine voice, smooth and nearly toneless, "you're also assuming that other covens don't have any exceptional vampires of their own." Torryn followed the sound of the woman's voice to the roof of a nearby pawn shop, but still, she saw no one. "Are you sure that's an assumption you're willing to make?" The voice came from behind Torryn now, on the rooftop of a small candy store, but still, she could see no one.

"I have yet to come across the members of the other powerful covens," Torryn called in response, turning in slow circles as she continued to scan the surrounding buildings. "From what I've seen over the past couple of nights, I'd guess that Diederick, Levon, Yaphet, and the Lord don't even send their minions out on the hunt like Emmeline does. Am I wrong?"

The woman laughed, on the roof of the pawn shop once more, but even her laugh sounded entirely void of emotion. "The Lord has slaves, which he purchases with dirty money and no effort. Yaphet has a personal harem, and though he sets his coven loose to do as they would for survival, they are as weak as the other vampires you've been crushing this evening. Levon and Diederick allow their covens to hunt just as they themselves do, but they have rules set in place — and their prey is…much higher up on the food chain than your kind, if you'll pardon the insult." Higher on the food chain? But besides werewolves and fellow vampires, which aren't fit for feeding, what is there? She still had a lot to learn. But the mysterious woman didn't stop to educate her, and her wispy voice trailed on, now from the roof of a nearby house. "So, while I suppose you're wrong for that particular assumption, I'll admit that you're not incorrect in thinking that I'm one of Emmeline's." With no warning at all besides another wintry breeze, a woman whose head barely came to Torryn's shoulders appeared in front of her, inches away and staring up at the half-Progeny with icy blue eyes. "I would be pleased to end your violence against my kind, if you wouldn't mind the inconvenience," she said, dropping into a delicate curtsy though she wore only a short sun dress, the vibrant lemon-yellow fabric standing out brilliantly against the faded ecru brown of her skin. And then, suddenly, Torryn's stomach was throbbing, and she was in the air feet above the ground, halfway down the street.

She hit the pavement and slid, the air bursting from her lungs to keep her from emitting a shriek as fresh pain tore through the half-healed gash along her back. With each loose rock or small bump her body skated over, a fresh sting erupted along her spine, and just as she thought she would pass out from the agony, just as she swore the thin fabric of her T-shirt would be burned away by the friction, her body finally slowed to a stop.

Slowly, she sat up, struggling to see and move through the pain that so tightly gripped her back. The vampire regarded her emptily from yards and yards away, and if it hadn't been for the outrageous yellow of her dress, Torryn would've sworn that she was a doll. As she began to push herself from the asphalt, the sensation of rocks digging into her palms like a tickle to her after what she'd endured, the woman suddenly vanished — and in a rush of that impossibly cold air, she reappeared before her.

Torryn didn't even see her fist as she swung, but she knew the vampire had struck her, as her body flew backward through the air and into the side of a parked car. A new burst of pain shook her, and it took her a moment to realize that, not only had she dented the door with her back, she'd also managed to move the entire car onto the curb. How am I still conscious? She pushed herself away from the car, biting her lip against the pain, but when she looked toward the vampire, she was no longer there. Oh, for fuck's sake.

Instinct kicked in suddenly, and as she sensed movement to her right, vaguely heard the sound of dainty feet upon the ground, impulse immediately drew her to the roof of the car in an impossible leap. The metal shell beneath her feet rocked wildly as the vampire's fist met the already-dented door, and without hesitation, Torryn crouched and lashed out with a foot. A sweep of her leg sent the vampire sprawling to the asphalt below, and before she could rise, Torryn leaped down and fell to pin the woman, straddling her waist. The vampire raised a fist; Torryn drew her blade from her belt.

Pain exploded in her throat even as the lukewarm stickiness of old blood splashed across her hand, clenching the hilt of her weapon. She fell to the woman's side, writhing on the ground as cough after cough shook her body. She struggled to regain her breath around spasms of pain in her throat, around the violent coughs that refused to subside, and panic iced through her. She'd crushed tracheae before. She knew that a vampire could easily do it to her.

