As She Fades

"Mother, I fight and I'm proud.
Father, I stand out from the crowd.
When it was so cold and there was nothing more,
While changing,
Mother, I found my reason to soar.

I'm fully alive, alive.
I'm fully alive, alive.
I'm fully alive, alive.
I'm fully alive, alive."
- Exilia

A knock on the door would've woken Torryn — if she'd been able to sleep worth a damn.

"Who is it?" she called, pushing the comforter down from where it covered her face, but she had a dreadful feeling that she already knew who it was.

"Can I come in?" Antony's voice filtered through the wood, sullen, and she sighed.

"Yeah," she said after a moment of hesitation. "Go ahead." As she sat up on the edge of her bed, he opened the door and stepped across the threshold, but he immediately averted his gaze upon seeing her.

"Wouldn't you like to get dressed first?"

She looked down at herself and shrugged. "It's not like you haven't seen me in my underwear before." She let out a brief, halfhearted laugh. "Or a lot less." He nodded and came to stand before her, but he still wouldn't look at her, his eyes glued to the floor at her feet, and she took the time to look him over.

If she hadn't walked in on him last night, she never would've known what he'd done. He'd showered, combed and carefully spiked his hair, dressed in a pair of jeans and a tight-fitting, charcoal-gray T-shirt that emphasized his every muscle, and sprayed on enough Axe to drop an army of hot women. He looked completely, entirely, 100% normal…and it was wrong. So wrong.

"I…wanted to apologize for last night," he said softly, clasping his hands behind his back.

She glared up at him and replied harshly, "You should be apologizing to the women you murdered during your little sex game, not to me."

Finally, he raised his eyes to hers, and the raw agony shining in those blue depths drove the anger from her. "I never wanted that to happen. Just…Just understand that, all right? After Becca told me that she could smell Skylar on you, I got angry. Jealous. More so than usual. So I decided to have her over for dinner, and I knew full well that sex was a highly likely possibility, but I never wanted to mix the two." His lips tightened, his jaw working as he gritted his teeth, and he dropped his eyes. "Not like that. I never wanted to kill a human, not that way. Not at all." Cautiously, he met her gaze again, and he added in a whisper, "And I definitely never wanted to hurt you."

But that's what you've been doing for weeks, she thought bitterly, though she didn't speak for a long moment. She regarded him in silence, her expression hard but not nearly as hard as she knew it should've been, and he held her stare. Asshole.

"What have you done with the bodies?" she finally asked.

"They've been burned elsewhere."

"Will their families ever know?"

He clenched his jaw briefly, then admitted, "I don't even know if they had families."

She fell silent once more, lowering her gaze. Thoughts raced through her mind, all of the things she should've screamed at him, all of the questions she should've demanded answers to, but when she finally spoke, she only whispered, "I should kill you for what you've done. God knows I've taken vampires out for less."

"You should," he said solemnly. "If you honestly think that's the appropriate course of action, I…I want you to do it."

She shook her head, staring at his gray socks. "You know I can't." Silence reigned once more, and she half loved, half hated the feeling of his eyes so obviously upon her. She vividly remembered a time that she wouldn't have been ambivalent — a time that she'd brought to an end herself.

God, this was her fault.

"Is there…" He paused, and she heard him swallow in the stillness of the room. "Is there any chance that you'll ever let me back in?"

Sorrow writhed within her, but she forced her gaze to his. "How can you ask me that?" He opened his mouth to speak, but she spoke over him, her voice rising in volume. "I walked in on you screwing Becca with a pile of naked, drained women beside your bed only hours ago, Antony. And you want to know if I'll let you back in?"

For a moment, he only looked at her, then he nodded once, twice, thrice, more to himself than to her. "Are you with him, then?" he asked evenly, almost emptily, as he held her stare. "Have you…chosen?"

Rage clouded her mind, and she narrowed her eyes. "You think that's what this is about? I don't want you back because I've made a decision and not because you murdered innocent humans?"

He instantly dropped his gaze to her bare feet, his body tense, ramrod straight. "That's not what I meant," he said softly. "I know why you're not…I…I just want to know what to think about what Becca told me last night."

"I had sex with him," Torryn answered flatly, getting to her feet so quickly, so angrily, that she nearly slammed into him. She managed to catch herself and turn, starting toward her dresser — Antony's old dresser. "That's it. I haven't made some epic decision." She jerked open the top drawer and scowled down at the unorganized array of socks and underwear, narrowing her eyes further when tears blurred her vision. "But honestly, after what you did…" She clutched the edge of the drawer tightly, biting her lip. "I don't know if there's much of a choice to make anymore."

"I understand," he said softly. "I won't…I won't bother you anymore. Just…Always remember that I love you, all right? No matter what." The door shut softly, and she knew that she was alone.

She slammed her drawer shut and bit her lip until the tears stopped, then wiped furiously at her dampened cheeks as she lay back down on the bed. Staring at the door, shivering in the chill of the air conditioning but refusing to take hold of the comforter, she couldn't help wondering.

Just how much of this was her fault? Would he have killed those women if she hadn't left him?

Was she really their killer?

