As She Fades

"Looking inside,
Digging in deep.
Holding on tight
To all that is me.
(No one takes me down. No one takes me down.)
Don't you think for one day that you can kill me.

I'm not a pawn;
I am the king.
(I'm not going down. I'm not going down.)
I am the king.
(I'm not going down.)

So you better think again."
- Submersed

"Diederick! I assume my men phoned you instead of the rest of my coven?" Emmeline said delightedly, and though the purple lipstick that colored her lips was thickly streaked with the red of blood, her fangy smile was beatific as ever. "I feel they may have overestimated the threat I face here, but it was good of you to come all the same. I'll owe you for this one, won't I?"

Antony turned from the manic pixie of a woman to face the vampire who approached — Diederick. He'd never seen the master vampire before, and honestly, after all the whispered horrors he'd heard told of this man, he was…not at all what Antony had expected. He stood well over six feet tall, but he was far thinner than Antony would expect of a top-tier master. Hell, Antony himself was broader and more heavily muscled. His father had been the same. But not Diederick, no. He was slender, wispy, even, with only a bit of lean muscle to tighten the fit of his nice black suit — Armani, same as Caesar used to wear almost religiously.

His face, however, was almost too masculine, his jaw square and his every feature harshly angular, though his thick lips and wide, round blue eyes did plenty to offset that masculinity. But his voice…

"Emmeline." That was it. That was all he said. But that low, unforgiving rumble sent a chill rocketing down Antony's spine, that cool, mirthless smile knocked him back a mental step, and he tensed until his shoulders hurt as he watched the tall vampire step over Raphael's unconscious form sprawled on the pavement as if the werewolf wasn't even there, eyes only for Emmeline. Half a dozen undead ghosted along in his wake, their dead-silent footsteps so perfectly in sync that another shudder forced its way through Antony. Right, left. Right, left. Right, left. An army. "I'm honestly shocked to find you in such shambles."

"A powerful telekinetic, a battle-scarred old wolf, the son of a formidable master, and the most mentally tolerant Progeny descendant I've ever met in all my centuries of undeath. I can hardly say I'm surprised to be a bit winded," Emmeline returned, still all good cheer and saccharine smiles. "I only need the girl alive. Perhaps the vampire, for posterity's sake. Interested in joining the fun?"

At that, Diederick's smile finally took on an edge of smug amusement. "Always, my dear."

With an angry roar, a jagged sound barely human, Antony lunged at the newcomer, and the battle began — and not in his favor. Diederick all but disappeared, leaving Antony's fist to cut through open air, the chill of it battering his already torn knuckles, and almost as if he'd teleported through some magical means, he appeared behind the young undead and slammed his fist into his side. Antony dropped to his knees as a mouthful of blood burst free to stain the pavement, but he was allowed no reprieve. Emmeline appeared before him and landed a jolly kick to the jaw that sent him sprawling onto his side with a resounding crack and enough pain in his face to momentarily blacken his vision.

He lurched to his feet before his sight even returned, tamping down the pain as he attempted to regain his alertness. Slowly, his vision returned, but his hearing was what saved him from another debilitating kick from Emmeline. He quickly sidestepped the sound of her footsteps and the oncoming rush of the blow, lashing out blindly toward what he hoped was her face with all the speed he had left. Bone gave way beneath his knuckles, and another sickening snap accompanied a woman's shocked — not pained; oh, no, never pained with Emmeline — scream and a heavy ache in his own clenched fist.

Vision returned just in time to reveal the glorious sight of Emmeline sprawled on the ground, blinking rapidly as she attempted to shake her daze. He'd managed to not only rip open the deep gash along her cheek that Torryn had created during their battle together, but also to severely fracture the red-tinged white of the bone beneath.

Overkill? No such thing.

Some instinctual sense of his brought him around as Diederick approached, a blur of fine suit and deathly pale skin, and he threw an arm up to block an incoming punch, gritting his teeth against the pain of yet another cracking bone. He opted to duck beneath the second swing, then to lurch to his feet and stagger back to avoid an oncoming knee, but he fell right into a woman's cold, waiting arms with his second step.