But slowly, ever so slowly, the hacking and the throbbing sting subsided, and in a matter of seconds, she was able to draw in a full, quivering breath. Her throat hurt like she'd been shrieking for the past hour and a half, but still, she could breathe.

She sat up and turned toward where the vampire still lay, and her eyes widened at the sight. Her knife stuck out of the woman's throat, embedded halfway into her neck, and blood leaked endlessly around the steel. The woman herself, however, lay still, her wide eyes focused on Torryn but no longer entirely alert, though a hint of lucidity still lingered at the edges of her expression.

"So this is what happens when you don't finish the job," Torryn muttered to herself as she drew herself to her feet. Her entire body still ached, but she didn't let it show, smiling coldly down at the still woman. "I assume your body would eventually force the knife out or heal around it, if I left it alone?" The woman didn't answer — of course, how could she, with a hunk of metal in her throat? Torryn nudged her with a toe, and when the vampire made no move to grab her, she chuckled. "I should've tried this sooner. I've always wondered just how much an undead body can take without turning all ashy."

The woman blinked suddenly, quickly, and Torryn knelt beside her to wrap her fingers around the blood-coated hilt of her knife. To avoid giving her more time to recover — though Torryn longed to watch the process, to see just how it worked — she forced the sharp edge through what remained of skin and bone, and the familiar transition of blood to dust took place almost instantly.

A cloud of ash wafted over her, sticking in the crimson that stained most parts of her body in small spatters, but she paid no mind. Wiping her bloody blade off on her jeans in a way that had become nearly mechanical by now, she kicked her way through the pile of dust and headed down the street toward her car and the nearby gas station. Pain continued to trill through her, raw agony in her injured back, but she couldn't shake her smile.

You really do learn something new every day, don't you?

-?-

Antony watched Torryn's every move from the instant she entered the building. With her duffel bag bouncing against her thigh, she made her way to the werewolf ring master, then to the two vampire women who sat behind the betting table, doing everything he'd taught her to do since her first foray into the ring. She seemed content, he thought, wearing the ghost of a smile as she journeyed toward the stairs at the other side of the room and pulled open the weighty steel door.

Something was off, though, and he couldn't shake the feeling. Her movements were a bit stiffer than usual…weren't they? And he could see a half-healed gash along her forearm…or was he imagining it? Was he just being paranoid?

She passed into the stairwell, the heavy door swinging shut behind her, and he frowned inwardly as he awaited her return. I'm just projecting, aren't I? Making up issues to take my mind off of… He shuddered, and though he tried to push the thought aside, he couldn't. He hadn't been able to stop thinking about it since last night.

He'd seen the fight with Skylar. He'd watched the entire brawl from start to end. But could he even call that a brawl? They weren't fighting. They were fucking. Maybe not literally, not right then, but he was sure of what had come later.

And that's what was eating away at him now, as he sat staring at a closed door like a lost Goddamn puppy waiting for its owner to return. What had they done? Why hadn't she stopped it? Damn it, why wasn't she choosing him already!

Shut up and respect her, he reminded himself as the door swung open and she stepped onto the old warehouse floor. Her bag was long gone and, with it, the hypnotic sway of black and gray against her thigh, and the swing of her nearly waist-length hair about her shoulders and arms was what drew him now. He'd been meaning to tell her to pull it back for the past few months, as he watched it hang in her eyes and get caught in her mouth with every dip and dodge she'd ever performed, but he could never bring himself to do it. Because you know that the suggestion isn't actually to help her out during fights, he admitted to himself. It's so that you could finally see her with her hair up.

He wanted to kick himself for the mushy sentiment, but instead, he just pushed it aside, focusing entirely on the upcoming battle as she passed through the gate and into the ring. He finally tore his eyes from her to observe her opponent, a woman he recognized from a few fights by now. She was tall, lean, extremely well muscled, and outright brutal at times, but she was only a heavily diluted living vampire. Her father was a vampire and her mother was a human, so while she'd managed to come out on top by having prevalent vampire blood, she was still half human. The only reason she was even able to hold her own in a fight was that her father had once trained under a high-ranking vampire and had been willing to pass on a bit of the craft to her.