-?-

Torryn's bag bounced against her back, in sync with the rhythm of her descent of the stairs. She knew that the afternoon sun would be high in the sky and just as blinding as ever when she stepped through the door, but in here, the thick curtains kept the bright rays at bay, and the only light she had to see by came from the lamps overhead. The unnatural yellow light usually didn't bother her, but today, thanks to her solemn mood, it seemed exceptionally dreary.

She sighed as she stepped off of the final stair, her hand already reaching for the doorknob only feet away, but a soft voice from behind her forced her arm to her side. "Hey." Becca stood in the hallway beside the stairwell, her arms crossed over her chest and her hair pulled back in a high ponytail. Just like Antony, she looked innocent as could be.

"Hey," Torryn replied numbly.

"I'm sorry to stop you on your way to class," the vampire began, smiling gently, and Torryn didn't bother to mention that she wasn't on her way to class just yet, "but I wanted to apologize before you disappeared for hours like you always do. What I did with Antony…It was a dick move, so soon after the two of you broke up." She shrugged, her eyes drifting toward a man as he passed through the living room door and conveniently missing the narrowing of Torryn's eyes. "You know that I've been wanting to do that for pretty much ever, and it was wrong of me to take advantage of his jealousy that way. I'm sure that sex with me wasn't nearly as great as the sex he has with you, though, if that helps at all." Finally, her eyes returned to Torryn's, and her smile faltered. "What?"

"Is that what you think this is about?" Torryn hissed, knowing that the only alternative was to shout, and she didn't want to make a scene in the middle of the vampire-filled house. "You honestly believe that the sex was the problem?" Becca pursed her lips but didn't speak, and Torryn went on. "I won't lie. It sucks that Antony slept with someone else, and it sucks that it was with someone I thought I was becoming friends with, but that's not the problem. The real issue here is that you and Antony killed three women. You slaughtered them, Becca. You drained them dry and I don't even want to know what else. How could you do that? How could you let Antony do that?"

Becca's features tightened. "I'd hoped you would understand that particular aspect of the night, but if I you really need it explained to you, here you go." She took a slow step toward Torryn, an obvious threat, but Torryn didn't move a muscle. "It's vampiric nature to drain your food source, just as it's vampiric nature that you mix blood and sex. It's vampiric nature to sate yourself in every way, to take everything that you desire — and it's vampiric nature to take it with whatever force necessary." She took another careful step forward, edging into Torryn's space, but still, Torryn wouldn't move. "You know this, Torryn," the vampire continued lowly. "You've experienced it dozens of times with dozens of vampires. It's what we are, plain and simple. It's our very nature to do the things we do. And while I'm really, truly sorry that last night unfolded as it did, I will never apologize for my nature — and I'll certainly never apologize for Antony's. I'm a vampire. He's a vampire. You either need to accept that or get out of his house."

A tense minute passed between them, locked in a match of icy stares and stubborn wills, but Torryn soon felt her lips twitch into a cold smile. Leaning close, her nose nearly brushing Becca's, she whispered, "It's like you've never seen what I do to vampires."

She spun on her heel and opened the door, and her smile never faded as she stepped into the light of the sun, listening smugly as Becca shuffled out of the reach of its rays.

-?-

Torryn knocked on the door even as she pushed it open and stepped inside. "Mom?" she called into the empty living room. "Rip— Er, Dad?" The word felt odd on her tongue, unused and foreign — but not wrong. She hadn't had much time to spend with Ripley, but calling him by name would be even weirder than acknowledging him as her father. At least, she thought so.

"Sorry," the man apologized, appearing in the doorway across the room from her. "We're making coffee."

"We were making coffee," her mother corrected him as she peered over his shoulder. He stepped aside, and she held up a pair of bright red mugs. "We're finished now." Torryn's father took one of the mugs from her, and the woman asked, "Want any?"

"No, thanks," Torryn answered with a smile. She was still a bit put off by her mother's kinder behavior, but she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. "I just came to see how you guys are doing."

"Come in, then," her mother said, already taking a seat on the main sofa herself.

Ripley sat beside her. "I'd been hoping you would stop by soon."

Torryn shut the door and settled into an armchair near the couch. "I'm sorry I didn't come sooner. I've just been dealing with school, and the Arena, and Antony, and…" She trailed off with a shrug of her shoulders.

"How's all of that going?" her mother asked, then took a sip of her coffee. Torryn watched her, noting the uncharacteristic gentleness that now filled the woman's brown eyes in place of that ever-present bitterness Torryn had grown so familiar with during her childhood.

"Fine," Torryn answered, smiling, "but I asked how you guys were doing first."

"You didn't really ask," her father answered with a crooked smile of his own. "But I think we're doing all right here. It's been…nice, getting to spend time with Leticia." He rested a hand on the woman's knee, and she smiled softly into the steam that rose from her mug.

"It has," she agreed as she lay a hand atop his, and the two smiled at each other.

Torryn looked away, feeling as if she was intruding on some very intimate moment, though she couldn't deny that she was glad for them. "Shouldn't you be at work, though?" she asked after a pause, letting her gaze return to them.

