Night's Omen

How could she have been so stupid? It had all started out so innocently: A young, blonde boy came into the Single Earth Ramsa Center, and Posey had been the one to listen. His friend had been attacked and left for dead in the forest just outside of Ramsa, and the boy was afraid that he wouldn't be able to get him out on his own. He was wild, telling her about a vampire who had been following them around since some party...

Posey remembered very clearly being afraid, but she knew that she couldn't just stand there. Matthew was at Ela's funeral, and the only backup she would have had would have been Laurel, who just wasn't cut for this sort of situation. If something had happened to her under Posey's watch and Riese found out... She grabbed her belongings and went with the blonde boy back to the forest.

That was how she ended up here, face down, head swimming. A Kendra; the blonde boy had been a Kendra, and he was still able to hide himself from her so well. Posey cursed the weakness of her bloodline as she felt cool earth between her fingertips. She tried to pull herself up to a more effective position of defense, but another sharp blast on her mind ripped through her paper-thin shields, sending her sprawling back down on her stomach, stars floating blissfully into her vision.

"You, and the rest of your pathetic Single Earth, are going to burn very slowly, and very painfully. It's nothing personal," he hissed, lips dangerously close to her ear. Griffon grabbed her by the hair, dragging her to a standing position. She was older than he was - he could sense it, smell the age on her like delicately fallen dust in a room with no windows, but it didn't matter. The Mira line was weak, and this girl fed off of willing donors and animals most often, so her power was waning; not like his. Griffon, the Vida-Slayer. He was on top of the world.

He threw her into a tree, something inside of him twisting in sickening joy as she cried out in surprise and pain. It still amused him that she acted so human, as though the guise would have kept her any safer. "Now, don't spoil my fun, doll face. Hold still, and I promise, it will only hurt a little bit."

He lunged.

Posey closed her eyes and screamed as he latched on, trying to fight him off of her. She'd never been bitten by another vampire before since her change, and it was more than excruciatingly painful. She couldn't recall a time in her immortality where she'd felt so much pain. He ripped through her mental blocks like they were glass, crashing down on her mind and drawing up sensations of fire that roiled through her, making her feel like she was burning alive.

She screamed, she screamed....

The Vida-Slayer.  That wasn't what Chris had heard of this one as, but he'd heard many stories about the troubles the New York area was having with vampires.  Useless, filthy creatures.  They all deserved to die, and this blond one was going to be next on the list.  Chris hadn't specifically been looking for him, instead trying to figure out the location of Mayhem itself (for future reference), but finding vampires in the forest wasn't all that surprising.

Actually, it was a rather pleasant occurrence.  He could go for a decent hunt, instead of all this cloak and dagger bullshit.

He hadn't been following them too closely, or the vampire would have noticed.  Personally, Chris thought the guy was more preoccupied with his little snack-to-be to pay attention, but he wasn't going to risk it.  He waited until the man was attacking her, making enough noise on his own to help mask Chris' movements, and he took aim.

Damn girl!  The vampire was too close to her for him to get a clear kill shot.  The vampire was lucky today, because Chris didn't like leaving survivors to potentially hunt his ass down.  He'd have to try for another shot once the girl was out of the way.

Thus, it was something of a painful 'warning shot' that he fired, clipping the bastard in the ass rather than the head or heart.  He couldn't risk the bullet going through and hitting the girl, and frankly, he was being a total prick with that one.  This vamp would learn its lesson.

Posey's mind began to wander, to wander far away where everything was black and nothing really seemed to be able to take a visible shape. She experienced synesthesia, inhaling in red, exhaling in gold, and then she was covered in a rushing void of noise - noise so loud she thought her ears would bleed. Her own screaming had stopped, and she felt herself falling, falling...

Griffon had vanished, his pride wounded enough to infuriate him, but his sense of self-preservation unwilling to let him stay and meddle any further. Obviously someone wanted the Mira more than he did; let them have her. She tasted of sweets and frippery he had long ago lost his desire for. Posey's breathing was laboured - an odd thing for a vampire, to breathe; however, breathe she did, raspy and unsure.

She sank down to the ground again, head tipped back as her eyes threatened to roll back, plunging her into the darkness again. She'd never been fed on before, but she knew how much she tried to avoid causing her donors this much pain, and now she was silently vowing never to feed on anything that didn't come out of a glass again. She felt herself fall sideways, pallid flesh now clammy and damp with sweat contacting against the cold, loose soil. She exhaled slowly, reaching out, trying to pull herself up, away.. there was a man, he had a gun, danger... danger...

She looked much like a broken doll at that moment, parylized, trying to drag her body from the scene. Brown hair was messed and her clothing had been tattered, long skirt ripped and her top nearly shredded during her struggle with Griffon. She had marks on her face; she was too weak to try and heal them, and so the guise of human was stagnant in the air around her - to a human, she appeared human, and very hurt.

Chris waited where he was even after the blond vanished, having tried another quick shot, but it hadn't panned out the way he wanted.  He gave it a short time, just in case the vampire came back for Round Two, but there was no sign of anything like that.  He kept his gun free, just in case, but quickly approached the girl, watching his surroundings.

"Hey, you okay?" he asked, dropping to one knee beside her to help her up one-handed.  "Come on, we have to get out of here.  Do you need help walking?"

He really didn't want to have to help her walk, mostly because he didn't want to impair his shooting, but if she needed the help, he'd give it to her.  Getting her out safely was more important than the kill, even if he sometimes wished that wasn't always the case.

He was going to end up hitting up one of those bashes, and just cleaning the place out.

Guns. Hunters. Bad. Bad. Posey was still trying to attempt to crawl away, and the human was at her side, trying to help her stand up. She tried to jerk away, startled, still disoriented. When he spoke, his voice came out strangely muddled, and as she rolled onto her back, blinking rapidly, eyes widening and shutting with every thunderous pounding sensation in her head, she realized that she was actually about to lose consciousness.

Imagine that. A vampire about to pass out.

A hand remained steady on her neck, though if the hunter knew anything, he'd know that the bite marks would have gone momentarily all the same. Something in their spit was a coagulant, and that was all it really took. She'd still lost so much blood, though, and with the human there, there'd be nothing for her to do to be able to recuperate, not unless she fed on him, which she was entirely too disgusted by at the moment. Her body cramped involuntarily as it struggled to cope with what had just happened, and she flopped onto her side with a small cry, like a fish thrown suddenly onto land.

Panicked breathing slowed suddenly, and the last thing she saw were the edges of fresh fallen leaves and a booted foot next to her face as her vision narrowed, tunneled, and finally blackened. Her eyes slid shut, and her body went slack. Posey was down for the count.

Of course.  It couldn't just go his way, it had to blow up in his face with an unconscious girl.  Where was he even supposed to take her?

Actually, that wasn't a difficult question.  There, in the middle of the forest between Ramsa and Mayhem, he started examining her for some sort of ID.  If he could find it, he could just drop her off at home.  Unfortunately, as good as the idea was, it didn't do him any good.  She didn't have any identification.  Great. 

This was going to be a long walk.  He had his gun in the most easily accessible location he could, and ended up lifting the girl up into a fireman's carry once he'd checked her for injuries.  She seemed to be alright, other than passing out and being bitten.  Now, it was just getting her out of the forest, and to his car.  That'd look good, him tossing an unconscious girl in his backseat.  He'd try giving her some time to wake up.  He might have smelling salts in his first aid kit.

Actually, that was exactly what he did.  He suffered through carrying her out of the woods, laid her out on his backseat, and found smelling salts. 

"Wakey wakey, sleeping beauty," he drawled, looking forward to getting her our of the way, and getting back to finding that vamp's trail.

Posey felt a strange streaming sensation, like she was flowing, being pulled gently along a current - she was always a peaceful sort of sleeper, even though she couldn't dream. Something, though, a strange ripping feeling - harsh scents, and she was gasping sharply with breath she didn't need, because Posey never really had stopped breathing, had she? She wore her humanity like a safety blanket, and it was probably the only thing keeping her alive.

Well, mostly, anyways.

She sat up so swiftly that she startled herself, and immediately yanked her legs up to her body, scrambling backwards as fast as she could. The blonde; she remembered being attacked. As the daze wore away, it all seemed to fall back into place, like snow hitting the ground; slowly, slowly the puzzle pieces fit together. There was Griffon, and then Chris, and now... this. Fingers trailed up to her neck where Griffon's bite had vanished into her skin. She felt weak, and she knew she'd need to feed soon.

"I need... to get home," she said, voice almost inaudible to herself.

She moved so fast and so suddenly upon waking up that Chris stood up FAST.

And smacked his head off the car's ceiling.

"Motherfuck, god fucking damn it!" he hissed, clutching at his head as he sat in a crouch outside the car.  He saw STARS with that one, which went to show just how on edge he was anymore.  All it took was a girl waking up too suddenly to make him react.  Ooooh, man, that hurt.

He kept muttering and hissing curses to himself while he sat that one out, just waiting for the pain of it to fade into something less and feeling the damn egg he was developing.  Lovely.  That felt wonderful.  Damn it.  "Holy fucking hell, that hurt.  I know you need to get home, and I would have taken you there, but you don't have any fucking ID on you.  Why'd you follow that douchebag into the woods, anyway?  Haven't you seen any movies?"