Against a werewolf or a super-powered human, she was a warrior. Against Torryn, she didn't stand a chance.

On the surface, it seemed like a fairer fight than anything either of them had faced to date, but in reality, Torryn had been more favored by her nonhuman blood. She would win this, hands down.

The battle started with a bloodthirsty cry from the ring master, and the two women met in the center of the ring at breakneck speed. Both of them ducked and dodged and punched and kicked quickly, accurately, perfectly, but Torryn was the first to land a punch, blood spraying from the half-vampire's mouth as her head was forced to the side at an unnatural angle by Torryn's clenched fist. A second punch, this one to the stomach, sent the woman sprawling on the mat with a fresh bout of blood spewing from between her lips. The woman managed to recover with surprising speed, however, and Torryn had to leap backward to avoid a sudden sweep of her opponent's leg. They were back to exchanging and dodging one another's attacks in a matter of seconds, and the crowd cheered in loud encouragement of the bloodshed.

"She's quite skilled, isn't she?" came a feminine voice he barely recognized from near a decade ago, and his eyes darted to Emmeline as she settled into the seat next to him, daintily tucking the skirt of her tight-fitting, blood-red dress beneath her thighs once she'd crossed her legs. She smiled to flash him a bit of fang, almost shockingly white against her darker skin. "I mean your Progeny, of course. The half-vampire isn't necessarily bad, but her talent pales in comparison to that of your pet."

He let his eyes drift to the men and women that crowded in the aisle next to her, seven vampires who all radiated centuries' worth of strength, then he turned back to Emmeline without a hint of emotion to his expression, though a faint panic had begun to tangle his gut. "Emmeline, I presume? To what do I owe this pleasure?"

She laughed, an oddly melodic, tinkling noise for someone who exuded such power and control. "Right to business, I see? You're not quite as like your father as I'd expected." She looked toward the ring, her moss-green eyes simultaneously tranquil and amused. "Your Progeny, my sweet Antony, has been causing quite a few problems for me as of late — including but not limited to the slaughter of one of my best hunters only minutes ago." Antony's eyes flicked to the ring, observing Torryn's movements much too closely once more as she dipped and dodged and rolled through the ring. So I was right. She did come in hurt. "Under normal circumstances," Emmeline went on, though Antony didn't turn to face her, "I would simply send a team of my own to remove the problem from existence, but with her, I find that it's not so simple."

He watched in confusion with horror quick on its heels as a six-foot-tall man, a mass of muscle and bloodlust, pushed past the werewolf at the gate and barged into the ring. He took Torryn's opponent by the arm and tossed her through the open gate without even bothering to look where she landed, and curious murmurs ran alongside excited shouts in the audience.

"He's called the Executioner among my ilk," Emmeline explained in a light, unconcerned tone. "He's among the strongest of my coven. He could be a master of his own but for his tendency toward brutality. You see, he would rather rip apart the competition than work alongside them, and that's simply not conducive to raising and maintaining a strong coven." He felt her gaze upon him, drawing his attention to her almost against his will. Her expression was deathly serious now, though bloodthirsty amusement still danced at the very back of her stunningly green eyes. "Your girl intrigues me, Antony…and that's the only thing that is saving her now."

The almost-master shut the gate and faced Torryn, whose eyes had widened beneath a brow furrowed in confusion at his appearance. She took a step back, and Antony could feel fight or flight kicking in, adrenaline flooding his lifeless veins, as if he stood beside her. He lurched to his feet, but Emmeline said sharply, "Sit down." He obeyed, but only because he knew that she could end this game at any moment…and with it, end Torryn.

Come on, Torryn. You can do this.

-?-

Raw fear raised the hair along the back of Torryn's neck. Panic sent a chill sliding along her spine like an ice cube against her skin. But she faced the stranger who had thrown the half-vampire from the ring and stood tall, and as a tingle of excitement drove the cold from her spine with a surge of heat, she smiled. She knew better than to wish for a challenge by now, but…

She was the first to move, running toward the vampire at full speed, and he met her just as eagerly. She threw one punch, then another, both hitting an arm raised as a shield, and before she could even see it coming, his fist found her stomach. The air knocked from her lungs, she staggered back, but she didn't linger. She sprinted to his back, aiming a kick at his spine, but he spun to face her the moment she raised her leg, and he caught her ankle without flinching and held fast.

