As She Fades

"Push me again.
This is the end.

Here we go!
Here we go!
Here we go now!

One — nothing wrong with me.
Two — nothing wrong with me.
Three — nothing wrong with me
Four — nothing wrong with me.

One — something's got to give.
Two — something's got to give.
Three — something's got to give.
Now!

Let the bodies hit the floor!"
- Drowning Pool

Antony stifled a groan as he crossed the threshold into the house, taking one last look at the slowly, slowly brightening horizon before turning from it — lamenting a view he would never again be able to see. Gently, as quietly as inhumanly possible, he eased the door shut behind him…then stopped to wonder why the hell he was sneaking into his own house.

I'm an adult. I can come home blood-drunk at 6:30 in the morning if I damn well please.

"And where the hell have you been all night, young man?" Becca asked out of nowhere, and he whirled to find her standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, her stern expression at odds with the half-teasing lilt of her voice.

He smiled easily and answered, "Monitoring some fights at the Arena, discussing the matter of pay with a few personnel, the usual."

"Mmmhm," she drawled, an eyebrow cocked. "And does 'the usual' involve sending Torryn home in a tizzy?"

He widened his eyes in feigned concern. "What? Did something happen?"

She pursed her lips. "I didn't want to bother her, and she didn't come out and say anything, but I've got a couple of guesses. I mean, the way you've been feeding lately, it's not exactly hard to figure out what you're doing when you disappear." Real ire crept into her tone, and she cocked her hip. "What was this one like? As pretty as the twenty others you've brought home in the past week? Or did you have more than one — again?"

"Jealous, are we?" he teased, grinning, and she rolled her eyes, though a smirk had sneaked its way back on to her lips. He threw an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close in camaraderie. "How about I let you know the next time I plan a little party for myself? Would that make you feel better?"

"Just name the time and the place," she said with a wink and a seductive smile.

He slid away from her, laughing, and started toward the stairs. "I'll be sure to keep you in mind." Relieved, he made his way up the stairs with quick but quiet steps, unable to get away from her fast enough; but before he'd made it to the second floor, just steps shy of freedom, she spoke again.

"You need to watch yourself, Antony," she said softly. He froze in mid-step but wouldn't turn to look at her. He could imagine the look on her pale, pretty face — the sagacity, the worry, the warning. He wondered if he preferred her vapid facade to her insightful reality. "You know I'd die all over again for a chance to be with you, but I know how you feel about that little half-Progeny, and I'm pretty sure both you and I can see just what you're heading toward with her. She's giving you the chance to grow up and deserve a relationship, not to act like even more of a child and develop a blood problem while you're at it. Just…keep that in mind."

When he finally looked back, contemplating whether to thank her or scold her for her unsolicited advice, she was gone. He climbed the last few steps with a shake of his head, and his gaze lingered on Torryn's closed door as he made his way to his room.

He hated that Becca could figure him — figure everything — out so easily, even as he grew all the more fond of her for it.

-?-

As Torryn made her way out of Maynard Hall, her book-heavy bag slung over her shoulder, she let her eyes focus only on the setting sun. It was the same sunset she saw every evening, Monday through Thursday: the bright orange ball of the sun nearly gone, its lingering rays stretching across the sky in vivid purples and pinks to clutch desperately at the dark navy that glided in to replace it overhead. It was the end of the day, the end of her normal life — and the beginning of her life as the half-Progeny slayer, sometimes lover, of bloodsuckers and beasties all around.

She smiled to herself at the thought. To think, she'd only just walked out of her Intro to Psych classroom…

Someone bumped into her, nearly knocking her bag from her arm, and as she turned to glare, the boy said a quick but sincere "Sorry!" before taking off across the grounds, obviously in a hurry to be somewhere. Frowning, she followed slowly in his footsteps toward the parking lot behind the administration building.

She wondered just where he had to be, where all of the students who bustled and laughed and chatted around her had to be. Were any of them like her? Were any of them like what Antony had been when he was alive? Were they like Skylar? Were they witches? Werewolves? Healers? Demons?

Were pyrokinetics a thing? Were fairies real? Should she monitor her thoughts more carefully just in case some telepath was listening in?

On the edge of panic, she looked into the faces passing her, at the people who paid her no mind. She didn't really need to be afraid of all this…did she?

Effectively unsettled, she shook herself and pulled her cell phone from her pocket, picking up the pace from where she'd come to a near stop in the middle of the sidewalk. She felt a thrill of excitement when she saw that Raphael had left her a voice mail, and she listened to it immediately.

"Torryn, I think I've finally found you something worthwhile," came the man's gruff voice through the phone, and her breath hitched as her excitement spiked a little higher. "A girl came in just now, one of the packless Were girls I take care of, and she told me that a guy from class, a friend of hers, had invited her over so they could study together. Turns out, the idiot was a living vampire who was too stupid to check out his prey, and he dragged her home to his coven, probably hoping to get some praise out of it. She managed to run, but she had a few good cuts and bruises. She thinks they were going to try to keep her, and she's pretty sure that they've got others there. No Progeny as far as she could smell, but quite a few humans, if she's not wrong." His voice paused, a low growl rumbling into her ear in its place. "I want you to take them down, Torryn. I want you to fuck 'em up good. Nobody messes with my Weres. Nobody." He rattled off an address, a street that she recognized, then hung up without so much as a goodbye.