Seriously. 

Posey reached forward instinctively, to try and tend to Chris' head wound. Her fingers were outstretched, reaching just far enough that she could feel the damp coils of his sweat-laden hair on his forehead before he moved away, and she jerked back again, afraid. She was beginning to realize the gravity of her situation - but not about Chris.

The woods. Why was she in the woods? And what woods, precisely? Her stomach dropped like a rock down a well. Mayhem. She was close, crushingly close to a place where she'd be stomped out like a befallen match still lit dimly in the twilight hours of a day. She felt her chest contract for a moment as she stifled on a breath that she did not need, and she closed her eyes to push out imagery that she did not think.

"He said his friend was hurt - attacked. I came, because I thought I could help. I didn't realize where he was bringing me, or what he was doing, until it was almost too late." But it was too late, wasn't it? He'd scented her blood, now, and regardless of what this young hunter could do - because that's what he was, was he not? - Griffon had imprinted her mind like all of his other victims: That he would return. Posey had never been made to feel like a victim as a vampire, not in such a way. She had been hassled before crossing through Mayhem, and Poppy and Rochelle had been very strict on her never to return. Now he'd brought her to the edge, so she had nowhere to run but directly into the wolves den...

She was moving, now. Climbing out of the car, not as careful as she should have been - lightly brushing Chris as she passed him. The rage surrounding her was suffocating her. She naturally assumed that it had been something the Kendra had done to her head when he'd attacked her, trying to make her panic, screw up, make a mistake and hurt herself even worse than he could hurt her. She had no idea that it was Chris' hatred of vampires that was making her skin crawl - Posey was too empathetic for her own good, but too noble with a childish ideal of privacy to read the minds of those around her, even though despite being a Mira she still could do it.

"It's too dangerous for us to be here," she warned him, brushing herself off. She was still dazed, but quickly regaining ground. He was a human, and he was in more danger than she was at this point. "Chris, we need to get out of here -- "

She stopped. He'd... never told her his name. She closed her eyes, feeling the remnants of what colour she did have drain from her face. It all seemed to 'click' for her, suddenly, as she opened her eyes a little bit to what was really going on. Her hand went over her mouth and she took another step back, trying to stop her panicked breath before it escaped her mouth. The feelings of hatred washing over her, she realized, we not Griffon's at all - they were Chris'.

"Oh, shit," she whispered to herself. She never really swore, but now seemed like just a dandy time to do it. She was in too much shock to teleport, or run, or anything. She just stood there, eyes wide, hands having left her mouth but still lingering by her jaw, clasped like she were about to pray.

She might have started right then, it might have been a good thing.

So the girl was stupidly naive.  He could handle that, a lot of girls were.  "Well, next time some creep tries to get you to follow him into the woods, I'd advise you not to go if you don't want to end up buried there.  Do you know what he was doing?" he asked, the lingering bad attitude after hitting his head still obvious, but calmer now.  This was a girl, and she didn't deserve the full force of his wrath, so he wasn't going to be a total ass to her.  She'd just suffered a pretty extreme attack, after all.  She was lucky that she wasn't hurt worse than just a bite.

He was completely oblivious of the fact that she'd ever reached to help him after he'd hit his head, considering she'd jerked away as soon as he'd moved, but given her answer about why she was even there, he'd have believed it.  She seemed like one of those people that thought she could help everyone.  "What were you really going to do to help, if he couldn't do it himself?  You didn't think to get anyone else?" he asked, looking at her more closely suddenly.  That didn't make sense.  Was she really just that naive?  "Don't worry.  He's not coming back, and if he does, he's stupider than he looks."

He meant it.  He'd kill the vampire if he came back, and actually, he wished the guy would.  It would save him the trouble of hunting him down later. 

The point was, she didn't need to worry.  He'd keep her safe.  He may not be a shining example of humanity for society, but he had chosen his job, and he was not going to go back on that.  He would keep her safe because she was a human and there were monsters out there that would hurt her.  It was as simple as that.

Or....maybe it wasn't.

"Wait.  How do you know my name?" he asked her suddenly, staring at her.  He hadn't told her his name.  He knew that.  He hadn't had a chance, because she'd only just woken up and he'd smacked his head off the car.  Unless he'd started rambling and forgot about it in the pain of his skull being bounced off the metal, which he knew wasn't the case, she'd picked his name out of thin air.

How?

"Wait.  How do you know my name?"

His voice was careful, measured, precisely just as cautious as it needed to be, as she watched him - his eyes flutter just so, his fingers twitch just enough for her to realize that he was scanning, mentally, trying to determine just when he'd told her his name, and coming up dry and empty, because of one tiny, insignificant detail --

He hadn't.

Posey took another step back. "Thank you for getting him off of me. Really. I... need to get home to my mother and my sister, now, though. They'll be grateful when I tell them - I'm sorry for.. this." She wanted to turn and walk away, but the anger was coming off of him in spouts, like solar flares - she couldn't see auras, but Violet had described them to her once, and she knew that his was violent, red and angry. She wanted to run, but she knew if she turned her back on him, she might never see death coming.

"You're dangerously close to Mayhem. You need to leave," she pleaded, her voice edging on a stifled sort of panic. She was begging him to leave, when she thought he might kill her. Posey would be martyred yet, it seemed. Always thinking of others first.

He kept watching her, examining her in a way that he didn't look at humans.  He was evaluating her, her level of threat, what she was.  She'd picked his name out of thin air, that sounded like vampire, but she was behaving like prey.  Was it because she understood he was a hunter?  He'd had vampire react as such before.

They were the easy ones.

He was still in a squat from where he'd crouched down when he hit his head, and he looked up at her without moving from it as she seemed more and more panicked.  All he'd done was ask how she knew his name, and she went off about thanking him and needing to get home.  She apologized. 

If she was getting vibes off of him, it was purely her vampiric abilities, because he didn't let it on with his body language or expression.  At least, not in an obvious way.  Perhaps she knew what to look for, and could see the way his eyelids dropped just a touch, just a little less open and friendly.  Perhaps she recognized the slightest upturning of the corners of his mouth for something dangerous, and he tilted his head slightly as she warned him about Mayhem's proximity.

"I know.  I'm looking for Mayhem," he told her bluntly.  He didn't need to beat around the bush, but here came the interesting part.  She knew he was near Mayhem.  Did she know where it was?  That would be very valuable information.  "Do you know where it is?"

Posey searched for the right words. She couldn't lie, not really. "It doesn't matter if I know where it is. Even if I did, I couldn't take you there, and I wouldn't tell you. I risk my entire family doing that," she said fiercely, even though the words 'fierce' and 'Posey' didn't seem to go together. She clenched her small hands into fists, though she wasn't the aggressor in this situation by any means. All she had was the ability to vanish into thin air, but if he got off a well-placed shot, she'd either be stuck here, or there, and wounded.

She could feel every second draining by on the clock - they were running out of time. Soon somebody was going to come after them, maybe Griffon, maybe with friends. Chris might think he was a hunter made of steel, but she'd seen how fragile a human truly was when they were outnumbered. Glass was a much better way to describe it - and she could go right along with that description, too, if she wasn't careful.

"Please, listen to me," she said, trying to speak calmly. "I don't care how good you think you are. You can't take them all on. There's a reason they've been there for so long. They don't come out, and we don't go in." She took a deep breath, something that was probably confusing him - she breathed so naturally, in and out, constantly - she was so deceptively human, and yet once you looked at her in the right light, how the clouds parted and the moon pooled down on her in a sliver --

Pallid skin of ivory dusted with the slightest traces of dampness from the moist, cool woodsy air around them, for even in the summer the land was low in the hills and did grow chill. Dark hair, lightly hanging in waves, the colour of bark - eyes so brown they were almost black, and yet... no, they were black, but you had to get so very close to tell --

"Please," she said again. "If they catch me here with you, they'll kill us both, and they'll kill our families. They don't play around. It's why he brought me here - if he didn't finish the job, he'd find someone who would."

Posey covered her face for a moment, feeling weak. She needed to feed; she needed to get him back in his car. She needed to do so much, and her hands were so small - how could anyone ever expect her to try and handle all of this on her own?

It was true, she was incredibly convincing, but now he knew.  She had to be a vampire, despite the act, and that didn't make him inclined to listen to her, or care what she had to say.  So they'd come.  He hoped so.

She didn't understand him, that much was obvious, because he didn't think he was made of steel.  He knew he was only human, and he knew that he may have to fight damn hard for his life if that blond came back with friends, but the blond had run.  That much told him that the vampire wasn't nearly as strong as others he'd dealt with, which he liked, but even if Chris was overwhelmed and killed?  It would have been in a good fight, and it would have been doing what was best for the world.  He could accept death.

Hell, it might almost be a relief.  He wouldn't have to think about everything every damn day.

.....

Did she just...?  Did she do that on purpose?  She was a vampire, did she know?