A haze began to fall over her mind, clouding her senses, and she was nothing less than stunned. Pheromones? And they're actually affecting me? But her words were still clear in her mind, and she clung to the lucidity that her mental voice gave her to lighten the fog that weakened her senses.

By the time she'd shaken the pheromones enough to react, however, she found herself free falling through the air, several feet above the ground. She didn't have enough time to react, and the air was forced from her lungs yet again as her back met the mat. Gritting her teeth against the fresh sting in her back, she began to rise, but she was barely on her feet when the vampire rammed his foot into her stomach. She hit the mat and rolled, crying out as the throbbing in her back and the fresh ache in her ribs combined into pure agony.

Caleb's face filled her mind's eye, and she remembered the beating she'd taken at his hand, the brutal torment of broken bone and internal bleeding where her ribs had once been. Instinct forced her to her feet, a desire to never face that kind of pain again — but the strange vampire was already standing before her, expectant. A punch to the stomach knocked her back against the chain-link wall, and another thrust her harder against it. With his knuckles digging into her tender skin, with the aluminum digging into the bruises and the gash along her back, he held her there, and then delivered a blow to her face that she swore had broken her jaw.

For a moment, she saw only blackness, felt only a body-wide twinge of torturous pain, and she made no attempt to crawl out of the darkness. She hadn't been in the ring with him for more than a minute, and already, she was on the brink of unconsciousness. On the brink of death, she corrected herself, struggling to breathe around the agony that gripped her every limb, muscle, and cell.

A fresh burst of pain jerked her from the sightless abyss, and the shrieks of the crowd, the stench of old blood mingling with new, the view of the stoic vampire hovering over her and his black leather boot connecting with her stomach, all of it filled her in a rush. Agony still held tight to her, but she caught the man's incoming foot and threw him back with a shove, just as instinct bade her to do. He recovered just as quickly as ever, but she was on her feet with the same speed, driven by adrenaline and the will to survive, the will to win.

She held his gaze as she slipped her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, and for the first time since she'd seen him, he smiled. The steel of her brass knuckles glinted on her fingers, and their weight felt right even as they cut into the bruises they'd already etched into her skin.

She heard the ring master crying fowl outside of the ring, but a sharp warning from someone she couldn't see shut him up in a heartbeat. The vampire's smile grew, true amusement dancing in the back of his pale eyes, and he lunged at her without reserve.

He threw a punch, and she fell into a crouch beneath it. He aimed his knee at her jaw, but with a speed to match his own, she met his leg with a metal-laden fist. The sharp edges of her knuckles tore through his black slacks, and the scent of undead blood flooded her nostrils as the sound of shattering bone and tearing ligaments fell upon her ears, and the two mingled together in the perfect opera of sensations. He staggered back, his leg buckling beneath him almost instantly, and she surged upright as he went down, slamming her fist into his jaw in the uppercut from hell.

He arced through the air and fell, and she paused for what was only the barest of seconds but what felt like an eternity of bliss as she breathed deep of the smell of copper and savored the crunching crush of bone that echoed through her mind. The brutality energized her, and the faint memory of her distaste for the bloodlust of the Arena's audience arose to laugh in her face as she sprang toward the fallen man and threw herself upon him like a junkie after her fix.

Before she could stop herself, she'd begun to wail upon him, blow after blow of both steel-studded fists raining down upon him wherever she could reach. Adrenaline surged within her to a fever pitch that matched the screaming of the invigorated audience. The scent of irony blood became cloying, overwhelming, but she could never tire of the alternately wet and dry sounds of tearing skin and breaking bone. She couldn't stop. She couldn't slow. His jaw hung from his face by a thread of bloodied skin; his eyes were no longer in their sockets; there were no eye sockets. His nose was long gone. His ribs were exposed; his ribs were crushed. His heart and lungs and intestines were a wet mass of pink and red and colors she'd never seen before. His throat was ripped open, gushing blood; his trachea was pulverized; his spine was cracking beneath a barrage of steel and fist.

