Vampyre 3

Chapter 3

I’ve got the day off. You work odd shifts while you’re a nurse and even more screwy when you’re on the graveyard shift. I hate that name for it; it’s morbid enough to hit me in my undead EMO buttons.

I got off at five in the morning and drove home with a couple of extra vials of blood in my purse. I’m actually tired out. I sat with Morey Anders tonight, he’s gone terminal with his lung cancer and he didn’t have that much time left. He’s not one of my “regulars” hell he’s not even a “client” no he got referred. I just couldn’t bring myself to say no, his family from out east was coming in and he might not have made it that long. So I fed him three ounces of my blood and built a bloodlink. My undead, mystical blood that’s not really blood winding through his body. I use it to link to his lung cancer, feed only on the cancer in him, there’s too much for me to fight but I can help him. I can buy him some time. I take the life force of the cancer away when I bite him and drink from his wrist; I take the blood from his cancer pulling it like I’m sucking poison from a wound. I pushed it as much as I could. Took as much as I could. I’m a vampire and I self heal, but my seniors looked after me as that whole law you are what you eat has the same amount of cancer erupt in me like wildfire.

The blood magik makes the cancer alive in me for as long as it will live without human blood to feed it and also survive the blighted essence that is my undeath. And while that happens, my lungs are active and living, it really hurts…twenty three minutes of lung agony and not being able to breathe but wanting to breathe, having to breathe because of the magic, then the cancer goes away and I get to relive my last breath all over again.

Yeah it was a long shift.

The thing is I picked, or pick up bits of Morey from that feeding. Not much of anything but tiny snippets of an eighty seven year old Jewish man and how much he missed his wife and this craving for chopped liver on a bagel and cabbage rolls. (Ick to both.)

I got off work and home as quick as I could with the sun coming up right on my heels. Once inside I head upstairs and take a shower and put on some laundry and feed my three cats and play with them a little bit, they’re a big emotional investment for me. I don’t need to do the standard stuff mortals do so I make them their own homemade food. I make my smoothies with the blood, with lots of yogurt and orange juice. I love the taste of blood but at the same time I hate the taste of blood. I think it that I hate how much I love it.

I settle in and watch some TV; I’m a fan of the morning stuff. I like Regis and Kelly, and I watch the local news stuff being informed is a good idea. If you know what’s actually out there you can get a picture of stuff as you read between the lines. It’s about ten in the morning when I finally go upstairs and go to sleep.
I like my bed, its white enameled steel with fancy brass fittings and all of that. I don’t sleep in a coffin. Some do, most don’t. You don’t have to be under the ground, you don’t need it lined with dirt from home. That’s all bullshit.

Well not exactly, there’s vampire majik that makes these things special but they’re not necessary. In fact they serve to strengthen your connection to The Beast. Yeah, that’s the last thing you want.

I slept pretty good actually the life I’ve been leading has been good for my mental health really, it’s like I can feel what’s left of my soul getting stronger. You see you still get to keep part of it, but the more you feed, the more you dive headlong into the abyss.

I get up around six thirty at night and do a couple of blood vials like shooters then quickly munch on some microwaved bacon. I do a bit of housework as the sunlight is waning and once sunset hits I grab my bag with my gym stuff in it and head out to the YWCA.

Yes I go to the Y, the exercise stuff doesn’t really do a thing for me but there’s other stuff there that I’m finding really useful. Like Tae kwon do, and I’m taking Tai Chi too as well as Yoga all of that really helps me find balance inside. I mean it really helps, the awareness of my chi and the chakra development are positive forces in my decidedly negative existence. I like the people too, I just like people.

The one downside is the fact it’s like a buffet for me. All that fast pumping blood from all that exercise and upped heart rates and everything. It’s hard but it’s an exercise in control when I get the bad cravings.

Tonight I have yoga and it was nice, I’m feeling light and tranquil and almost sedate like a bear with a full belly as I leave the Y. I get in my car and head for home, yes its night but I don’t hunt; I don’t revel in the whole undead thing anymore. I’m actually a bit of a homebody. People don’t expect my kind to be like that, which is exactly why I stay home so much.

The drive home was decent too right up until I feel this wave of arcane wash over the area and the power goes out. I can hear this Celtic…no this is Sidhe with infernal speak tossed into a roundelay of some kind. It’s haunting and eerie and it’s trancing out everyone around me.