He stood up so fast that he probably looked as though he was going to rush her right then, but he didn't.  He actually took a step in her direction, then spun away.  Attacking her wouldn't do any good.  She knew where Mayhem was, and she was pathetically weak.  Prey.  He could find the others through her.  "My family is dead," he snapped instead, turning to look at her again.  The care and poise of a moment ago was gone, because that one was below the belt.  He wasn't evaluating her any longer, and he wasn't watching himself. 

Why focus on the present when there was SO MUCH that wanted to push itself to the front of his mind?  He'd thought he had a grip on what had happened to his parents and sister, what he'd watched and fought to spare his brother, but it had all come crashing back down when his brother was made into one of those monsters.  It was all back, fresh in his mind, and he didn't have Ben to put on the strong front for.  Ben was gone.  Gone.  He was all alone, trapped in this nightmare, and she was going to refuse him what he wanted?

No.  She wasn't.

"I need to know where Mayhem is.  I need to know where those fuckers live, and I need to kill them.  I will find them, and I will kill them.  You know where it is, and you're going to tell me," he told her, and he meant it.  She would tell him, because she was a vampire and he didn't care if he had to threaten her or scare her or even kill her for the information.  She wasn't alive anyway, and she knew what he needed.  He'd caught wind that some things had been happening in New York City similar to what had happened to his family when he was younger, and he was starting with Mayhem.  He had to find that bastard.  He had to kill him.

Posey jerked back when he took a step forward, crying out a little in surprise. He was fast for a human. She wasn't exposed to many hunters, but the ones she'd met before had been Witches, or shifters, and their speed and agility she could understand. To see the qualities displayed in a human made her wonder just what had happened to push him to such an extreme way of life.

"I'm sorry, I... "

She'd meant to say that she didn't know; that she couldn't have known. Posey knew his name because it was surface, something easy to find, something she could find without looking. The complete and untold history of Chris Matheson, however, was not something she knew, and she'd never have gone digging, but --

Her head began to split, and she put a hand up to her temple, squeezing her eyes shut. He was projecting his thoughts so hard that they spilled over, and as sensitive as she was, she was the conduit to which they rushed. She let out a much softer cry, something between a whimper and a plead, but it was lost in the sound of leaves crunching as she fell. She hit her knees, and then backward, both hands at her temples now, pressing tightly as though it would take away those screams --

"Close your eyes. Close your eyes. Close your eyes."

She could hear herself saying it, almost inaudible, lips barely moving, numb. Her voice was soft, begging, but she was talking to ghosts of a memory that wasn't hers, didn't belong, didn't fit. Posey may have been from a weak line of vampire lineage, but she herself was empathetic enough that, combined with what power she did have, managed to live the memory. It was painful. Posey was unlike most of the kind Chris had faced - she retained her humanity, her emotions, her ability to love, hate, feel pain, sorrow. All of it.

She couldn't even hear Chris, she could just feel his anger boiling over, burning her. She wanted to get away as fast as she could, but she couldn't move. She just kept hearing herself repeating something foreign and strange and not hers over and over and over...

He'd thought he'd been a wreck since his brother had been turned.  He'd thought it, even if he didn't want to admit that he was making decisions he wouldn't have made before, even if he knew that he was being reckless and dangerous.  He'd thought it.  Now, he knew that he'd been alright.  He knew that because right now was the worst he'd been.

She started saying those words, those three simple words that were in every damn dream he had, and she just kept saying them.  Over and over.

Close your eyes.  Close your eyes.  Close your eyes.

How many times had he heard them?  How many times had he said them?  He had nightmares where anyone would say them, himself, Ben, the vampire, some other vampire he'd run into since.  Sometimes, his brother was the vampire.  Things changed in the dreams, but those words, they were all the same.  Close your eyes.

He couldn't take this.  No.  Not anymore.  No more.  ENOUGH!

"STOP!  SHUT.  UP!" he finally exploded, his gun in hand, but he didn't even know who he wanted to use it on.  He could shoot her, that would shut her up, it would make her stop, but it wouldn't make those words go away.  They were NEVER going to go away, they were always there, always waiting for him to close his eyes and start to drift off, and oh god, he couldn't listen to them anymore.  He could shoot himself.  He'd thought about it.  That would stop it.  That would stop everything.  He'd never have to hear those damn words again, or speak them again.  He'd never have to tell a little girl to close her eyes and not look before he shot a vampire that wanted to kill her ever again. 

No.  If he shot himself, he wouldn't be there to shoot a vampire and help a little girl.  The words, they had to continue.  As long as he was there to tell someone to close their eyes while he killed something, that meant that he was killing things that deserved to be killed.  If he killed himself, and he knew he deserved it as well, he couldn't kill those things.  Close your eyes.  The last time he'd said it, it HAD been a little girl.  She had to be 8 years old.  She'd looked at him like he was her whole world, like she knew that he was there and he was going to make the difference that would decide if her world just ended, and she'd closed her eyes when he told her to.  She hadn't looked, and she'd survived.

He wanted to, oh God, he wanted to.  He wanted to make it stop, make it all stop, never hear those words again.  He never wanted to see it all again, think about it all.  He was so tired of being alone, but he was afraid to be near people, afraid the next time he was telling someone to close their eyes, it would be because someone he had come to care about was the one being torn into, but he was so alone.  Something had to give. 

Looked like it just had.

He dropped the gun so quickly that it was almost like it burned.  It was just suddenly GONE because he couldn't hold it anymore.  If he did, he was going to shoot something, and there was nothing he could shoot.  His hands suddenly free, they flew up to his head, as though clutching at his skull and running them through his hair was going to do anything, and it wasn't.  It just gave him somewhere to focus his energy, because he was piquing, and he was going to do something violent or just completely overload if he didn't.  He'd have kicked the car if he could have focused on the present as much as he was focusing on the past, but that was unfortunately impossible at this point.  He had his eyes clamped shut, and even when they were open, he didn't give off the impression that he was really registering what he was seeing.  The vampires could have shown up right then, and he'd have welcomed it.  They'd stop it for him.

It only took maybe a moment for him to drop back into that squat, facing the ground and still clutching at his head as he had his breakdown.  His brain hadn't stopped its suicide run, but his energy was turning in on itself.  He wasn't going to lash out, not just yet, but he was shaking from the effort. 

"Stop, just make it stop, no more, just stop," he kept saying, and he wasn't paying any more attention than Posey had been.

They were a hell of a pair right then.

Swimming was a lovely venture. She'd not done it in so long. Kicking off her shoes, she dove in, fully clothed to the giant blue lagoon that seemed to swell up from the center of the earth, and she swam down towards the dark blue depths below. Further, further down, where the water changed from hot to cold, and it got harder and harder to move, because it was crushing her. Somewhere, through the water, she could hear someone yelling, saying something, but she couldn't make out what it was. She was sinking to the bottom, and when she tried to kick out, she realized that the bottom was a long way down - nothing for her to push up on. She was drowning, and what a peculiar thought that a vampire of all things should drown, but she felt the air being forced out of her lungs as the pressure began constricting upon her, squeezing the life out of her..

Chris' words cut through the fog, and all of those memories and emotions suffocating her, drowning her, crushing her - they were rewound, sucked back up, and she sat up, hands in the earth, scrambling backwards 'til she put a safe distance between them. He had the gun pointed at her, then himself, then at the ground - then at her, and himself again. He finally dropped it, and followed suit not long after. Posey still couldn't regain a solid grasp of reality. She was still sucking in cool breaths of humid air, trying to tell herself that she was alive, that she was here, now, in the forest, that she wasn't drowning or reliving memories or being attacked or anything else.

As she watched him break apart, she was flooded again with things - not memories, not tangible ideas, but emotions, broken thoughts. Unfinished sentences, things you meant to say but didn't, things you started to say and couldn't finish; things you never should have finished, but did. The vacuum effect of emotion was a strange thing, and she only wished she could see auras like Violet to appreciate the full beauty of it - if you could call it that. Posey was spiritual enough that she could. She got up, sort of, crawling to Chris, because she didn't trust her legs to carry her.

She remained within arm's reach, hands and knees, for a while - long enough that she realized he didn't know she was there. She sat on her knees, then, and reached out with a very, very careful, unsteady hand. She placed it on his shoulder, lightly, like a dragonfly landing on a lilypad - she was so scared he was going to snap, but she had to get him out of the forest, away. His dark emotions would attract them like crows to carrion, and Posey couldn't have that on her conscience for the rest of her life.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, voice nothing but sincerity, because Posey really was nothing if not sincere, in the end. She dared to rest her hand on his shoulder, waiting for the moment where she'd have to pull away before he swung 'round and cut it off.

She still didn't get it.  All those emotions she'd nearly drowned in, and she didn't get it.  He didn't mind if the vampires came, if his dark emotions drew them in like locusts on a fresh harvest.  He had nothing to offer but dying, diseased hatred anyway, so what did it matter?  No, he really didn't mind.  Let them come.

If they didn't come, he would go to them, sooner or later.

Posey couldn't see auras, which may have actually been for the best.  Would his have been a thing of beauty, or was it too wretched anymore to ever be considered such?  Right then, it may have even been a changing, pulsing, flashing thing, because he was self-destructing.  Explosions could be beautiful.  Maybe it would have been, but there was nothing beautiful about what it was doing to him.