She stopped only when her knuckles met dusty mat instead of bloodied man, and panting, she regarded the pile of red-tinged ash that lay in the shape of a man between her knees. Tiredly, she wondered, Did I just beat a vampire to death? The unbridled screams of the audience around her, the stomping of their feet upon the floor as they jumped up and down in excitement, shook the walls of the old warehouse. The shrieks of Torryn's own name set the chain-link of the cage rattling all around her.

Exhausted, out of breath, still wrestling with a bone-deep agony that just wouldn't let her go, Torryn pushed herself to her feet, still clutching tightly to the brass knuckles in her grip. She let her gaze sweep over the crowd, over their pulsing bodies and waving arms, but even her adoring fans and the overwhelming victory couldn't raise her up from the depths of her misery.

"She killed him!" the ring master cried, and she could just barely hear him even though she was stepping through the gate he stood beside. "She fucking killed him! We haven't had an outright kill in months!"

She entered the crowd, but a man stepped into her path before she could make it more than a step. He smiled down at her, fangs glinting menacingly in the low light — just as he'd planned it, she was sure — and held out her machete, cleaner even than how she'd found it. "You forgot this the other night," he remarked in a low taunt. She jerked it from his hand and instantly swung it, angling toward his neck, but he caught the sharp edge of the blade and continued to smile in spite of the blood that trickled down his palm. "Watch yourself," he said laughingly, then released her blade and disappeared into the crowd that swarmed around her.

She held tight to her machete's hilt and began to push her way through the crowd once more, longing to escape to the room upstairs and rest until she felt like herself again. She glanced toward where Antony usually sat in the stands, only half expecting him to be there, but her eyes widened at what she saw, her heart caught in the iron grip of panic.

He was there, all right.

And so was Emmeline.

With renewed vigor, she shoved her way through the throng of overhyped people as quickly as her battered body would allow. She would never let that woman hurt Antony. Never.

-?-

Antony had yet to unball his fists, the tension of the battle having driven his nails deep into his palms, and at Emmeline's content sigh, he only clenched his fists more tightly. He swore he heard his knuckles crack beneath the din of the unruly crowd on the floor below.

"I believe I've officially decided upon obtaining a few Progeny of my own, thanks to your little pet," she said pleasantly, and though he felt her eyes upon him once more, he didn't face her. "I'll ask the other masters in the area if they would be willing to part with any — if they even own any, of course — but I'm fairly certain that the only one I'm truly set on having is yours."

Unnatural speed brought his head around, and he glared at her murderously. "No."

The woman laughed that tinkling laugh of hers and looked from him to the crowd. Still smiling, she rose, her eyes focused on something, and he followed her gaze to Torryn's slender form shoving her way through the audience like a quarterback's nightmare. "Be glad that's all I want," Emmeline murmured darkly, then drifted through the mass of people that clogged the stands alongside her entourage.

Torryn sprinted up the stairs and came to stand beside Antony, though her eyes were wildly searching the crowd. "Why did you just let them go?" she asked, annoyed, as she caught sight of them. She started past him, eager to give chase, but he pulled her into his arms and wouldn't loosen his hold no matter how hard she squirmed. "You can't just let them go!" she cried desperately, and he could hear the panic in her voice, the strain, the unshed tears.

He drew her closer to him and whispered, "I won't let anything happen to you." He placed a gentle kiss on top of her head, and finally, she went still in his arms.

"I'm sorry I ever reminded her of your existence," she murmured despondently.

He wished he could pull her closer in that moment, but he only dug the tips of his fingers into the fabric of her torn shirt and the suppleness of her skin underneath. He watched Emmeline and her minions step through the exit and out of the Arena, and he breathed deeply of the scent of fruity shampoo that lingered beneath the gore that matted her hair. The gentle, familiar scent cooled his lingering ire, but nothing could ease his worry.

Softly, he murmured, "It's not my existence I'm worried about."