Scars & Souvenirs [Invite]

[Every]

[AGAINST THE CURE]

She was going to rip his head off, one day.

Marcus Barnes, or whatever the hell his name was.

The bullet dropped to the ground as she finished digging it out with her claws. On the floor, there was a slight tinkling sound that Every had become accustomed to from the moment her past had come back to haunt her. Between dealing with her uncle, his goons and the creatures within Harper Rock, the idea of a cure was added to her list of things that weren’t going to happen. She had first learned about when the rumor of it hit the headlines. It hadn’t surprised her, really, that people would attempt to cure the disease as one would potentially call it, as she had herself even. As she blended in with those around her, the shadow had resisted the snort that had wanted to be released after reading the article.

Hacking came next. There was nothing special about it - a few email segments revealed little. She didn’t expect to find the full transcripts, either. It made her curious, but she didn’t trust it. There wasn’t much left to say when one learns about test subjects - even just the potential of them. If there was a cure, it’d likely be forced upon others - “Dispersed through human blood? Perhaps airborne?” The thought went through her head as she lifted her hazel eyes to the ceiling above her. “How many floors…” She wondered, clenching her jaw as she felt the injury already beginning to heal. Sometimes, she hated being a shadow - but when the wound wasn’t too deep, such as today, it made her feel good about herself. The fact that the wound wasn’t too deep meant that she’d managed to avoid a worse one - or that whatshisface was a shitty shot.

Either, really, was okay with her.

As she shrugged out of her jacket, Every looked to the bloodstained ground and briefly smirked. At least she’d got a hit at ‘Marcus.’ Dropping the ruined denim, she watched some of her wispy black blood disappear from sight before she listened to approaching footsteps. Left, right, left, right, left, right. The individual paused. Right, left, right, left. Turn. She had a knife on her belt that would remain in reach, there was a pistol resting behind the same belt - she would have preferred her rifle, but it would do. As the footsteps due closer, she inclined her head and heard the strong heartbeat. Whoever it was, they seemed nervous. Closing her eyes, she reopened them a moment later with sharper vision. She rolled her knuckles, tapping her fingertips against her thigh before stepping around the corner.

The man seemed to jump, startled. He had the marks of a Paladin, but wore the clothes of a soldier - a relief, considering she’d spent enough time in the sewers seeing naked men and women for a lifetime. But, with the way she’d startled him, she assumed he was new. Not a typical hunter, certainly not expecting the shadows to jump into life as she raised her arms. Blood came out of the corners of his mouth, a grunt slipping past his lips as she heard the soft punch that accompanied the way the shadows pierced his stomach. When they released him, a sidhe came next - she waited for it to cackle or turn at her, but when the fae spirit followed direction, she couldn’t help but feel a bit pleased, watching the man be knocked into the ground.

Crack went his ribs, a whimper following as she stepped closer and her fangs slipped past her lips. It wasn’t going to be a very long fight. Not at all.

[Freyja]

So far, the door to the facility had held fast. Despite the efforts of what appeared to be dozens of vampires storming the gates, the base stood strong, though with more arrivals every minute, she wasn’t convinced that even the tremendous precautions that the humans had appeared to have taken would hold for very long. Vampires were a resourceful and clever bunch, as well as many that could provide sheer power of brute force behind that cunning, they were a force to be reckoned with. Whatever specimens it had been that these humans had been able to obtain for their experimentation with a cure had clearly, in her mind, been weak. Too weak to shoulder the burden of greatness, too weak to remain autonomous in a world of inferiors that sought to control them.

That was why they were sheep, and she was a vixen. Clever, beautiful, and bloodthirsty.

The man on the end of her sword clutched at the blade, his eyes wide with a terrible fear as blood gushed from both corners of his mouth. His tongue wagged in a useless plea for his life, the groan of what would have been his final words rousing the tall, slender norsewoman from her musings. She gave a scoff, a sound of disgust as air rushed through her nose, before she gave the long knife a sharp twist and a yank to her left, ripping the blade free as she shredded his heart. He was dead before his knees hit the floor.

