Night's Omen

 WARNING: THIS THREAD GETS REALLY VIOLENT.

---

"Sorry, we just had a trauma come in. I'll be working late tonight."
  A normal woman would have been upset; protested, said it was their anniversary, but she wouldn't. Not because she suspected he had forgotten, but because if this situation had been reversed, she would be doing precisely what he was. Apologizing for the inconvenience and moving on to more important things. Anniversaries were stupid, anyways.
  "That's fine. Dinner's in the fridge. I've got some paperwork and a glass of wine to keep me busy. I'll see you when it's over," she responded.
  "It's never over," he said.
  There was a laugh shared between them, and then the connection was silent.

  They'd been together for two years, and "I love you" had never once been said. The phrase was tainted and dirty and neither one of them would ever say something so base. They were together; that was all they needed.

  Daphne awoke to the lightest sensation of fingertips on her cheek. Rain was pounding against the window, creating ghastly shadows on the wall. Her persona was scared of thunderstorms, but she was too groggy to react, instead blinking rapidly and desperately trying to make sense of the darkness and the fingertips. She sat up slowly, making a confused noise.

  "What time is it?" she asked. The clock was on his side of the bed, and she couldn't see it from where she was; Victor was blocking it with the way his body was angled, anyways.

  "Two-thirty," he replied. He gave her a kiss on the cheek, and then the real apology came. "I'm sorry. I know you tried to stay up." He didn't often call her out on her humanity (and oh, how fucking sick she was and how utterly off-base he was), but he felt like perhaps now was a good time to admit his own - nobody was watching, after all.

  "Oh, no," she said, turning to face his now semi-visible figure. She drew her knees up to her chest and shook her head, resting a hand on his shoulder - a gesture she'd come to do that could speak volumes on what she needed to convey. Daphne was an expert at that one single motion saying things that she couldn't vocalize - but she had to be so careful. The closer she got, the closer he got, and the closer he got to finding out the truth. "I really didn't wait up," she began, but he was already laughing.

  "Daphne, the light was on when I came in. Your book was next to you, and your wine wasn't but only slightly sipped. Come on, I know you," he accused. He took his slender counterpart into his arms, unwilling to say how he resisted a smile when she turned to accommodate the gesture. She fit so perfectly. He had to be careful, though - she didn't know the truth. She was smart, but he didn't need her to know the truth about the things he could really do; about what really went on when he wasn't at home or at work. Daphne would handle it, but he wouldn't ask her to. Nobody wanted a hunter.

  "Okay, you got me," she said softly. She sighed a little, relaxing against him. "I was trying to stay awake and surprise you, but I guess after my follow ups were done, Stephen King just knocked me out," she admitted. She twisted her head up to look at him and smiled in the dark.

  "Oh, God. We've discussed the horror novel thing before you sleep, Daphne," he chided, humour in his voice. He secretly enjoyed it when she'd awaken from a nightmare - not because she was afraid, because he never wished that on her; it was because she'd snuggle up to him like a cat, and he could feel more useful than he already was. Victor hated to be depended on - hated it. However, even he couldn't deny that he was a protector; always would be, and that was just... the way it was.

  They were quiet, enjoying eachother's company for a moment or two longer, and then he cleared his throat. "So what was my surprise?" he asked. He tilted his head a little. Daphne may have come across as very proper, but he'd gotten to know that she could be quite a little sex kitten when she so desired, which was just fantastic as far as he was concerned. Everyone went on thinking she was an innocent little bookworm, and that meant less competition for him, not that he was worried about competition. Daphne wasn't stupid like the other women he'd met; she valued things that the other morons couldn't really provide for her. He almost puffed up with pride, but he remembered that she was hiding some sort of surprise, and he had to abandon his ego for a second.

  "Well," she began. She seemed almost bashful; he could tell by how her shoulders shrank in. Daphne had been doing this for so long it was like second nature; it was so wrong how much she had him wrapped around the false persona. She turned to face him, and this time the hand on his shoulder was close to the back of his neck, fingers brushing his short hair gently. "At the risk of sounding horribly stupid, it sort of is a certain day where two years ago we sort of began seeing eachother," she trailed off. "I figured you'd forget, so I thought I'd help you remember."

  She nodded.

  "I like where this is headed," he said approvingly. He leaned forward and began placing little kisses at her neck. "But," he said, "I didn't forget." He leaned away for a second, and then dropped something into her lap. It was small and cube-shaped.

  "I don't even know what to say, Victor. Just when I think I have you figured," she said. She picked up the box, turning on the light with her free hand. It was small and red - her favourite colour. It had a little white bow on top of it, and when she opened it, she found a key inside. She looked up at him, confused. "A key?" she asked.

  Victor straightened himself out and smirked a little. "Daphne, I haven't seen you wear more than those plain earrings since I first saw you, so don't tell me you expected something pretty," he said with a laugh.

  "Not at all," she said smoothly, returning his smile. "But what's this for? It's not a car key," she said, picking it up. She didn't recognize it; wasn't hers. A moment of panic had fluttered through her when she thought perhaps he'd found.. but it wasn't her key.

  "You remember last Christmas when you said you wanted to go up into the mountains for a week and get away from the city? Well, I have a... connection who made it happen. I've coordinated it around the same time we're going to have another doctor who's competent in on a visitation, and he's covering my shifts." He silently thanked Connor for pulling so many strings in the three hours he'd been allotted. "So, what was my surprise?" he asked indignantly.

  Daphne stared at him for a long moment, and then set her jaw. She put the box down on the nightstand, and then turned out the light. "Come closer, I'll show you," she promised.

  Click.

 

---

Victor was certainly glad that Daphne never gave him cause to doubt his sexual prowess. He'd never had her pegged for liking things a little rough, and he'd honestly tried to be careful with her most of the time. She was incredibly frail to him, even though he knew, logically, that she wasn't - it didn't help that he had a pretty basic understanding of how anatomy worked, either, but there had been some instances where he knew that he'd hurt her, and he knew she wouldn't say anything about it. What he didn't know was why.

  He hadn't figured out that aspect of her, actually. She was logical, so much that people had started to accuse her of taking on some of Victor's less than friendly attitude at times, but she was still a warm, caring individual. She wasn't one to sit and be in pain for the sake of someone else, though - he'd seen her demonstrate that plenty of times at work. In the bedroom, though, she became so much more willing to do it, and it actually frightened him to know that she would submit so terribly much, sacrifice something she otherwise wouldn't ever budge on.

  The first time it had ever happened was an accident. Actually, no, it wasn't an accident on all - it was deliberately and completely on purpose, but hurting her had been an accident. He should have guessed from the moment he'd met her that she was still 'inexperienced', but that was overlooked easily because he didn't really see her that way (not at first, she grated on him until he had to), it just hadn't occurred to him that a twenty-four year old would still be holding on to an old value, especially when she had no apparent interest in marriage or any other... values at all, actually. He'd been rough with her because she told him not to be gentle, but he knew when he'd crossed a line, which, of course now in their relationship was a non-existent line, and he'd felt... he'd actually felt incredibly guilty about it.

  When she didn't tell him to stop, it only made it worse. He'd asked her several times why she hadn't, but she'd just smile and he'd never get a straight answer out of her, which he knew he deserved because he did the same damn thing to her about a lot, mostly Nyeusi and Guild complications, and granted, it wasn't their sex life, his hunting, it was still a big part of his life, and thus her life by default. He'd eventually stopped asking, but it still came up every time they were intimate.

  It was very, very hard to try and be cautious with her when she demanded that he do otherwise. If he didn't know that she didn't enjoy it, at least in the moment, he'd say something might have been a little wrong with her, but Daphne usually began doing amazing things that made him stop thinking about why she was the way she was quite quickly. Actually, they made him stop thinking altogether, and he was incredibly thrilled that she would be so kind as to take his worries away.

  After an hour or so of particularly amazing things, she returned from the bathroom with a glass of water, wrapped in the light blue button down shirt she'd practically ripped off of him earlier. He was losing a lot of buttons because of her, and he knew that one of them would have to take up sewing. He'd make her do it; it was her fault the buttons were missing. Victor refused to be domesticated. He could cook. He wouldn't sew. As she climbed back into bed, he slid the bothersome shirt off of her and pulled her close to him, a possessive gesture that he felt well entitled to.

  She lay against him for a while in silence, and then he could feel the weight in the air like he always did, before she'd ask him something he didn't necessarily want to answer. She turned up to him, sure as silver, and tilted her head. "Can I ask you a question?"

  Victor frowned - but then he had an idea. "Yes," he said. "And I'll answer it honestly, but first I get to ask you something." He finished quickly, before she could interrupt him, which she was about to do judging from how quickly her mouth had snapped open.

  Daphne was shocked. What could he possibly want to ask her...? She felt fear cross over her entire body, and she bit her lower lip. She would lie; she would lie through her teeth if he came anywhere near the truth. "Okay," she said carefully. "That's fair." She knew what she was going to ask had better be worth whatever he was going to ask; she suspected it might be.

  Victor looked down at her, furrowing his brow. "At the risk of sounding incredibly crass, Daphne, I need to know something. Why - and I'm not trying to psychoanalyze you, so don't think I am - why in the Hell do you never say anything when I hurt you?" he asked. He could have phrased it more tactfully, but fuck it, this was Victor, and his girlfriend of two years. If she hadn't heard it by now, she never would.

  Daphne shrank back a little at his question. She didn't get what he'd meant for a second, and then she had to stop herself from laughing. Was that it? She'd still have to lie; she didn't want him to know how much she liked it. If she told him the truth in that instance, her entire cover would be blown. Sexual desires that didn't match up to character makeup at all would tip him off; he wasn't fucking stupid. Instead, she relied on her 'wounded bird' personality to pick up the slack for this question.

  "If I tell you the truth, will you call me stupid?" she asked hesitantly.

  He frowned. "If you deserve it," he said.

  Daphne made to get out of the bed. His hand caught her arm and pulled her back. "Hey, come on. Answer me," he said.

  She sat back down, and then shrugged a little. "Because I can distinguish what you need and what you want," she said. She spoke so casually that he actually choked a little bit, and shook his head.

  "I'm sorry?" he asked.

  Daphne sat up a little, speaking in a more authoritative tone, as she would if they were in the lab. She tried to explain. "Victor, there are times when you come home and I know all you need is a kiss on the cheek and some space. You want me to hang around, but you need to be left to diffuse."  She paused, giving him the "Are you following me" eyebrow raise.

  "Okay..." he said. "Keep going."

  "And there are times when I look into your eyes, and I know that what you want is to be careful and slow and warm, and what you need is to... actually, you really probably need to start taking kickboxing or something, because I don't think my body can take much more of this," she sputtered.

  She let out a muffled cry as he hit her in the face with a pillow, and snatched it back before she could grab it. She rolled onto her knees and crawled over to him, planting a kiss on his insulted face. "I'm kidding. The truth is that I don't say anything because I know what you want, and I know what you need. Or, at least I think I do." She sat back on her behind on her shins, feet on either side of her thighs. She squinted at him. "Am I stupid?" she asked, looking prepared to be admonished.

  "Yes!" he exploded. "I can't believe you just gave me a logical answer to that. I can't have any sort of counter-argument except, 'No Daphne, don't do that'." He fell silent, and then rubbed his face with the palms of his hands. "You're so... you," he finally said.

  "You're accusing me of... doing exactly what I would normally do," she said slowly. She shook her head, and then moved closer to him. "My turn," she pushed. She managed to wedge herself right next to him, doing incredibly cute things until she forced a smile out of him.

  Once she had him in a good mood again, she quieted down. "I've wanted to ask you this since I first saw you. If you decide to renegotiate and not answer me, that's fine. Victor, how did you get this scar?" she asked softly. She traced the scar with her fingertips so lightly that it would have tickled, except she'd never seen him smile when he regarded the jagged mark on his flesh.

  He caught her hand where it was, and slowly pulled it away. For a moment, she thought she'd crossed some sort of line - the quickness in which he'd done it was... astonishing. She felt fear again, that he'd caught her, found her fraudulent life and had seen the bodies. Instead, he pulled her hand into his other one, and held it for a moment.

  "Okay," he said. "The truth."

The truth.

The truth was a dangerous, nasty thing, especially when he'd already said he'd be honest with her about his answer, and she'd gone and answered his question.  He didn't really like her answer, but it was something he could understand.  Logic, despite how little it usually came into play in something as unpredictable as an intimate relationship and human behavior, made sense to him just as much as it made sense to her.  Logically, her answer made sense.  He just didn't prefer that she use that kind of logic against him, because he'd said exactly what there was to say; his only argument would just be telling her not to do it, and that wouldn't get him too far.  Not with her, anyway.  She cared way too much, despite what everyone else thought were his best efforts at instilling some attitude in her, and trying to tell her not to put his needs before her own was a demand that would fall on deaf ears.

Because he wanted her to stop doing that to herself, but she knew what he needed, instead.

It was infallible logic, and there was no arguing it.  That was ridiculous.  Even worse, those kind of revelations, him understanding something else about her that just went to show that she was a much better person than he was, made him feel guilty for keeping secrets.  It wasn't like she didn't know about vampires and shifters or the rest of the Nyeusi world, because he knew she did.  That was something he'd been certain to find out early on, and she'd 'known' things that made him suspicious, anyway.  Knowing that she was aware of those things made it easier, in a way.  When he said that he was working, but she knew he wasn't at the hospital, she knew it was one of those things that he didn't want to tell her.  Sometimes, he was sewing together someone who'd been ravaged by one of those 'children of the night', and sometimes, he was out returning the favor to some other nasty.  It all depended on the needs of the guilds, particularly Crimson.  He didn't generally hunt with Onyx or Frost, though there had been instances when he'd been along for the ride.  These were things she didn't need to know, not when he knew she already had nightmares just from reading things like Stephen King.  If she had more images to go off of, images that she related to him, he might lose her entirely.  On some level, it surprised him that he cared so much, but he didn't want that to happen.

He didn't need it to, either.

What made her question so complicated was that she knew he was involved in the Nyeusi world, and she knew he was human (which narrowed things down quite a bit), but he still didn't talk to her about it.  The story behind the scar involved things he didn't want to talk to her about.  He had promised, though.

It was true, he'd promised without actually saying those words, and he was going to tell her.  The long pause before he'd started up with 'the truth' and then the pause that followed that might have suggested otherwise, but he was going to tell her.  He was.  He just couldn't have her running her delicate, adept fingers down the raised white skin, focusing her attention so much on the biggest mistake he'd ever made.  She had to have noticed other scars he had, since any hunter has enough to make others curious, but this was the one she'd always given her attention to.  This was the one everyone noticed. 

"I saved up the money to put myself through med school by working for Bruja.  As a hunter," he specified, squeezing her hand for a second, just in case she'd briefly thought that he might have interned in the infirmary as a job.  He hadn't been in the infirmaries as anything other than a patient until he was already graduated and established as a surgeon.  "I didn't plan on making a career out of it to begin with, but the doubts I had about retiring to school were dealt with when I went after a female vampire who had some sort of voice trick in her arsenal.  She told me what to do, and I did it, no questions and no hesitation."

It hurt to admit that, despite the cool, clinical tone he was using.  He wasn't going to behave like a victim, he wasn't going to cry or stutter over something that had happened years earlier, and he wasn't going to lead her to believe that talking about it might be just a little difficult.  It was just one of those things he didn't talk about.

He smirked some as he continued, not looking at her in favor of something that really wasn't all that interesting on the wall, but he didn't want to see her pity or horror.  He didn't need or want it, just as he hadn't needed or wanted it when the incident had happened.  It just wasn't who he was.  "She read it from my mind, probably when she was in there playing her games with that voice of hers, that I was going to be a doctor.  She thought it was hilarious, a hunter turning from killing to saving people, and I actually think that she would have just bitten me and gone on her way until she got bored again if I hadn't been there to kill her."  Not that being bitten by an Akkan was a great thing, but he could have done without the slicing and the dicing, which he was taking his time in getting to. 