When Posey reached out to touch him, he could have just as easily gone in two drastically different directions.  He hated vampires, of which she was one, so badly that having her anywhere near him could have set him off just because of that.  Even worse, he was such a wreck about being near anyone that might be hurt because of him that having her speak in that soft tone and touch him like that could have thrown him into a whole new flurry and inspired him to whip around and nail her.  He had that energy roiling around inside of him, looking for an outlet.  It'd have been so, so easy.

There was a polar opposite, though.  For as much as he flipped his shit over getting close to people, he wanted it.  He was so alone, especially with his brother gone, so very, very alone, and no matter where he went and what he did, he didn't have anyone.  He may as well have been the only one around, walking amongst the monsters and killing as many as he could, for all the good he got from the company of others.  He just, for once, wanted to relax into another person's company, to just let go and be broken and stop.  When she rested her hand on his shoulder like that, when she apologized, he could have lashed out at her.  He liked to lash out at people, to make them hurt because he was hurting and it just wasn't fair that he had to hurt so much, but he didn't.  He flinched instantly, that much was to be expected out of someone as high-strung as he was, but she stayed, and she said those two little words.

The two that he never heard.  Never.  He'd said them rarely himself, but nobody apologized.  Who was going to be sorry for him?  Nobody. 

Nobody except Posey, apparently.  Under any other conditions, he'd have laughed at her and probably thrown something painful her way, just to get her the hell away from him and what was looking to be a far more fragile balance than he'd thought.  It was too late for that, though.  She touched him, she offered her sympathy and just her presence and she apologized.  He just completely caved into it, and if that energy he'd had tearing through him had been a tangible, visible thing, it would have washed outward in a wave from him.  He just let go, and he'd be damned if the vampires came then.

Hell, he probably already was.

Posey felt nauseous again, for the first time in years. She could still remember what it felt like to have the contents of your stomach rolling around, ready to bubble up and come out, acid-tinged and tasting of bile as it poisoned your esophagus. She shuddered a little at her own thoughts, trying to brace herself against the emotional brain-dump Chris was doing. She couldn't, though. Her shields were non-existent thanks to needing to feed so badly her body was shaking.

When he did not hit her, which was all that she expected, really, she stayed very still. It wasn't until she felt the release that she moved again, this time to wrap her arms around him, burying her head against his shoulder. This was all Posey was, all she was good for. Comfort, maybe - or a whipping boy, if she could be such a thing. She wanted to take the pain other people had and displace it in herself. Chris was warm against her own cold body, and she tried to keep her touch as light as possible - she didn't want to alarm him, but, really, he needed someone. She felt bad it had to be her, considering how much he hated her - a hatred so strong that it was almost foreign to her, actually. But he needed someone, nonetheless, and Posey was all who stood out there with him, so Posey was all he got. She felt sorry that she was all she was.

"I'm sorry," she said again. She didn't know what else to say. She was sorry that she wasn't there to stop the vampire, she was sorry that she wasn't there to help him; she was sorry she'd been in the woods at all, and she was sorry that it was only her who was there now, and not someone... worth something more to him.

What a heartbreaker.

There was nobody who was worth anything to him, not anymore.  There were his grandparents, but they were so detached from his whole realm of reality that he didn't even think about them anymore.  He hadn't talked to them since Ben had...since he'd gone.  He didn't have anyone who was worth a damn thing anymore, and so, there was nobody who was worth more to him than Posey.  She was as good as anyone, really.  He just needed someone, anyone who would be there while he fell apart, because in the end, he might not be able to put himself back together.  If he'd had this breakdown alone, he may have stayed there for days or until he was found and killed, whichever happened first, though there was also the question of whether or not he would have let go without her there.

He might have kept building up that energy until it really exploded, and he might have actually killed himself, but she was there, and everything that had kept him distanced from the people around him all this time had collapsed like sand before ocean waves, and he was completely and utterly vulnerable.  It was terrifying, but there was only so much he could feel all at once.  Everything else was so overwhelming, now drowning in the feeling of there finally being someone THERE, and the terror of the situation just swirled right in there with the horrible understanding that she was going to leave, someone was going to take her away and he was going to be alone again. 

No.  There really wasn't anyone worth more to him right then than the body he turned his face into, that he disentangled his hands from his hair to hang onto, nothing more important than that voice.  "Don't leave.  Please."

Posey was at a loss. She didn't know what she'd gotten herself into, at this point. She knew that the one thing she was good at was comfort, helping - even if she wasn't a healer. She envied the Smoke line of Witches. Maybe in a different universe, when the stars aligned properly, she could be a Smoke, have that power to heal and to soothe. For now, all she had was herself, and she didn't quite think it was good enough.

She tried, though. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him forward and into her chest - not in a creepy sort of way (and very above her 'chest'). She looked like a mother to a child, with her head bowed over the top of his, chin rested atop his damp mop of curly hair. How they had become situated, with her legs at her side, Chris somehow cradled in her arms.. it was innocent. It was, Posey felt, what he might need at the moment, even if he didn't need her. She had no heartbeat for him to listen to, even though she did inhale and exhale like any human - she didn't need to do that, either, but she did, dutifully, as though gravity would cease and planets would drop out of the sky if she didn't.

"Sshhh, it's okay," she said softly. What else could she say? He'd been intending to kill her, and now...? She didn't know what else to do. She needed to get him up and moving, and away from this place. They were on the fringe, by the roadside yes, but still it might have been enough to draw unwanted attention.

He'd intended to kill her as much as he'd intended to kill himself, in all honesty.  It was a mess, and HE was a mess, but his initial intentions had been to find out where Mayhem was from her.  Killing her had been an option he'd been playing with, but it hadn't been definite.  If she'd been helpful, he might have considered letting her live in case he needed it again, especially given how badly she behaved like prey.  No guarantees, though.

Now, none of that mattered.  Now, he needed her.  Now, he was vulnerable and wouldn't have been able to even get himself out of there if he were alone.  He didn't WANT to be alone, wasn't sure if he could handle it.  He was always alone anymore, and it was just too much. 

No, nothing was okay, not anymore, not for a long time, and it could never be okay again, but if she could just make it feel okay for awhile, he'd do anything.  He'd do anything, say anything, anything to feel okay for just a little while. 

Could she do that?  Oh, God, if she could?

Posey held him, because she could feel the gravitational pull of his need. She did speak though, finally, and her voice was very soft, but firm. "Chris, listen to me. We need to get out of here, okay? This is not a safe place for us. Can you hear me? Do you understand what I'm saying?" she asked, pulling away from him to see his eyes.

She was so weak, she couldn't even mask what she was. She didn't have the energy to spare, so she was thankful that it was dark enough he couldn't see the depthless black where a honey-brown had been once. She did sigh a little, though, and tilted her head, trying to reach out to him, to see if she could get any semblance of coherent thought that pertained to the situation.

She really, really hoped he wasn't going to stab her in the face. She'd hate that.

At that point, he really didn't care, so long as he wasn't left alone.  If she wanted to go somewhere else and totally drain him, he wouldn't have argued.  He'd reached a limit that just didn't allow him to care much further than his immediate needs, and those were just a little skewed.  He'd cooperate until he could allow that internal breakdown to heal up enough for him to be able to really sift through what was going on with him.

That could be minutes or hours.

Hopefully for Posey, it'd be long enough to get out of there without him having a fit of some sort.  He was going to hate himself even more for losing it in front of a leech like this, but it wasn't like he'd been given much of a choice in the matter, and he was really going to have issues dealing with his opinions on this whole situation.  Sure, she was a vampire and should be killed just for that, but he was going to have to face the fact that she's the only one that'd been there for him in over a year.  That was going to make for some confusion and chaos in his brain.

Just what he needed.

Being unable to see the black eyes was for the best, since he didn't need something to set him off.  He nodded, understanding that she wanted to move even if he didn't have any will to other than hers.  He wasn't against moving, however, so it didn't much matter to him.  He just didn't care, and couldn't bring himself to.  At least that meant she wasn't going to get stabbed in the face.

Posey managed to get him into the car, but he seemed more or less to refuse to do anything, so with a groan, she reached over to his hand and held it firmly. "We'll come back for it later," she said firmly. She closed her eyes tightly, arguing with herself about what precisely she was going to do with him. She refused to just leave him there; what were her options, though?

"You can hate me for this later," she said finally. With the last bit of strength she had, she moved them. Things rolled by her in a blur, as they often did when she used that vampire power to shift from place to place in the blink of an eye. Colours, lights and sounds passed by her like a time-lapse photograph session, and when she steadied herself, she and Chris were standing in the front yard of Rochelle's home.

"Mom!" she called. Rochelle had earned the term mother from Posey, and she referred to her simply as that, because she was a good sort of woman who deserved the name. "Mom, can you come out here?" she yelled, voice weak and kittenish. The door popped open as the porch light flicked on, and Rochelle stuck her head out, looking somewhat like an owl with her short, frosted and graying hair and large brown eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses.