A paladin lunged at her, the woman’s eyes wild with a rage that the amazonian warrior knew all too well, the hatred that the stout, muscular woman bore into her with dark eyes was matched and overpowered by the sheer weight of the frigid fury that the icy blue glare shot back into her, even as a heavy bladed weapon came crashing down onto Freyja’s knife. The short barrel of her pistol pressed into the woman’s abdomen and barked, the flash of the muzzle bright between them as the statuesque woman with the dark eyes twisted away in a flash, her blade glinting in the harsh artificial light of the military base, her dark hair flowing behind her in a wild, loose mane.

With a growl, the tall woman reached out to grasp a fistful of those dark locks and yanked the woman’s head back as she attempted to put some distance between them. Turning her back to the vampire, if it had even been for a blink of an eye, had been a fatal mistake.

The woman gasped as she was yanked back, and the barrel of the pistol pressed to the base of her skull. Her lips opened to beg mercy, when the pistol barked again. Her eyes snapped about in her skull, before crossing comically and sinking lifelessly to her knees. She grimaced, and shoved a knee into the woman’s back and sent her into the dust with a thud. She ran the back of her fist along the line of her jaw as she pulled her phone from her pocket, wiping the grime from her cheek as she shot her oldest progeny a text.

Where are you, girl?
I’m stuck in a real mess this time,
could use the help.

She tapped the send key and glanced up just in time to see a blade flashing toward her face. Her pistol rose, the trigger guard deflecting the blade away from her cheek, the tip whistling past and taking a few strands of loose hair with its passing. A feral growl left her throat and she turned on the offender, renewing her efforts on the front line defenses.

[Caligrace]

News of the cure had spread like wildfire.

It had started as a simple whisper that had been caught by the wind and carried from ear to ear, bringing with it the promise of hope – or the threat of danger. Within a matter of seconds it had ignited into a firestorm that no one saw coming. It threatened to consume everyone within its path, the destruction imminent, especially with half of the city blinded by their own rampant paranoia. If it hadn’t been such a serious threat, she might have found their reactions laughable. Even the strongest among them had rushed into the fray, their weapons drawn without a second thought into what this could mean. In mere moments, her kind had been rallied into proving to be the monsters they were named.

Brushing her hand through her hair, she bit down on the corner of her lip, the shimmering burnt orange gloss reflecting in the pale moonlight. Fall had been her favorite season – the scent of decaying leaves, the air that was neither too hot nor too cold, and Halloween. She lived for frightening movies, pumpkin spice lattes, and Halloween. Tonight, however, she couldn’t bring herself to care about anything outside of the chaos that had been brought into her quiet little world. Releasing a breath, she shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket, nails biting into the leather as she glared at the building before her. She knew once she stepped inside, she would be consumed by whatever spell the cure had cast among the undead. There would be no escaping the truth once she walked inside those doors.

“You need to make a choice,” she whispered, her words swallowed by the gunfire that emitted from within the lab. She knew once she stepped through the doors, she hadn’t to choose between humanity – and eternity. Could she live as a human again? Would she even be able to adjust to life without her enhanced charm, speed and strength? Or, would she give up that thin thread of hope to stay at Freyja’s side until the end of time as she continued to fight against the bloodthirsty beast that paced somewhere deep inside her veins? Only two options – and both threatened to tear her apart without hesitation. I’m going to mess this up. One wrong choice, and I lose everything.

Steeling herself for what was to come, she forced her head high as she stepped across the dying grass, her heels sinking into the damp ground. She barely noticed with green turned to stone, her amber eyes closed so she wouldn’t have to see herself take that final step into the abyss. She hadn’t expected anyone to be there, she didn’t expect it to happen so quickly. She had barely made it to the door before she heard the sound of the blade, the air distorted by the sharp metal as it came for her. She only had one choice – dodge, or die. Stumbling back at the last second, she gave a harsh cry as the blade narrowly missed her skull, and instead, sliced through her arm. The pain stunned her into silence, and as her vision swam, she took in the sight of the female. Her features were blurred by the tears that had built in her eyes and try as she might, she couldn’t bring herself to find her weapon. The shock of her missing limb clouded every logical and intellectual choice that she had, and instead of retaliation, she staggered forward until the door slammed shut behind her.