Yeah, time to bite the bullet.  No more stalling.  "She made me lay still while she used one of my knives to make this cut, without ropes or anything to hold me down.  It was just that voice of hers, and I stayed there while she cut completely to the sternum and even deeper where there wasn't bone.  I lost consciousness finally, but I couldn't tell you personally what triggered it.  My usual partner had sat that hunt out, and he was the one who tracked me down.  Everyone assumed that she'd gotten bored once I fell out and just left me there, wide open and bleeding out," he explained, his tone still lighter and less affected than it should have been.  He was obviously doing it on purpose, since he still didn't make eye contact, but he didn't allow himself that faraway look that victims sometimes got.  No, he was all in the present, all aware of where he was and who he was talking to.  If he could get away with it, he was never telling her another story about hunting or the injuries he dealt with that were all simply because of the cruelty of others.

"Needless to say, I was careful to always have someone a little closer than my partner was that day, and I didn't hunt nearly as often.  Surgery gets hectic and the hospital is a zoo, but I prefer bleeding less, personally," he offered up, finally making eye contact again and smirking.  He had no intentions of playing with her being upset.  Better to just move on.

Right.  Like that was going to work.  At least she'd stayed quiet while he told her what she wanted to know, and hadn't demanded eye contact.  That made it a little less difficult to get through.  God, he hated these situations.

  Daphne managed not to interrupt him for his story, though she never was one for cutting him off to begin with. She had too much respect for him - but it was always about that untouchable level he was on, wasn't it? She'd done everything perfectly to play directly into his arms, because he was perfect, to her. He was the one person she couldn't dream of cutting open, even if she felt her blood burn every time he kissed her. No, her obsession with him had hit a point where it split in an entirely different direction from her madness; lucky for Victor.

  Lucky for Daphne.

  When he finished, she couldn't even begin to respond. She didn't open her mouth, she mostly just stared at him. The sensation of absolute and pure rage was filling her body slowly, bleeding down from her mind and permeating every cell of her until her hands went cold under his warm grip. She could feel the monster inside trying to get out, but she knew that she would jeopardize everything by suddenly reacting irrationally. She took a deep breath, and tilted her head at him, forcing a smile.

  "You are, without a doubt, the strongest man I know, Victor Batten." She removed her fingers from his and turned his head towards her with her index finger, leaning forward to give him a firm, closed-mouth kiss on the lips. She ran her finger gently under his chin, her lips curling up at the ends to a more real smile, one that seemed to meet her eyes. "I wish I was half as brave as you."

  She spoke so honestly it hurt. It must have weighed heavily, no matter how distanced and casually of it he spoke, if he'd never told her. It must have if she'd always sensed that her questions concerning the scar were unwanted, actually - even when she would look at it, she could feel his eyes pressing on her like gravity, willing her to stare somewhere else. She'd never even so much as commented on it, and had treated it like it wasn't there, but when he wasn't looking, she would, and he'd caught her. What hurt, however, was the fact that she couldn't tell him the truth about... anything.

  As she pulled him into a hug, the expression she wore where he could not see changed drastically. It was positively murderous, actually. Daphne's green eyes were so bright they seemed almost ablaze with fury; the vampire with a voice trick? How hard could one such as that be to find? She'd have to tap every resource she had, turn every rock, and shake every bag of dirty laundry loose until she could find someone who could give her what she wanted.

  And speaking of looking under a rock, she knew precisely what particular cockroach she wanted to start with. As she pulled back from the hug, she smiled at Victor again, this time a much more gentle expression. The demonic visage she'd worn only moments before had vanished with a thought, and she was now just as he'd always seen her: sweet, intelligent, and kind.

  "I feel as though I should make you eat every time you told me that I had nothing to worry about," she said softly, giving him a small head shake. She put her back down to the bed and turned, curling into him. She stifled a yawn, though it was mostly faked - she needed him to be asleep for her to think properly. "I think that last bit wore me out," she admitted (the irony). Whenever he did get around to lying down fully, she placed most of her upper-body on him, as though she were somewhat draped across him.

  Daphne often fell asleep like that; it was odd that she'd grown accustomed to being held, but she couldn't allow Victor to suspect that she was up to no good. Breaking her normal routine would suggest that his story had bothered her, and he'd want to pry - not that he pried so much as demanded to sort her irrational thoughts apart before she drove herself mad with worry. It was laughable, because if he'd only known what she was thinking half of the time...

  She thought for a while about what she would do, and when she'd decided, she drifted off to sleep.

It was hard to say who exactly was luckier that her obsession for him had hit that point where she couldn't allow herself to cutting into him, since he definitely didn't need to have someone trying to slice him up again, and he definitely wouldn't have taken that quietly.  The big problem would have been that, despite his not being a very trusting person, he'd spent the last two years seeing this woman, and they'd been living together for quite some time.  If he couldn't trust her, the only people he could allow himself to trust would have been family.

Oh, if he only knew just how much he shouldn't trust her.

Honestly, he didn't understand this situation any better now than he had when it had first started, but he wasn't going to question it anymore.  He'd spent quite some time trying to figure out what it was about her that had gotten through to him so completely when there were so many others that he hadn't cared enough for to stay with; Victor had been a career bachelor for a very long time now.  He couldn't pinpoint anything specific about her, just that she was all-around perfect for him.  It made no sense to him, but that didn't make it any less true.  If he didn't know how ridiculous that would be, he'd have thought it was impossible, but it HAD to be ridiculous to think that just because it was happening.  He was lucky to have her.

Actually, so was his ego.  She was damn good at stroking that, among other things.  She was a talented woman.

"I hope you never have to be brave like that," he told her, just as honestly.  He wasn't the sort to go all 'falsely modest' on her over her compliment.  He knew that it took guts to keep hunting after THAT incident, just as he knew how much it took for Connor to keep hunting after his injuries (as well as countless others that he'd treated).  He didn't really think that enduring something like that took much in the way of bravery, just because it was inescapable and any idiot would have to suffer just like he had, but he knew that he wasn't ashamed of the way he'd handled it.  He'd kept as much of his dignity intact as he could. 

As much as he was always worried about dignity and not being dependent or depended on (which was practically impossible, because people who aren't dependent are the ones that people go to when they need someone to depend on, but he tried), Daphne had made herself into something of an exception.  He liked it when she curled into him and he liked holding her, so the fact that she didn't get too upset over what he'd told her was a good thing.  He hadn't really expected her to reject him or anything over it, since that would have been ridiculous and over-dramatic, but he wouldn't have been too surprised if she was upset over it.  If she was, she was handling it rather well.  That was how he preferred it, anyway.  He didn't need to keep the attention on it, so pushing along was just fine with him.  He hoped she thought about the cabin key he'd given her as she fell asleep, instead of his scar. 

He was entitled to his stupidity occasionally.

---

The hospital was a zoo, which wasn't too surprising because it was like that fairly often, but that didn't make it any more pleasant to Victor.  He'd been torn away from his current plans to help in the ER twice already, which put a crunch on his entire schedule that day, and Daphne hadn't answered any of his calls to tell her that his lunch was going to be pushed aside.  It was her day off, but she still had a habit of coming in to have lunch with him those days, just because they both had busy, often unpredictable lives.  If she didn't stop in for lunch, he might not see her until the next day, since she was likely to be asleep when he got home.  He could always wake her up, but he didn't prefer to do that more than once in a week.  Considering their conversation the night before, he could admit to himself that he was just a little concerned over the silence.

"I'm sure that if the scar didn't scare her off when her imagination was free to make up scenarios to go with it, the truth isn't going to do the trick," Connor told him over the phone, which made Victor roll his eyes.  It was Connor who had asked about Daphne, and he'd thought he had every right after the effort he put into getting that key.  Victor had explained that she'd seemed to love it, and it had finally moved to her asking about his scar.  He'd tactfully declined to mention his OWN question for her, since that was none of Connor's goddamn business.  The man probably wouldn't want to know about Victor's sex life, anyway.

"Do I sound like I'm stressing about it, you moron?" he demanded, a little indignant that his nephew even felt the NEED to attempt reassuring him.  "I have a sister who can do a much better job at talking me out of relationship stress, and a sister-in-law who is equally talented.  You're the last one I'd go to."

He meant THAT.

"Okay, whatever you say.  I just get the feeling that you actually like this one, so I figure I'll do what I can to keep you from screwing it up."

"You're bound to be under my knife within the next few months.  I'd advise you stop where you are."

All he got from the hunter was a laugh, but Connor DID change the subject.  That was all that was necessary, in Victor's opinion.  He was beeped back into the ER halfway through his sandwich, so it wasn't like he was on the phone all that long, anyway.

He still had to wonder where the hell Daphne was, but he refused to leave more than two messages or call more than three times.  He was worried, that was obvious enough, but he wasn't going to blow up her phone.  She'd call him back, or he'd see her at home later that night.  If she wasn't there, then he was getting someone from Crimson looking for her, just in case there was something seriously wrong.

It had better not be that.

  There was a damned good reason Victor couldn't get ahold of Daphne, and that reason was roughly five-foot, ten inches tall with skin the colour of a drowning victim and eyes that matched glacial water. Daphne was nothing if not smart, and so she'd waited until darkfall before she even attempted to contact the Raven whom she'd once tortured for the sheer pleasure of it. Any normal person going to revisit someone who so obviously wanted to harm them (harm was a gentle term for what Taran wanted to do with Daphne, actually) would have been terrified for their very soul; Daphne, not so much. She was there for a purpose, and her hands did not tremble as she very stealthily climbed the fire escape on the side of his building.

  Daphne's security lay in a few very large details about her current situation, the number one, of course, being that her current boyfriend was not only one of the main doctors for the three rings of the Bruja Guilds, but also still a semi-active Hunter, and a blood relative of the leader of the Crimson Guild. No matter what Daphne did, she knew that Victor would rather deal with her himself than let her fate to anyone - and that included Taran. Beyond that, Victor was also a well-respected doctor, and worked alongside the NYPD enough to know Taran's twin sister Tanith - and if the last place Daphne was ever seen going into was Taran's, well... he wouldn't be a twin after Victor got done with his sibling.

  For these reasons, Daphne was smiling as she hoisted herself up over the rusted railing of the fire escape. She stepped on a window ledge and then swung a leg up, pulling herself onto the mediocre balcony that Taran's apartment beheld. It was uncomfortably small, overlooking a deserted alley and the broad side of another building. It would figure that all his windows pointed to brick walls for scenery. She tugged a thin black leather glove off of her hand and rapped at the glass door of his living room, hard.

  "While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping--"

   "As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door," a deep voice said from behind her. Taran wasn't as stupid as people thought he was; he'd seen her four hours ago when she'd first appeared a few blocks away. He'd stayed in his Avian form and followed her from above, watching and waiting to see what the bitch had been up to. And now, well. He leaned against the balcony, arms folded across his chest. His blue eyes were on fire, but he didn't tremble. Bad people didn't tremble, especially not before they committed horrible crimes.

  "I see that you knocked this time," he said. His voice was light, giving no hint to the monster beneath. Daphne, however, was not stupid. Daphne had the very same monster hidden inside of her, and so she only smiled in return. It was that smile that made Taran snap. He reached out, and his reflexes, no matter what the bitch did, were faster: he was a shapeshifter, and she was a human with no training. She wasn't so fast without her knife, he noticed, which only made him want to smile - but no, not yet.

  He pushed her inside, opening the door around her. He was dangerously close to her, so close she could feel his breath on the back of her neck. Taran wasn't sure if he wanted to throw her down on the floor or smash her into the wall. He didn't want to let go of her, and so he kept her in the strange dance where they were pressed against eachother in a way so close it could have been misconstrued as intimate or passionate. Finally, he decided on the wall, and on the way there, he plucked a particularly sharp piece of glass off of the counter.

  "Tell me why I shouldn't cut you open right now," he said. His voice was so quiet and heavy that Daphne might have been frightened... if she didn't have the ace in her pocket. She was going too easily, allowing herself to be thrown around; Taran wasn't stupid, either. He didn't suspect that she would give up so entirely, so he kept that glass pressed against her throat when she tried to speak, just to let her know that they weren't going to have a repeat of last time.

  "I came for information," she said. She spoke effortlessly, as though the glass wasn't there at all. The slightest movement from her speech had pressed her into the edge of it, and a thin red line began to appear at her neck. Tristan was transfixed on the blood for a moment, but then realized what she'd said. He gave her a hard shove into the wall, knocking the wind out of her.

  "Information? And what makes you think I'll tell you anything? Actually, what makes you think you're going to walk back out of here?" he asked. His voice was choking and irritated; who the fuck did she think she was? She'd left scars -- permanent scars on him, not to mention what she'd put Tanith through by association. Thank God they weren't stigmatic twins, or Tanith very well may have the same scars on her body, and Taran wouldn't have stood for that.

  Daphne laughed. "Let go of me, and I'll tell you." After she received a scoffing noise as an answer, she shrugged. "Fine. Suit yourself."

  Taran wanted to jam the glass through her eye. She was so smug, so utterly sure of herself; if he didn't want to eviscerate her, he'd want to do other things to her. He was supposed to be the psychotic one, not her. With a gnash of his teeth, he let go of her - slowly - and gave her just enough room to turn around and face him. What was this bitch playing at?

  "I came to offer you a trade," she said. She held her hands up a little, as if to say that she was unarmed. "I need to know very specifically the name of a vampire who can control by speech, and where I can find her. In return, I'll let you slice me up just as much as you want, on the condition that you don't remove any limbs and you don't cripple me." She raised her eyebrows at him, as though she were offering him gold.

  Taran just stared at her. He began to laugh, the sound slow and low, and then becoming high-pitched, almost like a cawing sound. Suddenly, Daphne would find the glass mere millimeters from her right eye as Taran advanced, pinning her against the wall again. "And tell me, princess, what's to stop me from cutting your pretty little face off and wearing it as a Halloween mask?" he asked. His voice was dangerously on edge, and his mouth twisted into a jagged sort of smile.

  Daphne didn't even blink when he slammed her into the wall. She just smiled, smiled wide and pretty and taunting at him. "Because," she said slowly. She raised her hand up and with her forearm pushed his hand from her eye. Slowly, she rolled onto her toes and put herself inches from his face. For a moment, it almost seemed like she was going to kiss him. She moved past his mouth, however, and came to stop just at his ear. Her right hand rested just on his shoulder, something chilling about her touch, while her left moved to his neck, fingertips brushing it gently.

  "If, in another four hours, my boyfriend comes home to find me still gone, he will have all three rings of Bruja looking for me. And when the trail leads to you, he will feel that the only proper revenge lies in your sister. He will break every bone in her wings, and then he will rip them out. After that, he'll hook her up to an IV and pump her full of amphetamines - and then he'll start cutting off limbs, one.. by.. one.."

  She could feel him trembling with rage, and she pulled back to level her gaze at him. Slowly, her hand went to the glass he had, and she wrapped her fingers around his wrist, bringing it up to her throat. "Don't believe me?" she asked softly. She smiled broadly again, a Cheshire sort of grin. "Then do it."

  Taran stood very still for a long time. His head was indecipherable; static had replaced rational thought. He could see Daphne's body strung up on piano wire, ravens picking at her dead flesh as children threw rocks at her and headlines said it was the worst crime of the century. He could smell the rotting meat sliding off her bones and taste the copper of her blood, and he could almost...

  "The only vampire I know who can do that is a female Akka. She goes by Purezza, and she's out of Mayhem, but she's almost never there. Last I heard, she was obsessing over the feline bartender at Hellcat's Hollow," he said. His voice was measured, but casual by sound.

  "And now that I've gotten that out of the way, be a good girl and scream for me."

  In the end, she had.

---

  She swore to herself as she tried to balance on the white sink in the bathroom she and Victor shared. She had medical tape in her mouth and was attempting to rip it, but she'd dropped the roll and it had gone whizzing past her other hand, which hadn't been occupied by the scissors just yet. Daphne hated trying to treat herself with a passion. In the shower, pooled at the bottom were the remnants of her clothing from earlier - a white blouse that was so soaked in blood it was red, a bra much the same, and khaki slacks that had also begun to turn a lovely crimson hue. She stood in her underwear in front of the mirror, in a great deal of pain, and trying to patch herself up and get back out of the house before Victor could come home.

  She'd felt so guilty listening to his voicemails. He'd called more than he normally did, and on the second one, she could hear the edge in his voice. She knew that when he came home and didn't find her, she was going to have very limited time to find out everything she needed to; not before he and the rest of Crimson went after her. She hadn't been kidding about the things she'd said to Taran. They were too goddamned fast, and they made a clean sweep. As soon as she got to Hellcat's Hollow, the counter would start for how long it would be until they found her. She just hoped she'd be done with her work by then.