"Well, that was quite rude of you, wasn't it?" she murmured, her lukewarm breath washing over his ear until he shivered against her, though his eyes were glued to Diederick, smirking just like Caesar always used to as he cracked his small knuckles. His modest magnitude definitely did him no disservice. But Antony was forced to turn his attention to the vampire at his back as her hands left his chest, one arm snaking around his middle to hold him hard against her and her other hand tangling in his matted hair to jerk his head painfully back. "Striking me in such a way. Striking a lady in such away. Tsk, tsk, Antony," she all but growled in his ear, her heels easily raising her to his height. "You'll have to be punished for that, now, won't you?"

The way Diederick smiled, so cold and so cruel, told of the punishment he would willingly bestow, and Antony began to struggle against Emmeline's hold, but even after all this time, she still had the strength to hold him, his arms pinned to his side, his flailing useless. "Really?" he snarled around the ache in his jaw, lashing out with a vain kick and leaving half of his weight to sag in Emmeline's arms, but the woman didn't flinch. Physical size really did say nothing for a vampire's physical strength, didn't it? "She holds and you punch? What kind of master are you?"

"The kind that prefers to expend as little energy as possible in the name of duty," the master responded in a smooth, deep, chuckle-laden voice, and barely a second later, Antony let out a scream of pain as three of his ribs cracked beneath a single heavy blow. A fresh torrent of blood burst free from his lips, dribbling down his chin and onto his chest since Emmeline wouldn't ease her hold on his hair, and another fearsome punch fractured his cheek bone and added more blood to the red falls. Emmeline didn't so much as shift a hair beneath the weight of the man's strikes, grinning wickedly and standing ever steady.

But when Diederick raised his blood-covered fist in preparation for another strike, Antony made a split-second decision, relying on Emmeline's sturdiness as he swiftly lifted both of his feet from the pavement below and rammed them into Diederick's chest with enough force to send him sailing back down the empty road. Even Emmeline finally left her careful stance, her hold on Antony loosening just enough that he managed to squirm free and drop to the ground on his hands and knees. Quickly, half blind with pain, one of his eyes already beginning to close as his cheek swelled around the broken bone, he crawled across the asphalt, his eyes on where Torryn lay feet away. It looked like she was moving, if only a bit.

Good.

But he twisted to look back at the pair of masters, both on their feet now, bloody and unamused, and he stopped his mad scramble to lurch to his feet, turning to fully face them. All he could taste was blood, and all he could see was rimmed in the heavy black of looming unconsciousness, and if his heart still held a beat, he was sure it would've been begging to burst free of his chest by now.

Please wake up, Torryn. I need you. I hate myself for it…I hate to ask…but I need you.

And he threw himself back into battle without another thought to spare, already tapping in to every last bit of strength, speed, and wit he possessed.

He could at least warm them up a bit for her, right? For when she got up?

He could. He would. Even if he died his final death because of it.

-?-

The haze lifted from Skylar's mind just a hair when he registered the feeling of smooth warmth against his arm, and he looked down with half-seeing eyes to where the sensation was coming from, the only sensation to cut through the fog since the barrage of pheromones had begun. Beside him on the ground lay Torryn, sprawled gracelessly on her front, and it was her hand that he felt on his arm. For a moment, he was distracted by the unnaturally glowing pallor that the haze gave to her skin, beautiful but ghostly, but he forced his eyes to her face when her scratchy voice broke their small bubble of silence.

"Can you…shield me…like…that guy did…for Caleb?" she asked between pauses for breath, and his mind was instantly flooded with the vague, distant memories of the last miniature war he'd fought at her side. Antony's upstart opponent for Caesar's coveted throne, coated in protective telekinesis like well-fitting armor that no one could break through. Skylar still took pride in being the one to take out that telekinetic — but how much pride could he really feel after taking so long to do it that Torryn had ended up with most of her ribs broken and more trauma than such a young woman should ever have to speak of?