Once she was inside, her back to the heavy steel, she fell to her knees, chest heaving as she fought to keep the bile inside. Somewhere she heard a familiar chime, and it took a moment for her to realize that it was coming from her bag. Somehow, she had managed to keep it on her shoulder – even if the arm it had been attached to was somewhere outside. Don’t think about it, girl. Just breathe. As the panic swelled inside of her, the balloon threatening to expand until her chest cracked open, she fished her phone from the dark depths of her purse and hit the call button. The ringing that followed wasn’t too far away, and she almost laughed when she heard her sire curse before answering.

“I'm at the door, and girl, promise you won’t lose your **** when you get here…”

[Every]

There was blood on her face, some of the lighter strands of her hair stained red due to arterial bleeding of the man who collapsed in front of her. The blade in her hand was comfortable, familiar. She’d almost thought it had been lost in a cave in a few months back, but she'd been wrong. It was almost laughable, really. A cave in due to some stupid fledgling, a cure. “What’s next, flying pigs?” The shadow rolled her shoulders as she searched through the dead man’s personal items. A curse uttered a moment later as she slapped her open palms against his thighs. “You couldn't have a damn key?” She hissed, her fangs retracting while she got back to her feet. His unseeing eyes followed her as she ran down the hall, back towards the sound of gunfire and fighting.

Familiar faces in passing were greeted, others ignored as she slid to a stop. Her back pressed up against the wall, her hair falling briefly in her face as she debated about continuing to search for a keycard or to take another look at that door - she knew she wouldn't be able to pick the lock, even with her electronic kits she brought along just in case. She’d already tried blowing and hacking the damn thing, too, soot covering the bottom right corner. A private elevator was possible, but the idea of climbing into the shaft… she thought briefly about the treehouse and dismissed it. She really didn't feel like being crushed in an elevator - she'd already nearly had that issue before. Besides, she'd have to wait for it to be high enough so that she could pry open the doors…

As a piece of the wall shattered by her, Every turned her face away and felt dust settle over her clothes, her skin. “I don't understand how a curse could have happened.” She thought as she decided it would be best to go for a card, her mind automatically going to that link between her own and her wraith, Zachary. He was near the door, seeing with his eyes as she searched for what she was looking for. A commando, perhaps, or maybe another soldier… when she didn't see anything, she told him mentally to look as she repeated the action with Locryn. Her thrall. The younger woman was near, grappling with a man in uniform whom had seemingly gotten too close for comfort. She could already smell the differences of blood lingering in the air, some enticing where others smelled of nothing but toxicity.

Behind the fledglings shoulder, Every caught a flash of red hair and a missing limb. Mentally, she dismissed it as she focused back into her own mind. There was a loud bang and a shout as she came back, her previously unfocused gaze disappearing. Locryn. She thought as she turned towards the previous hall. In the back of her head, she heard Zachary and compared whether or not her thrall could handle it before ultimately removing the gun from the waistband of her jeans. Lowering her weapon towards the ground, she moved. She didn't want to take any chances, even if she knew the girl could handle herself for the most part.

Not only would she have to deal with Dante, but Locryn was bitchy when in pain. Even if the girl denied it.

As she rounded the corner, she watched as the other threw the man to the ground. Blood soaked one sleeve, breathing hard as his neck was twisted at an awkward angle. Lifting her gaze behind the young woman, Every said, “Drop” in a quick, authoritative tone as she raised her firearm the second Locryn hit the deck and fired three shots into the commandos chest, not noticing the round that went through.

[Freyja]

Things were getting entirely out of control.

All around her, bodies lay in a ring of carnage. Blood collected about her heels in a pool that the ring of fallen forms walled, allowing the crimson liquid to pool up nearly to her ankles, held an easy four inches off the ground. She was beginning to wish that she had worn taller heels, at this point, as she rammed another magazine into her Walther, and pulling her Makarov free from the holster that was strapped high on the inside of her thigh. The trouble that these humans were giving her was almost disgraceful. Though, she admitted to herself that she had created quite the spectacle of herself as she had begun to slaughter indiscriminately, wreaking wholesale homicide on each and every thing that came near enough to her with a pulse.