  She choked back a sob as she dumped alcohol on her arm. It wasn't the pain that did it, not really. It was the notion that in a very short amount of time, Victor would know everything about her. She almost couldn't handle it; felt her heart breaking in two for a split second, but then she forced it back down, biting hard on a towel as she jammed a needle into her arm. She was stitching herself shut in such a primitive manner that she looked like a ragdoll. She let her mental anguish become physical pain, and ignored the tears springing from her eyes as she worked the needle as quickly as she could.

  He'd done a number on her. Her back looked like she'd been attacked by wild dogs, and her arms.. She stitched herself up with dark thread, because it was all she could find. She looked like something from the Nightmare Before Christmas. He'd really wanted to bleed her out, and she knew it, but he couldn't. He wouldn't risk his sister, and Daphne admired him a little for it. He'd done what he'd had to do to keep her safe; and now Daphne was doing what she had to do.

  She gathered the clothing up and threw it into the fireplace, thanking God that it was winter. As they burned, she dressed herself slowly, and in the end, had needed to take a dose of painkillers to stop the utter burning coming from every open wound. Her back was wrapped and patched as best she could manage, and her arms were literally sewn shut, medical tape covering the wounds to ward infection. She slid her scalpel into a holder she'd fashioned for it, something that hid in her sleeve and attached to her wrist watch. With a quick douse of water on the fire and a check around the house to make sure she'd left next to no evidence of her arrival and departure, she headed for the Hollow.

  By the time Victor had arrived, the fire place had gone cold. He found the house dark, and there were still no signs of Daphne. He felt a little indignant, but still called her name a few times, promising himself to chastise her if she ended up being there and simply had been ignoring him for the day for whatever reason. He glanced around the bedroom, and then went into the bathroom, pausing at the doorway.

  He almost - almost - missed it. But Victor hadn't been a Hunter for so long just to forget his attention to small details. He walked forward slowly, and leaned over the tub where the water had been dripping, as if it had been run recently. He knew he'd made sure he'd turned it all the way off after his shower that morning, and Daphne had already been gone. There, at the bottom of the tub and right at the edges of the grooves in the drain, was blood.

  Victor pulled out his phone and dialed. "Connor?" He spoke deliberately and harshly. "I need you to do something for me."

In Connor's opinion, this was more than just 'doing something' for Victor.  This was showing up as his uncle's personal army, pretty much.  Problem was, the hunters willing to do pro bono work, even for their doctor, were limited.  Connor had Lucio and Matsumori already hitting up the places that Victor listed as being somewhere Daphne might go, with Chase trying to discern what the hell was going to happen.  He'd actually been at her place when Victor called, so she'd been there as soon as she started, which only flipped him out some about this.  She was getting mixed images, which didn't make a LOT of sense to him because he wasn't the one who experienced that sort of thing, but she explained it as being 'confused'.  The only thing she was telling him was absolutely certain about the whole situation was that there was more blood involved than she'd ever personally experienced in these things.  Victor hadn't been too surprised by that when Connor mentioned it, and Connor could understand it after his uncle's description of the bathtub and the little bit of blood that someone hadn't managed to rinse completely, and Connor couldn't honestly tell what the hell was going on. 

Was Daphne a victim, or the aggressor?  Supposing that blood was hers, why didn't she just wait for Victor?  Connor had gone immediately to their apartment to meet up with his uncle, and neither of them could find any evidence of a struggle.  A fast sweep of the place had Victor confirming that the medical supplies had been used, just due to quantity.  Connor believed him because Victor was almost obsessive about keeping medical supplies stocked wherever he might find himself requiring them, and so if anyone was going to know if they'd been used, it'd be him.  That still didn't make sense, and Victor quite obviously agreed.  He even tried calling her again, but left no message when she still didn't answer.  It was the last time he bothered with it for the time being.

"I've got LeCroix's hyena friend finding her phone.  As long as we find that, we should find her," he informed Victor, having just gotten off the phone with Skye while she watched over Jason's shoulder and tried to explain what the hell he was doing as he hacked into the system he needed.  Connor didn't really care what the guy was doing and how, so long as he found Daphne. 

Victor was of the same opinion, having changed out of the street clothes he wore in transit between the hospital and home for something he'd be more likely to be hunting in; something that wouldn't show blood well, would allow ease of movement, and hid the multitude of knives he preferred along with the single gun he carried, just in case.  He pulled a black wool peacoat on over it all, and he knew it was impossible to tell that he was armed like he was.  Connor looked more casual, but he nearly always did.

"Lucio and Matsumori haven't come up with anything?" he asked as he walked in, keys in hand and his cell slipping into his pocket.

"Nada.  They're basically able to tell us that she hasn't gone anywhere that you know of.  Either she's in some deep shit, or she doesn't want to be found," Connor pointed out, though the blood in the tub made him think it was the former. 

"Do you think this could have anything to do with what I told her?" Victor asked, and it was actually a shockingly clear show of just how worried he was over it that he even asked.  His tone didn't have to betray him when his words did, and that was what made Connor pause in his final sweep of the room before he opened the door.

"No, I don't.  If she's been attacked, it can't possibly have anything to do with that, and it's not like she's a hunter or anything.  It's probably just a really, really nasty coincidence.  We'll find her."

They were opening the doors to Connor's older black Lincoln by the time his cell rang, and he had to fight not to tell Skye to shut the idiot in the background up as she was trying to tell him the address that they'd found on the cell phone.  Jason seemed immensely pleased with himself, between finding the address AND the time in which he'd done it, but Connor was going to have to mention shutting his face during an emergency for next time.  That didn't currently matter, though.

"Got the address.  Hang on."  Fortunately, the police were paid not to pull over this particular Lincoln.  Connor didn't have lunch with the higher ups for no reason.

  With any luck, they'd be on their wild goose chase for a few hours. Daphne was sharp; she'd acted as though she didn't pay attention to Victor when he spoke to Connor, or when she heard matters involving hunting or the Guilds, but she had. She knew exactly how the waves would come - and what direction they would come in. For that reason alone she'd chosen not to take her own car, instead breaking yet another law and stealing a fine-looking Suzuki GSX-R 750 that she came across not long after leaving Taran's. Her own car was stuffed in a parking garage next to an attractive looking Jaguar - oh, the fucking irony.

  The helmet wasn't with the bike when she took it; she'd been left to assume whoever the owner was had taken it in with them. It was causing her back great pain to maneuver through the parking garage and out into the street, and she gritted her teeth, regretting the small dose of painkillers she'd had to take. She didn't want to be completely drugged out, or she'd be sloppy, and that just wouldn't do. She could feel moisture on her back where her wounds had begun to seep through the bandages, and as she hit the street, she could only hope that they would hold for another hour or so. She'd have time to change them - one last time - and then, well, it wouldn't matter much, would it? As she moved through traffic, she realized that she hated riding without a helmet - sunglasses were no proper substitute, and by the time she reached the Hollow, her face stung from sand and grit that had been pushed up into her face from the vehicles in front of her.

  Her lower back and forearms were numb with pain, from both the strain of the position she'd had to sit in and the very fresh wounds. She could feel the stitches brushing against important parts of her arms when she flexed her muscles, and she tried not to do it very often. The sensation of the thread was foreign in her flesh, alien and invasive. It stung like iodine, but she had no "quick fix" for it. Retribution was all that could force her moving forward, and so she did just that.

  Once inside, she headed straight for the bar. She ignored her windblown hair; it would tax her arm too much at the moment to try and fix it, so a good shake was all she could offer. She looked along the bar, first to the tall blonde man at one end, and then the shorter brunette man at the other. His eyes were stunning - chartreuse, almost. That had to be the feline bartender - the other man was built too big, and his movements were staggered and bulked. She approached with a mild manner of caution, but she didn't have much time to waste.

  "Excuse me... can I speak with you a moment?" she asked. She didn't lean on the counter for fear of aggravating her stitches any more than they already were, but she rested close enough to it to give the illusion of a casual stance. "It's about a little problem I think we have in common."

  Darren, of course, could smell the blood as soon as she walked into the bar. His brows nearly shot up into his hair when she addressed him, and he didn't miss the pained way she moved. Hunter was his guess, especially by her arrival - why did all of those women have motorcycles? Did they all have a deathwish? Was he the only person still content with four tires? He came over to her, because - well, she was pretty - and he was curious, and put an elbow on the counter.

  "I have a lot of problems, but I don't see how they'd involve you," he said honestly. He smiled warmly, even though he was a little freaked out - but look at his luck. Purezza, Persephone... He had a knack for attracting psychotic women who wanted to harm him somehow. He poured a glass of water to look occupied.

  "I'm sure it does, actually. Vampire, does something with her voice. Tell me where I can find her, and I'll make sure that the problem goes away," she said. There was a sort of promise in her voice that Darren had heard in Danielle's once or twice, and he straightened a little, cutting the cute act short.

  "Hunter?" he asked. He tilted his head to the side. The Hunters from the Guilds had been trying to catch Purezza for months now, but they were either too backed up with work, or she was too damned smart for them. Akkan vampires had a damn fine sense of self-preservation, so he wagered she wasn't entirely stupid.

  Daphne didn't seem to smile so much as bare her teeth at him. "I need firestone, and I need a location, and I will bring you her face on a plate in return," she said. She did smile then, and it was a jagged, razor-sharp thing.

  Darren's hand shook a little for a moment as he fished inside his shirt. There was a small snapping sound, and the firestone pendant Ash had given him came free. He turned his back so that Dave couldn't see what he was doing, not entirely, and handed it to her. "Lady," he said honestly, "you're freaking the shit out of me. I'll be truthful. But if you can really erase that leech from this planet, than I'll give you that and whatever the fuck else you ask." He dropped it into her open palm.

  Daphne turned as soon as she had it, and headed for the door. She paused, and then turned back and looked at him. "Please don't tell anyone I was here," she said. She spoke so innocently, as though the entire exchange had never happened. And like that, she was gone.

  Darren didn't hear the bike start again, which perplexed him even more, because when he darted outside after her, she'd disappeared. Even the scent of blood was gone, though if it had been coming from her, he couldn't believe she wasn't passing out. She'd asked for him not to say that he'd seen her, which of course meant that he whipped out his phone and immediately called Connor.

  Darren never did what he was told. It was precisely what Daphne'd been counting on.

He'd allowed himself some time to clean up as much of the evidence of what he'd done to Daphne as was possible and rage silently over not being permitted to kill her before he jumped into 'survivalist-escape' mode.  He was on the phone with his sister as he threw the things he absolutely needed in the bag that he always had mostly packed for one such occasion, all the while mentally cursing himself for taking so long to clean up.  It wasn't like someone who was really looking wouldn't find evidence of what had happened, but he wasn't worried about the police.  Tanith would take care of that, regardless of which detectives were on the scene.  He was worried about the boyfriend that Daphne had mentioned, and already imagining the kind of psycho she could possibly be dating (especially considering what she'd said about him).  Besides getting an image of someone like himself (fucking psycho-bitch, he hated her way too much to believe that would have ever worked out without the guy killing her), all he could think was that she's really been lying and the guy was a nobody that had no idea what was going on, or he was someone like DeMortei; strong, a predator sort of shifter, and ridiculously low on morals.  He wasn't so sure on character other than that, because ripping a bird's wings out was fucking harsh, not to mention lacking in ANY finesse, but going after someone's family instead of them was beyond cold. 

However you wanted to look at it, he was getting the fuck out of dodge, and he was trying to get Tanith out, too.

"GODDAMNIT, TANITH.  WHY DO YOU ALWAYS ARGUE WITH ME AND PLAY 20 QUESTIONS?!" he finally demanded, losing his shit just a little.  He could hold it together better when it was him under the knife, and had in the past, but not when it threatened his sister.  "GO to DeMortei's house.  Go.  His, or one of those SWAT guys.  Hell, fucking have a party and make sure they're ALL there.  Just DON'T fucking go home, and DO NOT FUCKING STAY THERE ALONE!"

"TARAN.  SHUT UP.  Tell me what the FUCK you're into now!  You HATE London, so it's gotta be massive if you're telling me to go there!" she insisted in turn, though he could guess that she was in the process of moving from the sounds around her yelling.

"IT DOESN'T MATTER!  JUST DO IT!  WHEN HAVE I EVER STEERED YOU WRONG WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR SAFETY?!  JUST FUCKING GO!" he shouted back, snagging the last important thing (his stash of fraudulent credit cards and the wallet of legitimate bank cards) and wrapping anything that might be valuable or breakable in the clothes that were already in there.  He closed it up, threw the lock on it (just in case he didn't get to it fast enough), and dropped it off his balcony, watching it fall pretty much perfectly behind the dumpster out there.  He was just about to take off himself, but it was hard to do that when he had his sister still yelling at him and demanding to know what was going on.

"Tanith.  TANITH.  STOP." 

No good. 

"God fucking damn it, just fucking fuck me already," he blurted, the fury and panic not going too well together, and what was that fucking noise?  He'd heard it before, not too long before, but he had NO FUCKING CLUE what it could be.  What was it?  WHERE was it?  "STOP YELLING.  I hear something!"

He heard something, alright.  It sounded like something buzzing, like an electric razor or a dildo or something.  Since he didn't own either, that made absolutely no sense, so why did he hear it?  Oh, God, and was it seriously coming from underneath his couch?

"Fuck!" he hissed, holding the phone in one hand as he actually just flipped the couch backwards to find the buzzing thing, just as it stopped.

A phone.  A fucking cell phone.  He saw the name 'Victor' flashing for just an instant before it switched to 'Three Missed Calls'.  He had a few seconds to tell his sister to go, hang up, and it was just as she was still trying to get him to talk that his door came crashing in.  He hoped she didn't hear that, but he didn't have the time to worry about it.  He was shoving the phone in his pocket after a quick, panicked look at the shorter blond man with the gun who'd busted the door in, and already sprinting for the balcony and a swan dive.  He had NO problem shifting mid-air, and he was going to do whatever it took to make it work, including dodging bullets, if necessary.

It wasn't necessary.  He got as far as the door out onto the fire-escape balcony before an elbow connected with his face and knocked his feet right out from under him.  He hit the floor HARD, head smacking with a sick sort of THUNK that echoed in his brain, and there was suddenly a set of hands that probably belonged to the same body as the elbow dragging him back into the apartment.  He was so fucked, and the sharp punch he took to the nose when he started to struggle was just further proof. 

The psycho-bitch's cavalry had arrived.  She hadn't been bluffing.

---------------------

Connor had to admit just how bad this was looking as soon as they reached the apartment building, and the walk up had only made his feeling on the situation worse just because the place was a shithole, but Victor wasn't seeing that part.  His uncle was climbing the fire escapes to get in the place from the other end, since their guy was bound to be trying to escape.  Connor didn't know that Victor got to watch a duffel bag fall a few stories from the apartment they'd pegged for being the one they needed, and he also wasn't sure that the man was in place when he busted the door in.  He just took a minute or so outside to listen to what was going on within (which wasn't hard, considering just how much yelling the occupant was doing, not to mention throwing things around).  It sounded to him like some heavy piece of furniture got knocked over, which suggested a panicked individual, and that sounded good enough to him.  He actually tapped ever so lightly along the edge of the door, looking for the more solid areas (that was bound to be where any deadbolts would be, and he sure as hell found them).  This guy had to be a paranoid freak, or he wouldn't have had locks like that, and Connor estimated he was going to have to fire twice to bust up the locks enough to get in. 

So, he did.  He ensured it was in quick succession, two shots fired just a second before his shoulder impacted the wood, and it shattered and gave way.  All those locks, and the door itself was a waste.  He made brief eye contact with eyes almost as pale blue as his and much more panicked before the guy bolted, and any shouting Connor did was absolutely useless.  It wasn't like Taran was getting too far.

Victor's elbow really DID come out of nowhere.  Even Connor hadn't seen him waiting out there, though he definitely saw Taran go down.  There was a choked sound out of the man upon impact, then another awesome impact noise as the body hit the ground, but Victor didn't look like he was taking the time to enjoy his work.  He was dragging Taran back into the apartment within a few seconds of the guy going down, and even nailed him right in the nose as soon as he started trying to get himself up.  Victor got some badass points out of Connor right then, but that was worrisome.  Victor was always cooler and more calm on a hunt.