It was hard, but he managed to force the guilt away and drag his heavy consciousness back to the present. "I can sure as hell try."

"I don't need you to try, Skylar," she said, her voice taking on a hard edge in spite of her lingering breathlessness. "I need you to do."

"These stupid pheromones are making things hard," he groaned in his defense, shifting on the asphalt and doing his best to focus on the loose gravel that dug into his back through his shirt, hoping that the slight pain would help him to regain his drifting senses.

She laughed darkly, the sound filled with weeks upon weeks of experiences he was sure he could never even dream of, and the fog lifted just one degree more as he turned his gaze to her face, her brow furrowed in determination, her jaw set and her silvery eyes hard. Was that just a trick of the lighting? Of the pheromones? Or had her gray eyes really taken on the ethereal silver of her ancestors? "If I can overcome them — me, a member of the species created specifically to fall under a vampire's thrall at the drop of a damn hat — then you, the human, the human with more mental fortitude than any man I've met in my life, should be able to shake it off without a problem."

He felt that warmth on his arm intensify as he watched her expression shift, a raw earnestness entering her gaze that washed away the shadows of battles past, and he could only stare into those silvery eyes as she went on eagerly. "Just think of what's at stake. Think of the people you love who will suffer if you don't do exactly what you need to do at the exact time that you need to do it. That's what always gets me through."

"I…I will," he all but whispered, awestruck, and the light to her eyes drew him further from the dark abyss of the vampire's thrall — or was this the heavy hand of both of the enemy masters? He couldn't remember anymore — and he focused every last bit of his will on the form of the woman sprawled beside him in the middle of the vacant street. He'd never done something like this before, never exerted his influence over a person's physical form for the sake of helping and not hurting, but the theory was clear enough, and after letting his eyes rove over every dip and curve of her slender outline, he let loose a gentle surge of power. He let the energy twine with her cells, with her clothes, with every last strand of hair, and it wasn't long before she was coated in a very careful casing of raw telekinetic power.

If further harm came to her now, it would be his fault — and he'd be damned if he let anyone so much as touch a single hair on her head.

She pushed herself to her hands and knees, and he was careful to keep the shield tight around her as she moved. She leaned down to press her lips to his in a brief, gentle kiss, and though he could feel little else through the thick fog, he could feel every last bit of her warmth against him. He swore the pheromones only amplified her presence. Or perhaps it was only a trick of his addled mind, a trick of his desperate love for her. "Do everything you can to protect yourself, Raphael, and Antony while I do this, all right?" she said as she rose gracefully to her feet. She bent to grab her fallen machete from the ground nearby, and he marveled at the ease with which she seemed to control herself, fully in charge of her own careful movements when she'd been so far under only moments ago. She dived into the fray without a second thought, in true headstrong fashion, and he was left alone to gawk and squirm against the haze.

If she could wriggle her way free of it, then so could he, God damn it.

A low growl reached him from a few feet away, and he turned from Torryn for just long enough to spot the massive form of a dark brown wolf snarling viciously at the crowd of undead Diederick had dragged along with him for the fight, all of them standing about, waiting for their time to fight. Raphael, Skylar realized, and with a faint smile, he turned his attention back to Torryn and pushed himself into a sitting position, managing it though he still struggled against the pheromones that gripped him.

Hope. There was hope.

-?-

Two of Diederick's back-up vampires fell beneath a single swing of Torryn's blade as she burst into the crowd from behind. Had they really been paying so little attention to where she and Skylar and their werewolf accomplice lay? Had they really been so sure of their master's thrall that they had completely ruled the remaining three out? Weres couldn't even fall under a vampire's spell, as far as she knew, and humans, especially telekinetics, probably weren't always easy prey, themselves. Of course, Raphael had been knocked unconscious, and the pheromones of two masters combined would likely be more than enough to put any human under, and she was half-Progeny, after all…