A tall woman, still short next to the vampire standing taller than six and a half feet in her heels, rounded the corner, her bright blue eyes alight with hatred as she lifted a rifle and aimed for Freyja. Her finger didn’t manage to even reach the trigger as a bullet burrowed between those pretty eyes. Her head snapped back, rifle flying away from the already dead body as her long golden pony tail whipped around her throat and she fell back on her own boots, body folded in half.

Blood coated the typically immaculate vampire, crimson dripping from the tips of her golden curls, her eyes wild with the rage that surged through her. She heard her phone ringing somewhere in the back of her mind as she leaped out of the ring of bodies, moving swiftly through the tight corridors of the base as she made her way for the front door. A man rounded the corner, only to find the barrel of the .22 Makarov shoved into his mouth, breaking several of his teeth on their way past. He cried out in pain, just before the muzzle flash caused the man’s cheeks to glow with a fiery intensity for a brief moment, his head rocking wildly as he fell back with a tremendous impact against the wall, and slid to rest on his backside, his weapon still hanging from his shoulder.

She let the pistol dip to his shoulder, where she wiped the dead man’s saliva from the barrel. “You can keep this, you filthy animal.” she snarled, before striking him across the face with the weapon, breaking the dead man’s jaw with a sharp crack. Her disdain for the Paladins and those that aligned themselves with them was plain. She had never tried to hide her issues, even if she didn’t fully understand them herself. She simply couldn’t stop the hatred that swelled inside of her any time she saw one of those self-righteous bastards and their cronies. Just the sight of them made her blood boil, her trigger fingers aching with an undeniable desire to unload a magazine into whatever unlucky face she’d spotted.

She shook her head, wrist passing over her hair and flicking blood from the once golden strands, both hands grasping a sidearm and refusing to put either of them away. She made her way back into the large room at the entrance of the facility and finally put away the thunderously loud Makarov, in favor of the larger-caliber Walther, slipping the weapon back into its place beneath her dress as she pulled her phone from between her breasts. She ran a thumb across the screen, a habit from a time before she was one of the undead, and answered the phone, tucking it against her ear, just as a soldier came around the corner, his weapon at the ready and already firing as he swung around on her.

“****.” she snapped, ducking as the bullets hissed through the air, her own weapon pointed at the kneeling figure. Dressed in body armor and armed to the teeth, she couldn’t see the face behind the mask and goggles, and she didn’t care. It was one of them. The pistol barked, and she shot the soldier in the face. The black mask made it difficult to see where, but the way the head snapped to one side as the body crumpled into the floor, she was sure that whoever they were, they were never getting up again.

“I’m almost there now, Cali. What am I not losing my **** o- where the **** is your arm!?”

Suddenly, the chaos all around her vanished. The blood that caked her whole body was forgotten, the nagging tug at the back of her mind at how dirty, how filthy she was getting herself in the middle of that fray, vanished completely at the sight of what was her closest friend in the entire world, the closest thing she would ever have to a daughter, resting on her knees against the wall of a military facility under heavy attack, holding the bloody stump that used to be her arm. In fact, everything seemed to vanish from her mind, the only thing that mattered in the entire world was closing that gap between them, for her to be at Cali’s side and be sure that she was alright.

She didn’t even notice the scuffle happening just feet away, the thrall fighting with one of the commandos, or her master as she rounded the corner. The command to get down was a muffled whisper of air breezing past her as she began to pull the phone away from her face.

The device didn’t make it far.

A sharp crack sounded, close enough to make out above the din of battle all around her, and still completely unnoticed by the tall Dane. She didn’t realize the danger of being shot, until the bullet struck her hand, passing clean through the meat of her palm, the phone, through the flesh of her cheek and breaking several of her teeth, the shards of bone, glass, and shredded metal resting across her tongue and swiftly awash in her own blood. The shock of pain was mostly lost in the sea of emotion at seeing Caligrace in the state she was in, though not so much that she failed to wheel on her attacker and lift her pistol into their line of sight.

It was then that she saw who had wielded the gun that shot her, the bodies in the floor in front of her going entirely unnoticed.