"WHOA.  Hey, Victor, don't hit him again!" he called out suddenly, rushing to grab his uncle before the man could drill the guy on the ground again for trying to move.  Taran took a wild kick at them that nearly tripped Connor up and definitely eased the blond's sympathy some, but he'd gotten Victor to stop with the hitting.

Instead, the older man pulled out a long, extremely sharp knife. 

"Oh, yeah, that's an improvement," Connor remarked, rolling his eyes, but he had a gun drawn, so he couldn't really complain TOO hard.  The only problem was that Victor was more likely to use that knife right then.

"Who the fuck are you two?!" Taran demanded, holding his bleeding nose and propping himself up on a hand without trying to get off the floor.  His eyes were on Victor's knife instead of Connor's gun, which had Connor already assessing him as more dangerous than he seemed.  The guy knew who to watch, and which weapon was going to hurt him worse. 

"Where is she?" Victor demanded instead of answering, and Connor was NOT surprised. 

"Victor!  Why don't you do a sweep of the place, and I'll keep him here?" Connor offered, wanting to get his uncle away from the guy more than anything.  Someone was going to end up seriously hurt or dead, if not.  Other than a withering, cold look, Victor even did as had been suggested.  Score one for Connor, though he'd barely had a chance to get something in Taran's hand to sop up his bloody nose with and confirmation on his name before Victor returned, looking pissed.

"I found blood.  Where.  Is.  She."

Connor glanced down at Taran, who didn't look at all surprised by Victor finding blood.  More, disappointed.  He'd probably tried to clean up or something.  Idiot.  "I'm going to suggest you answer our questions, buddy.  It'll be a hell of a lot less painful for you," Connor told him, one eyebrow cocked up in appraisal.  What was Taran going to do?

"If we're lucky, she's fucking bled out by now.  Go fuck yourselves," the man snarled, and that was pretty much the stupidest thing he could have done, since Victor had jerked him up by his shirt and smashed him up against the wall in the next few seconds.  It happened fast enough that Connor only had enough time to make sure the older man didn't slit the guy's throat, but Victor still hadn't gotten any answers.  It was a pretty good bet that Taran would live until Victor had asked his questions, at the very least.

Connor was going to do as much of that asking as he could.  "Bled out?  What did you do to her?"

"So, you're the fucking boyfriend?  I thought it was the other one when he busted in, but you're too pissed not to be," Taran remarked, watching Victor over the few inches that separated them like he wasn't being pinned to the wall with a knife to his throat.  He had a cold sort of fury on his face that actually creeped Connor out just a little, like the guy was probably going to imagining pretty awful things for both of them during their conversation, but he had to keep control of this.  They needed to know what was going on.  "God, you're fucking old.  She's a goddamned psycho, but I figure she's smart enough to hide it and she's definitely hot.  She could have gotten someone better."

"WOW.  Seriously, are you even understanding what's going on here?" Connor suddenly snapped, completely not believing that the guy had the nerve to even say that shit to someone who had a knife to his throat.  Victor got credit for only putting a little pressure on the knife from there, which in turn had Taran pressing himself further back against the wall.  "Just tell us where she is and what you did to her!  It's not that hard!"

"Tell us.  If you don't, I'm going to remove anything good you have from your life, one little piece at a time until you crack, and then, I'll kill you.  Don't play games, not this time," Victor told him quietly, and Connor glanced at his uncle carefully, not so sure he liked what he was hearing.  Victor had always been a 'good guy', a protector, despite his usually cold and apathetic attitude.  He'd always been a good person, someone who could be depended on to do the right thing, even if he made an issue out of it at the time.  This didn't sound like a 'good guy' sort of thing.

"Uh, Victor?"

Connor might as well have been on another planet for all the attention the two of them paid him, so he actually shut up for a minute.  He was watching their staring contest like it was something he'd never seen before, and to this caliber, it wasn't.  He'd never seen Victor like this.

It worked, though. 

"I cut her up, bad, because she caught me not too long ago and kept me a few days while she carved me up to her heart's content.  I'm a shifter and I'll still be scarred for life because of that bitch, so when she told me I could slice her up all I wanted, I took the chance, even if she laid down some rules," the man finally explained, still calm and quiet.  The way he and Victor's demeanors were almost mirroring each others' was kind of freaky, but Victor was getting answers.

"Why would she let you cut her?" Victor asked, and this time, Taran didn't give him shit.

"She wanted information about a vampire.  Purezza, out of Mayhem.  I told her what she wanted to know and that the vampire was obsessing over some cat at the triste's place, and she upheld her end of the bargain.  I didn't kill her, even if I wanted to."

Victor actually cursed, letting go of Taran rather suddenly when he heard all that.  Connor still had one thing to ask, despite hearing that Daphne had probably gone to Darren for information and knowing how bad that could be.  "Why the hell did she leave her phone here?"

"How the fuck am I supposed to know?  She probably did it on purpose!" Taran snapped this time, obviously less calm now that he'd been released.

"Why wou--"

"To fucking throw us off," Victor hissed, already turning towards the door, though he twisted around for a second to point the knife at Taran.  "If you take off, I will hunt you and your sister down and kill you."

"WHAT?!  I TOLD YOU WHAT YOU WANTED TO KNOW!  LOOK AT WHAT THAT BITCH DID TO ME!" Taran exploded, ripping his bloodied shirt up and over his head to show the scarring on his chest and especially on his back.  He'd been lucky as hell that he still HAD a raven form.  "Are you really going to tell me you wouldn't have done the same?!"

Connor just STARED at the scarring, less intricate than what was on his own back, but deeper.  If Daphne had done that, she had done it specifically to cause pain, whereas his tormentor had been insane enough to be caught up with her design.  Both were cruel, but the purpose of causing pain that was evident in Taran's skin was actually frightening.  The blond glanced at Victor, who looked like he was memorizing the damage in the man's skin, and then they were both leaving.  Victor sheathed the knife and didn't say another word. 

This was so beyond anything Connor had signed up for.

  The cab ride had been a short one. She went from the Hollow to the hospital, securing her hair back in a baseball cap that she'd procured from a man on the street for twenty bucks. She went straight to the locker area and pulled a dress shirt that she knew Victor had left behind. She had a good idea about how to go about this, but she needed to get away from civilization and get herself patched back up before she could do it. She quickly exited out of the hospital via the parking garage, and got into another cab, this one a different company than the first.

  Daphne had the driver take her to her small cabin in the woods where she kept most of her "trophies", and had the driver drop her off at the wrong address on purpose. She paid in cash, and walked the next mile and a half to her driveway, which was itself a quarter mile long. By the time she got to the door, her back was stinging with a mixture of blood and sweat, and she could barely keep her balance. That fucking bird. It was almost amazing that he didn't just break his reign of control and kill her; as Daphne had allowed herself to be sliced and diced, she realized that it was something new for him to have a willing victim. She couldn't even imagine the sort of thoughts she'd be having if the situation had reversed.

  She admired him, in a way. It was too bad she'd set him up as yet another waste of time for Victor and whomever else he'd have with him. It would probably be Connor, she surmised, stripping her clothing off and throwing them into the furnace. She walked to the shower and stepped in, a bar of antibacterial soap held in her aching hands. When the water hit her back, she screamed, but it was cut short by her utter need to think. How much time had passed? How far could they have gotten by now? Surely their next stop would be the Hollow, which was literally at the opposite end of the city from where she'd come.

  Navigating Mayhem would be next to impossible for them, too - they'd need to plan that one out. They couldn't just rush into the vampire city, or they wouldn't be coming back out. Another point in Daphne's favour was that they'd never even find this house - at least, not for a while. Eventually, she was sure they would, but it wasn't something you'd find unless you went looking. It wasn't even in her name - it was in her brother's name - and his name wasn't even close to her own. In fact, even if Victor found the name, he wouldn't know it was her brother; nobody but Daphne knew that she was aware she had one. Her parents still didn't even know, but Daphne was a resourceful sort of girl. It was why Victor was with her.

  She patched herself back up again, this time doing a much more meticulous job. She'd bought herself at least an hour to burn, and she did it ensuring that she wasn't going to bleed out before she made her mark. Once she was dressed, she went down into the basement. The floor was cold cement, and there was virtually nothing in it save a hanging light that swung to and fro when you clicked the chain that turned it on and off. She stood there for a moment, taking a mental inventory of the things she would need, and then she proceeded forward - to the real room.

  You'd almost miss the door if you weren't looking for it. It didn't have a handle that you could see; it was the draft from beneath it that would betray its existence most of the time. Daphne pushed on it, hard, and with a loud click and a slow groan, the seal of the door released, and it gradually began to swing backwards. She shouldered out of the way and entered. Before her was a simple table - almost like an operating table. There was a steel cart with a sheet over it, and in the corner a rack that had neatly folded towels and sheets. There was a large basin with a number of chemicals on a shelf above it, and a small blue clothes basket in the corner that had a heap of old scrubs in it - ones she'd used and hadn't gotten around to burning, yet.

  The real horror was in the room adjacent to it, but Daphne didn't enter it so much as run her fingers along the knob, almost lovingly. The dark room held photos upon photos upon photos of her work; the good, the bad, and the beautiful. A wall collage of terrifying smirks was there, some photos so overexposed all that could be seen was the red of their Glasgow smiles on a blanched, fleshy canvas. She remembered sitting for hours and staring at them, trying to arrange them in such a way that they told a story; in the end, she'd opted to randomize them. Every photo had a name, a date, and a time of death on the back of it. The handwriting was hers, but not any sort of penmanship that Victor, or anyone else for that matter, would recognize.

  She glanced down at her watch, and then exited the hidden room, crossed the basement and headed back up the stairs. She needed to get a few things before the hunt began.

---

  As the sun went down, Daphne walked along the edge of the woods that bordered Mayhem. She wasn't stupid; she knew precisely where this place was. A few well-aimed knives would make even the most seedy-looking vampire-junkie talk. As she came across the black roses she was seeking, she began to feel a creeping sensation in her spine. When she turned, there was a woman standing not but six or seven feet off, well-dressed and...  She was beautiful, actually.

  Daphne did precisely what she'd taught herself to do her entire life: she lied. She projected fear and need, projected the image of being an easy piece of prey, and most of all, projected the want for the person she "thought" would protect her: Victor. In the end, it had been the scent of his shirt that Purezza had picked up; she'd have known it anywhere.

  "And what precisely are you doing here, child?" she asked, tilting her head a little. She wasn't using her tricks, not yet. No, she wanted to savor the fear as much as she could before she struck. After all this time, you'd think that silly hunter would have learned to tell the people he loved to stay out of her woods. Oh well, no matter.

  "I'm lost," Daphne said, voice unsure of itself. She hugged her arms to her chest, thankful that she'd applied those disgusting mentholated bandages to her body. They utterly destroyed the scent of blood, even if they were obnoxious. At least they had a nice cooling feel to them, despite the constant hum of the stinging they did to her open wounds. "I was supposed to meet a friend, and I got lost in the woods..." she trailed off.

  Purezza was approaching her - no, actually, approaching wasn't the word for it. She was stalking after her. Daphne felt her feet move beneath her as she skittered back, trying to flee. When she turned to break into a full run, she ran right into Purezza's chest, and with a flick of her wrist, the vampire deposited Daphne onto the ground on her back.

  "He may as well have put a bow on you," she said cheerfully. "Come here, my dear," she said.

  Daphne rose almost instantly, taking very, very forced steps towards her. She was trying not to, trying to resist, but she just found that she wanted to come closer, and she couldn't stop herself from doing it.

  "Oh, I'm going to enjoy this," Purezza cheered, reaching out to take Daphne by the wrist. She yanked her so hard she nearly fell, grabbing her head forcefully. "What do you think? I'll drain you, and then -- oh, I could cut you up, but I think I'll turn you instead, just like I did for that Arun witch's little boyfriend. How would your hunter like that? Or I could cut you first, and then turn you..." she mused.

  Daphne stood very, very still, but her fingers twitched slowly. Something was coming out of her sleeve, and working its way into her right hand. Purezza didn't notice it; she was too busy fantasizing about how much she was going to hurt her pretty new toy.

  "Be a good girl now, and hold still while I have a taste," Purezza instructed. She lowered her lips to Daphne's throat, and sank her teeth down into them. Simultaneously, Daphne's hand came up, jamming the syringe into the side of her face. For a moment, nothing happened - and then she began to scream.

  Purezza jerked back so hard she almost ripped Daphne's throat out in the process, and Daphne used every merit of her self control not to fall backwards onto the grass and stone again. She pulled something else out of her sleeve, and while Purezza screamed and flailed around on the ground, Daphne hooked it around her neck so viciously that if it had been piano wire, she may very well have fatally wounded her.

  "Be a good girl and don't scream anymore, or it'll be the last fucking sound you ever make," Daphne said, voice very laboured and hoarse. She let the crucifix fall against Purezza's chest, and when the vampire screamed again, another syringe worked its way level with her left eye.

  "Scream again, and I'm putting it in your eye. Shut your fucking mouth."

  Purezza stopped and sat as utterly still as she could while the burning liquid scarred the side of her face. Holy water. That bitch had holy water. And now a crucifix? What the FUCK was happening. Her voice hadn't done ANYTHING. She could feel her insanity bubbling around her as Daphne instructed her up and ushered her towards the car.

  "That cross is stopping you from escaping. You try anything - anything - and it won't even matter where you run, bitch, because I will find you, and this will be like a fucking day at the beach compared to what I will do. Do you understand?" Daphne spoke very clearly, handcuffing her and shoving her face-first into the backseat of an undercover cop car. It was yet another object she'd "procured", although this time it was more from a connection than from someone at the NYPD. It hadn't even been reported stolen yet.

  "You WILL release me," Purezza demanded. Her eyes were on fire. She hissed at Daphne, trying to ignore the pain as the side of her face became blanketed by black veins. The holy water was working its way through her system, making her vision blurred and her thoughts hard to discern.

  "Oh, why? Because of your magic voice? Yeah, bitch. I got earplugs."

  The car vanished down the road, nothing left as to a sign that they were there except for one dropped syringe of seemingly harmless water on the ground.

No, Darren never did what he was told, and he'd called Connor immediately after Daphne left.  He got no response, left a message telling the 'asshole' to call him back, and then texted him with the same message.  Whatever was necessary to get the point across. 

Connor was getting into his car, Victor already in the passenger's seat and ready to go, when he checked his texts, saw that Darren had called, and just called him back.  Naturally, he got no response because the moron was at work and probably couldn't get to his phone, so he called the bar itself as he broke a few speeding laws trying to get there.  If Darren was calling and texting him immediately after Taran had told them that's where Daphne was going, then that was where they needed to be.  He called Erik on his way, calling the two hunters off of their current search and putting them on the hunt with a little less information than they'd started with.  He told him she was after Purezza and that the target was likely in Mayhem, but that was still very little information.  Mayhem was a big place, and they really didn't want to tip the vampire off that Daphne was after her.  Short of doing so, it would be impossible to get hunters into the city. 

Damn it.

"You gave her firestone?"  Victor demanded as soon as Darren had finished speaking, and Connor actually covered his face with his hand, trying not to watch.  This was just getting better and better.

"She came in here stinking of blood and telling me she was going to give me that bitch's face on a plate, Uncle Victor, what was I supposed to do?  Say 'no', so I could have another scary-ass woman pissed off at me?" Darren demanded indignantly, though he did look a little chastised by the whole thing.  He knew he shouldn't have done it, and Ash didn't look pleased that his gift had been handed off to some potentially psychotic woman, but he understood.  He was volunteering his office for this conversation, and mostly just watching.

"You can't possibly tell me that you thought Victor's girlfriend was going to start stalking you if you told her 'no'," Connor pointed out, looking disbelieving.  He'd met Daphne, and he would have refused her.

"How was I supposed to know that was his girlfriend?  She didn't give me her name or say why she wanted to kill the vampire, just that she did!  Besides, she was hot," he added, as though that made sense.  In a way, it did, and it wouldn't be such a big deal for Darren when Andrew was satisfied with his level of training.  He was getting better, but obviously not fast enough.