She reached her car now, grinning as she pulled the door open and threw her bag into the passenger's seat. A whole coven of dumb assholes, eh? Sounds like fun.

As she slid into her seat, the phone still held idly to her ear, she realized that the robotic voice was still going. She had another message, and her heart leapt when it began to play. She'd know that voice anywhere.

"Uh, hey, Torryn," Skylar started awkwardly. "It's me. I know you're probably in class or whatever, but call me back when you get this, okay? I wanted to ask you something." The message ended, and only now did she remember to pull her door closed and put the key in the ignition. She dialed Skylar's number even as the engine came to life.

"Hey, Skylar," she greeted him pleasantly after his initial hello. "What'd you need?"

"Oh, uh…" He laughed nervously. "I just wanted to know if you'd like to come to dinner at the house tonight. It'd be cool to hang out again. I mean, if you're not busy."

Her smile edged into a frown. "Are you forgetting the fact that you live with two people who, you know, kind of hate my guts a little bit after what a jerk I was to you?"

"Oh, yeah, I know," he hurried to say. "But that's part of why I want you to come. Wouldn't it be kinda nice to have some relatively normal friends again? I think being around people who aren't vampires might do you good."

She started to drive out of the parking lot and said flatly, "They hate me, Skylar. How is this a good idea?"

He sighed. "Just…Come over, okay? Please? I promise it won't be that bad."

She thought about it for a moment, chewing gently on her lower lip, then finally sighed in resignation. "Fine. But I'm just on break now and I still have class for a bit, so it'll be another hour or so. Is that all right?"

"Not a problem," he said happily. "We're all night owls, anyway. See you soon."

"All right. But text me the address again, please. I don't remember where you told me it was."

"Will do! Later, babe."

She smiled in spite of herself. "Goodbye, Boo-Boo Kitty Fuck."

-?-

A gore-covered mace, several short swords, a machete, an untouched sledgehammer…

She pushed them aside, shoved away the grimy axe she'd used the night before, and kept searching.

Various daggers, a dirty flail, an empty gas can…

It was hard to believe that she'd found all of this — excepting the gas can and the sledgehammer, of course — in the shut-off room that Antony always referred to as Caesar's "study." If I had a study, I'm sure I'd keep battle axes and katana in it, too. Makes much more sense than books.

She noticed a cloth-wrapped hilt jammed into the lower corner of the trunk, and, curious, she took hold of it and pulled it free with a tug. A massive sword came free, nearly five feet long with an unusually broad crossguard. Her eyes widened.

A claymore. She had a freaking claymore. How had she forgotten she'd stolen one of those?

She shifted it from hand to hand, marveling at how light it felt for something so large. The axe had been heavier, and it hadn't had anywhere near this kind of length.

"This is probably a really stupid idea," she muttered as she slammed the trunk shut, "but I think I'm gonna do it, anyway."

Resting the flat of the blade carefully against her shoulder, she made her way down the walkway and up to the porch of the remarkably rundown house, and, feeling empowered after last night's easy victory in the Arena, she shoved the door open without even a knock and sashayed inside. "Hello!" she called to the empty hall she'd entered. It reminded her of the entryway to Antony's house, only the stairs were on the opposite side, and there was much less room to move here. "Anybody home?"

In an instant, she was surrounded by eight vampires, all emerging from separate parts of the house with their tiny fangs bared. "You're not welcome here," a girl snarled.

Torryn chuckled. Living vampires would never faze her, not after she'd seen what Antony could do, what the Lord could do, what Caesar had been able to do — and certainly not since she'd taken out about as many living vampires as this on her own before.

They lunged, and she kicked the door shut behind her as she lifted the claymore from her shoulder. The blade cut through the air in a wide arc as she swung it at the pair of fang-barers nearest her, and it cut through both of their torsos with ease — but it also crashed through the banister at the bottom of the stairs, sending splinters flying along with the blood and dust that already rained down upon her. Another swing cut through another two — and took out a vase and a window beside the door. Several sets of keys clattered to the floor with the jagged remains of the vase, but Torryn had no time to ponder their origins as two more vampires fell upon her, one of them grabbing her wrist and prying her sword from her fingers before she could maneuver its bulk back in front of her. It hit the floor with the loud ringing of metal on tile, then skittered away from her with a series of clinks and clanks.

It's better this way, she thought with a mental shrug, even as she punched the nearest man in the face hard enough to send blood gushing instantly from his nose and threw a kick at the nearest woman. She staggered back, tripping over the lowest stair and clumsily sprawling across the rest, and Torryn turned her attention to the two new vampires who were rushing at her.