I see him, this negro colored fae, a larger fae too human sized and looking too, braided hair and a nice suit he’s got a touchstone around his neck and he’s twirling and ornate rowan Shileigh in one hand like a cane.

He’s a Kelpie, a dark fae.

He strides up towards me like he’s king of the county and I embrace the darkness inside. My eyes shift to blood filled and my nails lengthen and turn as hard as steel, my teeth too grow fast and into a mouthful of fangs. I chirr at him in a challenging hiss. “Who are you, and what do you want here?”

“Ah, I be lookin fer you Oi thinks now fer a bit poppet yer wanted ta come home.”

“I don’t know you, and I’ve no business with the fae. You’re breaking the laws doing this Kelpie.”

“Ah poppet the rules ain’t never held no shine fer me dearie. An ye kin call me Shea. You’d be Alecia now wouldn’t ye?”

Shit, shit, shit, shit. He knows my name.

“I’ve gone by that. What’s it to you?”

“Well I’ve been hired to fetch ye back to ye da, The Frenchman wants ye home and he’s payin quite well.”

“I’m not going back to Michel, I’m not his servant anymore.” I start backing up, I don’t like the power that I’m smelling on him.

“It nay matter what you’d be wanting poppet, I’ve been paid my coin I haves and I’ve a binding ta bring ye to him.”

“How’d you find me?”

“Ye nary thet hard t’find yer a we bit strange y’know. There’s a bit of talk about ye and wot them choirboys did te ye. Bragging it up they wuz, it be amazing the stuff ye kin find on thet Internet thingy. Oi found some of them and they right did a wee bunch of talking they did. Once I found out what ye bin doing with folks since ye escaped ye were right easy ta find.”

“You used fae magic on mortals like you’re doing now The Ash or The Morrigan won’t like you breaking the rules like this.”

“Oh Oi did worse den this ta those laddies, an I’s not too worried about them lot not wit what’s a comin.”

I back up to the trunk of my car and get a bit more distance. I rip the trunk lid off than rather try to fight with the key and stuff. I pull the double barrel I used on the Dark fae here in two and gave him both barrels of rock salt. It staggered him and his flesh smoked like he was burning. Cold iron, and rock salt or silver could hurt most fae of any kind.

He steps up to me a blur of mystical speed and hits me like seven or eight times with his Shileigh before he uppercutted me with it and send me flying backwards through the air. The power of that strike was unreal, it hit me with the power of a charging lancer and I flew backwards…way backwards and crashed down on the hood of a still running car.

The hood didn’t give.

Ouch….I taste blood.

Then Shea’s there, I can’t tell what he said because my bell is still ringing. Both the driver and the car aren’t effected by Shea’s magics, in fact the driver throws the car in reverse. Squealing the tires and the girl has a hold of me by my arm. As the boy tries to turn Shea kicks the passenger side front fender making the car skid into the other cars.

“Alecia!, What the fuck is going on! Why do you got Shea after you!” I still don’t know how this witchling knows me. But I’m a little busy feeding Shea a crescent kick. He blocks it with his Shileigh. He grabs me by the ankle and throws me thirty feet away from the two kids. I spin my body weight like my sensei has taught me to do up the mats when thrown. Preternatural reflexes and strengths kick in and I land on my feet and in a crouch.

Shea looks at me and smiles then stalks towards me. “Now Pet, play nice and I’ll be a good lad and not be too rough on ye.”

“Go shit a gold brick Kelpie, I’m done with them and no half fae is going to bring me in on some bounty.”

“Half-fae? I’m no a half breed leech, But yer gonna find that out soon enough ye will.”

“Oh, didn’t anyone tell you, A Kelpie’s what you get when you let the goblins in around the horses.”

That pissed him off, his eyes glowed green.

And then it was on.

The first few minutes of the fight look like a strange dance Shea fights with a style that’s called Savate, which is like a very elegant form of kickboxing with flourishes almost like capoerira and uses a cane sometimes as it’s weapon katas but for Shea it’s his Shileigh. Then there’s me with vampire strength and speed fighting back with my green belt Tae Know Do. My advantage if my natural fighting instincts and my speed. Shea has experience and he’s a brawler too not great for me. But he’s strong too. A good rule of thumb for vampires is we’re three times as strong as a human of the same size, that actually goes up in power again adding another hundred percentage of strength over human for every fifty years. I’m just over a hundred and fifty odd years old so normally I’d be six times as strong as a human of my size, but I’m not a feeder so halve that.

