DEZI

She lay there, limp and relaxed, at one with the universe, at least for this one instant in time. She could feel the pressure of the terrible things to come battering at the edge of her mind, but she refused to think of them. For now she would think only of the moment and being here with Chris. Moments like these were why she existed at all, and she would not waste them.

"I love you," Chris whispered, his face against her hair.

She stroked his side, feeling the warmth of love deep within her. "I love you too."

She moved her head to look at him, to see him smiling at her, so young and beautiful. She could not face the thought that she might never see him again, but she knew that she would have to.

"Where’d Lianndra go?" he asked, looking around perplexedly, as though Lianndra would just suddenly appear. His nostrils flared as he breathed in the scents of the apartment, outside of their little room and into Gregor’s, searching.

She shrugged. "He must have gotten up before us. Come on, we need to get ready for the fight ahead."

He wasn’t smiling anymore, was suddenly looking grim. He was preparing to face the dangers in their future. She missed the laughter and the simple joy; wished that they could go back in time to those first joyous moments of their love, but it was not to be.

She sighed and climbed out of bed and dressed, this time wearing a pair of black hip-huggers and a black camisole top with a dragon etched in dark blue on the front. She pulled on socks, then her boots, lacing them tightly around her narrow feet.

She raked a hand through her shorn hair and turned to face Chris, who was watching her from the bed. He was lying on his stomach, his chin propped on his arms, his bare legs swinging in the air. All he needed was a phone pasted to his ear to complete the image.

"Come on, get dressed," she said.

He wrinkled his nose. "What am I supposed to wear? I mean, you look like you’re ready to face danger and fight for survival and everything, but what do I have that will go with that whole suicidally-brave and daring theme?"

She blew out a breath. "Come here, I’ll find you something--something nice."

He laughed and jumped to his feet with inhuman suddenness and grace. Dezi looked him over from head to foot then back up again before turned to their bags.

She rubbed her chin for a second, then pulled out a pair of loose, tailored black pants with very sharp cuffs rolled at the end of the pants legs. She also brought out a pair of black suspenders, a white men’s undershirt, a black silk shirt and a heavy-fabric black jacket with silver epaulets on the sleeves and silver buttons running down the front and at the cuffs.

"You think of everything, don’t you?" he said, accepting the clothes with humorous grace.

"Yep," she nodded, reaching back into the suitcase to pull out a pair of white jockey shorts she twirled on the end of her finger before tossing them to him.

He blew her a kiss and began to dress quickly, cloth rustling.

When he was dressed, she reached into the suitcase and brought out a pair of black men’s dress shoes and black socks. The shoes were made from Italian leather and she had ordered them special from some people she knew in Italy. She liked making Chris look good; it gave her a warm feeling inside, something almost but definitely not completely maternal.

"Aren’t these clothes a little too good to be fighting in?" he asked, pulling on the socks.

She shook her head, making her short hair swirl around her face to tickle her skin. "We have to make a good impression, it’s all about status, something you have to flaunt if you have it, and we do. We’re going as Lianndra’s backup and we have to show our support by making him look good… before we kick some real ass."

He frowned, then shook his head. "Whatever."

"Come on, we have to hurry," she said, grabbing up her leather from the chair as she passed by.

CHRIS

He looked at her, so beautiful and focused, like a sharpened knife honing in on a target. He felt a pain in his chest; whatever made her choose him would always be a mystery to him. It was a wonderful mystery though, one he would be thankful to for all the rest of his days, or hours if it came to that. Though he prayed that she never woke up to the fact that he wasn’t good enough for her.

"I love you," he whispered, reaching for her hand.

She smiled at him, like the sun between parted clouds, shining out at him like a dream. She squeezed his hand. "I love you too. And don’t worry, everything’s going to be fine, we’ll make it."

He ran a hand through his hair. "I hope so, I really do."

She brushed his hair back from his face. "Don’t worry," she said, then led him into the living room.

Two steps in, she froze, her nose twitching as she looked around with narrowed eyes.