Forcing the useless thoughts from her mind, she lifted her machete once more, but the remaining four vampires faced her in tandem, all stout and glowering, and she stilled with her weapon upraised as a wave of fresh pheromones washed over her. They twisted around her, curved gentle fingers around her arms and whispered sweet nothings in her ear, and she found herself teetering at the edge of the abyss yet again. She could just cave in, right here and now, and fall into that warm, promising embrace…

The four bodies lunged toward her, but a blur of dark fur burst onto the scene and knocked them all over like bowling pins, and the familiar scent of wolf bolstered her enough to let her muscle her way through the haze. A wolf roughly the size of a luxury car held a vampire pinned nearby, already chomping through the woman's neck with terrifyingly powerful jaws and a delightful spray of blood, and even as she spared a smile for Raphael, she threw herself at the remaining three undead who charged toward him.

She took one of them down with that same surprising ease, but the final two didn't seem quite so eager to lose their heads. They swarmed her as one, forming a stunningly perfectly synced unit, and as she felt the lukewarm pulsations of Skylar's telekinesis holding steady around her, she decided to test out his shield. The first man swung, his punch powerful and precise, but she felt it as barely a tingle in her stomach, though she did fall back a step from the sheer force of the blow. The second vampire swiftly landed a kick to her side, the tip of his steel-toed boot digging into her back where her kidney lay beneath, but there was still only a faint tickle and a light stumble on Torryn's part. She smiled cruelly and hefted her blade, and the battle truly began.

She dipped and dodged her way neatly around a pair of carefully synced barrages of blows, but even when she missed a step, no harm came to her from their attacks. When she raised her machete, her target raised his arm in defense, but she only lopped it off with a quick swing before slicing through his neck next. A spray of blood, then of ash, then the remaining vampire surprised her with a kick to the stomach so powerful that it cut through her shield, and a mouthful of blood burst from between her parted lips as she heard a rib crack, and she staggered back helplessly.

Had Skylar dropped the ball? Or had she?

She couldn't feel Skylar's warmth so strongly around her now, but she should've known better than to stand still in the first place. She sidestepped a second kick and hefted her blade yet again, but another blur of fur breezed by, and the vampire's fresh cry died in a wet gurgle as teeth found throat and undeath ended in a spattering of blood and a wafting of ash.

Taking advantage of the brief lull, she turned her attention to where she'd left Skylar, wondering if something had happened to him to force him to drop his shield. She found him on his feet, bloody and panting, face to face with another carload of undead. Four of the vampires, one man and three women, slipped free of the dark interior of a sleek black car just like the other two that set empty nearby, and Torryn felt her chest tighten.

They were already spread thin. Would they really be able to overcome this, too? And who the hell kept calling for back-up?!

But an agonized cry from Antony brought her head around, and the second she saw him, on his knees, coated from head to toe in his own blood and very nearly broken, at the mercy of the two masters who stood gleefully over him, she knew what she had to do. Raphael sprinted past her to rush to Skylar's aid with a low growl that promised only the wickedest of violence, and Torryn ran in the opposite direction, sliding to a stop in the middle of the street, dead center between Antony and his opponents with her arms spread wide, as if taking up more space would somehow help her protect him more.

She scowled at Diederick and Emmeline, ignoring the aches in her head and her stomach and her everything else, ignoring the pheromones that still swam around her and broke uselessly against her like salty ocean waves lapping at a jagged old boulder, but she couldn't ignore the sound of Antony's weak but mirthful laughter as he came to stand beside her, resting a heavy hand on her shoulder as he regarded the pair of master vampires with the only eye that would open all the way. They'd beaten him. Badly. She felt her ire rise.

"You remember when we fought Caesar?" he asked suddenly, his voice far stronger than she'd expected from such a battered shell of a man, and she smiled in spite of herself.

"Of course I do."

"Well, keep remembering, 'cause I think we're going to need a repeat here in a second," he said with a smile quirking his busted lips, and his hand slid away from her shoulder as he rushed headlong back into battle. Without missing a beat, she charged in behind him.

-?-

This sure was a weird time to remember it, wasn't it?

