As She Fades

"I can see a frozen point in time
Where her figure still awaits.
Tongue of fire tracing lips outlined
Where frozen breath originates.

With one motion of her wanting eyes,
She strips everything away.
This one moment is intensified,
And the colors all fade to gray.

I am in the only place that I want to be,
Though we know that it ends eventually.
But it's all right 'cause right now we're frozen."
- Celldweller

Antony could feel her eyes on him, but he pretended not to notice, sucking gently at the blood that leaked around his fangs as if he was alone with the human — and this woman was human, distinctly so. She tasted wholly untainted; she trembled nervously without pause; she breathed in a gasping, erratic rhythm. She'd obviously never done this before, and she was the first untouched human he'd had in quite some time. Hell, she might've been the only one he'd ever had during his time as an undead.

He sensed a hand moving toward him, and he opened his eyes just in time to watch another woman reach over his lap to gently take hold of his current meal's wrist. The longer the two women touched, the more his prey's shaking subsided, and he grew steadily more relieved. Fear worked for a lot of undead, but honestly, he just found it off-putting. What was the point of any interaction if both parties weren't enjoying — or at least tolerating — the experience?

He looked away as the two women entwined their fingers, and he glanced past her scrunched features to meet Becca's unwavering gaze. He'd expected her to look sated, mellow, but her dark eyes were disarmingly alert, and as he met her gaze, she slipped her fangs gently out of the woman's throat. She licked her lips, let her tongue swipe absentmindedly over both of her bloodied fangs, and for a moment, he was captivated. Something about that was just so…erotic.

But she didn't even seem to notice what she'd done. "Don't you think we should slow down with this one?"

"Please," said another woman, and he looked past Becca to her serene, unfamiliar face. "If you wouldn't mind. She's new, see, and —"

"We know, dear," Becca said in a low, sultry voice that Antony had never heard before, nothing like the faux-seductive voice she used to match her insipid facade, and he sensed her pheromones on the air, strong enough to rival even his own. He watched as the human's face slackened, as her eyes glazed over and her shoulders slumped, but Becca didn't even turn. "We'll do what we see fit, and you'll thank us for it."

"Yes, ma'am," the woman beside Antony murmured, and the one between the two vampires sagged against him. He rested his hands gently on her shoulders and withdrew his fangs carefully from her neck. Her head lolled to one side.

"Isn't that a bit much?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow at Becca, but her eyes were on his lips the moment his sentence had ended, and he realized that he was mimicking her action from a moment ago, licking the blood from his teeth absently. He wasn't sure whether to be surprised or flattered when her pupils dilated to swallow the entirety of her sienna-brown irises.

"If you don't use pheromones with your women," she began in a lascivious purr, leaning across the woman's lap to give Antony a perfect view of her breasts in her low-cut top, "you're wasting your money." Before he could stop himself, he bent down to meet her, and she returned his kiss eagerly.

He could taste the blood on her tongue, he realized, fresh and sweet as if he were tasting it straight from the source. She shoved the woman who separated them backward onto the bed with a hand to the chest, and Becca all but crawled over the tranquil woman to reach him. Gripping a handful of shirt in either of her hands, she jerked him toward her, and he tangled one hand in her hair as the other pressed into the small of her back, forcing her closer.

What am I doing? he wondered, but he couldn't stop himself. He followed Becca's lead as she drew her lips from his and bowed to bury her face in the neck of the woman whose throat was already leaking blood. She bit into her, bringing a fresh waft of blood-scent to his nostrils, and he bent down beside her to take an eager bite of his own.

Becca groaned beside him and pulled back. "Always use pheromones," she murmured, turning her half-lidded, wild eyes to Antony. "It makes them taste so much sweeter." She caught him by the hair and dragged him to her, and their lips met with the same explosion of coppery flavor.

He felt a growl rumble through his chest. He felt desire pour through him like magma. He felt the last vestiges of his reason draining away from him.

Taking hold of the hem of her shirt, he began to pull, and she obliged.

-?-

Torryn pushed the door open and crossed the threshold, the duffel bag heavy with cash swaying against her thigh from where it remained hanging from her shoulder. She dabbed the rag she'd retrieved from her trunk against her throat and lowered it, pleased to see that the bite wounds were no longer bleeding. She was healing, slowly but surely — and more quickly than usual. Maybe her life of vampire-slaying suited her more than she thought.

The door swung shut at her back, latching a bit more loudly than she'd expected, and she noticed that, while the vampires in the living room had been staring at her intently since she'd entered, most of them the undead and the older living who had more of a penchant for blood, only now did the three standing around the center island counter in the kitchen stop their chatting to peer down the hallway at her.

"Hey, Torryn," a girl called brightly, and Torryn vaguely recognized her. She was a living vampire in her mid-teens, and Torryn knew her mostly because of the fiery red hair that cascaded in layers to the small of her back. Her face was freckled but otherwise unremarkable, but her hair…It was hard to forget it, and even harder not to envy it. This girl and the two boys at her side had been spending most of their evenings here as of late, and Torryn suspected that their parents were either members of Antony's own coven or simply absent like his own parents had been, though she'd never thought it appropriate to ask.