“Oh of course it was you. It had to be you.” She rolled the bullet and broken bits of her teeth around in her mouth with her tongue, before she tossed the shattered phone to the ground and lifted her wounded palm. She spat the bits as best she could into the heel of her hand, away from the hole, where she could grasp them as a reminder to keep her head about her when she was somewhere as dangerous as this. Caligrace was not forgotten, the tall blonde still poised to run after her wounded progeny.

Shoving the mementos into the storage pouch of the holster for her Walther, she turned to say something else to Every as she made to move toward her little firecracker, something witty, something downright mean on the tip of her tongue when another soldier came into the main room, the mouth of the corridor so close that the soldier nearly stumbled into Freyja, had they been paying the slightest bit of attention to her. Instead, their weapon was trained on the wounded redhead by the door. Freyja was close enough to smell the woman’s perfume, the scent filling her nose lost beneath another surge of anger as she watched the masked woman lift her rifle toward the one thing she had come to this spot to protect.

Her hand lashed out, grasping a fistful of the uniform’s collar, and hoisted the woman into the air like she weighed nothing at all. Her back impacted the wall with a snap that would have made Freyja wince, had she not been held in the grip of her rage. A sharp yelp left the soldier, and her arms fell to her sides, the weapon forgotten as it fell to hang from the sling strapped about her torso. Freyja shoved her pistol between the woman’s breasts and the chest of her flak vest, one hand still holding the soldier aloft as the other, now free of its weapon, gripped the mask and, in one fluid motion, ripped the cloth facemask, black goggles, and the helmet free of the face and threw them to the side in a furious flick of her wrist. The helmet impacted the wall and broke against the concrete, staved in at the scalp.

The frightened woman beneath stared with wide, brown eyes brimming with terror as she shook her head. Freyja glared into those eyes, and drew her lips back in a snarl. “Corporal Bexley,” she hissed, having seen the name stitched into the chest of her vest, the rank sewn into the shoulder of her uniform, both seen in the flash of an instant that she had seen the woman before she’d attacked, “If you want to live, I expect you to do exactly as I tell you. The wounded you were about to so cowardly take a shot at needs medical attention. I expect you to see to her wounds immediately, and to bring her back to this spot. If you fail, I’ll break your ******* neck myself once I’m finished with you. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

She had used the power many times now, and had maintained her hold with ease over the thralls that she commanded now. With Bambi released from her command, Freyja found the act of dominating another human’s free will almost second nature. The woman in her grasp looked practically ready to piss her pants in sheer fear of what the vampire might be capable of. She doubted that the exertion of her power was necessary, the amount of her own energy that she had to put into the act more taxing than she really felt was called for, considering how quickly she had cowed the aggressive commando, but she would leave nothing to chance when it came to Caligrace.

As a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, it was very likely that the woman knew more on trauma first aid than Freyja might, and would have her patched up and ready to move again much faster than the tall blonde would have.

Slowly, she lowered the soldier to her feet, boots hitting the floor with a thump and the woman moving to bolt as quickly as she could to carry out her orders. Fast as a flash of lightning, Freyja’s fist caught the long, black braid of hair that trailed behind the woman and yanked her back. “Bring her back to me now, Corporal, or I will have you watch as I slaughter your entire family.” The woman tried to nod quickly, yanking at her own hair. “I’m trying, I’m trying! Let me go and I’ll bring her back!”

With a nod of satisfaction, Freyja tossed the woman’s hair free, sending her rushing toward her downed childe in a frantic effort to retrieve her. When she wheeled on the woman that had shot her, the gashes in her cheek from the explosion of glass shards were slowly beginning to heal, though the hole in her face would be some time in closing. She could still feel the jagged shards of what was left of her teeth threatening to cut into her tongue. The entire ordeal was painful, though that was still lost beneath her anger, the wound itself adding an entirely new level of intimidation to most of the soldiers that flooded the complex.

It was turning out to be quite the playground down in this dark hole.

“What the ****, Every? I don’t see you in months, and the first thing you do is shoot me in the goddamn face? I knew you didn’t like me, but damn. Leave my pretty face out of this.” The words were a jest, though the humor didn’t reach her expression, her face still mildly twisted in pain as she kept an eye on her newfound thrall, watching her out of the corner of her peripheral as she bent over the small redhead and offered her a hand to help her to her feet.

