The things you do for a broken heart!

[Eachann Christie (DELETED 4713)]

He had no idea how he was still standing. He'd done all he could to avoid the bullets she'd fired at him, but one of them had caught him in the throat, ripping a chunk out of the side of his neck. His powers had kicked in, that survival instinct he and his kind had that seemed to keep them going when they should be down and out. His blood balled on his skin, crept towards him from all around where she'd shot him and it had splattered. It moved as if it were alive and found him once more and was absorbed back into his wounds and into his body. He seemed to glow with an energy, as he bounced from foot to foot, a wicked smirk on his face as he watched hers and heard her words.

"Yer no a demon aye? Yer the same hen ye ahlways were? Did ye gae aroond killin pair folks afore ye where a monster did ye? Really?"

She really thought she wasn't evil, and that she was just a normal girl? Her face said otherwise and it was annoying him. He wanted her head, with that expression on it, as a warning to the other vampires. So he went for it. He stepped forwards, one foot at a time at a slow pace. His sword dodged and weaved before him like some sort of whirling dervish as he tried to black her defence and back her up against a tree. He didn't hear if any shots were fired or not, but he was sure he felt another land in his body - his neck again. But not before he'd lunged forwards in a surprise move and drawn a long, thin slice right from her hairline to her chin, and right across her eye, pressing in hard against her eye and eyelid - trying to make it pop.

You engage Zelda in melee battle, swinging your sword at them wildly.
As Zelda steps back, surprised, your blade cuts a clean line across their face and blinds them in one eye.

[Zelda (DELETED 4403)]

Zelda growled; there was no point arguing with this guy. Hadn’t she just said, not long, that she never actually killed anyone? Murder was not the name of the game. Feeding, was. She had to consume blood to survive. It didn’t matter whether she got it straight from the vein or from a shop somewhere – it was always stolen. Sure, she’d love to have a willing donor but where the hell would she find someone like that? And would they really be able to give her a pint of blood a night without slowly dying?

She bit her tongue to keep from retorting. If there was one person she did intend to kill, it was this hunter; this man who had been brainwashed, who couldn’t see her for who she was. All he saw was that she was a vampire. It didn’t matter that she had her own emotions, that she had a heart, that she thought her own thoughts and strayed from her own paths. She still had a conscience, and a thinking mind with which to execute it. This guy wasn’t going to listen, so she wasn’t going to waste her energy on words. What was the point, when she was going to kill him anyway?

He came at her with his sword. A ******* sword, for crying out loud. She felt like she needed a shield, with the way in which it was swirling and dashing through the air; her eyes widened, but she should have shut them. As he got closer she shot a few more bullets, wanting only to trip him up so he and his sword couldn’t come any further; although she was certain a bullet did find its target, it didn’t stop the man. The blade came clean down across her face and she screamed like a banshee—like a siren scorned. Although she was half blinded, she continued to fire, glad that she at least had a gun that she didn’t have to reload too often.

She wasn’t sure whether any more bullets hit their target, and was aware that the sword was still close, and dangerous, and biting. She was now ready for this fight to be over.

[OOC: I got confused – think this gets us up to this point:

Zelda: You take a couple of shots at Eachann Christie, and one of them rips through their throat!

Eachann: Stepping out of the shadows, you lunge at Zelda with your sword, but they are too fast for you, and your sword merely scratches their cheek. The wound closes up almost instantly.

Zelda: You fire wildly at Eachann Christie, but your aim is poor.
You do, however, hit them once in the leg, tripping them up.

[Eachann Christie (DELETED 4713)]

He was choking on his own blood now, and all of that adrenaline was ebbing away and out of his body. Every bullet wound was aching, every swipe of the sword felt like a leaden weight in his hands. He could feel his strength slowly vanishing as if it had all been a lie to start with. He tried to stab her in the head again, but he only got her cheek as he went wide. He was stumbling around as his blade tip dipped towards the ground, instead of out and proud as it had been. Everything was going wrong and he knew the end was coming. In fact, as another bullet landed in his leg and tripped him up - he felt this was it.

Down he went, falling on his *** before his head hit the ground right after. The whole world spun as he coughed out yet more blood, feeling it hot down his leg. He tried to get up, trying to keep her back with his sword, but he felt more and more bullets hitting him, burying their way into his flesh. None of his strikes struck and he could barely see - his eyes just wanted to close and his vision swam. With one last ditch attempt, he once more incited her, hoping to distract her as he rolled to his front. He'd planned to try getting to his feet, to try and run - but all he felt was another bullet in his back. Even without that bullet, there was slim to no chance that he'd actually have managed to get to his feet, let alone away.

He collapsed down, rolled onto his back and just lay there and stared at her, staring into her one remaining eye. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he gasped and whispered, coughing through the blood as he spoke to her.

"Finish it. Take mah life as yoo an yours huv taken evrything fae me. Ah've got nowt tae live fer!"

And he stared, and waited for that inevitable end to come - passing out into unconsciousness before it did.

[Zelda (DELETED 4403)]

The rage was all that Zelda could feel – at one point it doubled, and again she felt that unnatural foreignness, an anger that was not her own, but which only added to the frenzy with which she fought. She was beyond reason, now, screaming and gnashing her teeth as the bullets sprayed the area. The scent of blood permeated the air and her blood lust screamed at her from within, a dull ache residing in the back of her throat, in the gums of her teeth. She had lost blood, and her body was telling that she needed to replace it. It asked her to take the blood of this poorly creature; to finish him as he asked not with a bullet, but with her teeth in his neck, draining him of every last drop, taking every ounce that he himself had taken from her.

No such thing happened, however. Maybe it was the tears in the guy’s eyes. Maybe it was the way his voice was tainted, heavy with passion and remorse. Zelda was not merciless, not in the least. If begged, if given proper reason, she would let him live. If he’d talked to her from the beginning rather than attacking and running away like a coward, maybe she’d have actually listened. Maybe she’d have swayed him to her point of view. What would he do now, if she were to feed him her blood, to change him and make him a vampire? How would he feel, then?

He’d probably hate her forever, that’s what. And he’d probably still lust for her death, which was not something she was particularly inclined to deal with. Her teeth ground together. She ached, and her face stung. Blood blurred her vision – the one eye that she could see out of, anyway. She would heal that wound as soon as she could. She would heal it completely, and hope that it would not scar.

Pride urged her forward, even if her heart told her to stop. The gun was aimed at the human’s head—her fingers squeezed the trigger. But no shot sounded. No, there was just a dull click – finally out of ammo. And instead of the echo of a gunshot, there was the sound of sirens. Someone had called the cops. Of course, there were homes around, somewhere. They’d have heard the gunshots, and the screaming. Panic seized Zelda, and she figured that he’d probably die anyway, with how badly she had harmed him. Best to get the hell out of dodge before the authorities arrived.

She spun on her heal and ran in the opposite direction, abandoning any plans to go to the party that she had been on her way to. Instead, she pulled the tome from her pocket and went home, where she would lick her wounds. Where she would sit on the edge of her bed and contemplate the last hour or so of her life, and the things that she had thought, and the things that she had felt – she would contemplate whether she felt proud, or whether she felt remorse.