Chris peered around too, knowing that something wasn’t quite right, but not sure what it was. There was Gregor and Bran at the small dining table eating what looked to be gobs of raw red meat. There was Christine, staring vacant-eyed into the TV, as though her life depended on seeing everything, no matter how stupid or bizarre.

"What’s wrong?" Chris asked, feeling a nervous flutter in his stomach.

Dezi bared her teeth angrily. "Where is he?" she demanded, glaring at Gregor.

The man looked up, an apologetic look on his narrow face. "He left. He didn’t want anything to happen to you, so he left before you Woke. He would have told me to stop you and keep you here, but he knows full well that I couldn’t stop you if you really wanted to go."

"That bastard," Dezi hissed the word like a cat, following it up with a tirade of equal and worse words, her voice rising and falling with her anger.

Chris quickly backed through the bedroom doorway, laying his back against the wall, shutting his eyes tight. The sound of her anger was terrible, resounding off the walls and emphasized by the crashing of furniture as she kicked and threw things that got in her way.

He winced as a table leg smashed through the wall right next to his head, the point gleaming jaggedly where it had been broken off. This was not good.

He almost wished that he was with Lianndra facing the bad guys, it had to be better than this.

LIANNDRA

He shrugged his shoulders and caught a wind current that sent him flashing through the sky like an avenging angel of the night. He felt his lips twitch at his sudden poetic streak. It seemed to hit when he least expected it, but mostly when he was going into a dangerous situation he didn’t expect to survive.

He felt the heat against his leg where he had strapped the magicked dagger he was going to use to kill the Dragon. It burned with an inner heat, but he was fairly certain that no one else would be able to sense it, not unless they knew it was there and what it was.

The power he had used to create this weapon had been horrendous, but well worth it. It was a thin line between life and death, and he rather hoped that this dagger would keep him on the right side.

His nerves thrummed with suppressed energy as he streaked across the night, heading toward certain doom with a smile and a wink.

Looking down at the bright little town, the house lights like stars against the velvety dark, he felt as though he were doing the right thing. A stupid thing, but right nonetheless.

CHELSEA

She fell to her knees holding her ears, tears streaming down her cheeks as she tried to hold out the sounds. They grew louder and louder, closing in around her until she couldn’t get away from them.

"No, no," she moaned, sobbing in her throat. "NO! NO!"

There was nothing she could do, the sounds were getting louder and louder, making it hard to think, making it impossible for her to do anything but huddle there, holding onto herself and praying for guidance and help.

She didn’t know who she was praying to, since she had long since decided that she was one of the forsaken of God, yet she prayed and prayed, but there was no one to help her. The sounds closed in tighter and tighter, her whines rising until there was almost no sound anymore, just this dry pain in her throat.

Anything to get away, anything…

The dark closed in around her, tight and resolute.

DEZI

She kicked the table to splinters, then plopped down to sit cross-legged on the floor and look around at the wreckage of the room.

She could hear the racing heartbeat that belonged to Christine; the girl was huddled behind the couch, hiding from Dezi’s terrible wrath. The werewolves didn’t seem to be afraid at all, not even Gregor, even though he had practically written the code of "shoot the messenger if you can’t reach the bad guy." He knew her too well.

In the "good old days" when she was a regular party-girl they had had a few good times and had had some real fun. She remembered way back when, him with his opium pipe and her with her regular old pot, both daring each other to get stoned stupid.

She had never really gone in for the use of hard drugs. Even if she was a vampire, she didn’t want to permanently mess up her brain. Eternity was a long time to be nuts.

Gregor didn’t see it that way though, he saw everything in shades of black and white, fun and not fun. He was the kind of guy that saw nothing wrong with fucking everything that moved, in one way or another. He did as much drugs as he wanted, sure that his immortal body would heal all ills he did it, just certain that everything would be all right, without one single baseless fear crawling into his brain in the still moments. He was always just so sure that no matter how hard he drove his body, it could take it and bounce back better than before. Which allowed him to party until he collapsed, waking up the next day to do it all over again.