Shea on the other hand is a Kelpie, and the horse crack is real. They can turn into large black quarter horses at will and even in human form they’ve got the strength of a horse of that size but like my vampire strength it’s tripled. That’s so not good for me. I’m hitting him but honestly it’s like I’m trying to beat the heck out of a horse, out of a horse that likes, no loves to fight.

I get punched into a mini-van hard enough to bust the sliding door. I pull it off and beat him with it.

The witch girl starts hitting him with balls of light, ow great they explode in flashes that hurt my night eyes. I stagger back hearing the swish of the Shileigh pass my face. It’s blinding him too. That’s good I guess.

Shea turns on them. “Oy thet’d be enough of thet.” and he pointed his Shileigh at the girl and a burst of force hits her squarely in the chest sending her crashing into the car and dropping her to her hands and knees.

The boy yells out. “Raine!” and kneels beside her, he looks up and his eyes are literally sparking with lightning bursts. He touches his car and the engine rev’s up and he throws a hand up and a bolt of lightning jumps from his hand and slams Shea into a half ton truck. The car rev’s up again and he hit’s Shea again and again. Then there’s a pop that leaves smoke coming from the hood of his car.

I follow up throwing the van door at Shea’s head and tap the darkness a bit deeper, healing, and boosting my strength and speed as much as I can. I run in and slip under his swing to knock the door away from hitting his head. I hit him with a duo-fist blow to his guts trying to knock the wind out of him. He bends enough for an uppercut and he goes flying or he would if I hadn’t grabbed his ankle. I swing him like a bat bashing him into vehicles, over and over using defensive throw techniques and my strength to do that as many times as I can to him. I think I got him seven times before I caught a force blast to the face.

I’m on the ground stunned right up to the point of where his Shileigh comes down on my knee cap. My right knees crushes into shards, I scream in pain.

There’s suddenly headlights coming through the dimmed vehicles and a police bronco comes right at us. I manage to roll away before it hit’s Shea hard with the ram bars. He goes flying into another car crashing through the rear window of someone’s mini-van.

There’s a woman who get’s out and runs over to Raine and get’s her up and over to the truck. The boy who she calls Shaun grabs her stun gun and tells her to grab me. I’m loaded into the back with Raine who’s not breathing right…she sounds like her ribs are broken.

“Ye bleeding fookin mortal whoors!!, I’ll flay the skin off the lot of ye!” Shea’s enraged now and literally tears his way out of the mini-van. I hear the deputy breathe out scared. “What the hell is going on….?”

The kid called Shaun he makes the truck rev and points the stun gun at Shea as he’s crawling free of the rubble. The darts make contact and several lightning bolts instead of tasing shots burst out from the weapon and dropped Shea hard. Smoke is rolling off of the Kelpie’s skin and Shaun sags from all the power he’s been channeling.

He bites down hard on the fatigue and gets into the front passenger side. Shea’s getting up and he yells at the deputy. “Donna!, get into the truck now!” She’s emptying the clip of her pistol. It’s not really doing anything to Shea and she’s, well she’s mortal and having her first encounter with the paranormal, she’s freezing up in shock and that’ll get her killed.

Raine gasps and coughs and sit’s forward and points at him with both hands and her eyes go solid white and glow like moonlight beneath them. I heard the charmed air currents before they hit as a wave of twisted together winds like a small but effective sideways twister. So the girl’s an elemental, it still doesn’t explain how she knows me. He, she god it’s impossible to tell. She’s turning pale even getting a blue tinge to her skin. She whine’s out “Mom?”

The deputy turns and that get’s her to jump into the truck and peel out and away from Shea in a backwards squeal of tires. Then she whips the truck around and peels out quickly.

Raine’s eyes are rolled back in her head and she’s blathering in German?, Swede, no it sounds like Norwegian. She exhaling frosty breath too, she looks hypothermic. I’m at a loss, I don’t know what’s going on with her.

Then I hear the horse scream, a sound straight from hell as Shea shifts to his true form and this literal nightmare horse bursts out from where he was standing and starts to chase us.

“Deputy! We’ve got to get this thing moving, he’s gaining on us.” I tell her.

“Is Raine alright? What’s happening to my little girl?”

“I’ve got no idea Ma’am, she’s going through something I’ve never seen before.”

Shaun turns around in the front to look at me. “Why’s the thing after you?”

“My sire wants me back, I’ve…I’ve left the ways of the Sanguira.”

The deputy yells. “The what!?”

Shaun says. “She’s a vampire.”

“A what?”