"I have the day off," her mother answered. "The first one in forever."

"I've actually been contemplating taking up work at the Arena," Ripley said, "to earn some money to repay her for letting me stay here."

"You know you don't have to do that," her mother hurried to say, but Torryn only cocked her head to one side.

"Can you even fight that well?" she asked.

He scoffed, though she could see a smile edging its way onto his lips. "I'm happy that you have so much faith in your old father's abilities."

"That's not what I meant," she said quickly. "I've just never really seen you in action before, and you kind of, you know, melt into a quivering little puddle whenever vampires set their sights on you."

He chuckled, carefully placing his mug on the coffee table before him. "Would you like a demonstration? I promise, I'm not nearly as fragile as I might seem, my reaction to vampires notwithstanding."

"Uh, sure," she said, curious. With a nod, he got to his feet, and she followed him alongside her mother to the plain backyard.

Her mother stopped at the edge of the back porch, sipping her coffee as she watched them, and Ripley led Torryn to the center of a patch of grass. "Don't hold back, all right?" he said as he rolled his shoulders, and she nodded. He lunged.

Instinct drove her backward when he swung at her, his fist moving so quickly that she could barely see it. She ducked beneath a second punch, sidestepped a third, but a fourth caught her full-force in the stomach and sent her staggering back with the air knocked clean from her lungs. As she gasped for breath, she continued to bob and weave between punches, desperately following the pale blurs that were his fists. Just as she caught on to his rhythm, just as she raised an arm to block a punch, just as she prepared her counterattack, her feet were suddenly swept out from beneath her. She hit the ground on her back, hard, and the air she'd just regained slipped from her in a whoosh. She rolled to the side as his fist came down at her, and she leapt to her feet without pause, fighting for breath all the while.

She tried to land a punch of her own before his flurry of blows resumed, but he knocked her hand aside with practiced ease and sent her sprawling on the grass once more with an open palm to the sternum. Again, the hard-won breath was wrested from her lungs, and she struggled to regain it even as she sat bolt upright and threw an arm around her father's leg. With a tug, she sent him to the ground in front of her — but he recovered in a split second, returning to his feet with the aid of a back handspring.

His bare foot headed toward her face, a blur just as his fists had been, but she was quick enough to catch it this time, guided by her instincts. She threw him, and he sailed through the air, only to land neatly on his feet a couple of yards away with all the grace of a cat. She was already on her feet as he charged at her once more, and she allowed the adrenaline singing through her veins to instruct her as a fresh volley of punches and kicks rained down upon her.

She dodged, ducked, and blocked with every bit of speed she had, but suddenly, he was behind her. She sensed his hand hurtling toward her yet again, and by some miracle, she spun in time to block it. Shoving it aside with one hand, she lashed out with the other, and a powerful blow to the stomach sent him arcing through the air once more.

He landed with the same grace as before several feet away, but this time, he was coughing, out of breath just as she had been half a dozen times by now. She started toward him aggressively, but, grinning, he held a hand up to stop her, and she rocked to a halt.

His smile was almost mischievous when he spoke. "You're not half bad, you know. It's no wonder that you've been giving the vampires so much trouble."

Her eyes widened, and she managed to say around her panting, "I barely managed to hit you. I don't think I'm very good at all." Either that, or he's impossibly good. The speed, the strength, the grace — was that what she was supposed to be?

He laughed, straightening his button-up shirt where it had been rumpled at the hem. "We Progeny are far more impressive as a species than we may seem while in the presence of vampires. I'm sure you're already aware that we're used as a source of food and pleasure for them, but you must keep in mind that we're also generally trained as daylight guardians to ward off the threats that our masters can't handle." His mischievous smiled returned, and he crossed his arms over his chest almost triumphantly. "I'll admit, however, that we don't usually become this skilled in combat unless obtained by a powerful master. I'm more the exception than the rule." His smile softened, something new filtering into it — pride. "Your skill is surprising, though, considering your situation. For such a young girl who's untrained and so heavily tainted with human blood, you're quite impressive — and honestly, being able to withstand a vampire's thrall will always be more of an advantage against them than even my extensive ability."

She felt her cheeks grow warm, and she averted her gaze. "Thank you."

She felt his hand upon her shoulder, his grip tight, affectionate, and he said, "Let's get back inside, then. I'm sure you've had enough of this particular topic for now." She nodded, and together, they made their way to where her mother still waited on the porch.

Just before they entered the house, she looked up at him, and he met her eyes. "Do you…Do you think that the others — the other Progeny, I mean — need to be saved?"

He shrugged, the gentleness seeping from his expression to leave him looking tired. "Do they need it? Of course. Is it practical or even possible? No, I'd say not. Fighting entire covens is no job for a young half-Progeny, and besides, where would they go if you got them out? Most Progeny are raised in captivity. We know nothing else." He smiled halfheartedly. "Remember, I'm the exception, not the rule."

But she could see it — there, in the weary depths of his silver eyes. They needed her, all of them. They needed someone to get them out of whatever horrid conditions the vampires kept them in.

Why couldn't she be that someone?