"Seriously, you have got to stop doing that.  A LOT of the bad things are attractive," Connor pointed out, cutting Victor's pissy response off before the man could give Darren shit for hitting on his girlfriend.  Darren still got the point, though.

"How did you even land that one?  You're old!"

"Oh, my God, are you all on drugs?  That is NOT the point!" Connor blurted, rolling his eyes again.  Taran had basically said the same thing just a little while ago.  Victor didn't look any more pleased this time than he did before, though Connor thought he saw the triste's mouth quirk up some in amusement over the remark.  Great.  Ash thought it was funny.

"This is getting us nowhere!" Victor snapped, looking like he wanted to just leave, but really, where was he going to go?  He couldn't burst into Mayhem anymore than they could. 

Well, actually, Connor could, in a sense.  He could call a certain vampire up who happened to have a house in Mayhem, and he could see if Purezza had been around at all.  There were no guarantees that Val would know, but it was worth a shot.  Naturally, his phone rang right as he was opening his mouth to suggest it, and he muttered in annoyance before answering Chase's call.

"Got anything?"

"You have horrible phone manners, but yes.  You're not going to find her in Mayhem.  Whatever she's doing, she's being too chaotic about it for me to put it all together.  I can't really explain it, but the connection keeps getting interrupted, like static or something.  She's not even going to GO to Mayhem, just the woods outside, so your chances of finding her in that area are just about nil.  Actually, I can tell you that you don't find her there, so don't waste your time.  From there, all I'm getting is a cabin.  Make any sense?"

"Are you serious?  God damn it!  Thanks, bye," he said quickly, hanging up and probably pissing his sister off, but she'd get over it.

"What?" Victor demanded, Darren looking confused by the conversation his superior hearing had allowed him to eavesdrop on and Ash still just watching.  He didn't offer suggestions because he really didn't have too many other than 'let it happen'.  Victor hadn't liked it when he'd said it, so he didn't repeat it. 

"Does she have the key to that cabin?"

"I didn't notice it missing, but it was in the box after last night."

"Shit, Chase said we're not going to catch her in Mayhem, but that she's getting something about a cabin.  You don't think she'd have gone there, do you?"

There was a long pause as they all considered it, Connor and Victor more than anyone else, and it was Victor who cursed violently and whipped the door open to go check out that lead. 

Too bad it was the wrong cabin.

  When Purezza awoke - because somehow that bitch had figured out a way to knock her out - there were two dark figures standing over her. Well, it wasn't so much that they were dark that it was there was a beaming light in her eyes. She felt a lot of pain, more pain than she could remember since she'd been turned so long ago. When she opened her mouth to speak, it began to sear and boil, and she couldn't understand why --

  "You're awake!" Daphne cheered. She smiled broadly, tendrils of dark hair framing her face and working their way loose from her pony tail. Her bright green eyes were absolutely shining, like a child on Christmas morning. The figure next to her remained silent - Hell, it even had on a sterile mask.

  Daphne turned to her brother and gave him a stern look. "Kevin, she's a vampire. You can't catch any diseases from her except for vampirism," she said.

  He shifted beneath the black scrubs he had on and shook his head. "No. Way. You know how I am about those things," he hissed. "The only reason I'm even here is because you needed that knife from me," he insisted. "My line of work is a lot less personal."

  "That's a dirty lie," Daphne said, shifting her body to block the light for a moment. She leaned down to adjust the crucifix on that Purezza still wore, causing the vampire to jolt. She looked up at him. "I'm sure if you ask the bodies, they'd say it was very personal. Speaking of which, please never tell anyone that I stole a cadaver for you. My life would be over," she retorted. She pulled her own face mask back up as she prepared to make more of a mess, and then held her hand out to him.

  "Knife, please," she said.

  Kevin held out the knife, a simple-looking object with a strange, light feel to it. He'd paid in a big way for that blade - he'd been told that it belonged to a witch once. The vampire he'd bought it off of had plenty of scars to prove it. "Giving it a test drive, huh?" he asked. He folded his arms over his chest and watched in childish curiosity while his sister worked her magic. There was no finesse to fucking a dead body; Daphne had honed her skills to a fine point. Kevin - well. He was just sick.

  Purezza made a strange howling noise as the knife cut into the skin on her stomach, and Daphne cried out in happy amazement. "So it is real!" she exclaimed. She glanced back at the vampire, whose mouth, cut open wide like an extended smile, oozed blood and acid that Daphne had experimentally poured in just to see. Her tongue was still somewhat in tact, and with a quick motion, Daphne yanked her jaw down so hard that she heard bone breaking. She made an ungraceful sawing motion and cut the tongue off near the back of the vampire's throat, and then threw it into the stainless basin beside the bed where other "items" from Purezza's body were. Fingernails, teeth, a finger or two. The Firestone didn't seem to allow her to heal much, and this new knife was no different.

  "Can I have her when you're done?" Kevin asked. His voice was hopeful, and he loomed a little too close for Purezza's comfort. She shook her head furiously at Daphne, who seemed to consider the question for a moment while she twirled the knife between her palms.

  "If you're good," she said finally. She looked down at Purezza and smiled again, this time more sweetly. "Oh, don't worry. I'll fix you up real nice for Kevin. He thinks scars are attractive. And you're right up his alley. I mean, you're already dead," she offered, trailing the blade across the vampire's breasts. She dug in sharply, making a twisted sort of butterfly design with her sternum as the body.

  "She's a little warm for me, if you want my opinion," he said. Vampire or not, the idea of a warm body disgusted him. He backed away from her a little, watching with interest as Daphne began carving a bug on her body.

  "Well, you'll have to wait 'til I'm done, I'm afraid, and that may be too late. I don't want you here much longer. We'll both get splattered when they find us. I had the body delivered to the address you told me to," she said. She leveled her gaze at him. It plainly said, Get out.

  Kevin took the hint. He didn't know how much more of his sister's good will he could sap. He didn't touch her as he squeezed by her and the tray, instead reaching out and taking the tongue. "Can I have this?" he asked. At her curt nod, he stuffed it into the chest pocket of his shirt, and then literally fled the room to do God-knows-what with it.

  Daphne looked back down to Purezza. "Well, now that we're all alone," she said with a smile. "Just us girls and all that - I think I can get down to business. Do me a favour and try to stay awake, won't you? I do so love the sound of you howling in pain like a wounded dog. Say, I wonder how long you can survive like this? Days? Weeks? Tell me, are you terribly objectionable to fire?"

  The sound of a blow torch coming on jarred Purezza's senses.

---

  As promised, the skin of her face, minus, of course, some vital parts (her eyes had been dropped into a jar of formaldehyde), was taken with surgical tools and placed neatly on ice. The case was closed and put into the freezer, where she could preserve it. She wondered if the cat would vomit? He probably would, she thought to herself with a little frown. She had promised, however, and she intended to deliver - Daphne was a serious sort of girl.

  The body had been mostly dismembered, and there were some bits (her hair and legs, for example) that had been burned so badly they weren't really there anymore at all, save some charred bits. Her chest, stomach and back was carved up so beautifully, designs that made the things she'd done to Taran look like third grade artwork. She rinsed the knife that Kevin had delivered to her very carefully, and had strapped it to her leg after changing back into her jeans. She slid into a white tanktop, neglecting to yet again redo the bandages on her arms and back - she looked like some sort of sadistic ragdoll. The black thread was terribly obvious, and the dressing she'd used had turned liquid red again. Why couldn't she stop bleeding? She didn't know, but then it struck her - the medicine she'd been taking for something previously: bloodthinners.

  A for effort.

  Her painkillers had worn off, and the adrenal rush of her kill had long since gone, leaving her feeling beaten to a bloody pulp. She locked up the back room and literally hobbled up the basement stairs. She began to feel incredibly lightheaded, ignoring the sticky and wet sensation where the stitches on her arms had torn from a near-fall down the stairs that was valiantly caught and ungracefully maneuvered. She lurched through the cabin and headed for the front door, opening it just as the barrel of a .45 caliber handgun pressed against her forehead.

  "Victor," she said, voice betraying her surprise. Behind him, fanning out, was nearly the entirety of the active Crimson guild.

  Shit.

Frankly, Victor was torn between relief that it was Daphne who'd come out of the cabin, amazement over the same thing and the grim understanding that had been growing since they'd left Taran Korakas on the floor of his apartment that the happiness he'd enjoyed the past two years was coming to a violent, bloody end.  He didn't flinch, didn't hesitate, and didn't allow his face to show anything other than the same cold determination and fury that the rest of Crimson had been seeing so far as the door opened and he leveled the gun on her.  His eyes flicked over here, taking in the stitches and bandages along with her otherwise relatively clean clothing, and then settled on her surprised expression once more. 

"Daphne," he returned curtly, and Connor stepped up beside him as Victor slowly gestured her forward a few steps with his fingertips, keeping the gun pressed to her skin.  Once there was room, Connor pointed to two pairs of hunters, Lucio and Matsumori were gestured towards the upper floor of the cabin, while Madison and Ulrich were sent downstairs.  He had LeCroix and Laun on the perimeter for the time being, even if he was worried that'd be a waste.  Even so, if Daphne had gotten to Purezza, there might be retaliation, and Connor wanted to know about it before it got bad.

"Is there anyone else inside, Daphne?" he asked, figuring it couldn't hurt to try, and he hoped that the very slight shake of her head while she watched Victor meant that his hunters would be alright.

He was keeping Victor in sight, but he ventured into the house a few steps, trying to remain close enough to help whoever might need it.  This was way too quiet so far for his liking.

---------------------------------

Abby was glad that she didn't currently have an 'official partner', since Batten telling her to bring someone bad ass that she could trust meant that she could call Xander up.  Naturally, he was all for something that was potentially crazy, and he was a close enough friend that he wouldn't mind them watching each others' backs, so it was a win-win situation.  She kind of thought that it was annoying that Batten sent her and Xander down into the lower rooms of the cabin, but she could understand it.  LeCroix was a mom, and Erik had been funny lately about blood because he'd contracted that weird-ass shifter thing.  Matsumori had been pretty good about helping him with it, but she and Xander were much better for this part.  She was pretty much assuming that, if there was going to be anything found, it would be down in the basement.  Wasn't that where all killers did their dirty business?

Oh, she had NO IDEA.

Personally, she didn't see anything too weird when they got down there, except for the fact that all that was really down there was a light that hung from the ceiling.  Abby used the hand holding her flashlight to pull the switch and grant them a little more light, since she'd need it, even if Xander didn't.  She still didn't see anything of interest.

"What the fuck?  Didn't they say this bitch got a leech, or something?" she demanded, lowering her gun ever so slightly as she looked around in obvious disappointment. 

"She looked pretty out of it. I don't think she was doing Tae-Bo down here. Let's just keep looking, we're missing somet.... what the fuck is that smell?" He moved towards where the hidden door was, and was forced to put his hand over his nose.  Of course, that drew Abby closer to where he was looking, trying to get a grip on what was going on.  She ended up holstering her gun to have a free hand and still hold the flashlight, and that was actually okay.  She trusted Xander to handle anything that might jump out at them while she drew the weapon once more.

"What is it?" she asked, because she really didn't smell it.

"Baby A, you better believe you are lucky you can't smell this shit." And with a good, hard shoulder, he nailed where the smell was coming from. The door swung open, and Abby took advantage of his moment of staring to slip past him and into the room.  She stopped dead just as much as he had, her jaw dropping even as he started muttering to himself. "Oh. My. Shit. Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?"

By the end of it, he was absolutely shouting, and she backpedaled so hard that she smacked into his chest and scared herself senseless, but she couldn't even focus on that.  The sight inside that hidden room was burning itself into her mind, and it was only after her brain had really had time to completely appreciate the horror in front of her that she could make her own comments.  They were equally useful. 

"OhfuckinggoddamnwhatthefuckXander!" she cried, way too quickly for it to really make sense, and she actually drew her gun, eyes flicking around in something about as close to panic as she got anymore, actually afraid that something in there might still be alive.  If it was, oh god, she'd have nightmares for the rest of her life.

"BATTEN!  GET DOWN HERE!  JESUS CHRIST!" she shrieked, and wasn't at all surprised that the steps on the stairs were almost on top of them by the time she'd even gotten the words out.  He'd probably come running as soon as Xander shouted, but that didn't mean she didn't feel hers was necessary.  God.

--------------------------------------

He'd have been lying if he'd said that seeing the stitches and the blood didn't upset him.  His absolute first instinct was to sit her down and slowly fix all of her injuries, then ease her into a warm bath and then bed.  That was what he wanted to do more than anything, that and go back to beat the shit out of that asshole Korakas.  That wasn't an option, however, and so he merely grit his teeth and kept his eyes on her even as he heard Ulrich and Madison yelling.  Honestly, he'd never heard Ulrich react like that to anything, and Madison sounded almost like she was going to panic.  That was NOT good.

"What have you done, Daphne?" he asked, that same cold, calm tone of voice making itself comfortable for a moment as Connor rushed his way down the stairs and Skye took up a half-way point between them and Frank's position, obviously worried.  Lucio and Matsumori were already on the stairs, though they hadn't descended completely.  The place was just to small for too many people.  He heard a few more curses, this time from Connor, then Lucio.  Whatever was down there must have been interesting, to say the least.  "What.  Did you fucking do?"

A better question was going to be, 'what was HE going to do?'

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh, fucking fuck with a fucking cherry on top. She had lost track of time. She backed up as Victor walked in, locked in some strange dance after the pause where she had to remember that she needed to breathe because she was staring at Victor and the most active members of the Crimson Guild. Fuck. FUCK. She was too goddamn dignified to show her fear, at least, she tried to be, but the grip that she had on the monster was slipping below the surface.

  Of course she'd have problems trying to do this balancing act between her two selves with Victor fucking standing right there. She hadn't thought this through very well at all. At least he'd lowered the gun, but he hadn't done anything else otherwise besides stay right in her space. He might have suspected that she'd make a break for it, and maybe she would. She didn't want to, because it looked so fucking weak, but she didn't know what was going to happen when they came back up those stairs.

  She didn't answer him, just stared at him. People moved past her, and then there was screaming, but she didn't seem to do much except stare at him. Her heart was thundering, no matter how steady she tried to keep the beat, and she wanted to push her fucking eyes in for how badly she was losing control. She needed to stay calm, and it was terribly hard to do, staring into his eyes, which were unlike anything she'd ever witnessed from him up until that point. She'd seen him mad, and angry, and yes, even livid, but this was a whole new category of rage - because that's the only word she could find for it.

  She knew that look well. She'd seen it on Taran only a few hours ago.

  She flexed her fingertips a little, arms at her sides. She was losing feeling in them; she was losing feeling all over, actually. It wasn't until Connor went downstairs - and then there was a long break between when he went down and when he came back up. She knew she was done.

  "You need to come downstairs. Right. Now." He spoke over her, to Victor. He looked like he was going to vomit.

  She stood perfectly still, and then finally her hand shot out, grabbing his shoulder before he could get beyond her to go to see what the Hell she'd done. She didn't anything, because she couldn't confess anything, and she damn sure wouldn't beg; not in front of all these people, not ever. She just held him there for a second, grip weak as ever from the loss of blood. Ever so slightly, she shook her head - just a little, just enough for him to see it. There was so much in her eyes, and most of it was completely alien to anything Victor had ever seen.

  Even in moments where Daphne thought she might lose her shit and let loose on someone, Victor hadn't ever even scratched the surface of how truly diabolical she was. It was like holding a snake you didn't know was poisonous. You didn't want to get bitten, but you didn't actually think it was going to kill you, either. Surprise.

  "I really, really think you need to come see this. Now," Connor said again. His voice was shaking. Daphne knew that he was incredibly out of his element at the moment, and she also knew that he was very interested in getting Victor the fuck away from her.

  She let him go, slowly, and took a step back. She continued to stare at him, though; unflinching. As far as she was concerned, there wasn't anyone else in the room - well, mostly, Connor kept fucking making noise. She wanted to run; as soon as he was gone, she would. She'd make a break for it. Could she fake illness? No, they'd be too smart for that. FUCK. How had she gotten here again?