She knocked one back with a kick to the stomach, but the other was quicker than she'd expected from this lot, and she found herself pinned to a wall, hands held above her head and bits of broken vase crunching beneath the heels of her sneakers. His fangs were suddenly in her wrist, but she sent him stumbling away from her with a swift backhand. She followed him back, throwing rapid punches — at his face, his stomach, his chest — and forcing him further and further back all the while.

When his back hit the opposite wall, she landed a final punch to his jaw, one hard enough to set his head bouncing off the plaster at his back, and he crumpled to the ground at her feet, out cold. She turned, and instinct sent her leaping back, over his body, as the bloody blade of her own sword sailed through the air in a sloppy arc before her. It managed to tear through her shirt to leave a shallow cut in her middle, and she dived at the girl who wielded it. A single punch to the nose was all it took to have her eyes rolling back in her head.

Torryn caught her claymore from the girl's hand before she'd finished her descent to the floor, and as the remaining two lunged, uncertainty shining in their eyes, she swung her sword at them just as she had with the first four. Their torsos split neatly in half, and their bodies faded in a mess of blood and ash.

"Pathetic," she muttered to herself, ending the two unconscious vampires with a quick thrust of her blade through each of their necks.

"You think my young are pathetic?" came a deep, even voice from above, and she looked up to find a man watching her from the top of the stairs. He looked to be barely in his thirties, and judging by how little she could sense his pheromones on the air, she imagined he hadn't been undead for long. She'd met living vampires with a better thrall than that.

"You're too young to be talking like some wizened old creep," she said as she came to stand at the bottom of the stairs, gazing coolly up at him as she shook the blood from her blade. "Lose the act and come here so we can get this over with."

He was suddenly one step above her, bending down to hiss inches from her face, and she cringed as his iron-scented breath wafted over her. She lifted her sword, guided it through the air as she had before, but the man was quick enough to kick it from her hand, leaving her fingers stinging as the weapon grated across the floor. He lashed out with a kick, quick enough to catch her in the chest before she'd raised an arm to block, and her back hit the wall between the door and the window with a thud.

She dipped beneath a punch, managed to block another kick, then caught his wrist and swung him around. He fell against the wall front-first, and she took a handful of his pale, unkempt hair and began to force his throat toward the jagged glass that still lined the windowpane. She remembered the last vampire she'd fought, the undead who had been forced upon her axe's blade, but unlike that man, this one struggled against her. He planted his hands firmly on the window's edge and pushed back, but she only used more force. He tried to kick back at her, but she easily maneuvered out of the way, never altering her pressure. With a final burst of strength, she managed to force him all the way forward, and though her arm trembled as she did so, she steered his throat onto the glass until it cut through the entirety of his neck, even his spine.

His body fell to dust, and she took a shaky step back, panting. Even as hard as that last bit had been, even as she stood there breathless and trembling, she couldn't keep herself from marveling at how simple that fight had been. Either she was getting stronger, frighteningly so, or she wasn't facing the right opponents. Part of her missed her days of fighting Caesar, of struggling through each battle in the Arena — but she knew she'd never miss the fear and the stress that came with it all.

Once she'd finally caught her breath, she picked up her fallen sword and made her way through the house from top to bottom in search of the captives. They were in the basement — How imaginative! Not a cliche at all, this one. — and she managed to coax them up even with a bloody claymore in her hand.

"There are keys on the floor," she said over her shoulder as a dozen or so humans, all in their late teens or mid-twenties from what she could tell, trailed up the stairs after her. "I think he kept all of your cars around here somewhere, probably out in the backyard." She paused as they neared the front door, all standing together in a clump. Quickly, she let her eyes roam over them, but she could see nothing wrong with them beyond a few bruises and bite marks, and she smiled. "Well, I think you can all make it home on your own. Good luck. But try not to mention the vampires to anyone. They won't believe you, anyway," she added with a wink.

They didn't respond as she strode out of the house with her claymore on her shoulder, and she sighed as she emerged into the night. She wished she could do more for them, but short of standing around to babysit, giving them a full overview of the supernatural vermin who hid in plain sight all around them, or taking the time to drive them all home one by one, there wasn't much that she could do, and she didn't have the time or the patience for that.

What a good savior you are, she thought derisively, popping the trunk of her car and tossing her sullied blade inside. Slicing up the vampies and galloping off into the sunset. She pulled a rag from between a couple of daggers and wiped at her face with it, then her arms. Then again, they're all adults, and he hadn't been undead long enough to have had them for long. They seemed fine. They can handle themselves. She dabbed at the cut on her stomach, but quickly gave up and tossed the rag back into the trunk. And if not, 911!

She slammed the trunk shut and grabbed a navy-blue hoodie from the backseat. It wasn't nearly cold enough to need it just yet, but it also wasn't so hot that she couldn't wear it, and what better way to hide the few wounds she'd received from the battle? It wasn't like she had the time to drive across town to Raphael's and back to Skylar's without arriving suspiciously late.

She slid into the driver's seat and sighed, half reluctant as she started the car. If she had to choose between having dinner with Maddie, Lindsey, and Skylar or facing a dozen more of these covens, she'd take the covens, hands down.

At least she knew what the hell to do with those.