Sometimes, moments before the sun came streaking up into the sky and her consciousness slipped away into the nothingness of Sleep, she wished that she could see the world in the same way that Gregor and his kind of people did. To them there was nothing but the way things are and the way they could be, there were no regrets, or if there were, they were nothing-things that could be wiped off of a sleeve like the remnants of fairy dust.

If she were Gregor, she wouldn’t feel this pain deep inside, this fear that ate her up until there was nothing left. If she were Gregor, she would be secure in the knowledge that Lianndra could not be killed. That he would enter into the darkness and return unscathed, to step blinking and grinning out into the light of day. There was nothing that could touch Lianndra, nothing that could hurt him, maim him deep inside where he couldn’t be fixed. If only she could see the world like that, but she couldn’t. She remembered the way that Lianndra had felt in her arms as he sobbed out his fear, his small body quivering beneath her touch. In that moment, she had seen what he really was and there was no going back.

That was why she had been so angry. Not because of disappointment that she couldn’t go out and kick monster butt. No, her anger had been a way to express her pain without hurting her inner self. For deep inside, where no one could touch, there was the secret fear that Lianndra would never come back, that this was the end of her beautiful friend. The end of everything she had held dear.

Even with Chris to love and hold, there would be a void deep within that could never be filled. That was what ate her up inside like acid burning through her skin. The fear that Lianndra would be gone forever. He would just step out of her life and disappear.

LIANNDRA

He felt the moon shining down upon him and raised his face to look up at that beauty, perhaps for the last time.

In his moments of rational thought, he knew that what he was doing was incredibly stupid, not to mention the fact that it probably wasn’t worth it in the long run. He would enter the jaws of danger and be ground up like dog meat. That was just the way things were.

This was real life, not some movie. Good didn’t always triumph over evil, and when he thought about it, he knew it was rather difficult to class him on the side of good. His soul was as black as sin, or at the very least, very, very gray.

He drew in a deep breath he didn’t really need but that made him feel better in some way and entered into the darkness.

The church was a building that had been marginally converted into a house at some time before its abandonment. It was large and somehow threatening, as though it was about to swallow him whole. The boarded up windows were like accusing eyes glaring down at him, the peeling dark brown paint a testament to the fact that it was tough, that it could withstand anything he might throw at it.

He stared up at it and felt small somehow, as though he would shatter into a million pieces if he were touched. It was a terrible feeling, a feeling he hadn’t experienced for so long that it was almost impossible to withstand.

He pulled his courage around him like a cloak and stepped forward, heading toward the front door. He saw no reason to sneak in the back way; they knew he was coming.

As he approached it, the door swung open with a creaking sound, and Lianndra stepped through.

It was so dark that for a second he thought he had gone blind. He stumbled forward, hoping that his eyes would adjust and he would be able to see.

"Well, well, well, if it isn’t little Lianndra."

He turned as the door slammed shut and found himself blazed by the light of a flashlight. He blinked a few times, trying to see past it. "Who’s there?" His voice quivered nervously and he was surprised by how afraid he could be. He had thought for one moment he might be ready for this, but he wasn’t.

A rumbling laugh came out of the darkness, so near that he flinched. "I can’t believe you don’t recognize me, why, we go back a long way, you and I."

"Kristen."

Another laugh. "Yes, Kristen Karne, here to make things right."

Sudden flashing pain and the dark closed in around him from deep inside. He didn’t feel the floor come up and hit him, didn’t feel anything at all.

CHRIS

He looked up at those rather brusque words and saw that Dezi had finally come back to herself. Even if he had no clue what the hell she was talking about.

"Huh?" he asked suavely.

She hurried forward and grabbed his arm, jerking him to his feet. "We have to go help Lianndra."

Chris shook his head. "He doesn’t want us there, you know," he said. "I mean, I think his message was pretty clear, him leaving us behind and everything."

She frowned at him. "Don’t be stupid. Just because he doesn’t want us to help him doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t. We’ll just head out that way and hang around in case he needs us. Besides, I think we should be there for him."