  "Oh, fuck," she said softly to herself. He was really going down the fucking stairs. Fuck. FUCK. She put her hands to her face, pushing back her hair forcefully. She wanted to rip out her stitches one by one, to force herself to concentrate, to focus. Focus on the pain, reality comes back into place. A thumb made it through one of the threads, and with a small cry, she ripped up with it. It popped lose. Again. Again.

  "Hey. HEY!" Xander yelled. "Abby, grab her! She's going to fucking bleed out if she keeps doing that shit!"

  She tore, and she tore, and she tore. There were hands grabbing at her, but they were too slow, too fucking slow. All the thread was on the floor, her arms burning and aching every time she tried to flex, to push her weight against them to get away. She cried out, something between a sob and a roar, trying to scratch at herself.

  "STOP!" Abby screamed. "What the fuck is WRONG WITH YOU?" She was horrified. What the fuck was this bitch ON? She didn't want to hold on to her, but she had to stop her from ripping all of the... well, nevermind. "FUCKING STOP!" she screamed, finally moving to a point where she threw Daphne at Xander. He wrapped her up so tightly she could barely breathe.

  They should have been to the door by now.

  "Get me something to immobilize her with. She's going to fucking kill herself if we don't tie her ass down," he boomed. Someone in the room - he didn't know who, he didn't care who - jerked into action, searching for something to secure her with. "Abby, go to the car and get Victor's medical shit. She REALLY IS going to bleed to death," he said.

  He couldn't believe what he was seeing. Had something happened to HER down there? There was no way this tiny thing that was trying to rip her skin off could have done all of that down there. Was there?

Very quietly, so soft that Xander strained to hear her, she spoke: "I cut out her tongue so she couldn't talk. I cut it out so she couldn't talk. I cut it out so she couldn't fucking talk anymore."
 

Victor's problem, Victor's real problem with this whole thing wasn't that he was angry.  It was that he was hurt, and he just didn't do hurt well.  He knew what was happening, and even looking at her and knowing that the others were hoping she wasn't responsible for whatever it was they'd seen, he knew.  He could finally see her, really see her, and he could see something that looked dangerously like a struggle in her face.  He kept remembering what Taran Korakas had said she'd done, remembering those scars, and the others hadn't seen them.  Just himself and Connor, who returned from the basement with a grim sort of paleness to him, like he wished he could erase what he'd just seen from his memory.  Daphne didn't want him to go downstairs, he saw that in her nod, and he might have taken that into consideration before.

Before this.  Now, he had to see.  He had to know what he'd missed all this time, what had been hiding right under his nose, and he had to know.  Yes, he was furious that she'd lied and that he'd been fooled, but he'd been happy.  She had made him happy all this time, and now it was over.  Loss had never been a thing he handled well.

Madison and Ulrich were back upstairs, and LeCroix and Laun hadn't gone down, so Victor wasn't worried about leaving her alone.  She needed medical care, probably due to blood loss, but he could look before they left.  He had to see, and Connor went down with him, nodding his head up the stairs for Erik and Kenji to get back up there.  Connor knew that Victor didn't need an audience for whatever was on the way.  Actually, Connor wasn't so sure that he wanted to be there for it, but SOMEONE had to.  He just hoped the others could hold it together long enough.  All he kept thinking was that Victor had lived with this thing for two years, and his mind wanted to jump to the 'what-ifs'.  It could have been Victor down here that they were finding.  It could have been Victor.

Suddenly, getting sick didn't seem like such a bad idea, but he held his own.  He had to.

Victor fully intended to hold it together as well, but that was bound to be more difficult than he expected.  The others had all had rather strong, loud reactions, which didn't bode well, but Victor wasn't a loud sort of person most of the time.  He could be, but he wasn't generally.  This situation didn't disappoint.

He walked purposefully through the empty front room, not even giving it a second glance like he normally did when he was in a new place, instead focused entirely on the room that they'd found.  The difference between the two was positively revolting, but he stood in the doorway and slowly canvassed the entire room, absolutely silently.  He could feel Connor's eyes on his back, watching him for anything that might be a warning sign of him freaking the fuck out, and it was tempting.  Staring at the mass of tissue and gore that had once been the vampire he'd hunted and lost to, he had trouble for a moment remembering who the monster was.  Was it Purezza?  Daphne?  Himself?  Why had he told her about the scar?  You should have lied.

But he didn't lie.  Not to her, not over something like that.  He could have avoided it.  He could have.  He hadn't.  He hadn't, and this had happened.

This.  Blood, gore and death.  Really, he couldn't even tell what some of the body parts were without really focusing on them, which he understood was his mind's attempt at protecting him from something that was going to do everything it could to break him, but he wouldn't allow it.  He needed to see everything.  He HAD to.  He had to know what Daphne had done, so that when he went upstairs and wanted to see the woman he'd loved for the last two years, he would know that it was all a lie.  A bloody, disgusting, fucked-up lie.

"Victor?"

He blatantly ignored Connor, instead pushing further into the room than any of the others had even attempted, grabbing the door handle to another room.  Would something leap out at him?  Some prisoner of hers?  What could there possibly be that wasn't in this room?

Ah.  Photos.  He almost wanted to fucking laugh, realizing that he was truly in the den of a serial killer, a truly psychotic individual who fit the classic serial killer mold.  She'd kept souvenirs.  Didn't they all?  He knew he'd studied them at some point, simply out of morbid interest and due to an issue that came up with a vampire, but he'd never expected such a personal reason to know it.  She'd kept photos.  Disgusting proof of the people she'd maimed and hurt and killed.  He saw countless faces, so how many had it really been?

He could hear them yelling upstairs, and Connor said his name again, obviously getting nervous with the sound from above and the lack of sound from his Uncle, so Victor turned around and returned to the stairs.  Connor had a duty to go tend to his hunters, and Victor wasn't going to keep him from it.  When he hit the exterior door of the cabin and saw Xander trying to keep Daphne still while Abby did her best to apply pressure to cuts (she hated blood, and he knew just how much she did, but she was still trying).  He watched with an almost clinical detachment, coming to understand from what everyone was saying (yelling) that she'd pulled the stitches out herself.  Connor had rushed forward to help Abby, while Erik was trying to help Xander hold her so that Connor could actually try to close up the wounds again.  Victor still did nothing, and he caught Connor's eye as his nephew twisted around and called for him, trying to get his help.

He paused still, watching her, wanting to hold her and fix her and make it all better for a few seconds before the basement and its 'goodies' invaded his thoughts again.  "Let her bleed."

That was all he had to say on the matter, for the time being.  They wouldn't let her bleed, not Connor, but Victor wasn't going to help.  He didn't trust himself to touch her.  He had to drop the gun on Connor's seat in the car, because he honestly didn't know what he'd do.  If he touched her, even just to restitch her injuries, would he break?  Would he snap and just hold her, or would he hurt her worse?  He didn't fucking know. 

He wasn't even in the car, yet, and that was probably for the best.  His inner horror, hurt and downright confusion manifested itself when he finally twisted and smashed his fist into the Lincoln's body.  It was the only thing that wouldn't really hold it against him, though it sure as hell left its own mark for his blow.  He didn't even care right then, and whipped the door open to sit inside, away from the glances that he'd just gotten.  Let them deal with her. 

  It was Xander, in the end, that she could appeal to. She could see it, see it in his eyes. The murder scene had been disgusting, but he was on edge; not evil, but not good. She had stopped fighting when Victor had told them to let her bleed, and Xander had, after a moment, relaxed his hold. It was while the others were milling about and talking amongst themselves that he took over trying to tend to her wounds. The rest of them looked like they didn't want to, and he'd take that burden from them.

  "Abby, go in the next room," he said. "Sit down. I know you're not a wuss, but seriously, take a break. I can handle this." He paused. "Connor, you might want to get Erik out of here, too." The Hunter had been staring at the blood something fierce, and it bothered Xander, because he didn't know quite what he was about. It didn't take any sort of convincing after that - Erik looked glad to leave, and Connor was more than willing to make sure they didn't have another incident where Erik wanted to eat everyone.

  Xander bent down, and began picking up where they had left off. He wasn't gentle with her, but he wasn't wrenching her around, either. "I'm not going to ask you why," he said. He wrapped gauze around her arm, securing it with tape. "Damn sure not going to ask you how," he added. He stopped and sat back a little, making sure that she wasn't dripping on the floor anymore.

  There was a pause while he waited to hear what was going on in the next room. He looked her dead in the eyes. "Are you armed?" he asked. His tone of voice suggested that he wasn't fucking around.

  Daphne stared at him, and then slowly nodded.

  "Where?" he demanded.

  "Left leg," she said. It was all she said, because she was afraid if she said anything else, she was going to flip out. Let her bleed. It kept going over and over in her head, his voice. She didn't know where he'd gone, or what was happening. Would he hurt himself? She couldn't handle all this not knowing; she usually knew everything.

  Xander reached into the bottom of her pant leg, and pulled the knife out. He looked at it for a moment, and then raised his brow. "I'm not even going to fucking ask how you got this, because I think, little girl, that you know what happens when you steal from Witches." He threw it across the room, somewhere that she couldn't get it easily.

  "Is there anything else that you have that could be potentially harmful?" he demanded. He could applaud her for effort; he watched as she did a mental inventory of everything she might have had on her person. When she shook her head, he stood up, and then took a step back.

  "I'm going to let you out that front door. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen. And Daphne, is it? If you try anything, I will be on you so fast that whatever the doctor may or may not do to you won't matter, because I'll rip you apart before he can even get to you." When he said the last part, his voice turned into something guttural, and his face began to change - slightly, but enough to get the point across.

  She stood, slowly, cautiously. She understood that she wasn't the predator at the moment, and Xander knew it. "Turn around and walk," he hissed. He drew his gun and followed a few paces behind her. "I will blow one of your kneecaps out if you even think about running. Do not test me, little girl."

  Daphne limped out of the front of the house, stopping in the doorway to straighten out. She was trying to summon whatever dignity that she had, but it was so far out of reach. She couldn't tap into it at all anymore, no longer beautiful and graceful and proud. She felt like a cat that had lost its second form, forever burdened to live life in a human carcass and rot away.

  "Move," the massive man behind her said. She heard the slide pull back on his weapon, and she moved.

  Slowly, slowly, she walked down the front steps. She had her lips pressed together so hard that she felt like they would bleed against her teeth, but it was the only thing stopping her from screaming.

  Xander honestly didn't know what Victor was going to do, but he wasn't going to let anyone dictate a reaction for him. If he thought Daphne deserved to die, then she wasn't leaving the yard outside of a body bag. If he didn't, then she'd be detained until he could figure out what he wanted to do - but he was forcing him to make a decision, because everyone else was treading on such thin ice. Xander didn't tread on thin ice; he sank to the bottom of the fucking lake.

  Now it was Daphne's turn. Would she sink, or would she swim?

  She scanned the dusky drive for any sign of Victor, and didn't see him right away. She couldn't stop herself from shaking as she inched forward, knowing that the wolf wasn't lying when he said he'd kill her. Whatever sort of mission from God the guy felt like he was on, he sure wasn't going to give her any room to move when it came to backtracking, and she didn't feel like she deserved it. She had an ounce of respect for him, for throwing her into the fire.

  She wished she knew why she was so wrapped around the idea of pain as a healthy stimulant for decisions she made. Maybe it was genetic.

  She spotted Victor finally, and her blood ran cold.

  "I'm coming over," she said weakly. "I'm not armed. He says he'll blow my head off if I try anything."

  She stopped limping as much as she could and came as close as she dared, which was still a good several feet away. She needed to give him a wide zone to explode, which she sensed was coming.  "I believe him, but to be honest, if I'm dying tonight, I'd really rather it be you. And that's not some sick stupid self-pity bullshit. It just is what it is."

  Xander backed up onto the porch, and after a moment, lowered his gun. He was going to be lucky to have a job after this, but he refused to let the people that weren't as deeply attached to this situation try and deal with it. Sometimes shit just had to hurt. It's just the way it was. They probably wouldn't understand, and honestly, he didn't care. If they didn't get it, they never would.

  Or maybe he was just as fucked up as she was.

  When she was met by silence, she moved a little closer. Maybe she was trying to commit suicide. "I take it you found the bird," she said matter-of-factly. If Daphne was scared that he was going to shoot her, she sure didn't seem to be showing it. It was probably a bad idea, but then again, the lying game was over, wasn't it? Why bother acting like she was afraid of dying.

Clearing the area had been surprisingly easy for Xander, but it was true that Abby wasn't a wuss and wanted a break.  Xander knew just how to handle her, and declaring that he knew she wasn't weak was a good way of starting a suggestion that she go take a break, and she ended up agreeing that she could use one and heading into the other room.  She didn't always do what she was told, but this time?  She needed a fucking sink and some soap.  Seriously. 

Connor would have been harder to get rid of if Erik hadn't really been so on-edge.  Skye and Frank were still stuck dealing with the perimeter, in case a friend of what was left of the vampire downstairs opted to show up, and Kenji just wasn't big enough to deal with Erik if he lost it.  Connor AND Ken had enough trouble, nevermind leaving the raven to it alone.  As much as he didn't want to leave anyone alone with Daphne, it was only the next room.  If Xander needed the help, for whatever reason, they were right there.  The girl had calmed down and was actually being fairly easy to tolerate finally, so he was sure it would be alright.

Naturally, he had no idea that Xander was going to march her out to Victor.  He would have objected to that, rather strongly, actually.  He knew his uncle well enough to understand when the man was in need of space, and he knew that Daphne's fate would be decided.  Not immediately, but after Victor had time to figure out what the hell he thought of what was happening.  Hell, Connor hadn't figured out what he thought of the situation, and he hadn't been sleeping with the chick.  He had no delusions about this being a simple fix sort of situation.  Yeah, not happening.

Apparently, Xander was going to try for that, and Victor actually didn't notice until Daphne was about halfway between the cabin and the car he was sitting in.  When his eyes landed on her and he saw the hunter urging her along from a distance, he actually thought that taking out his frustration on the asshole that was trying to force the issue wasn't such a bad thing to do, but he settled for giving Xander the finger and a dark glare as he got out of the car.  It actually hurt more than he expected, which meant that he'd probably fractured something in his hand when he'd hit the car.  Perfect.

"Your distraction worked.  We found the phone," he said, rather than admit that they found 'the bird'.  The man that she'd tortured for the fun of it.  Taran was a bad person, Victor believed that, but that didn't make it excusable.  It occurred to him to ask her why she did it, but why should he?  He knew why she'd done it.  She'd done it because he'd told her about the scar, which really didn't fit in with the rest of her killings except that this time she'd given herself an excuse. 

How the fuck was he supposed to talk to her when she sounded so normal?  She sounded like the girl he knew, even if she was bloodied up and fresh from a killing.  How many times had he come home to her after she'd done this to someone?  Perhaps even after she'd done all that to Taran?  The man had said 'a few days', so how many times had she played normal for him between carving the raven up?  How much of what she'd said and done was a lie?  The girl he knew hadn't been capable of this, but he understood that.  She'd lied, it wasn't so difficult to understand.  He knew it and she knew it.  She'd lied to him to get away with this, and she'd lied well.  Problem was, now he didn't know what was true and what wasn't.

"You fucked up your own logic, Daphne.  Did you even believe that when you told me you could tell the difference between what I wanted and needed, or was it a lie?" he asked, because of all the things he could have asked, that stood out.  It was so fresh, yet the night before seemed so impossibly far away.  It felt as though it had happened years before. 

He'd kept the gun on the seat of the car, out of his immediate reach.  That was a good thing.

  To her surprise, he didn't shoot her - at least, he hadn't yet. She was literally counting the seconds down 'til he did, but she knew that if she didn't want to push her luck, she'd stop egging him on. However, he was going to begin asking her questions that had weight to them, and it was only a matter of time. How many honest answers could he take before he broke? She didn't want to break him. She didn't. But telling him that?

  Not so much.

  "I believed it," she said lightly. "And I was right. And I've been right up until you fucking showed up at the door with a gun to my head. I'm not even going to ask how you found this place, really, because I'm sure it involves something that I couldn't get around. I got around everything else, but evidently there was something I overlooked, and it was something I couldn't control." She sounded irritated about whatever it was - it had, in the end, been Chase. And Daphne, had she known, would have been a little smug to know just how long it took for her to focus in, considering how random she made her pattern appear.