"Take him inside, get him some tea," she said, shaking her head before Rochelle could open her mouth to protest. "I'll explain later." She turned to Chris, fingertips brushing his cheek lightly. "My mom is going to look after you for a moment. I will be right back, okay?" she said, looking directly into his eyes. She reached up with her other hand, holding his face gently, making him look at her.

"Okay? Five minutes. I promise. Right back," she repeated again, for the benefit of his dazed mind.

Dazed was a damn good word for it.  He'd been trying to make sense of his world, of his surroundings and what was going on in his head, and then she'd zipped them out of there, and the only reason he kept his feet was because she was hanging onto him as he swayed in her yard.  That had thrown everything back into a frenzy of confusion, and her calling for her 'mom' only worsened things. 

Why?

Because even in his current state, he knew she was a vampire.  He was too messed up to care, but he knew she was, and vampires didn't have 'moms' and they didn't have normal houses and tea.  They tortured and killed people.  He killed them.  This whole reality he was seeing didn't make sense, and just wasn't computing.

Then, she said she was leaving.  She was leaving him with her 'mom', but she was leaving.  He might as well have been alone, for all he knew this woman.  Sure, he didn't know Posey very well, but that was different.  Don't ask his brain to rationalize anything.

"Five minutes," he repeated, taking a deep breath.  Five minutes alone when he didn't think he could stand being alone.  Alone with a lady who was probably a vampire that he didn't know.  Too many vampires, too much hurt, just too much.

"Oh my," Rochelle said. She held her hand out to Chris as she glided down the porch to him, finally taking his lightly when he just stood there, staring off into the darkness as Posey vanished. "Come inside, dear. She won't be happy if she gets back and she thinks I just let you stand out here all by yourself. Come, I've got some chamomile and vanilla tea already on," she said, her voice light and singsong.

Once inside, Chris would discover that the house was actually quite... charming. Knick-knacks and photos decorated the walls and the mantle above the fireplace, while soft carpet and rosy-toned paint and wallpaper made the house seem... cozy. The scent of sweet bread and cinnamon was everywhere, and a pretty girl sat on a couch in a room with no television, colouring gingerly with markers into one of those massive velveteen posters you could find at the store. She glanced up, surprised and showing it by a gasp, as Rochelle led Chris into the kitchen.

"That's Poppy, Posey's older sister," Rochelle explained, setting a mug down in front of him, regardless of what he wanted. "Do you take sugar?" she asked.

Their saving grace where cooperation was concerned was that he couldn't make himself care enough to find with this woman about going inside.  He wasn't happy and he was poised to plunge back into the mess of a head he had, but he was mostly calm right then.  The smallest thing could set him off again, but Rochelle was already being careful and not putting too much on him. 

Actually, she was so painfully normal that it knocked him for a loop.  Everything so far suggested that she was a vampire, just like Posey, but this was so absolutely human, like houses he'd been in with real, normal families living in them.  It didn't make sense to him, and the confused sort of look he gave Poppy emphasized that fact.  Of course, his ragged appearance probably didn't do much to help that, either.  It was so easy to think that he had to be a total disruption in the calm normalcy of their household, and completely forget that there wasn't anything normal about being vampires.  It was wrong, it was backwards, it was way, way messed-up.

But he had tea.

He stared at her and asked if he took sugar, and really, he didn't even know.  He couldn't remember the last time he'd bothered with tea.  His mother used to drink it.  Rochelle was a very motherly type.  "Do you?"

"Of course. It's too bitter without it. Poppy is the only one in this family who can drink it straight," she said, a disapproving noise between her tongue and the top of her mouth as she dropped a lump into his cup before he could answer. She glanced up to where Poppy stood in the doorway and frowned - the girl was clinging to the frame for dear life, it appeared.

High cheekbones were framed by light brown hair that gave the impression it was very fine and soft to the touch, and it might've curled given the right humidity conditions - but right now, she was hiding behind it, dark eyes peering forth at Chris. Her full lips pursed for a moment, and then she spoke. "Mom, I think maybe you should give Posey's guest a little space," she said softly, though her voice betrayed her fear. Poppy was hyper-sensitive to auras, and Chris' didn't tell her anything good. She seemed to have an aversion to him like a normal human should have had to her.

"Oh, Poppy, don't be like that. Posey never would have brought him here if she didn't think it was safe. I'm sure she has an explanation, which I can tell you I'm very interested to hear," the vampire mother-hen replied, lifting her own tea cup to her lips to take a sip. She withdrew it quickly. "Oh, heavens, it's still too hot. Watch your tongue, lad, you'll burn your tastebuds right off," she instructed.

Poppy remained where she was by the door, unwilling to come any closer to Chris. "I'm going to go to my room and read," she said, and with that, she had vanished up the stairs. Rochelle looked at her back as she left, and then her eyes flicked to Chris.

"Don't mind her. She's not used to company, is all. I'm sure you're just lovely; she's just a very timid girl," she explained.

It was no surprise that someone sensitive to auras would have an aversion to him, since his had to look like a swirling type of blackhole at this point, just waiting to suck everything around him in before he self-destructed.  He glanced up at the girl even as Rochelle assured her that Posey wouldn't have brought him there if he wasn't safe, then warned him about the tea.  He watched her, and she still looked like a human, moved like a human, behaved like a human.  But she was a vampire, wasn't she? 

Of course she was.  She knew he was dangerous without any indication from him.  That alone made her suspicious.  He was in a household of vampires.  He should have felt more hate and anger rising up than he did, and the only real explanation for that was the fact that he was just so completely overcome with grief and depression, apathy, all those emotions that turned in on himself rather than allowing him to channel them into violence.  Fury and hatred could be turned to violence.  Self-hatred and loneliness couldn't.  He'd have preferred to kill these confusing vampires, these pretenders, but why?  What were they doing, other than coloring, reading and drinking tea?  He was so dependent, so needy right then that he'd rather their company, even though they were vampires.

Poppy still had every right to distrust him.  He'd have killed them under normal circumstances, without a second thought.  She was right, but she was already gone to her room when he spoke of it.

"No, I'm not.  I kill vampires," he said, his tone deadpan, and he still hadn't touched that tea.  He looked at it again, as though he suddenly remembered it, and he picked it up to try a taste.  "My mother used to drink tea every night.  She hated coffee."

Since then, he'd only drank coffee.  No tea.  He hadn't even thought of that before.

Rochelle only arched her brows as he named his profession. Like she'd needed him to say it; she was thankful Poppy had already gone to her room, though she didn't doubt that her daughter hadn't heard him, especially not from the colourful stream of thought she picked up off of her. The bond was strange and unique between them - all of them were fairly weak vampires, but their power seemed to be attached to emotion. Poppy could see auras, but she was empathetic enough to let them change her - Posey could relive memories, but she was empathetic enough to have them control her, and Rochelle, well - as the sire could do much the same with both, except with far better control.

Still, they were low on the list of priorities of 'bad vampires that needed slaying' from most hunters.

"Coffee is disgusting," she said. "If your nose were as strong as mine, you'd understand more why I believe it is, I imagine," she mused, taking another experamental sip from her beverage. It was just right that time, and she let out a little sigh in relief.

Posey chose that moment to come through the front door, and rushed into the kitchen where Chris was. "Back!" she cried, cheeks flushed as her natural ivory hue had returned, replacing the green complexion she'd been getting from being riddled with hunger pangs. "I hope she didn't bother you?" she said, leaning down next to Chris to hear what he had to say on the matter. She didn't get too close, of course - didn't want to get her face ripped off, but still.

"I've done no such thing," her mother said indignantly.

Posey let out an exasperated sigh and sat down in the chair closest to Chris, angling her body more towards him. "I'm sorry I did that. I know you probably didn't enjoy it, but this was the only place I could think that would be safe," she said, voice trailing off. "We can go any time you like," she added. "I can get us back to your car, either with my own or... faster," she said, settling on that as a good vocabulary choice for 'teleporting'.

Somehow, it wasn't so surprising that this woman agreed with what his mother had believed, considering just how much of a 'mom' she felt like.  It was wrong that she was a vampire, as well.  Everything was wrong about this.  She was either smart enough not to make personal inquiries with him, or had been able to glean enough from his mind to know better, but she didn't say anything about his mother, and perhaps that was the best.  He could have just as easily plunged back into himself and completely undone all the calm he'd achieved since then as talk with her about the woman.  It was hard to say which was more likely at that point.

This was definitely the best Posey had looked since he'd met her, but considering what that had entailed, it wasn't surprising.  What had she done to make that happen so fast, though?  Of course, he already knew.  She was a vampire.  That meant blood, but whose blood?  This was why he killed them.  They were dangerous.

But these didn't seem dangerous at all.  Was it really just that good of an act?  It had to be, there was no way any vampires were this normal, this human.  Why hadn't they just eaten him by now, though?  Posey could have done it in the forest without him even struggling.  Why hadn't she, when she'd needed it so badly?  It made no sense!

"Who did you eat?" he asked, not even focusing on what she'd said about leaving and him being safe here.  He believed that, but it still didn't make sense to him.  "And why haven't any of you eaten me yet?  You're vampires."