“She’s a vampire Donna.”

She turns her head to stare at me. I’m still charged up so there’s no hiding the eyes or the fangs. Shaun grabs the wheel. We almost clip a telephone pole. “Fuck!, watch where you’re driving!” She turns back and stomps on the gas. “Is she going to hurt Raine?”

We both say. “No.”

Shea’s getting closer as we get out of the area where the power had been spelled to shut down and we hit the streets where there’s more people, more traffic. It’s going to piss off the Fae courts something awful. And that doesn’t make any sense. The laws of the fae are strict. No one really flaunts them, the wider world shouldn’t know about us or them. But Shea’s running full out and he’s shouldering cares out of the way with that impossible strength. If he’s working for Michel and he doesn’t care if he’s causing a scene then it’s not good, it’s really, really not good.

Shaun takes the riot gun from the dash holster and his eyes spark again, He powers out the window and he shoots Shea as we race through the streets. It’s not silver or iron so it’s not doing much but he’s sticking a charge of power to the brass pellets and the energy is slowing him down. But only a little.

It’s not enough, he runs up along side of us and crashes his flank into us. The force is like getting side swiped by a car. We veer and the deputy swerves the car into him back and he horse lunges at her missing by inches. He slams us again. She rams him again. He slams us again and we go through a guard rail and then we’re rolling down the embankment over and over and over until we come crashing to a stop down by the railway tracks.

Shaun got tossed out the trucks open window. I don’t see him. There’s blood pouring out of the deputy…It’s driving my hunger to really high levels. Raine’s crawling out of the wreckage. She looks better not like she’s freezing to death but she does look like she’s been through hell and she’s all cut up. I hear her calling. “Mom?…Shaun…?”

I kick my door off the hinges and drag her mom clear of the truck and It’s a huge, huge fight for me not to feed. Even as I’m trying to staunch the bleeding, trying to use my nursing knowledge to save her….but…

It hurt’s so badly…I need to, I need to, The Beast is screaming at me…Inside of me.

~Do it!~

~No!~

~Yes!, Yes you can…the blood.~

~I can’t…I won’t.~

~The Blood, the life, the taste, you need it!~

~No I don’t, I don’t need you…I’ve…I’ve changed.~

~You are mine! A willing monster, you are Vampire.~

~No!, No I’m not, not anymore!~

~Yessss, FEED!~

~No!~

The pain get to be unbearable, it’s like a thousand tiny gaff hooks ripping away inside of me. Raine whispers something to me looking at me as she stands under the nearest lamp post. Her hair is moving stirred by an unknown breeze. She’s looking right at me, me not the vampire.

Me…

She say’s “Ask.”

There’s fingers through my hair? There’s this woman, this spirit, my mother? All the women I’ve murdered, some of those I’ve saved. I feel something there….She’s something else, she something beyond the else… I look at her my eyes streaming tears of blood… “Please, please help me?” My body is screaming as my soul is being mauled by The Beast, It’s enraged beyond anything I’ve ever felt. But it’s not hurting me anymore…You, you out there that know abuse, when you hit that point where it’s still going on but time seems to slow down. Sound seems to mute all around you and something gets you through it, that island of peace, safety, the eye in the storm. This woman’s touch is doing that for me.

SHE offers me HER wrist.

It’s like there’s light filling me, touching me and it goes deeper and deeper into me. There’s a battle going on inside of me as I feed from HER.

Everyone, I’ve ever harmed, hurt, tortured, maimed and murdered are with her fighting it.

Fighting The Beast.

Fighting for me…

There is so much light.

I hear her singing, singing for me…

“These wounds won’t seem to heal.”
“This pain is just too real.”
“There’s just too much that time cannot erase.”
……

“When you cried, I’d wipe away all your tears.”
“When you’d scream, I’d fight away all your fears.”
“And I’ve held your hand for all these years.”
“But you still have…all of me…”

I feel it, let me go. I feel something new enter me and fill me up and I’m crying, crying real tears. I stop feeding and let go of that wrist… All those spirits, everyone that my evil had damned swirling around me and in pillar of light they’re finally released and go, streaming away into the light going home to where they’ve always belonged.

Donna, the deputy starts to convulse going into shock. “Oh no you don’t, I’m not letting you die.”

I bite my wrist and put it to her mouth forging the bloodlink between us. I pull on the magic in me, I pull on The Goddess and I take her wounds and give her my vampire healing gift.