  She opened her mouth to say something, and then sighed, and just closed it again. She wanted to say that she hadn't lied to him, because she really hadn't - not about where she was, or what she was doing. The last date on a photo in that room had been before they'd ever gotten serious; before he'd questioned her whereabouts. Not that it would matter. In truth, the only things she'd lied about that she could recall were her feelings - and that was, she almost believed, what she was really in trouble for.

  That and the fact that she had an amazingly artistic ability with a knife, not unlike the scarring Victor had, except with much more skill. But now she had them, too. With the damage she'd done to her stitching, she'd have them forever; the bird, she was certain, would be thrilled. In fact, it was that stupid bird that suddenly became the object of her hatred fixation, and her eyes darkened as she focused on the ground, unwilling to show Victor that thing in her eyes.

  How was it - how was it - that Taran was every bit as vile and villainous as she was, and yet he still had someone that loved him? His sister (because Daphne had done her homework, as she always did) loved Taran more than anything. It wasn't just about them being twins. She hated it. She wanted to destroy it; whatever that line between them was, she wanted to obliterate it until there was nothing left but ashes and burned feathers.

  Her head snapped up, eyes coming back into focus and into the situation that she was currently in. She'd just, without meaning to, given Victor a very clear demonstration of what she really was. He didn't have to see her cutting someone's face up to see as plain as day that there was definitely a serious malfunction with her mind. Her expression changed drastically, like she'd just been caught telling someone else that she loved them.

  "I kept - " she stopped. No. She was genuinely afraid now; not for herself, but because she was trying not to make this any worse. Could it get worse? She drew in a shaking breath. She'd kept hoping that he'd see it and get rid of her, before she could do precisely what had just happened. But there wasn't any way to explain that, not in a way he'd understand, because Daphne was crazy to them all at the moment.

  "I can't fucking say anything to you. I want to lie, because every truth is just - " she stopped. What the fuck was she saying? Where had her dignity gone? She began to fidget with her bandages, because she didn't have anything to hold onto, and those came apart so easily. She couldn't tell him the truth, because it would be baring her throat to him. She wouldn't do it. It wouldn't do her any good, wouldn't help her climb out of the well she'd quite amazingly thrown herself into, wouldn't do anything. He could hate her for being a lying, psychotic bitch. He wouldn't hate her for being weak.

  She didn't move forward, for him. She didn't move backward, away from him. She wanted him to pick up that gun; she needed him to do it. He wouldn't; or not without very strong provocation on her end, at least, she didn't think - and she didn't know if she was willing to push his buttons. She'd done quite a bit of that. She was burning the rope at both ends with him, and she could see it had been the worst idea she'd ever had. Not that it had started out that way, but it didn't really help anything to say it wasn't the end result she'd been hoping for.

  This was more torturous than being screamed at or cut up by that stupid bird, that was for sure. She kept thinking back to the wolf - how easy would it be to trick him into shooting her? She wouldn't have to do very much, she didn't suppose. Slowly, she turned her head, searching for his form on the porch. Did he know what she was thinking? Did Victor?

  It would be a fine time for him to finally be able to decipher her thoughts.

  "Appreciate the irony, Victor. I just threw my entire life away to kill the vampire that gave you those scars." There. She said it. She let her breath out, and felt pressure welling up against her chest, creeping into her windpipe. Her eyes were stinging. Oh, HELL no. No, she wasn't going to cry. She wouldn't cry; she would NOT cry. She pressed her lips together, forcing the emotions back down, but they betrayed in her voice. It had broken - barely, but it had.

  She put her hand to her face for a moment, trying to pull herself back down to reality. What was happening? She wanted to tell herself that this was all a dream, but she couldn't. She opened her eyes and he was still there at the car, staring knives into her. "I wish I'd never said anything at all," she whispered. She wanted to take it back, the questions, the lies, all of it.

  She didn't, obviously, get what she wanted most of the time.

If Daphne had known that the factor she couldn't control had been Chase, she'd have probably been much more smug than even she would have realized.  She'd frustrated Chase to a degree that the woman wasn't usually ever forced to, mostly because Chase had lived her whole life with her ability and she'd embraced it from the start, making for a rather high success rate.  Chase knew what she was doing, and Daphne's state of affairs had been spurred on with things that the other woman hadn't wanted to see.  Every time she'd started to tune into Daphne and where she could be, her mind's eye got an overload of blood and gore.  In the end, she'd had to push past those images and sensations in order to pinpoint Daphne's location and how everything was going to turn out, and she was NOT happy about it.  She'd told Connor as much when she gave them the details she had that last time, and he had to admit to Victor, at least, that she sounded both shaken and pissed.  That didn't happen often.  She'd also downright refused to tell them what they were walking into (which meant that nobody was going to be hurt, at least) or what the end result would be.  She'd told them to 'find out for themselves' and not to call her until the next day.  She was taking some pills and sleeping for as long as she could.

Yeah, as if that hadn't been enough to put them on edge.  Now, Victor was wishing Connor would have gotten the 'end result' out of her.  It'd have made his situation just a little easier right then, which was probably why she hadn't told them.  She was smarter than Victor liked to give any of the 'kids' credit for, but he'd always known she was the smartest.  That didn't make this any easier, though.

"Should I have shown up with fucking flowers instead?" he snapped, though he wasn't expecting an answer and was really just venting, actually indignant that she would even mention him 'fucking showing up at the door with a gun to her head'.  Could she have honestly expected anything different?  Truly, he'd expected Purezza to come out that door, considering everything he knew about both women, and he'd been planning on putting a bullet between her eyes before she could blink.  He'd hesitated and been sure to show absolutely no surprise when it was Daphne instead, and that was because he'd had a sinking, horrible sort of feeling in him.  If Purezza had killed her, he could have mourned her and hunted the bitch down.  Her killing Purezza meant that they had to find the vampire's remains, not to mention the evidence of her earlier kills.  He could have blamed it on Purezza, could have assumed she was going to finish up the cutting she'd started on him in the same ways, if she hadn't been killed like that.  He might have known in the back of his mind, but he could have left himself in denial about it.  Now, there was no denial.  He couldn't even TRY for any sort of denial, because eight out of the ten people who had arrived on the scene had seen what she'd done.  It wasn't just him.

God, he was in a mess.

Victor might notice later, when he was going through the things in that basement with painstaking detail, that the dates on the photos were old.  Not old enough that he wouldn't still believe they were hers, but old enough that he wouldn't fail to notice that they hadn't been since he'd been seeing her seriously, or even since she'd moved in.  The problem was that Xander had pushed this situation to the point that he had, and Victor didn't have the time to go over everything in detail, nor did he even know that there would be information like that down there.  He was going to go over it all because he felt like he had to know, not because he thought it would change his mind about the situation.  That is, once he'd actually made up his mind. 

Watching her as her head fell, trying to keep her face from his view, he would actually have just let her have the privacy of her mind on this one.  He didn't want to know, had seen enough of what she'd done to Purezza that he didn't need to actually see her snap, but she'd whipped her head up, and he saw it anyway. 

In that instant before her expression shifted to something that was more horror and guilt (probably over allowing him to see it, not over what she'd actually done), he truly considered getting the gun and putting a bullet in her head.  He really, honestly did, because that wasn't a woman, that was a monster.  Then, just as quickly, she was the Daphne he knew again, and that only made it harder.  If he'd have had the gun in his hand, he'd have done it and the situation would be over.

That was exactly why he DIDN'T have the gun in his hand.

Given the way she opened up her mouth, sighed, stopped, started, stopped, then finally spoke, continuously cutting herself off, she wasn't helping things.  All he was getting was that she couldn't talk to him because she wanted to lie, and that was NOT helping the situation any.  God, it wasn't, and the narrowing of his eyes as he listened to her had to tell her that much.  It had to, because she wasn't that stupid.  She'd managed to elude them for quite some time, and that alone meant that she wasn't stupid.  Frankly, he was surprised that she even said that she wanted to lie, because she had to know how that was going to go over with him.  Of all the things he was and did, he wasn't a liar.  He didn't even like stretching the truth to make others feel better, and hadn't done much of it in years.  That was why he was notorious for having 'bad bedside manner', because he could be sympathetic and understanding, but he wasn't going to lie to them or make it sound better than it was.  He couldn't respect liars, and he frankly couldn't stand them. 

Oh, the irony?  That was what she was focusing on?  At least she'd gotten it out into the open, the whole subject right out there where they could both deal with it.  It was what he'd been worrying about since he left her that morning, since she hadn't answered his calls.  Now, it was right there, just not the way he wanted it to be.

"You threw your life away when you killed those people, Daphne," he hissed at her, finally entering her space.  There had been several feet between them and he didn't touch her or even get close enough that he would be inside her 'personal bubble', but that was a force of will on his part.  He wanted to just shake her, but he knew that wouldn't make any sense out of this.  It wouldn't really make him feel better, either.  "Even if it had just been the vampire, you'd have thrown your life away on a worthless piece of shit!"

No, he didn't want to shake her, he wanted to strangle her, and she thought SHE wished she hadn't said anything?  She didn't even KNOW how badly he wished he'd refused to answer her question, though that was a box of worms in and of itself, wasn't it?  If this hadn't happened, how long until he found out some other way?  What other way, and what was this?  Oh, that wasn't even possible.  She couldn't be, oh, but she was.

"Jesus Christ, don't you fucking cry," he murmured, and it wasn't even certain that he was actually talking TO her.  He didn't want her to cry, because her crying made him want to go easier on her, and he didn't need that interference.  Her crying made him think that she might not just be the psychotic monster that he was thinking, but were the tears real?  They looked real, but she'd fooled him for a long time.  How good was she?  "Daphne, don't cry."

He was going to punch Xander in the fucking jaw for doing this.

  When he made the remark about the flowers, she actually facepalmed. It wasn't as comical as a normal situation might suggest, however. She almost couldn't handle the fact that he was talking to her still. Why hadn't he killed her yet? Did he like torturing her? She wanted to push him, to make him pull the trigger, but the part of her that still had some sense left kept reigning her madness in when she'd open her mouth.

  "They're not all dead!" she shot back. "Look at the dates! That stuff stopped when I started seeing you. Not that it's a good sort of thing, but at least I'm not denying that I did it." She had exploded suddenly, a rabid sort of tone to her voice as she jerked forward, like yelling wasn't going to get the point across as much as her frantic gestures. She seemed surprised as her voice echoed in the woods behind them, as though the sound had startled her.

  Her posture changed again, shoulders hunching forward as she sank a little bit; making herself smaller to hide from herself. She didn't want to be so fucking crazy. Couldn't he see that? Why couldn't he understand that she DIDN'T want to be like this. Her hands went to her temples, elbows crooked as she dug her nails into her scalp, trying to force herself to hang on to her mind, to the small control she had over herself.

  "I'm not crying," she said through clenched teeth. It was obvious she was, but she wouldn't admit it. "There's something in my fucking eye," she reasoned, even though her voice cracked to a whisper when she said it. She didn't know what to do. She couldn't mutilate her way out of the situation, because the only person standing in front of her was Victor, and she wouldn't hurt him - not physically. She couldn't stitch the problem back up, because sometimes stitches didn't hold - like now. All of those painstakingly, carefully woven lies over the years, and one tug on her heart, one stupid fucking moment where she did something out of emotion and not out of scientific curiosity.

  It was his fault. She wanted to blame him - almost, but she couldn't, and she knew it.

  "It's easier for me to be horrible now, because it's easier for you if I'm not human anymore. I'll let you think I'm crazy or sick, but I'm not weak. I'm not." She paused. The truth? She couldn't. She held the rest of what she'd wanted to say back, and just sank down to the ground.

  "FUCK, Victor, just fucking kill me. Stop fucking looking at me like that, just stop and kill me." She couldn't stand to have him staring at her, judging her! It was driving her crazy, making her head hurt. She pressed against her temples so hard that it hurt. "I keep going over and over in my head, why did I have to go after her? You'd never have seen any of this if I hadn't, but I got emotional and it was personal and I was sloppy."

  Her head snapped up and she stared at him, eyes narrowed. "And I don't give a fuck what you say," she hissed. "I'd do it again to her in a second. She deserved everything she got, for - " And she stopped. For what she did to you. She didn't say it. And now she had scars, too. It wouldn't matter what she did, she'd always have them, like he'd always have his. And so would that fucking bird.

  Something in his gestures played back over in her mind, and she stopped her strange panic attack for a moment to focus in on something else. "Your hand," she said softly. "I can - " And she stopped. She could what? Could fix it? She really thought he'd let her touch him now? She stopped before she'd finished, but it still hung in the air like a blade over her head. It was him; Victor, his energy, his love, his everything had pulled her into such a duality that it really seemed like she was trying to exist two people inside one body.

  But Daphne didn't have multiple personalities. At least, she didn't think she did. That would mean being unaware you were doing something; not aware that there was another side of you. She was perfectly aware of the things she did when people weren't looking, so why did she have so much trouble shifting back and forth between the two? Maybe she was really crazy after all. She sank down further into the ground, and just looked at her hands, holding them palm-up, as if she was shocked at something she'd done.

  Why did he make her feel this way?

  She had been fine before she met him.

Why hadn't he killed her yet?  That was a good question, because all of his instincts as a hunter and a practical, realistic bastard were telling him to shoot her and get it over with, that someone who would do those things belonged dead.

Then, he thought about Taran, and finally allowed his eyes to really take in her injuries.  She was hurt, and she'd hurt herself worse when he'd gone downstairs to see her little treasure trove of gore, but it had all been too much.  He'd paid attention to the things that really seemed to matter at the time, like what he'd seen in that basement and what she'd done.  Now, he could think just a little better because the situation didn't demand INSTANT ACTION.  That brought her black, damaged stitches and the damage they revealed a little closer to the front of his mind, and could he really blame her for what she'd done?  To the people before, the ones that hadn't been for any reason other than sadistic pleasure, yes.  For Purezza?  No.  What did he want to do to Taran?  Perhaps not the same thing, but he wouldn't have minded slitting the bastard's throat or putting a knife in his ribs.  Victor wasn't as interested in long, drawn out displays, but killing Taran certainly sounded good to him, and that was even knowing just what sorts of horrible things Daphne was guilty of.  Could he really throw stones over her exacting revenge on someone who'd hurt him, not to mention other members of his family?

Yes, he could.  There was a lot he could do, but the question was whether or not he would.  What she'd done was horrific, but he heard her mention the dates and that she hadn't been doing it when she started seeing him.  Didn't that count for something, that she'd cracked when she found out what Purezza had done, and not because she just wanted to? 

He saw Connor start outside as Daphne yelled, obviously prepared to deal with her in the same way he'd deal with any monster, but Xander intercepted and got a sharp, angry response before Victor waved his nephew off.  He could handle this himself, and Connor didn't look pleased, but he nodded and remained in the background with Xander.  That was just fine, since the rest of this conversation would probably be much quieter than either could hear.  Victor didn't feel the need to do anymore yelling, especially with the way she'd hunched down like that, almost like she was trying to hide.  Hide from who, and what?

It was surreal how normal she looked, even in the given situation, telling him that she wasn't crying and there was something in her eye, just like she'd done countless times before.  Logically, he knew that it could have been an act then and now, but he wasn't so sure. 

"God damn it, Daphne, would you shut up?  If I was going to fucking kill you, I'm sure I would have done it already!" he snapped, not wanting to hear that she'd do it again.  For him.  It HAD been for him, not for anything else.  He had that still ringing through his mind, that she'd done it for him.  She hadn't been doing it after they'd gotten together. 

God, he knew he was stupid, and he hated that.  He hated that he was even trying to consider something other than killing her after all this.

He opened his mouth just a little, like he was going to make some other frustrated comment, but changed his mind and rubbed his hand through his short hair in a brisk, sharp movement, thinking hard enough that it was only making his mood worse (if that were possible).  This was SUCH an impossible situation, and it did strike him that he'd gone and made it that much more ridiculous by smashing his dominant hand, his fist, into a metal object.  He was reminded because the sharp movement of something as simple as rubbing his hand over his head caused a sudden pain that basically confirmed his suspicions that he'd done something stupid.  Her concern over it was also a reminder, as well as being one of those things that made his mind backpedal and reconsider things.  What the fuck was he going to do?