Posey's brows raised suddenly, and Rochelle made a displeased noise, exiting quickly from the room. Posey meanwhile reeled back, hand on her hip as her mouth opened in surprise. It didn't take long for the shock of his rude question to wear off as she narrowed her eyes - who was she kidding? He'd had a moment of weakness, that was all, what had she honestly expected to happen?

"I didn't eat anyone," she snapped, taking a step back from him. She glared at him a moment longer and then turned, graceful as ever, and went to the refrigerator to rummage for a small juice box. She ripped the plastic off of the straw and crammed it into her mouth, sucking down the apple juice and brushing passed him without another word.

She turned at the doorway and took the straw out of her mouth to talk, and her voice came out both hurt and indignant. "Your prejudice blinds your common sense. I've never killed a human in my life, nor has Poppy or Rochelle. You can't judge us based on what the rest of them do. My bloodline alone has been chased and persecuted for years, nearly wiped out by two berserk Silver vampires who decided to cleanse the Earth of our timid and unobtrusive ways. We're no better than humans to them, and yet to you, still cold and powerful killers. You need to educate yourself a little more on the breed as a whole and the history behind it - We don't fit anywhere it seems," she snapped.

She thundered up the stairs to her room, slamming her door hard behind her.

It was probably for the best that, even though he seemed to be recovering from his 'moment of weakness', it hadn't passed, because he was actually taken aback by her reaction and what she had to say.  It meant that he didn't jump to defend himself, get angry or even turn violent.  She was a vampire after all, so it wouldn't have been so unlikely.  He couldn't even get himself to scoff at her saying she hadn't ever killed a human, even if he found that hard to believe out of a vampire. 

Maybe it was true, but if it was, he really didn't want to know about it.  He had enough trouble with the mission he'd taken on for his family, especially since his brother had gone, that he didn't need it to complicate itself further.  He didn't need to be doubting whether or not killing each vampire he took on was right or wrong.  That kind of doubt was going to get him killed faster than he was already working to accomplish that, intentional or not. 

He hadn't dug himself in any deeper with her by arguing, but he hadn't said anything at all while she snapped at him, which couldn't have really helped his situation.  She took off out of the room and upstairs to slam her door behind herself, and he was left alone in the vampire family's kitchen.  Alone again, but he was feeling a little more together.  It wasn't all there, but with the walk he had ahead of himself, he'd have time to pick up the pieces while he searched out his car.

Damn, that was going to be a long walk.

He considered whether or not he should say anything to any of them, but considering how Poppy had acted since he arrived and how Rochelle had dipped out of the room right before Posey went off, he was figuring that none of them wanted to talk to him.  That was fine, he was used to it.  Not exactly from vampires, but what difference did it make?  He wasn't supposed to be friendly with them, anyway.  He knew how to handle being alone (most of the time), and now that he'd had his freak-out session, his defenses were starting to pull themselves back together.  He could wait until he was alone someplace he knew was safe to break down a little again, but this wasn't the time or place.  He needed to avoid any further 'incidents', because that was just unacceptable.

He stayed in the awkward, lonely kitchen for a moment before he slipped out the back, trying to avoid any further attention.  He didn't need anything else to happen to mess everything up more than it already was.

Poppy jumped, the blue ballpoint pen skipping in her hand as she heard her sister's door slam shut. She sat up, examining the little squiggle she'd made in her journal, and then shut the book with a quiet snap of the pages, the pen discarded. She stood from her desk and walked to her bedroom window at the sound of the back door opening, and cleared her light yellow curtains back to watch the human as he walked and grumbled. She tipped her head to the side a little, but even from where she stood, she could still see nothing but a torrent of anger and pain whipping around him. It made her bite her lower lip, but she didn't really want to let him walk back to the car alone - that was where he was headed, no doubt.

With a sigh, she closed her eyes, feeling the breeze of the world rush by her. When she opened them, she stood only a few paces behind him, though her gait was as steady as his. She moved rather silently though, like a whisper, as was her way. Poppy didn't make waves.

"She's telling the truth, you know. It's why she was in such a panic to get out of the woods there - that vampire who attacked her was probably the last thing on her mind. She's more afraid of them," she said softly, watching his aura and waiting for him to react to her sudden presence. She was ready if he drew a weapon, though she was more willing to vanish than to try and fight. She didn't know how, not really.

There was no denying, not in the least, that Poppy had scared the hell out of him when she spoke up like that.  He'd thought he was alone, and he hadn't heard her leave the house, so having her so close and then speaking nearly gave him a heart attack.  Had he been as high-strung as usual, he might have drawn a weapon and reacted more strongly, but he flinched and twisted around anyway. 

Finding Poppy there wasn't expected. 

"Do you always sneak up on people?" he asked, though he was somewhat lacking in his usual venom.  God, he was going to sleep like the dead when he finally made it to someplace that resembled a bed.  The back of his car might do if he didn't make it back to his room.  That looked possible.

He started walking again, assuming that if she was going to attack him, she would have instead of talking to him, and really, he didn't care if she wanted to.  At least he wouldn't have to walk to his car.  "Who's 'them'?"  Did she mean Mayhem? 

Oh.  He'd forgotten that he was looking for Mayhem.  He didn't have the energy or the force of will to keep looking that day, but he'd forgotten nonetheless.

Poppy sighed a little, such a human thing to do, and walked with him, bringing herself to his side slowly but surely. "The rest of the vampires. A lot of older ones live in Mayhem, including some of the ones that had a good sport of picking off Mira vampires one by one, until there were almost none left." She spoke sadly, but Poppy had done a great deal of studying, and knew her lineage rather well.

"I know that you think we're all evil, but really, some of us who choose to still have souls. It isn't my fault I became a vampire, no more than it is hers, or Rochelle's. Sometimes getting caught in a metaphysical crossfire gives you new perspective on things around you; in our case, a new reverence for life."

She fell silent for a moment, surprised he wasn't instantly arguing with her, but she figured that would be a good opportunity to continue before he started to. "I'm not telling you to offer hugs and lollipops to every vampire you see. Hardly. Posey's a little more innocent than I am - what I'm saying - no, asking, Chris, is that you don't isolate people who can help you."

She stopped suddenly. "Oh, for Christ's sake, where is your car? You realize we're miles from where you found Posey, don't you? Ugh, let me just take you there," she snapped, the soft and melodic tone of her voice replaced more or less by what sounded like an impatient teenager. She held out her hand, palm up.

He listened to her, which was more than he'd usually have done, but he really didn't have the energy to spare arguing.  He was bound to argue SOMETHING, but he was going to choose his battles for once instead of snapping at everything.  He honestly didn't know how long the walk was to his car, but he knew it was far, so he was going to take it easy lest he end up sleeping on a bench somewhere. 

She didn't seem to have anything to say that he hadn't already gathered from Posey, though she had more details, but it didn't help his situation any.  She was still suggesting that he start taking good and bad into account where vampires were concerned, which was only going to make his life more difficult. 

Wait, help?  What was she talking about? 

"Help?  Who's going to help me?" he demanded, his voice only just starting to sound more like himself.  He could promise to leave her family alone in his purge of the vampires in the area if that was what she wanted, since they were so eerily human that it flipped him out, but he didn't know what else she wanted.  Why else was she telling him all this?  "If I choose to 'isolate' people, it's my problem.  Popularity gets people killed."

He wasn't losing someone else he cared about, because he wasn't going to care anymore.  It made perfect sense to him.

When she stopped, he assumed that she was giving up, but she only complained about how far his car was, then claimed it was miles.  Well, that was going to suck.  "I can manage.  Nobody asked you to follow me.  Go back to your book."

For a half-second, Poppy wanted to disorientate him so badly that she could taste it. She wouldn't be the one to defect from the little harmonic balance that the family had going, though, at least not right then. She let out an angry, indignant breath. "I can see why she likes you; you're as stubborn as she is," she snapped.

There was a lot more Poppy wanted to say; none of it was nice, so she settled for a shocking sort of stillness that only a vampire could hold, and then vanished. She returned home, but didn't go inside yet, opting to sit out on the porch swing to try and still her temper. She was peaceful, yes, but she was still female, and when she got frustrated she could barely resist the urge to scream. She was thankful for the immortal blood she had, it had taught her temperance when she normally would have been losing her marbles.

She rose slowly after a moment and went inside the conventional way, locking the door behind her. She supposed she should sleep, since she knew that Chris wouldn't be. It brought a little smug smile to her face, but she mentally scolded herself for being glad about his situation. His aura was so muddled... She hoped he would get out of the forest in one piece.

He really didn't need any help getting disoriented and all messed up, especially when he was only just starting to get a grip on himself, but if Poppy would have done it, he'd have just dealt with it and hated vampires more for it.  That would have just messed with the argument Posey was having with him about Miras being 'good vampires'.  Poppy was better for deciding against it.

She was probably also better for leaving him where he was.  He wasn't really in any mood to be any good socially, not with the way this evening had been going and his state of mind, and she wasn't exactly helping things.  Just her being a vampire didn't help, so there wasn't much to be done there. 