“I can help stop this bleeding, if you’ll just come with me. The… woman wants you over there…” she lifted her hand, and jutted a gloved thumb back to the spot she was supposed to fetch her to. “I can get a tourniquet applied to this wound once we’re safely together, and I can offer you something for the pain… if, I mean… can you guys even like… take… painkillers? I don't know. You just tell me what you need, and I can tell you if I can handle it. ”

[Hudson]

Project Revival.

Up until he read the name in the paper, until he read over the details the article provided, Jensen had no idea the project even existed. As he sat at his desk, a steaming mug of coffee in one hand and the folded newspaper in the other, Jensen began to wonder about what else the Longslade facility held within its walls. Since the news broke, government agents and military personnel darted back and forth between rooms. The elevator had been in constant motion, taking people between levels. And even though Jensen knew about the possible existence of a miracle cure for vampirism, he still couldn’t obtain security clearance beyond the animal testing labs and the main floor. He couldn’t explore on his own, see the cure with his own eyes. In the scheme of things, he felt utterly useless. No one had even asked him for coffee.

“Hey! Sir! Wait!” Jensen threw the newspaper down on his desk and held out a hand to capture the attention of the intern program coordinator, a man by the name of Robert Fisher. “What’s going on?” Jensen watched as an array of emotions filtered across the old man’s face, but no words escaped. Neither of them knew where to take the conversation then, so they lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, one broken by the interruption of another person.

“Sir, the helicopter is on the pad. Protocol dictates,” a military man interrupted. Jensen quickly identified the newcomer as Private Ferguson. They’d met a few times in the stairwell, shared a table in the cafeteria. Beyond that, they knew little of one another.

“I know what protocol dictates. Wait for me at the top. I’ll be a few minutes. We can spare that much time before lockdown initiates.” Robert hesitated before he spoke those words, but he spoke them, nonetheless. When Ferguson ran off toward the staircase and disappeared behind the closed door, Robert grew more serious. “You need to evacuate the facility. I’m telling you this for your own safety. We’re asking all non-military personnel to leave the grounds within the next forty-five minutes. This isn’t a drill.”

Jensen couldn’t breathe. Why couldn’t he breathe? He’d been through fire drills, earthquake drills, tornado drills -- he’d been through every drill his cluttered mind could recall. Everyone had laughed at the mandatory-evacuation drill. In the history of the facility, there had never been a mandatory evacuation ordered. Robert kept speaking, but Jensen couldn’t decipher the words. He couldn’t hear them. He couldn’t make sense of them. He’d cut off all communication and focused solely on the heavy pounding of his heart. When Robert grabbed Jensen’s shoulders and gave them a shake, the world made sense again.

“Go home, Hudson. Get the hell out of here. Use the back entrance, the one that takes you directly to the parking garage. This internship was never for you. Forget Project Revival ever existed.”

Jensen watched as Robert turned and began a steady jog toward the main stairwell. The elevator had been preoccupied, most likely still overwhelmed, or maybe Robert just preferred the safety of reinforced concrete and the certainty of a straight shot to the roof. Three minutes passed before the alarms began to sound. By that point, Jensen scrambled to get behind his desk and gather all of his belongings. Textbooks. Laptop. Tablet. Files upon files of research gained from his workings in the animal-testing lab. Maybe he would have had a chance, maybe he could have made it to the back entrance, took the elevator to the parking garage, and escaped on foot; however, his choices set him back by the precious minutes he desperately needed to complete those actions. By the time he gathered his belongings and threw them into his backpack, the facility doors had been pried open and an influx of people -- no, not people, vampires -- swarmed the first level.

He let his bag fall to the floor, and then he dropped to the ground along with it. He couldn’t stop his heart from beating out of his chest. He couldn’t stop the panic brewing in his veins. The facility quickly became overrun, and Jensen had no choice but to creep his way along the ground, hiding from the government and vampires alike. He had a few more desks to go before he had a straight shot to the door, but he couldn’t move. Several people blocked his exit, one of them being an injured redhead and a woman he knew as Corporal Bexley.