Antony swerved around a bone-splintering punch from Emmeline and rammed his knee into her stomach, reveling in the pained gasp that left her as she stumbled back. He shifted his weight and slammed his other knee into her in a follow-up blow, hard enough and high enough to meet her ribs and elicit a satisfying crack from them, and he spent another brief moment savoring the small sound of pain she made. She no longer held such an invincible front. She no longer made every effort to avoid showing her pain. She no longer had the strength to hide the agony or to avoid the blow that would rain it down upon her.

The moment he'd slipped his arm around Torryn's waist and thrust that broken table leg into his own father's chest had been the moment Torryn had finally realized what had happened to him.

He'd died. He'd died at his father's hand. And the look in her eyes when she'd put the pieces together haunted him more than his father's killing blow ever would.

Emmeline came back with a vengeance, rushing toward him in a vampiric blur and catching him in the jaw yet again. The bone had only just managed to mend, and here she was, breaking it all over again. He let out a grunt of pain as he fell back, but he didn't let the agony blind him this time. He'd grown numb to it. He'd grown numb to everything.

He raised an arm to block another devastating punch, leaping backward to avoid a kick, then he jumped again and spun, and it was her turn to lose control of her jaw as his roundhouse kick caught her. A loud cry left her, and she staggered back, clutching her chin as she glared at Antony. Her face was bloody, torn open in several places, bruised, an awful, awful mess, and he couldn't keep himself from smirking one of his trademark cocky smirks as he took in the beautiful sight.

Oh, how the mighty had fallen.

"I should've let you do it," he said suddenly when he felt Torryn's arm lightly bump against his as she stepped away from Diederick. A quick glance at the man revealed a sight not too far off from Antony's own, Diederick just as bloodied as Emmeline, but when Antony's eyes flicked to Torryn, he found her favoring her right arm and wielding her gore-coated blade in her left hand. She didn't look to be in such good shape, herself. Then again, what the hell did Antony look like? He was sure it wasn't pretty. He sure as hell didn't feel too pretty right now. But her silvery eyes darted over to meet his, and he saw no pain, no fear, no panic. There was only concentration and that deep, deep determination that only she could muster.

"What?" she asked in a pant, apparently not always the mind reader he liked to imagine she was.

"Caesar," he answered simply, then added to clarify his point, "I should've given you that table leg and let you finish him. He was just as much your nightmare as he was mine."

Caesar. He tried to remember when he'd finally stopped calling him Father, when he'd finally stopped imagining the man to have ever been a parent.

But Emmeline and Diederick suddenly rushed forward again, and Antony was pulled away from Torryn as he danced clumsily around a barrage of rapid punches. One finally caught him, Emmeline's sharp knuckles catching him in the stomach with enough strength to set him sailing back through the air, and he grunted when his back met the asphalt, the loose gravel scattered across it tearing through his back as he slid.

A clang sounded, likely the sound of Torryn finally being separated from her machete, and he heard an ever-so-eloquent "Oof" leave her as her back met the ground next to where he lay. Lucky. She hadn't had to slide.

"He'd been your nightmare for far longer than he'd been mine," she said around gasps for breath as she pushed herself into a sitting position, looking exhausted but still stubbornly determined. "I'm glad you finished him. I'm still sorry about what happened with your mom, though."

He pushed himself up to sit beside her and opened his mouth to speak, to tell her that the crazy woman had been trying to kill Torryn and she had no reason to apologize for what had come of it, but Emmeline suddenly fell on him, and he wished her fangs would disappear like her dagger had as she snapped at his throat. Before he could fight her off, however, Torryn dived at her, tackling her straight off of him and onto the pavement nearby. Torryn had her pinned, landing repeated punches to the woman's already mangled face — she was lucky Torryn had lost her brass knuckles long ago, he thought — but Antony didn't have time to sit and watch. Diederick suddenly came hurdling toward Torryn's back, and Antony tapped into his vampiric speed to meet him in the middle, far from Torryn, and began to grapple with the man, trying but failing spectacularly to force him back.