"Sort of like moral support, huh?" he asked.

"Sort of," Dezi said.

He shrugged. "Sure, I guess that’s a good idea." Inside though, he had to wonder what they were going to do to help out if Lianndra couldn’t handle whatever he was getting himself into. Still, Lianndra had Made him and there was something deep inside of him that was drawing him forward, that wanted to be with Lianndra so badly it was almost pain.

"Let’s go."

LIANNDRA

Magnus’ human Bondsman might have been considered a handsome man by some, but there was something in his face that was wrong. Something monstrous and strange.

Before Magnus had changed him and taken him in, Kristen, or Krissy as he liked to be called, had been a serial killer that had murdered and eaten twenty-seven people before he was finally captured and sentenced to death. It had been Magnus that had saved his life and offered him the chance of a better future, a new life that involved being able to eat any of Magnus’ leftovers; cannibalism on a regular basis. He had jumped at the chance.

Lianndra looked up at the man and felt his face twisting with hate. If he could have, he would have leapt up and ripped out the man’s throat. As it was, he could barely move.

Though he was definitely insane, Kristen Karne was not a stupid man. The moment he had knocked Lianndra out, he had tied him up so tightly that if he were mortal, he wouldn’t have been able to breathe at all.

"What are you looking at, pretty little Lianndra?" Krissy asked, going down to his haunches next to the recumbent vampire.

"I don’t know, what am I looking at?"

Kristen frowned. "What’s that supposed to mean?"

Lianndra smiled nastily. "It means that you’re less than nothing, that you’re less than scum on a log. You are not to be feared, but pitied for your inabilities."

Krissy shook his head and giggled, a high-pitched sound that grated on the nerves like jagged fingers digging into a person’s skull. "You’re just as silly as you’ve always been," Krissy said, smiling down at him in what might have been called fondness.

"Yeah, and you’re just as dense."

Krissy shot to his feet faster than a normal human would have been able to and kicked the child vampire hard in the gut. Lianndra grunted and clenched his muscles, trying to keep from crying out. Being a vampire made him tougher than any mortal, but he could still feel a modicum of pain. If he was hit in the right spots, he could only take about the same amount of damage as a normal human, especially if he was hit hard enough.

"Is that all you’ve got in you?" he taunted, pulling himself straight on the floor. He tried not to think of a worm squirming around, pulling itself straight and long and then curling around itself for protection. Not being able to use his arms and legs left him at a definite disadvantage, but he had an idea. Maybe not the smartest of ideas, but an idea nonetheless.

Kristen smirked at him. "Of course I’ve got more, pretty boy," he said in his lilting voice. "I was just giving you a little taste of the fun to come. I don’t believe in premature ejaculation."

"Hah, you can’t even get it up!"

Kristen wagged a finger. "You really don’t want to make me angry Lianndra, ‘cause if you do, well…" He shrugged, the warning hovering there.

Human Bondsmen have a higher pain threshold than normal humans. They also have more strength and stamina. If Kristen had his way, things could get really ugly. Lianndra had to put a stop to it before it really got started. Which meant that he was going to end up taking some damage before they were through.

"Yeah? What are you going to do?" Lianndra asked. "Your master would be upset if you took all the fun out of his sport, and everyone knows that you do whatever he wants you to do."

"What’s that supposed to mean?" Kristen stood very still, his head cocked attentively.

"Just what it means. You’re nothing but a lackey, that’s all you’ve ever been and all you’re ever going to be!"

Krissy shook his head. He had never been one for taking insults. That was one of the things that had finally allowed the cops to catch him at the end of his murder spree. They had the newspapers post a rather unflattering description of his intelligence, citing everything from his high school grade point average to the fact that he had trouble with impotence. He had practically raced into the net they held ready for him. It had been kind of pitiful really.

Now though, Lianndra had no qualms about using Kristen’s weaknesses against him. "I heard from the rumor mill that you still have that little problem with keeping it up; is it true?"