Leaving meant that he still had a long walk ahead of him, and he'd refused his 'lift' there.  Oh, well.  It wasn't like he wanted a vampire's help, anyway.  Right.  He'd be reconsidering after a mile or three, he knew that.

Sure enough, he was, especially when he realized that he really hadn't been to this part of town yet.  He wasn't exactly sure where he was going, and was pretty positive he'd screwed something up along the way.  He hoped the cops in this area weren't a hassle, because the second he found a bench, he was sleeping.

Right around 4 AM, Chris would probably wake up to a shock as Angela Arun's body slammed into the back of the bench he'd been sleeping on. She rolled over it ungracefully, across him, and landed on her face on the concrete. "Mother. FUCKER!" she roared, moving out of the way as a very quick vampire first went straight for her spine. A metallic ting was heard and sparks were seen as the knife the vampire was using wedged itself into the concrete - damn superhuman strength.

She took the advantage of the youngling's sudden confoundedness at his abilities (he was fresh; months old by her calculations), to whip out one of her Vida knives. She gave his knee a kick so hard she heard the bones break, and swung her own blade downward, thrusting it into the side of his face.

It didn't take much.

Angela was panting - she was a little angry about that, wiping sweat out of her dark hair. The blood on the knife was discarded as easily as she squatted down to rub it on the grass. She already had purple bruises forming on her arms, and she could feel her muscles in her legs aching from chasing the fuck across the park, but still - so worth it.

"That's one down, one hundred billion to go," she muttered. She hadn't even noticed Chris yet, not really - she figured that the body on the bench was a dead one, in all honesty. That vampire had been using the park as his stomping ground, and she'd waited there all fucking night for him to show up. She'd probably inadvertently saved Chris from being chewed up in his sleep, actually.

She made a thoughtful sort of noise as she kicked the body over onto its back, tilting her head a little. She knew him - they'd gone to high school together. He was actually more of Jared's friend than hers, and that notion made her lip curl in a little sneer. She spit on the dead body, cursing the day she'd ever met Bastian. He was so dead to her.

Except not. And that's what sucked the most.

He couldn't have honestly said that he would have been against being chewed up in his sleep.  Maybe it would have been quick that way.  He'd care more after he was awake.

After he was done cursing and being pissed over tumbling off of the bench, and scrambling out of the way of their fight while he grabbed for weapons that....weren't there.  FUCK!

FuckfuckfuckmotherfuckerFUCK!

He glanced around fast, looking for something he might even be able to USE.  Short of diving for the knife that the vampire had gotten stuck in the concrete, which he knew wasn't going to happen, he was pretty much useless.  That was nice.  He thought fast, trying to remember what happened to his gun, and he knew he'd been waving it around when he first started freaking out.  After that...he wasn't so sure.

DAMN IT.

It wasn't like it mattered, since the girl killed the vamp pretty quickly, and he couldn't say he disagreed with her handling of the body.  Actually, it was refreshing, given his discussions of the night before.  "Nicely done, I officially feel useless.  Thanks, though," he told her, trying not to sound too peeved over having been unarmed.  At least he got up off of the ground.

Angela jumped in surprise, obviously, when Chris got up off the ground. "Damn, I thought you were dead," was all she said for a minute. She shifty-eyed the situation, and was about to give him a good blow to the head before she took off when he congratulated her on her disposal of the vampire. She paused - he was human, she could tell that much now that she was paying attention.

"Thanks," she grunted as an afterthought. She gestured to the bench with her first and middle fingers, the other three curled around the knife still lightly, letting it droop a little in her palm. "Sorry about your, ah, bed?" she said, voice lifting at the end as though to make it a question. She blew brown strands of wet hair out of her eyes and resumed what she'd been doing before, which was putting her knives away before someone showed up, sort of like this, to catch her in the act.

She knelt down and began rummaging through the vampire's pockets, because Angela wasn't above pillaging at all - it was commonly frowned upon, but she wasn't a Single Earth goer, so she didn't quite give a fuck about what they said or did. She particularly did it just to spite Jacob, because she knew he wouldn't approve of it, and she wasn't thrilled with him at the moment.

Men just complicated her life, no matter what their station was in regards to her. Boyfriend, friend, accidental vampire acquaintance.. whatever the case was, there was something in the air when it came to them. Speaking of men -

"So," she said, standing up to wedge four hundred-dollar bills into her pocket. "You look a little too well-groomed to be sleeping on a bench." That, unmistakably, was not a question, but rather a statement. "S'your story?"

He couldn't help a cynical sort of smile when she said she thought he was dead, though he was surprised he startled her.  He'd have thought she'd be keyed up and noticing everything around her at this point.  Mistakes happened, however, and that was a tactical reason why he missed his brother.  They'd made a good team, and now he was alone and never had anyone to watch his back.  That was going to screw him over royally one of these days.

For the most part, he just watched her.  He didn't know the vampire, he had no reason to get involved with it, but he sure as hell wasn't going to be sleeping again in the next few minutes, especially on that uncomfortable damn bench.  He busied himself stretching out sore muscles while she tore through the vampire's pockets, and shrugged when she said he looked a little too well-groomed to be sleeping on a bench.  That was definitely unexpected, since she'd thought he was dead a few minutes earlier, and he HAD had a pretty rough night.  'Well-groomed' wouldn't have been his words of choice, but he supposed she had a point.  So far as he knew, he didn't stink yet.

"Lost my car outside Mayhem, and pretty much lost Mayhem at this point.  I chased off the 'helpful' leech," he explained pretty simply, as though it wasn't all that strange.  "I'm new enough to the area that I really don't know where I'm going, I was tired, so I figured I'd sleep my bad mood off and keep looking in the morning."

Angela stared at him. "Helpful leech? Was that supposed to make sense?" she asked, though her expression was sort of blank. She blinked a few times, and then went back to what she was doing - she took a personal inventory of what she had on her, and then moved around a little to make sure nothing was broken. The bruises would be gone in a few days, at least.

"Are you sure you didn't crack your face on the pavement when I got thrown into your bench?" she asked hesitantly, lifting a leg up, again somewhat ungracefully, to slide the blade she'd been using back into a strap where it was kept. It was funny to see how, well, human Angela was moving, considering what she'd just done. The truth was that she'd learned to have a very convincing cover for what she did when she was around other people, hunters or no. Not everyone needed to know that she was a Witch, as though the last name didn't give it away.

"I can probably get you to your car, if you can remember anything about where it was," she said, tapping her fingers to her chin, nevermind the dirt and blood that was drying on them. She'd take a shower when she got home; it wasn't priority at the moment.

"No, it really makes no sense," he responded, returning to the bench just for a seat.  No, he didn't crack his face on the pavement, but he could certainly doubt what happened earlier, considering the breakdown he was having at the time.  He wasn't going to explain all that to this girl he didn't even know, but he could ask her about Miras.  He was interested in hearing that bit from someone like him, for sure.

First, the car.  He remembered where it was, and explained that to her without hesitation.  He just didn't know where HE was, so it was less than convenient.  Actually, he had a couple of questions for her, but he was going to start slow.  Asking about Mayhem right off the bat didn't strike him as a good situation.

"You ever heard of Mira's Line?  I never really cared much about the lines, except Akkas with their lame-ass quirks, but Mira's came up tonight," he explained, not even realizing that mention of Akkas might be a bad thing.  How was he to know?

"Okay, then let's get moving," she responded simply, motioning for him to follow her. And she'd turn and go the direction of his car, and if he didn't follow along, she'd leave his ass behind. Angela wasn't into charity, but she figured that she'd do it just this once since his bench broke her fall, so to speak.

She glanced over at him as they trudged the length of the park, which led into a field (and then the woods, eventually), and then that sneer came back at the mention of the Akka line. She'd been all ready to tell him what he'd asked - well, the minimum, anyways - nothing you couldn't find in the libraries at Single Earth - when he'd made the crack about them. Her fingers twitched as she fought the urge down to hit him with her forearm hard enough to break his jaw. The anger flared across her skin in a hot wave, like a sudden gust when you opened up the oven too fast. It was there, and then gone, leaving a pit in her stomach where the idea of Jared was stored.

"Yeah, I have," she said curtly. She corrected her tone quickly, though, and looked ahead as she walked, careful to pick her way over rocks and other random forest-y type shit she could trip over. It didn't matter that she could see just fine in the low light conditions, or that she'd never just trip anyways, but she was making a good effect of pretending to be human, so why not keep up the show?

"They're pacifists, mostly. Lots of them associate with SingleEarth, that lame ass 'love and peace' organization," she replied. She thought of Jacob and smirked to herself - even the older vampires got caught up in all of that 'save the world' bullshit. Whaaaaatever. "At one point in time there were almost zero left altogether, because a few vampires from a more powerful line got it in their heads that they wanted to expunge them - and so they did, almost."

She shrugged. "They're all the same to me." It was a lie as it left her mouth, raking across her lips like jagged glass as she spoke it. The blood of the untruth would fill her mouth and overflow into her brain, giving her a pang of guilt for even saying it - but it was true. It was true, and if she kept saying it, she might believe it.