Antony hit the ground suddenly, knocked back by a hard shove from the older master, but when the man fell upon him, fangs bared in an obvious threat, he bent his arm and lashed out hard with his elbow, catching the vampire hard in the cheek and likely shattering his cheekbone. Diederick tried to recover, but another swing of Antony's elbow sent him sprawling onto the pavement, dazed, and Antony sat up in a hurry, immediately turning to lift his foot and slam it down on the man's chest. Blood burst free of his mouth, the satisfying crack of a fracturing sternum echoing along the street, and Antony raised his foot and brought it down again, but this time, Diederick caught his ankle and jerked him into the air, dragging him through the empty space over him and slamming Antony face-first into the asphalt on the opposite side.

Well, if his face hadn't been busted before, it sure as fuck was now.

A flash of pain tore through the careful numbness he'd built up around him, and he groaned as he pushed himself onto his hands and knees, blood flowing from his face to grow the puddle below him with all the strength and speed of a waterfall. How many bones were broken now? How many gashes marred his forehead? Would his other eye be swelling shut soon?

They needed to end this, and they needed to end it fast.

Just as he managed to get to his feet, he was bowled right back over, and he hit the ground on his back with Torryn sprawled on top of him. She cringed apologetically as she forced herself up to straddle him, and he rested his hands on her hips and smirked up at her, though he knew full well that now was not the time.

"Looking good, Antony," she said with a poorly hidden smile as she rolled her eyes, and his smirk only grew.

"You, too, baby. As always." But her warmth left him as she hopped to her feet and charged at Diederick, leaving Antony to turn toward where Emmeline stood, sagging beneath the weight of her injuries and glaring murderously at him.

"Round three," he declared loudly as he stood, brushing at his clothes as if he could ever rid himself of all this dirt and grime. "Fight." He rushed toward Emmeline with every bit of speed he could muster, smirking arrogantly all the while as every last bit of his previous dread left him.

After all, he had Torryn by his side. They'd fought worse than two measly masters.

Caesar.

Caleb.

The small armies of undead their opponents always seemed to have at their backs.

With Torryn at his side, he could never lose. He was sure of it.

-?-

The tires of yet another car squealed as it tore onto the scene, and Torryn felt her chest tighten with dread once more. Seriously? More of these bastards? Seriously, who the hell kept calling for back-up?!

Diederick aimed kick after kick at her middle, her face, her throat, but she continued to block with her sore arms and dodge to the best of her abilities, until she finally saw an opening and reached out to grab him by the hair, spinning and dragging him along with her as she stooped, slamming his face into the ground just as he'd done to Antony.

Antony's poor, poor face. It was a tragedy, really.

She'd just lifted the man's head, preparing to ram it against the pavement again, when he tore easily from her grip and threw an elbow back, straight into her ribs. She cried out, another crack bursting from her abdomen as more ribs gave way beneath the blow, but she gritted her teeth and tamped the agony down as she dodged his next attempt and lurched to her feet, dancing quickly back and away from her opponent.

"What the fuck?" she blurted when a flash of headlights caught her attention from nearby. Raphael's car rocketed toward her, swerving around Skylar as it mowed down the carload of Diederick's remaining lackeys, and as the sedan broke into the light of the streetlamp that glowed overhead, Torryn could make out Becca's angry face where she sat hunched over the steering wheel.

The woman swerved to miss Torryn, but Torryn rolled out of the way just the same, and sadly, so did Diederick and Emmeline, the two who seemed to be the insane vampire's intended targets. The car screeched to a stop, and Becca leaped out without cutting the engine, rushing to where Antony had fallen to his knees nearby, clutching the side of his throat. Blood spurted between his fingers, and Torryn frowned worriedly as she took a step closer. Bite marks…?

"Remember the deal! Please!" Becca cried, coming to stand between Antony and the two other masters, her pleading eyes on Emmeline. "You said you would never kill him!"