Kristen began to pace around like a caged tiger. "I can’t believe she told! That bitch! Now I have to kill her!"

Lianndra snorted. "Why bother? Everyone knows you have a small dick, it was practically on the news."

"Shut up!"

"You want me to, don’t you? Yet at the same time you want to hear what other nasty things they’re saying about you, don’t you, don’t you?"

Kristen shook his head, his hair flying crazily. "Shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up!"

Lianndra laughed deep in his throat. "Poor Krissy, doesn’t want the world to know about you and your father, do you?"

Krissy turned to glare at him. "What are you talking about?"

"Doesn’t want the world to know how much he liked it when his daddy gave it to him. Doesn’t want the world to know how he screamed for it, begged for it, dreamed about it."

"Shut up, I killed him! I didn’t like it, I didn’t!"

"Poor lost little lamb, dreams about when his daddy stuck it way up inside of him, so deep he could taste it on the back of his throat. Dreams at night about all of the men he begged to give it to him, dreams about it."

Kristen gave a wordless scream. "I don’t! I don’t! I don’t! I hated it, hated it!"

Lianndra laughed again, that same low, mocking laugh. "That’s what you like to tell yourself, isn’t it? But really you liked it, liked it so much that you can’t even keep it up with women, can’t make them cry out in that same way you did with the men in the cars who paid you money so they could stick it in."

"Shut up! That’s not true." Kristen was working himself into a real fury. Sweat streamed down his face and neck as his erratic pacing took on a new quality, a new kind of energy that had him practically swooping around the room. "I’m a man, a man!"

"No you’re not, you’re the same little boy that begged to have it stuck into him, begged for it. Dreamed of sucking it, could almost taste it in your mouth. The same little boy that dreamed of being fucked so deep that it almost felt as though it were splitting you apart. The same boy that couldn’t get an erection without thinking of his daddy and the secret you shared!"

"You dumb fuck, shut your stupid mouth!" Kristen was frothing at the mouth now, a thin line of spittle running out of the corners of his lips. "I am not a faggot!"

Laughing, laughing, evil laughing. "I didn’t say it, you did!"

Kristen growled/screamed deep in his throat and threw himself at Lianndra.

Lianndra braced himself for the impact as the man fell upon him, pounding into him with fists and knees. He felt several ribs breaking and wanted to close his eyes against the pain, but he knew that now was not the time for weakness.

"Ha, pussy!" he taunted.

Kristen screamed again and picked the vampire boy up high over his head, then slammed him down onto the hard floor with another scream. He sounded like a soul in torment, hunted by demons he could never escape from.

Lianndra grunted at the impact, feeling his right arm snap. Looking down, he saw the bone poking through the skin. The pain was sharp, a throbbing agony that beat into his brain. He summoned up another mocking laugh. "Poor Krissy and his dreams. Screamed for the men to stick it in, screamed for it, hour after hour. Wanted it so badly he could taste it."

Kristen kicked him hard in the stomach. He held back a moan. "Shut up, shut up, shut up!" the man screamed over and over, but Lianndra knew the man could still hear him.

"Doesn’t want the world to know that that was the real reason you chose Magnus as your master. He’s so big that when he comes, it feels as though he’s splitting you in half."

Kristen threw his head back and screamed. Froth bubbled up from between his lips and his eyes were mad.

He bent and lifted the small boy to throw him down again.

Lianndra waited until he was about midsection high, then brought his legs scything around the man’s body. His stomach pounded into the man’s waist, his knees slamming hard into the man’s spine. Kristen yelled and they fell to the floor with Lianndra on the bottom.

He wriggled into a better position beneath the man’s thrashing weight and brought his knees up into the man’s groin as hard as he could. He felt the snapping of small bones, the mashing of delicate flesh into immovable bone. Kristen gave a gurgling scream and fell back, the front of his pants stained with the spreading blood.

Lianndra would have laughed in victorious relief, except he had landed on his arm and the agony was racing up into his brain.

