Give Me Envy, Give Me Malice, Give Me Your Attention

Around five minutes later, Anna came to and sat up groggily. Any minor cuts and scratches had already repaired themselves, but she gasped at the searing pain in her side. She looked down and in the dim light she saw an inch-thick branch sticking out of her side just above her hip.

'I must be the only person in this world that could do this much damage by simply tripping.'

She knew it wouldn’t do any real damage, seeing as she was kind of already dead, but that didn’t make the current pain any more bearable. Biting her lip to muffle the sound, she whimpered as she took a hold of the branch and slowly pulled it out of her body.

'Great.' she thought. 'Could I get any more pathetic?'

Her unvoiced question was answered when she found herself incapable of standing without her heavily bleeding would burning agonizingly in protest. 'Fantastic.'

“Anna?”

She swore she heard a voice call out. She wanted to answer, but somehow she just couldn’t find the strength. She tried to use her sight to see through the trees, but for some unexplained reason she couldn’t do that either.

“Anna?”

The voice was getting closer. She wanted to shout out and tell them she was there, but all she could manage was a small, inaudible croak.

“Anna!”

Without warning a blur of a figure burst through the forest trees and was kneeling by her side.

“Anna, oh my god, what happened to you?”

“Ry, please, I’m fine…” she whispered. Ryan looked from the gash in her side to the blood-covered branch on the ground and put two and two together.

“Oh my god, how did…”

“I just fell, Ry,” she mumbled, embarrassed at her own clumsiness.

He scooped her up in his arms and before they knew it they were back at the mansion. Gently lying her down on her bed, Ryan locked the door and returned to lie beside her. She smiled up at him as he softly stroked her hair out of her pale face. They just lay there for a few moments before Ryan spoke quietly.

“You know you have to drink, my love.”

His use of the word ‘love’ should have made her tense up in discomfort knowing that she couldn’t completely say it back to him, but instead it had a soothing effect.

“I know,” she sighed. “I just… I can’t help but feel like nothing more than a murderer. It doesn’t feel right.”

Ryan took her hand in his and kissed her fingertips.

“You know,” he started. “There might be a way around it.”

Anna looked at him, shock on her face, curiosity in her eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll look into it for you,” he promised. “But only if you promise me that you won’t starve yourself in the meantime.”

“I wasn’t starving myself,” she mumbled, looking down.

“Promise me,” the intensity of his gaze made her lift her own eyes.

“I promise,” she sighed, wrapping her arms around his torso and hugging him.

“Good.” Ryan smiled at the contact she made. “I think we both know that you wouldn’t have collapsed tonight if you had had some blood.”

She didn’t answer. She knew he was right.

Before she could say a word against it, Ryan bit into his wrist, dragging his sharp fangs along his skin deeply.

“Ryan!?” she gasped as he held his hand out to her, blood spilling lusciously from the self-inflicted wound.

“Drink,” he commanded.

“What? No!”

“Anna, you’ve already collapsed once and I’m not going to let anything like that happen again. Now drink, before it heals.”

Anna bit her lip nervously before breaking their eye contact and slowly bringing her lips to the cut. As soon as she tasted the warm liquid on her tongue, it was as if she’d been electric shocked. It was amazing. Nothing could ever taste as sweet; nothing could ever leave her wanting more than this. The intensity was a hundred times more than when she’d killed Jason. Sucking desperately at the wound on his wrist, Anna drew more blood to satiate her hunger. She hated herself for this. She hated herself for wanting more of the blood. She hated that this could be hurting Ryan but she couldn’t stop herself. The vampire had taken over, and the small part of her that remained was screaming for her to stop, having about the same amount of impact as a pissed off ant. What seemed like hours later, although it couldn’t have been more than a minute, she tore herself away and licked her lips, savoring the taste.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, not bringing herself to look at him.

“It’s alright, love,” he said. She shook her head, not saying a word.

“How is your own injury?” he asked, full of concern.

Honestly, Anna had forgotten all about it. Looking down, she peeled up the bottom of her shirt so she could see. The gash was almost completely gone now; only a small scar. Her shirt, however, was covered in dried, cracked blood and splinters of wood.

“It’s fine,” she replied, showing him the improvement.

“Good,” he smiled and kissed her forehead.

His lips made her skin tingle, but she wasn’t ready to let that tingling go. Leaning up, she connected their lips and intensified the kiss at the feeling of his smile. Intentionally, Ryan quickly bit into his bottom lip and let Anna drink in the blood. He knew he probably shouldn’t let her get accustomed to the taste of his blood, but he needed to make sure she was drinking enough. Losing control of herself once again, Anna let the liquid flow into her mouth, kissing him harder and more passionately to get more.

Knock knock knock.

“Anna? Are you there?”

In the blink of an eye, Anna and Ryan broke away from each other sitting up straight again, trying to calm their heavy breathing.

“Don’t come in!” Anna almost screamed, hoping that her visitor hadn’t already used vampiric sight to see through the door. Fixing their hair and rearranging their flushed faces, Anna lay back down on her bed and Ryan went to open the door.

“Anna!” Chiz gasped, running across the room and tackling her in a hug. “Oh my god, you just disappeared and we had no idea what happened to you and…”

“Jeez, calm down man, I’m fine,” she laughed nervously, but they missed the nervousness.

“Banana!” Travis strode to her side and held her hand. Ryan felt a small pang of jealousy at how easily Travis could hold her hand and not have to worry about what everyone else might think.

“I thought we got over that nickname ages ago,” she raised an eyebrow.

“Not quite, honey,” Travis grinned.

“Tell us what happened!” Chiz demanded, still worried.

“Dude, it’s nothing. I just tripped,” she mumbled.

“That doesn’t explain why there’s blood all over you.”

“You’ve clearly forgotten that we just went hunting."

It wasn’t the truth, but technically it wasn’t a lie.

“You didn’t drink a thing tonight, Anna.”

“Did too,” she mumbled again truthfully, thinking of how they had interrupted her kiss. Thankfully, Chiz and Travie decided to leave it alone, but they wouldn’t leave her side.

“I’m not a porcelain doll, you know.”

“We know.”

“Won’t Beckett get the least bit pissed off if he sees you all in my room?”

“He shouldn’t look… Are you trying to get rid of us?”

“No,” she lied. “Maybe…’

“You were fine with Ryan staying in here,” Travis smirked. She glared at him as Ryan’s cheeks went pink… well, as pink as a vampire’s skin can get.

“All of you, out. Now!” she grumbled.

“But…”

“Now!”

That was a close one.