The worry left Torryn as she whirled to face Becca, her eyes narrowing in a fierce glare. "If I make it out of this fight, I'm killing you with my bare hands. You're too stupid to live. You know she won't spare him, no matter how many innocents you sacrifice to her along the way!"

Emmeline's cackling laughter rose high on the air, and it felt almost as if they were back at the beginning of the battle, as if no one stood injured and none of them were on the brink of death or unconsciousness, as if Emmeline's own blood didn't stain the street, smeared by the pint. "Even now, as you stand fading before me, that is your concern? Not yourself, but those poor, forsaken Progeny of yours? Those innocents, as you so call them?"

Diederick chuckled lowly. "If I were in your place, I would certainly be more concerned with my own well-being and my own betrayal than with that of a group of slaves-born-slaves who would never know the difference."

Torryn opened her mouth to speak, but it seemed that the time for talking had come to an end, and she found herself weaving between the man's frenzied blows once more. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Antony forcefully shove Becca aside, and he got to his feet, his fangs bared and glinting dangerously in the low light. He fell on Emmeline like a beast, taking her down as a monstrous snarl rumbled through him, and Torryn turned her attention back to her current problem.

Diederick landed another hard punch to her already-broken ribs, but she kept her mouth shut so that only a strangled mockery of a cry could be heard, and she darted around him quickly. In an act of desperation, she jumped on his back, wrapping an arm around his throat tightly though she knew full well that he needed no breath, and she tightened her hold until it was near crushing. The vampire reached back and clutched at her hair, at her shirt, at her shoulders and the back of her neck, but no matter what he tugged at or how hard, she held firm.

Falling to his knees, he twisted, ramming her back into the hard ground and shifting his weight on top of her until she couldn't breathe beneath him, and though she struggled to wiggle free, she could find no escape, not even a mouthful of air. But she heard a clang and the strange hiss of metal sliding along asphalt, and instinct guided her arm from where she'd forgotten it around Diederick's neck. Her fingers scrambled across the pavement high over her head, and she felt a surge of telekinetic power as the hilt of her fallen machete was forced against her palm. She curled her fingers around it, and as Diederick finally began to rise, free now that her arm had left him, she swung.

Stale old blood fell into her wide open mouth as she gasped for air, but she barely paid it any mind, her attention glued to the sight of Diederick's head dropping to the ground beside her. It fell to ashes, the man's body growing brittle and gray and soon doing the same, and she let the machete fall from her fingers as she lay there, her mind kicking into overdrive as she tried to register everything that had just happened. Diederick was dead. One of the highest-ranking masters in the area was dead.

And she'd killed him.

She sat up and glanced toward the spot where she'd seen Antony going for Emmeline's throat, but she found only a pile of ash similar to the two that pooled neatly on the ground to either side of her. A breeze picked up, scattering the masters' remains, and she searched the area for Antony. He sat barely conscious on his knees only feet from Emmeline's remains, dripping blood onto the pavement and staring at the waves of blowing dust in awe, his mouth hanging open to show his fully extended and blood-covered fangs. Had he…torn her head off with his teeth?

Finally, she forced all of her shock away and stood in spite of her aching bones and protesting muscles, glancing around the scene. Antony sat staring. Becca stood staring. Ash flitted across the pavement like the ever-moving waves of the sea.

They should celebrate, she thought.

She should collapse in a heap on the pavement and let exhaustion take over.

She should scream at Becca until she couldn't hear herself anymore.

Something. They should do something. Something beyond staring and watching those dusty piles flutter away while waiting for consciousness to finally leave them all.

"Torryn," Skylar said softly, his voice so quiet that she could barely hear him, but in the sudden stillness of the chilly night, it wasn't hard to hear anything at all. She turned to face him…and the world fell out from under her.

Raphael lay in human form at Skylar's feet, naked and beaten and bloody, and he…

She didn't think he was breathing.

-?-

The Flame That Guides Us Home

"Sing, now, seraph, find the calm within your soul.
Bring us closer to the flame that guides us home."

- Demon Hunter