He squirmed up onto his knees, looking down at the man. Kristen had both hands clamped between his legs, his mouth open in a silent scream, his eyes wide and staring. Blood flowed between his fingers.

Lianndra licked his lips in sudden Hunger and fell on the man, wriggling his way up the man’s body to clamp his fangs on the man’s throat. He felt the weak struggle as Kristen tried to get away, felt the futile impacts as the man hit his back with both fists. Finally, he felt hands around his throat trying to strangle him, trying to pull him away from the warm, suckling flow of blood. He growled deep in his throat and clamped down harder.

He made a tiny error and the man was away. He miscalculated the sharpness of his own teeth and cut through the flesh of the man’s throat. With a hard jerk, Kristen ripped himself away, tearing out his own throat in his need to escape.

Knowing that he was dying, that there was nothing to stop the terrible gushing flow of blood, Kristen wrapped his hands around Lianndra’s small neck and began to squeeze his thumbs into Lianndra’s larynx.

Lianndra gagged at the pain, trying to get away now, but it was no use, he was still tied up.

Kristen stood up, the vampire hanging from his hands by the neck. It was a mistake.

Lianndra brought his legs up and slammed both feet hard into the man’s stomach, kicking off, sending himself flying backward through the air. He heard the echo of his own bone-shuddering impact when Kristen hit the opposite wall. Lianndra gasped, feeling the thick blood rushing up through his throat. He lay still on the floor, unable to get up. Finally though, he turned his head to the side and watched the blood splash out of his mouth as though it were something faraway.

He closed his eyes, lying still, just listening to the slow beat of his own heart.

He didn’t know how long he lay there, or how much longer he would have, but he was finally forced to rise up when he felt the flesh and bones of his arm trying to fix themselves. He would have to set the bones or pay the consequences when he later had to have the arm broken and reset.

He groaned and sat up, knowing that the real pain was still ahead for him.

Closing his eyes tight, he strained his legs against the bonds, feeling the delicate lessening of tension as the ropes began to break a strand at a time. With a last flex, he felt the ropes give and his legs fell limply in front of him. Now the real fun would start.

He brought his right leg up and across so he could reach the sheathed dagger strapped to his thigh with his bound left hand. The pain throbbed as his right arm moved too. He hissed between his lips as he drew the dagger and brought it flashing upward.

It was a trick he hadn’t used in awhile, so he was relieved not to cut off one of his thumbs when he sent the dagger spinning around his hand in an arc that sent it slicing through the ropes. If he had slipped even the tiniest of bits, the dagger would have sliced through the ropes and his left thumb as it came up and around. As it was, he was rather relieved to still be intact.

He grit his teeth against the pain when he jerked his arm straight, sliding the bones back into their normal grooves. The subsequent healing pain was almost a relief over that throbbing agony.

He moaned at his painful ribs and brought himself back up onto his feet, sheathing the dagger he had dropped on the floor.

He held his arm still as he walked across the room toward where Krissy lay, so still he might almost have been dead. But Lianndra was of the old school, the school that said it was better to be safe then sorry.

He stood over the man for a second, staring downward. Kristen had landed on his back, his eyes closed, his face streaked with blood from the pool seeping out of his neck. He looked so sad lying there. He had had an abusive father, had been raised to think that his own natural urges were evil, and had become what he had been made to be: a psychopath that enjoyed cannibalism. In some ways, Kristen Karne was as much a victim as the people that he had killed. That didn’t mean he hadn’t deserved his fate though. It was just very sad.

Lianndra frowned. "So sorry, old boy. I truly didn’t mean to question your manhood, really I didn’t."

He shook his head sadly as he brought his foot down hard, feeling the impact against the bottom of his boot as Kristen’s neck snapped. Now there would be no chance of the man rising up and coming after him.

He hadn’t really been worried in the first place, but he didn’t doubt that it might have happened. If this had been a movie, there would have been no doubt in his mind that Kristen would have come after him later, intent on revenge. Since this wasn’t a movie, he played it smart and made sure of the kill before moving on.

A smile curved his lips as he left the room in search of Magnus.