“I can get a tourniquet applied to this wound once we’re safely together, and I can offer you something for the pain… if, I mean… can you guys even like… take… painkillers? I don't know. You just tell me what you need, and I can tell you if I can handle it. ”

When Corporal Bexley moved, Jensen finally caught sight of the injury. He covered his mouth with his hand, but his stomach still jerked. He felt the urge to vomit. Swallowing a few times, Jensen turned his head away and tried to gather himself. Her arm had been severed, and not in a setting one would imagine. He shouldn’t have stayed. He should have kept moving. But when he saw a soldier start gunning down at the intruding forces, Jensen just couldn’t turn away. Turning away meant letting someone die, and he didn’t know if he could handle that or not. He didn’t know if he could be that person. When the soldier began a line straight toward Bexley and the injured woman, a line that meant cutting down anyone in his path, Jensen closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and gathered every bit of strength his body contained.

Jensen moved slowly, at first. He crept around the darkened facility and kept close to the ground. When the soldier picked up speed, Jensen picked up speed. When the soldier aimed his gun at the redhead, Jensen swung his backpack, the weight of the laptop, the tablet, the files, and supplies coming down on the back of the soldier’s head. The guy didn’t stop though. He elbowed Jensen right in the face and went to whip around. Jensen swore in pain, but he repeated his action; he hit the soldier over and over again until the guy eventually dropped to his knees. The laptop was trashed. The table cracked in half. Jensen didn’t need to open the bag to feel the broken contents.

“Amanda, is she going to be alright? I know -- ****, I only know CPR,” Jensen said, his eyes going to the redhead’s missing arm. “We need to get the **** out of here. There are more of them coming and the commandos in this place are shooting everyone. You saw that guy, right? She just lost her arm and he’s ready to finish the job.”

He looked both ways, as if expecting someone to come from one, or both, directions, and then he saw something even worse than a woman missing an arm. How had he missed a woman being shot in the face? Vampires. The lot of them were vampires. A mixture of confusion, shock, and horror spread across his face. What the hell was he doing? They were all after the supposed cure. Were they going to kill him just for being there? He started to panic. And his attention went right back to the redhead’s missing arm. Why the **** had someone chopped her arm off? Was she a bad person? She didn’t seem like a bad person. His thoughts flew right out of the window then, did three loops, and crashed and burned, all thanks to the realization that he’d just helped a ******* vampire.

[Caligrace]

“Outside the door, girl, someone---“

It was as if the world slowed to a stop the moment her sire stepped into the lobby. The sounds around her became muffled, as if the battle was taken place beneath water instead of all around her. Each grunt of pain, scream of horror, and cry of rage became obsolete as she met the blonde’s malevolent glare, and she had to work her jaw a few times to even manage to get a strangled sound to emerge. Without the chaos to anchor her, the pain became real. It was a slow throb at first, an ache that reminded her of all the times she had to force herself to stand on her feet after a long night of club hopping. It started where her elbow would have been and crept along the void, until it expanded. The quiet ache was replaced with an agony so unlike anything that she had ever handled, and she had to grit her teeth to silence the howl that built within her chest, the shout so powerful that it beat against her throat.

The haunting pain became the only thing she knew.

She couldn’t claw at her arm, curl it against her chest or apply pressure to it. There was nothing there for her to grab onto, but that did nothing to stall the redhead’s wild attempts. When the pain became too much, she threw her other arm across her torso, fingers reaching out into the void, only to grasp air. Where she should have felt skin, there was nothing and yet, it ached. Her arm was on fire, the burning consuming her entire limb, but there was nothing there. Thinking that her mind had played tricks on her, she tore her gaze from her sire and dared a glance down. It was something she immediately regretted. The second her amber gaze took sight of the bloodied, wounded flesh, her stomach twisted. The bile rose up the back of her throat, the pressure threatening to split her lips open, yet she refrained.

Somehow, she managed to keep her last meal within her stomach.

Tightening her fingers against her thigh, she dug her nails into the denim of her jeans, the bright orange a brilliant contrast against the denim. Everything about her screamed fire, yet, when she turned her eyes back to her sire, tears shimmered within the depths. She was no fighter, no firecracker. Without her limb, she was less of a woman. The panic seized her then, and it only intensified when she watched Freyja’s head snap back, the sound of her teeth shattering replaying in her head like a stuck record. When the blonde righted her skull, hand lifting to her palm, Caligrace had to close her eyes. There was too much destruction around her, and now the one beautiful thing in the room had been destroyed.