He didn't even realize what it was that had irritated her as he followed, or that she considered breaking his jaw, but he noticed the curt tone and hesitated in following her for a moment, well aware of the fact that he didn't know what he was dealing with here, and he was unarmed.  Posey, Rochelle and Poppy all seemed pretty damn human, and this one played it well, but he'd seen how she moved against that vampire.  He wasn't so sure she was what she seemed to be.

She stopped with the attitude, so he didn't comment on it immediately, merely narrowing his eyes and taking in the rest of the information she offered.  It pretty much went along with what Posey and Poppy had said, which was a point in their favor. 

Amazing, he trusted the word of a person he'd just seen put a knife in someone over the lady that gave him tea. 

"All the same, huh?" he asked, not so sure he believed it, but the only thing he'd mentioned was Mira and Akka.  Mira was supposedly pacifistic, so he didn't see the problem there, and Akkas...well, they didn't last long, as a general rule.  He liked those, because he could fuck with them while he killed them.  Other vampires didn't freak out over religious items and other fun things that he could dig out.  "I know the feeling.  I don't discriminate with them.  Easier to just kill them all and let someone else figure it out."

Oh, he meant that.  He wished he didn't, but he did.

Angela was resolute that most vampires were the same - killing them was nothing out of the ordinary. There were only a precious few whose deaths, whenever they came, would bother her. Jacob, for the moment, was one, and of course Jared was another. Had they even officially broken up? Angela didn't know what to make of the situation, but she knew that she wasn't telling anyone about it. It would slash the credibility she had as a hunter to ribbons, and right now, her credibility was all she had. Chris couldn't have known that, of course, but the fact that Angela did know made things more difficult.

Still, she didn't go telling complete strangers her personal story, anyways.

"Pretty much," she agreed with a sigh. She slowed her pace a little as the metallic glint of moonlight provided them enough lighting to see Chris' car in what was now plain sight a few paces ahead. "I'm going to go on a limb here and say that's yours?" she asked, gesturing to the automobile in the distance. Even in low-light conditions she'd have seen it, but the moon was enough that Chris would see it, too.

For all he knew, she was human. She still had bruises, despite her strength, and since he hadn't personally felt her grip, he would be left to assume she was well-trained. The problem, of course, was that her natural aura drew humans in - a Witch had a certain charm, a circle of warmth around them that made humans want to be near them. It was all well and good for Smokes, because of their nature, but Angela didn't need or want anyone close to her for the time being, and the one person she did want close to her was now something she despised, so as far as she was concerned, that was an open and closed case.

"Your chariot, sir," she said graciously and mockingly, bowing as they approached the car in a much closer fashion. Now it was only ten or so feet away; the distance was flat and mostly grassy with a few rocks here and there, so not something hard to traverse. "Think you can handle it from here?" she asked playfully.

He didn't go around telling complete strangers his personal story, either, which basically meant that these two weren't going to be having any groundbreaking revelations anytime soon.  That was fine with him.  He had enough problems without listening to hers on top of it.

The problem was that, for some inexplicable reason, he liked her.  Maybe it was his earlier vulnerability still not worn off, but there was just something about her that he couldn't help but like.  Technically, that meant he DIDN'T like it, since it went against everything he'd decided for himself about not getting close to others, but this wasn't the first time he'd met someone he liked.  Usually it didn't happen so quickly, though.

Weird.

Of course, he had no idea that witches just did that to people, or that his own subconscious loneliness might have something to do with that.  He just liked her.  She was aggressive, snappish and more than able to hold her own.  Qualities he valued.

He nodded when she asked if the car was his, already watching the area around it, just in case.  It had been long enough that he didn't think anyone would be waiting around for him, but it had also been long enough that the blond vampire he'd shot in the ass might have come back with buddies.  "If I say no, are you going to carry me or something?" he asked, actually surprising himself with a sarcastic little smirk.  She'd been mocking and teasing him, so he didn't feel too awkward in returning the favor.

"On a serious note, I wouldn't mind a few minutes of back-up.  My weaponry is at the car, and I shot a vampire in the ass just a short walk away from here a few hours ago.  Can't imagine his dignity's feeling too nice right now," he explained, still glancing around.  He didn't want to think about what the retaliation for that might be if he didn't have a weapon on hand.  It certainly couldn't be pleasant.

"Pffft," was the only verbal reply Angela gave as she responded to his remark about her carrying him. She did smile, however, which wasn't at all uncommon. Angela smiled a lot when she didn't have much to be happy about; humour did that to her. It just so happened, however, that most of her moments with Jared were spent in sarcastic and yet heartfelt bantering, so every smile she gave was double-edged, and on the outside the blade shown nicely, while inside it cut her up like a filet.

It figured. He'd even ruined sarcasm for her, that bastard.

"Backup? Sure thing, boss," she chirped, letting him go ahead a few feet before she silently moved after him. It was easy to see the transition between 'normal teenage girl' and 'hunter' as she suddenly changed everything about herself in one fluid motion. Footfalls suddenly were measured and lacked noise, and even her breathing had become inaudible, whereas even after the time between her physical confrontation and now some people would have still been winded. One of those deliciously sharp knives was in her hand, held firmly by her thigh as she walked so as not to shine in the light. She didn't need to announce herself any more than the human already had.

Once he'd gotten safely into his car, she folded her arms across her chest, the knife still in her hand. "I think you've got it covered from here," she said. There it went again, that change - she was relaxed, one knee bent as she rested her weight on her other. Her expression was lazy, if not a little amused. Angela was hard to explain, but then again, Aruns were still somewhat enigmatic in their own right.

Jared, depending on the mood you caught him in nowadays, might have been happy to hear that he'd ruined sarcasm for her.  Chris simply had no idea it was a problem, and she didn't give him any indication that she disliked it.  Not that he would have stopped, but he might have liked her less if she couldn't handle him being cynical.

Considering his attitude, that meant that she couldn't handle him, in essence.

He wasn't blind, so he noticed the transition, and he approved.  It meant that he wasn't about to get gang-raped (figuratively speaking, thank god) by a bunch of vampires without a fighting chance, and he appreciated that.  Grabbing up the gun that he'd flung dropped earlier and hopping in the car, he took a moment to check that it was still loaded and operational, then glanced up at her. 

"Yeah, I've got it, but it's awful dark to be wandering around alone.  Can I take you to your car?" he asked.  Really, it was only fair, and he was pretty damn sure from the way she'd handled that vampire that she'd put one of those knives in him faster than he'd get that gun up if she felt threatened.  Fortunately, he meant well.

Angela just shook her head. "I'm good," she said, and she meant it. She'd walked anyways. The distance between here and her mother's house hadn't been a monumental one, and she'd needed the physical activity to take her mind off of her current life situation. "Really," she said in response to a doubtful look, rapping the top of his car ever-so-lightly with her knuckle (Angela had been known to dent cars when she hit them, it seemed), the signal for him to take off.

"I grew up around here. Believe me - they wouldn't dare," she said. She almost wished they would, though, silently as she gave a small wave to the car as it pulled off. It would give her some excuse to let loose and go really berserk. That, she realized with a sigh, would be some other night. She turned back down the road and hit the path that lead back to her own house.

Casually, she glided up the front steps, a movement from the curtains telling her that her mother was awake still. She glanced over her shoulder, brown eyes glittering in the dawn light. She knew he was watching her; she could feel him. She didn't know where, though, so she couldn't focus on just one spot to stare at, or else she'd have bored holes into his brain. She pushed the door open and closed it with a click. They'd changed all the locks on the house after Reilly had found some texts Akkas, and it protected them from Jared just waltzing right on in.

It was convenient for Angela, at least, but she wouldn't have had to worry about it anyways. Jared was probably in the bushes with a splitting headache for how badly her chest cramped whenever she realized that he was out there.

He wasn't sure he believed her, but he didn't exactly know that the one most likely to approach her was also the least likely to outright attack her right then, so he had room to doubt what she said.  He'd offered, however, and shrugged at her insistence.

"Alright then, thanks," he told her, not really caring enough to force the issue.  He wasn't going to insist that he take her wherever she was going, since she definitely managed before he'd run into her.  He was sure she'd continue to manage without him.

Everyone always did.

Jared didn't move from where he watched, having picked up her trail after she'd left Chris.  That was for the best, since he'd have been less than pleased to see her chatting and trading sarcastic banter with some random dude. 

Yeah, so he was jealous.  It pissed him off that other assholes could be around her all they wanted, and he couldn't. 

Changing the locks had been a fairly useless venture, for the most part.  He didn't like Angela's mother much, mostly because she'd hated him, so he wasn't going to enter her home just because he didn't want to deal with the hassle.  He also couldn't think of a decent way to approach this issue, and since he got a massive headache that spiked whenever Angela seemed to realize he was around, he knew better than to just appear there and try to deal with it on the fly.  He'd just screw it up and get pissed off. 

He saw her to her door, and perhaps that was all he'd needed.  He sure as hell knew that if anyone had tried to mess with her, he'd have smashed their faces in.  Then, he'd probably have gotten into a blow-out argument with Angela, but he'd have still done it.  Once she was in the house, he lingered for a few moments, but left shortly after, not wanting to tempt himself into anything else.  It wasn't like he could just ring the doorbell, anyway.