"Hi, uh…" She hesitated, wracking her brain. "Samantha?"

The girl grinned. "It's just Sam, but I'm flattered that you remembered. We're making a couple of pizzas. You want some?"

Torryn smiled halfheartedly. If she hadn't been feeling like shit, mercilessly laden as she was with regrets regarding Skylar and Antony, she wouldn't have hesitated to stick around. These kids were the closest thing to normal that this house had to offer — and she never turned down pizza. "No, thanks. I'm kinda tired. I think I'm just gonna head to bed."

"All right," Sam said, her smile never fading. "I'll save you some."

"If we have any left," one of the boys remarked, and Torryn only smiled her response before heading up the stairs.

Away from the vampires that filled the first floor, she felt like she could breathe more easily, and she let out a soft sigh of relief as she approached her bedroom door. She'd take a nice, warm shower, then sink into that giant, lovely, fluffy, fantastic, awe-inspiringly amazing bed and…

She paused with her fingers on the doorknob as a high-pitched scream of what could only be utter ecstasy echoed through Antony's shut door loud and clear, and she turned to it, her brow furrowed. Becca…? A deep groan followed the cry, a sound that was familiar enough to draw a gasp from Torryn. Antony? She could suddenly smell the fresh blood on the air, irony and sickening. She dropped the bag from her shoulder, let the bloody rag fall to rest atop it, and propelled herself through the doorway before she could stop herself.

The door bounced off of the wall from the force of its opening, and she gasped again when her eyes landed on the tangled pile of red-stained flesh on the bed. Surely enough, there they were, Becca sprawled blissfully beneath Antony atop ruined gray bed covers, Antony hovering aggressively over her and growling in unadulterated pleasure. They were covered from head to toe in blood, neither of them noticing her — or perhaps noticing her but not caring enough to stop — and Torryn averted her gaze in embarrassment, but something caught her eye.

She clamped her hands over her mouth as a horrified scream escaped her — beside the bed, sprawled on the floor, lay three naked, gore-coated women in a sloppy pile of splayed legs and oddly bent arms. The frenzied creaking of the bed stopped as she rushed forward, crying over and over, "What have you done?! Antony, what have you done?!" She fell to her knees beside the women, nearly slipping in the blood that flooded the smooth floor, and took one of their wrists, anxiously searching for a pulse. But she found none in that woman, and none in the next, and none in the last.

"Antony," she whispered in horror, and her gaze slowly drifted to the pair on the bed. She met Antony's beautiful, beautiful blue eyes, dim beneath a haze of pleasure but vaguely confused, and blind rage tore through her.

Without a word, without even a shriek or a cry, she launched herself at him.

-?-

Antony felt nothing as Torryn's body collided with his and sent them both hurtling to the hard tile on the opposite side of the bed. Were those corpses? he wondered vacantly, even as his back met the cold floor with only a faint echo of pain. Did I really just sleep with Becca? His eyes rested on the woman hovering over him, tears streaking her pale cheeks to contrast with the way she bared her teeth, little jerks of her shoulders contrasting with the clenched fist she raised. Is she…really here? Her fist hit him once, then again, and again, and again, and slowly, ever so slowly, he could feel true pain seeping into his jaw.

It was real. All of it.

He could hear Becca screaming Torryn's name, but the girl's fist never stopped coming at him, time and time again, piling the pain on his cheek, his mouth, his nose, his jaw. Her warmth left him, and he watched as Becca dragged her back with her fingers hooked under her arms.

He could taste the blood now — his own blood, for once. He could feel the incessant throbbing in every inch of the left side of his face. He could hear the thuds and the small, gasping breaths and minute cries that came with a fight. He could hear Becca's voice, Torryn's voice, and slowly, cautiously, he rose to his feet.

He could feel nothing as his eyes landed on the two women, locked in battle on the other side of the bed, only inches from the corpses. He could feel nothing even as he looked at those bodies, those women, and opted instead to return his attention to the fight.

Torryn was a blur of fleshy white and bloody red as she landed punch after punch to Becca's torso, face, chest, but she wasn't quick enough to keep the vampire from catching her shoulders and ramming her against the wall. Becca spun her around and pushed her against it front-first, then sank her fangs into Torryn's throat with barely a pause.

Life sprang back into him, then, and as the final traces of numbness fell from him to leave behind fear, doubt, worry, the scent of Torryn's blood in his nose, he leapt over the bed and the bodies beside it. Becca drove her teeth into Torryn's neck repeatedly, biting her with only the intent to hurt her, to tear through her flesh as mercilessly as possible, and as Torryn's whimpered cries of pain met his ears, he grabbed Becca and jerked her roughly back, then threw her away with enough force to send her thudding into the wall several feet away. But his attention was instantly on Torryn, only on Torryn, and he reached for her.