Her own pain forgotten, at least for the moment, she tried to lift herself from her knees. Already, she could feel the blood as it seeped into her jeans, the crimson likely staining her skin at the rate it pooled around her. She only made it to a low crouch before she heard a sharp growl, one that was far too familiar – and one that, should she ever allow herself to admit it out-loud – terrified her. Lifting her head, she watched as her sire spun, fingers curling into the uniformed shirt of an officer. The moment the woman’s back hit the wall, she knew what was about to happen, and she had to turn away. It wasn’t something she wanted to see. She hated herself enough for the small army that she had collected. While her sire chose to enthrall out of the necessity of having the help, Caligrace’s came as accidents.

She never meant to tear away their will.
It just… happened.

Sinking back to her knees, she bowed her head once more as her vision swam, the lights beginning to flicker around her. She was certain that she was a second from losing consciousness when a pair of combat boots stepped into her line of vision. That is atrocious, she thought, even as her eyes lifted from the scuffed toes to travel along the fatigues that loosely covered the newly enthralled woman’s form. If it weren’t for the god awful choice in uniform, she might have been attractive. Of course she would have chosen her. She can never choose a hot guy, she laughed, the sudden husked sound earning her a strange and wary glare from the thrall as she started to babble.

“Just cover it up,” she managed, her knees sliding out from beneath her so her backside rested against the warm cement. Pressing her back to the wall, she tilted her head back, crimson curls shielding her dark glare as she watched a soldier shoulder his way through the mayhem. As the thrall set to work on binding what was left of her arm, she kept her back to the crowd, leaving Caligrace to watch as the officer turned his hatred onto her. She saw the moment he recognized what she was, and as his arm swung to aim between her eyes, her hand shot out to search for her gun.

In the end, it wasn’t needed.

Before she had a chance to lift her weapon more than an inch from the ground, another figure emerged just inches behind him, his… bag his main choice of weapon. With each swing against the soldier’s skull, she watched as the light faded from his eyes, until finally, he dropped. When her savior finished the final steps to reach her side, she lifted her head back, skull scraping against the metal of the door. At first, she didn’t bother to speak. Instead, she drank him in, from the frantic dance of his eyes, to the tic in his jaw, and finally the muscled chest that rose rapidly with each sharp intake of breath. At her side, the thrall continued to work, her bandages she had pulled from her pack wound tight around the massacred flesh of her arm. “Thanks for saving my life, handsome,” Exhaustion lined her voice, but the warmth was still there, French-Canadian accent making the gratitude sound sweet as sugar when it rolled from her tongue. With her eyes locked on his features, she didn’t miss a single mute emotion as they flickered across his face, cracking his mask.

When it finally dawned on him that he had turned on one of his own for someone dead, she had to swallow the bitter disappointment that crept up her throat. It shouldn’t bother her that he was about to look at her with utter disgust in his eyes. It shouldn’t make her uneasy that his hand was about to creep for his weapon. Though, as she gave another leisurely sweep of his form, she couldn’t see one. In fact, there was nothing physical about him, outside of his well built form. He wasn’t weighed down by combat gear, there wasn’t a gun or blade that she could see. He only had his pack.

“You’re not a soldier, are you?” The question was uneasy as she pulled her knees to her chest; free hand curled loose around her the butt of her gun. It still lay on the floor, her finger inches from the trigger, though her remained stance relaxed. He’d not given her a reason to doubt him, at least, not yet. Running her tongue along the blunt edge of her teeth, she glanced past him to take note of her sire, knowing that the blonde was a second away from coming to her aid. With a minute shake of her head, she called off the rabid blonde, her full lips curving into a sensual smile as she returned her attention to her newly discovered hero. Even in her wounded state, with her panic shimmering in her amber gaze, she couldn’t quite stop the flirtatious undertone in her next question.

“You already know what I am, doll, so I guess the question is what you’re going to do with me now, isn’t it?”