It goes black as I feel the convulsions of shock stop in her and start in me as my skin tears open matching her wounds as it begins. There’s a smile on my face even as I fall.

***
Shaun:

The creature this dark fae thing that called itself Shea just wouldn’t go down. I tried every trick I could do and still the thing just kept coming.

Then Raine did something that commanded the wind to attack him and knocked him down long enough to get away.

Well we thought we were getting away.

The Vamp has a lot, a lot of explaining to do.

I watched Raine go into some kind of fit, talking in tongues and getting so cold her breath steamed and she was turning blue.

Her mom had come to our rescue and the poor woman was beyond freaked out. There’s going to be a major shitstorm out of this.

Shea turned into some kind of big bejeususly nasty hell horse and chased us through the traffic as we tried to get away.

It got bad, then he ran us off the road and it got worse.

I got thrown from the bronco and I hit my head on something, I felt my arm go snap in a couple of places and the truck rolled over my legs. I can move them but everything hurts, I want to puke….OK, I do puke.

Then he’s there. The damned hell horse…the bank’s too steep so he shifts into that Irish black guy form with the braids. I push myself up to my feet, get in front of him but he just laughs and uses his fucking stick to blow me off the side of the hill. The thirty foot fall doesn’t do me one bit of good.

Things break inside, Blood and vomit burst out of my lips.

I see the Vampire trying to take care of Donna, but she starts to really vamp out. Then she’s shaking, arguing, screaming and talking to herself then I see Raine, getting up and walking over to stand between the Vamp and her Mom and Shea. There’s light that’s more than the streetlight pouring down on her. It’s all really Roma Downey-Touched by and angel like.

I see this blurry ghost like image of all these shifting women with the vampire.

Things go dim as I see Raine give Shea this come get some hand gesture before thing’s blur into darkness…

***
Raine:

We were right in the middle of the battle against Shea and losing when my mom got involved. I’m not sure why she showed. I’m thinking that it might have been the blackout he caused.

Kara came to me then, rushed me was more like it.

A witch, a woman of power amongst her own people. Vikings, she could speak to the elements. Call them to aid her people in raiding. She was killed not for that, not for anything she’d done in the long life she had lived. No, she died because she dared love a roman woman, a warrioress from the enemy, her beloved Amazon.

She lived with her until the armies of men, of men and demons descended on our valley home because we were women with power, we were women with freedom who despite the world we lived in…we wanted to change the world for the better.

Then the Roman army under the guise of this new one god came and killed us. That was Kara’s chance of a second life, peace, freedom, love. It was gone and now I’m, we, she became a Valkryie spirit.

Now I am her and she is me and It all came through to me in seventeen minutes in battle.

Then came the crash.

Then SHE came to me.

That’s when I saw Alecia fighting what that thing had made her with everything she had, everything…and I got it. I got Why SHE couldn’t help me go after her. I can see them, feel all those trapped souls bound to her killing them.

I seen Shaun try to defend us and watch him fall because of this. There’s a strange peace to this now. I look at HER. “Go…Go to her, that’s your fight…I’ve got this.” I look at Alecia and pull her focus to me catching her attention. “Ask.”

I turn from them towards Shea. I’m feeling it, me, all of me drawing together. He’s hurt my lover, my mother and there’s souls now in the balance for Alecia’s soul now at risk. I’m feeling it. I’m feeling this…I’m feeling what they meant when they created The Evanescence…

I reach out with my feelings, I reach into the sisterhood and motherhood bonds between all of us.

I hear her playing along with one of my favorite bands.

“Raven hair and ruby lips.”
“Sparks fly from her fingertips.”
“Echoed voices in the night.”
“She’s a restless spirit on an endless flight.”

I start to sing along as I gesture to Shea come get some.

“Wooo hooo, Witchey Woman….see how high she flies…”
“Wooo hooo, Witchey Woman….she’s got the moon in her eye.”

I can sort of see her in this trailer someplace rocking out to this song with her guitar. Glasses, long soft brown hair and chocolate meets coffee silky eyes. There’s a huge stereo in behind her and it’s all hooked to her equalizers and her amps and stuff. There’s arcane tomes and stuff on another wall and art supplies and sketch pads on the coffee table.

She’s in faded black jeans that are slipping off her hips a little and she’s got this old faded men’s sized Led Zeppelin Houses of the holy tee shirt on under a Cleveland Brown’s hoody, she’s bare foot. I can’t help but to smile as she plays. She hears me singing though…and stops playing. I recognize her, she’s the witch that got shot when we faced the demon.