She caught him in the jaw with a mean right hook, and he staggered back, tripping over the bodies and onto the bloody bed. Suddenly, she was on top of him, and he could see the moisture flooding her gray eyes, streaming down her cheeks, as she took hold of his shoulders and began to shake him roughly, desperately.

"What did you do?" she whimpered. He blinked rapidly as her tears dripped onto his face along with her blood, and he couldn't tell which was which as she whispered again, "Antony, what did you do?"

"I don't know," he whispered, and she stopped shaking him as her own body was rocked by violent sobs, "but I'm sorry I made you cry again."

She kissed him once, then a second time, but as he regained enough control of his body to reach toward her leaking eyes, some primitive desire inside urging him to make those tears stop falling, she leapt from the bed and made a break for the door.

"Torryn, wait," he said softly, catching her wrist before she'd made it halfway across the room, and she let him pull her to a stop, though her body continued to shudder with the strength of her sobs. The warmth of her skin seeped into his palm, and his mouth went dry. What did he say to her now? He wasn't even sure what had happened yet. He wasn't sure what he should be feeling. He wasn't sure that she was real. "Torryn…"

"I should kill you for this," she rasped, wiping at her down-turned eyes with her free hand. He could feel her pulse throbbing rhythmically, beautifully, beneath his fingers, and for a moment, he could only marvel at this woman, filled with all of the things that he'd lost so long ago. She had a heartbeat; she had tears; she had compassion; she had life. "I should kill both of you for this," she whispered, and she jerked him back into the moment when she met his eyes with a murderous glare. The shaking of her shoulders had ceased, but he didn't know if the tears would ever stop. What had he done? What had he done to make her look at him with such hatred in her eyes but speak to him with such humanity in her words?

"I'm sorry, Torryn," he said, and though his words sounded empty, though he felt only an echoing cavern of nothingness, he meant those words with every fiber of his being. "I never wanted to make you cry." She tried to pull her arm from his grip, but he tightened his hold, and desperation finally broke through the gate that dammed his emotions. "Please, don't go," he whispered, his voice heavy with panic. "Please, don't leave me. Not again."

He saw her eyes widen before he was so overcome with emotion that his vision blurred. Panic, fear, worry, guilt — all of it for her. What had he done? Why had he done that to her?

Wetness slowly streamed along his cheek, and he reached up with his free hand to swipe at it. He stared at his dampened finger in muted shock.

Crying. He was crying.

What kind of vampire was he? What kind of vampire fucking cried?

But what kind of man would he be if he didn't?

-?-

"Antony," Torryn whispered, and the painful throbbing his tight hold caused in her arm faded into the background. He'd never cried before. Never. Not once.

For a moment, she let her eyes rove over his face, over the blood that streaked from his nose to his chin, over the bruises that swelled his eye and his cheek and his jaw, over the damage she'd done to him without so much as a moment's hesitation, and her heart sank. How could she have been so cruel to him? Her hand itched to reach out and gingerly touch the cut that split his lower lip, but she held herself back. Her arms begged to embrace him, but she refrained. Her lips twitched beneath the desire to apologize, but she didn't speak.

She wasn't sure what to do. She wasn't sure whether she was in the wrong — the cause of the blood that streaked his face — or he was — the cause of the blood that stained his body.

"I'm sorry, Torryn," he said again. His voice didn't quiver as hers did, his shoulders didn't jerk with the same pathetic sobs as hers had, but still, another tear fell, and his guilt was clear on his face, even muted as it was.

She recognized this, she realized. She'd seen him react like this before. Almost entirely vacant, emotions muffled and half there if they managed to appear at all…

This was how he'd been when he'd first become an undead. This, she realized, was his vampiric nature asserting itself.

And his tears…

He was still the man she loved. Somewhere in there, beneath all of his bloodlust and blatant assholery, was still the living, loving vampire she'd first met.

But he'd just killed three women. He'd drained three human beings for his own pleasure. And as she pictured them, writhing and screaming and weeping as Becca and Antony pinned them and did what they would, her disgust, her growing compassion for the innocent, went to war with her compassion for the repentant undead before her, and with one final, purposeful tug, she pulled her arm free of his grip.

"You're not really sorry," she said softly, coaching her expression into neutrality. "You don't care about what you did to those women. You don't care about what you did with Becca. You'd do it all again if you had the chance. You're just sorry that you got caught." He reached for her again, panic bringing his eyes wide — God! Those beautiful, crystalline eyes! — but she knocked his hand aside and took a measured step back.

"Torryn, I —"

"I should kill you." She had to whisper to keep her voice from cracking as she felt a sob rising in her throat, and she took another step back. "I should kill you for this." And she would've — if it hadn't been him. Anyone one but him.

"Torryn —" But she'd already turned. She was already fleeing the room, tears falling fast from her eyes once more. "Torryn, please!"

God, anyone but him!