~Jonelle?~

~Yes?, Goddess?~

~No, not quite. We met sort of in Fort Lauderdale.~

~Oh…How can I help, this can’t be a social call?~

I flash her the entire event up to right now with Shea stalking towards me. Jonelle smiles and flashes me the plan. I smile too right at Shea.

I snap out of it to lean away from the first swing of his Shileigh. I counter with my merged reflexes and speed and strength of all of me, myselves. I’m reasonably good at self defense stuff but Kara takes the lead on this with us. Norse wrestling along with Pankration styled fighting and forty some years of actual experience too. Block a few blows, push them away, use his strength against him, hit back, roman like boxing blows laced with Essence not mana. There’s five others here melded with me, I’m on par with him in and unexpected way. I use a bit of the little martial things that Ko can do, Antonia dances out of the way of his blows and Heaven…I…she was a hooker and she knows how to fight dirty.

Shea’s still winning, I’m still not able to take the punishment that the blows that do hit inflict on me. He hit’s me with a sudden jumping round house that knocks me back. I roll with it despite how much it hurts and come up on my knees. I do magic, I work light.

Actually I take light away from the street lamp. What’s left behind shining down on him is a binding circle.

That pisses him off. I think it hurts because it’s shining down on him. It’s like a cone of force and he’s screaming as he’s hammering at the containment.

“Oh ho, ho, ho, ye fooking whoor, ye think ye’s all clever thet you can do a wee bit of light magic.”

“Oim, gonna break yer neck!”

“Rip yer titties off!”

“I’m gonna stomp the life outta ye and ye wee boy toy there and the copper there.”

Then he grabs that stone around his neck and it glows, his eyes match it in this deep green glow. He points his Shileigh at the lamp post and blows it to hell and he laughs out loud crowing almost. “Oy you ain’t laughing now are ye bitch?” He stalks closer, to me and I stay still, not moving just working power.

Shea gets close and points his Shileigh at me and the waves of force can be seen at the end of it like a heat shimmer. “Any last words there Poppet?”

I look at him. “Yeah, I do.”

“Wotts thet now darlin?”

“You’re going to make a really nice statue.”

“Wott?!”

I do the same thing as I do to weave the cloth from air only it’s the rail yard, and there’s tones of rust everywhere. Where there’s rust, there’s iron. I had been spreading my mana out through it as he was yammering on. Every time the train rolled over these rails it was grinding away at the rails, the rails away at the wheels and everything else.

Now I use Essence instead of just mana, the life force power is like NOS for magic and the mass of iron particles are mine now. It rises behind me a massive black tidal wave and comes crashing down past me without touching me. He screams, animal, human , both, neither and shifts to his true form, I send hardening tendrils at him. I take away his stick, I take away his fancy necklace. He bolts but magic is faster than his hooves and I surround him, then enfold him in the cloud.

He bucks and screams and rears and then it’s over. Another burst of Essence and I petrify him in cold iron. Like I said; He makes a nice statue. It almost hurts as I let go of the power and get weakly to my feet grabbing both his Shileigh and the amulet…that bites me and I take off my jacket and wrap it in that.

~Jonelle?~

~Yeah, Raine?~

~It worked, thanks I owe you one.~

~Hey…Raine…Friends don’t owe each other.~

~Thanks, Jo.~

~Go, Take care of yours. We’ll talk later.~

~Thanks.~

I limp over towards Shaun and sit beside him. Bright Blessings he’s still breathing. I close my eyes for a minute and then look over to where Mom’s sitting up and so is Alecia.

“Hey Alecia, you think we can get a little help here?”

The look she gives me is priceless because I think she just figured out who and what I am.

***
Michel:

He screamed, he screamed and screamed and screamed as power was ripped from him. As she was ripped from her and all the essence that he had tasted through her ripped away, torn asunder even further up the food chain…Tears of blood flowed from him as he picked himself off the floor.

The servant’s and even his children were huddled in fear. He could feel The Anger of his own sire, and the rage of The Beast. They were going to take this out on him if they could. He chose her, He bent laws to create her from what she was. They’d blame him and he’d die with her.

He gripped the large emerald on the chain around his neck…There was another feeling Shea had failed him, SHE had somehow been there, something defeated Shea, something unexpected.

Asmodeus would not like losing Shea.

He left the main hall to pray and beg the protection of his new master from his sire.

And to plot revenge, he’d find out who took his darling from him and there would be much suffering.