"You, don't move," he told her, and he actually went to snatch up his first aid supplies (the hunters left it all a mess, in typical idiot fashion) so that he could deal with the stitches that she'd not only torn up, but botched horribly in the first place.  He still didn't know what he was going to do, but leaving her there like that wasn't much of an option, regardless of the situation.  Besides, it gave him something to do with his hands, even if one hurt.  He also ended up pulling out his phone, which he'd learned long ago to hold between his ear and his shoulder, so that he could call a specific guild member.

"Dr. Flores, I have something of a situation here, and I need your professional advice."

  Daphne did as she was told when he told her not to move. Well, for the most part. She shifted her weight to take some of it off her arms, which had momentarily been propped out below her to allow her to sit upright. She leaned against the base of a tree, and then let out a surprised cry when the contact against her back began to seer through her shirt. She bent forward, pulling her knees to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them, trying to sit up as straight as she could. Any sort of leaning motion caused the gouge marks to re-open and pull apart further, and she didn't need that at the moment.

  Meanwhile, Xander was trying to detain Connor and the rest of the hunters. He gave them his reasons, clearly unafraid of what sort of repercussion that would follow. He informed them that Victor could handle himself, and that if he'd wanted to shoot her, he'd have done it by then. He rushed Connor back in the house, no small feat, even for someone such as himself, and then loomed around in the doorway, because he told her that he would. He didn't need for her to suspect any weakness from him, or any of them. She was clearly a little too in tune with her predatory nature.

  Daphne watched what Victor was doing very carefully, unwilling to speak anymore at all until she knew what was going on. He was impossible to read at the moment; he was going back and forth through so much that she wondered if she looked the same that he did when she did such a thing; they were subtleties on his face, things she'd taken two years to learn, but things she knew once she saw them. She listened intently as he spoke to whoever was on the phone; the name was unfamiliar to her.

  "Victor?" Irulan said. She sat forward in her chair, pushing away from her desk rather suddenly. She had been keeping up with what was happening through updates between the guild members, but she hadn't expected to be called by anyone involved. After a brief description of what was happening, she gave a long, uncomfortable pause. He wanted to know if Daphne was salvagable.

  "I wouldn't say that where she can hear you, foremost. I'm sure that it gives her hypothetical rehabilitation mileage to know that you believe her to be something in need of salvage," Irulan said curtly. Victor wouldn't get around her attitude, mostly because he was making demands he knew she couldn't possibly meet on the phone.

  "Honestly, it's up in the air. I'd have to have her here for extensive research. If she's as back and forth as you say, she might even have some sort of dissociative disorder - she says she's aware she's doing this, but she isn't, not really. I can't properly diagnose it unless I see it, and her. Can you get her here? Without putting yourself in danger, I mean?" she asked. She sat forward in her chair a little more, tapping the eraser of a pencil on her notepad rapidly. "If you think she's that much of an immediate threat, you can immobilize her, but otherwise... I suggest you get her to me," she said.

  She didn't know if she could fix this girl, but his voice was almost... It was the most human she'd ever heard the good doctor Frankenstein sound in years. "Bring her to me, Doctor Batten. I will see what I can do."

  Daphne couldn't hear what had transpired on the other end of the phone, nor did she know the result. She simply sat, watching Victor's expressions and listening to his side, aware that if the result from whomever he was speaking to was a negative, she was as good as gone. Maybe she needed to be gone? She didn't know anymore.

  When he hung up the phone, she just stared at him. "You always did stitch better than I did," she said, watching his eyes travel along the criss-crossed and misshapen patterns along her arms. She looked down, and then said, almost fondly, but not quite, "That fucking bird got me pretty good. " Her voice held soft wonderment, like the idea that she couldn't believe it had even happened at all.

  It still ate her alive that he hadn't killed her. How could he possibly have that much restraint? Was his sister worth that much to him? She flicked her eyes to Victor, watching him take something from the medical pack, and exhaled slowly to herself. Maybe. Had the situation been reversed and she truly thought that someone might have gone after Victor, she may have done the same thing. Of course, the fact that she, a respected doctor and member of the community, had a literal basement full of bodies and he, stupid criminal bird serial killer with a penchant for bad bets.. Apples to oranges. She was in deep shit because she was expected to know better.

Xander would NOT have detained them if Victor hadn't looked like he both had the situation at hand under control and was okay with that fact.  It was Victor's gesture to stay back that had Connor relaxing some, not Xander's reasons, though he could respect the reasoning behind it.  He still didn't approve of Xander taking it upon himself to force a situation that he'd been called into for back-up, but if Victor was alright with it, so was he.  What else was he going to do?  Sure, he had more personal involvement in it than Xander did, but he had been called in as Victor's back-up, too.  As long as Victor had it under control, Connor could accept that it wasn't his situation to call all the shots in, and he could let it go. 

Xander better not make a habit of this, different guild or not.

--------------------------------

If he hadn't needed Irulan and her skills, he'd have said a few extremely unfriendly things and hung up the phone.  She didn't care for the people in the psychology and psychiatry fields, and frankly didn't put much stock in what they did.  Yes, he knew that they had valid jobs and were good at them (most of them were, anyway), and he knew that mental health wasn't a joke.  He knew just how bad the crazies could be and what trauma could do to a person.  He understood that, in a metaphorical sense, a person could be just as torn up in their mind by an incident as they were physically when he had to put them back together.  He just didn't have any skill for putting the pieces in their mind back together like he could sew skin and mend bones, and he didn't have the patience for it.  He was curt, to the point and aggressive.  He stitched them back together, and then he let Irulan deal with the lingering issues in their minds.  It just wasn't his thing.

Too bad it was biting him in the ass right then.

The entire time he talked to Irulan, he worked at removing and restitching Daphne's already abused skin.  He didn't personally like the idea of putting new stitches in so soon, but hers were so bad that it was going to be necessary if he was going to have any chance of lessening the scarring.  Without thinking too far ahead to what was going to be done with her and about the situation, he was just going with the closest to what his usual reaction would have been.  Clean wounds, no infection, neat stitches.  The least amount of scarring possible.  Take care of her.

Damn her for this.

He wanted to laugh when Irulan criticized him for saying 'salvage' in Daphne's presence, and it really wasn't because he thought it was all that funny.  Not in a good way, anyway.  "I think she already knows what I think, Flores.  That I'm even talking to you right now must mean that I've lost my own mind, and that's why I called."

He knew that she'd need to see Daphne, talk to her, evaluate her.  He knew that, just as he knew that if Connor had called up to ask if something would heal right, he'd have had to see it to know.  It was common sense, but he could always tell Connor what he thought the most likely outcome would be.  'No, that is going to leave a mark and the bone will have to be rebroken if you let it start to heal.'  He wanted to know if it was likely that she could be saved.  Could she live a normal life and function on a daily basis?  He didn't want to have to babysit her to know that she wasn't out carving people up.

That was, if it was possible to get past the knowledge that she'd already carved all those people up.  That was a big deal. 

"I want to know if you THINK you can do it.  I understand that there are no guarantees, but I want to know what your first impression is.  I won't draw this out for her or anyone else." 

He wasn't going to drag her all over the place, give her hope that everything would be fine, only for Irulan to decide that it was a lost cause.  It it was a 'lost cause', if she was cracked beyond repair, he would have to kill her himself.  He wouldn't allow anyone else to, and he couldn't leave her alive to keep doing these things, as much as it might kill him to have to kill her.  Nobody else would do it.

She'd said to bring Daphne to her, though.  He hesitated, still not sure, but she sounded sure enough despite his specifying that he wanted her best guess.  That sounded like there might be some hope.  No guarantees, but hope.  He hung up the phone thinking that, maybe, his life didn't have to go completely sour right this second.  Maybe it could go back to something that resembled the happiness he'd had before, with her.

He didn't inform Daphne of the result of the call, not sure that he could handle whatever reaction she might have.  If she asked him to kill her again, or if she relaxed and he had to see her loosen up and stop with the act she must have gotten tired of after all this time, before he had a chance to calm his nerves and stop with the emotions that were making him less rational and more prone to doing stupid things, he might really do some harm.  Stupid things.  Of course, talking about the bird wasn't helping, so he had to ignore that.  Mostly.

"It helps with your stitching to care about what happens to the patient," he snapped, still obviously pissed.  That wasn't going to go away quickly, just because he might have a plan that might get them somewhere in some undetermined amount of time.  Victor didn't usually spaz, but this was a BIG situation that had gotten him to go so far as to punch a vehicle because he was that flipped out.  His anger was going to take some time to dissipate, though he DID feel just a little bad sniping at her like that. 

A little bad.  It wasn't like she didn't deserve it, but it was a cheap shot and he knew it.  Usually, he wouldn't have cared, but this was Daphne.  Damn her.  "Please don't talk about the bird.  I told him not to leave the area and I guarantee he did, so I should already kill him on principle alone."  No, he wasn't suggesting that he might want to kill Korakas on her behalf.  Not at all.  No, looking at the cuts on her didn't make him want to kill the bird.  Nope.  Yeah, that was a lie. 

  Daphne finally seemed to appear to have calmed down enough not to cry, or panic, or anything else for the moment. She appeared calm, but not placid, nor cold. She wasn't as she'd been before - that unsettling sort of quiet, but as Victor had come to know her; contemplative, still. She tried not to move too much while he fixed her arms, though it did sting quite a bit. She couldn't help but suck in a sharp breath when he hit her with just the right angle or right swipe of an alcohol pad. It hurt, and now that all her adrenaline and panic and whatever else she had in her system had worn off, she was feeling the brunt of it again.

  She must've bled her painkillers out some time ago; either that or she'd become somehow acclimated to them. Or the shock had burned them off. Whatever the case was, she was feeling every last bit of the agonizing burning from her arms - and from her back. Gods, her back. How was she even going to begin to heal that? Being a shapeshifter may have been perfectly handy at the moment, but Daphne didn't do animals, and she didn't do vampires; she was happily human, and with good reason. She had it in her mind that Victor wouldn't like her as much if she were anything else.

  "I was in a bit of a hurry," she retorted to his statement, refusing to be admonished for her obviously bang-up stitch job. "Wait until you see my back," she warned. He hadn't seen it yet; not the actual brunt of it. Just the oozing viscous red fluid and plasma that worked its way into the cotton of her tanktop, staining it and making it harden with time.

  "You shouldn't kill him. You should let him get on with his miserable life. Believe me, Victor, I have already damaged him enough to make my point," she said. She spoke truthfully, but there was something in her voice, a pleading sort of tone to leave the bird alone. "As much as I hate him, he could have killed me, and he didn't; just as I could have done the same. We're even. I don't want that scale tipped again," she added.

  She doubted he would care or understand what she meant. It didn't seem to phase her in the slightest that she'd scarred a shapeshifter to the point of no return, nor did it seem to bother her that he'd given her permanent damage to her own pale flesh. All she was concerned with was the fact that they were even. He didn't have to worry about her popping out of a corner; she didn't have to worry about him slitting her throat in her sleep. Both, of course, would be hard to accomplish - if either one of them lived through the next series of says, they'd both be sleeping with one eye open for the rest of their lives.

  She rubbed her arms once Victor had finished, and leaned forward a little. "Let me see your hand," she said. She reached forward, her tone becoming more terse but somehow softer. "Let. Me see. Your hand." She looked up at him, her head leaning to the side a little. "I've never seen you hit anything before in anger; please don't start damaging yourself now on my behalf. It breaks my heart."

  She wasn't lying. Daphne had done this to try and avenge him, not to hurt him. It just so happened that he accidentally found all of her other little dirty secrets before she had a chance to clean them up. It didn't matter, really - the evidence would be gone soon enough. Nathan would come by as soon as they'd cleared out; he'd lace the place with so much gasoline and flame that there'd be not even a trace of what was left. He'd do it, or he'd die trying, because Daphne had demanded it, and Nathan, though extremely sick in the head, was very apt to fearing his blood relation that had a knack for slicing people's faces off.

  It was just a safer way to play things.

  "I think your hunters are growing restless. Do you have some sort of plan for me? I'm sure you won't just leave me here; you're not sure if I'm a danger to anyone else, or to myself. I assure you, I won't be slicing and dicing anyone so long as they don't try to hurt the people I care about," she said, the words punctuated with a frown as she clasped her hand lightly over his. She was being gentle, which was completely mind-boggling given the current state of affairs.

  Daphne was sort of like a pit bull. She'd seemed perfectly normal, right until she'd started killing people.

Victor made it a point to handle her injuries just as he'd have handled anyone else, refusing to thing about the basement and what was in it, or the fact that she'd gotten this cuts bartering with another psycho for information.  Not thinking about all that actually became easier, and his movements became just a little less clinical and detached and a little more careful as she settled into that calm of hers that he recognized.  If he didn't think, he might almost feel as though this was relatively normal, as though he hadn't seen anything to shake his situation with her so completely.  Of course, when didn't Victor think?

He still relaxed ever so slightly, which he knew was stupid.  Relaxing at all was just looking for trouble in this situation, but he'd been as relaxed as he ever got around her in the past and she hadn't carved him up.  He figured that if she hadn't already, she probably never would.  He'd probably never know just how much she'd wanted to bleed him once upon a time, and how much she'd refused to let herself do it because she respected him.  It was probably better that he didn't know that, though his reaction might have been surprising.  Maybe.  It was hard to tell with him sometimes. 

He hesitated when she mentioned her back, his eyes flicking to the way the mess had been oozing through her tanktop, and that was another thing he'd been trying to pretend he hadn't seen.  Now, he was going to have to deal with it, but it would have to wait until he could get her into a proper infirmary.  He wasn't going to have her pulling her shirt off in front of a bunch of hunters, most of them male and unmarried.  He'd already gotten plenty of remarks from various individuals when a picture was distributed for them to try to find her.  He knew they thought she was hot.  "Of course you were in a hurry.  You couldn't have me catching up with you after I'd found traces of blood, your phone at some psycho criminal's house and evidence that you'd gone after a vampire that had only refrained from killing me because I'd gotten boring when I lost consciousness.  A hurry, naturally."

Yeah, he wasn't pissed at all.

"I'll take care of your back at the guildhouse."

As for the raven, he'd drop that subject.  He didn't need to know anything more about that situation and why or how Daphne had even gotten involved with him.  He didn't want to know, either.  If those two decided they were even, then Victor was finished with it.  Want and need, and neither of them belonged in that mess.

He finished surprisingly quickly, though perhaps it wouldn't be so surprising if she were more aware of the sort of battlefield medicine he'd done.  There was a reason he was quick in surgery, and that wasn't because he was in a hurry.  Habits die hard, and there was no reason to fix that one.  Of course, her deciding that she wanted to see his hand as soon as he was done wasn't part of his plans for that day.  If he'd hurt it, he'd have Mitchell look at it after he was done with her at the guildhouse.  He wasn't going to completely leave it to heal wrong because his hands were much too important for his livelihood, but it really just wasn't his top priority right then, though fighting with her about it when she took hold of him really wasn't worth it, either. 

"That's because there isn't much that can make me angry enough to hit something," he murmured honestly, and it wasn't for the sake of guilting her, or anything.  There were only a few people that he cared that much about that they could make him feel that crazy.  She'd become one of them when he wasn't looking.  "I'll have Mitchell look at it.  Get in the car."

He was going to lock her in, then talk to Connor, who only needed a wave from Victor to be slipping past Xander to get over there.  Victor wanted this documented so that he could tear through whatever was there, and the guild clean-up crews were good.  The police weren't allowed to find this, and the guild wouldn't leave anything for Nathan to even get his hands on.  It only took a few minutes of talk with Connor to ensure that, and then the guild leader was informing Lucio and Matsumori that he was riding back to the guildhouse with them.  Victor was taking his car to Crimson.

  Daphne found it better to say nothing in regards to his comments about being in a hurry, because he might actually slap her in the mouth for them. She Was only a little smug that the brilliance of her long-term boyfriend and his team of detectives and hunting dogs had been two steps behind her nearly every step of the way. It fluffed her ego to know that in another instance, she might be able to do it again - and that was to them. Think about how much normal people missed. She'd been careless even with this situation, what would lay in her wake if she tightened up her defense and planned things?

  She didn't know if she'd ever live to find out when he told her to get in the car in the tone she'd heard her father use once when he'd caught her out after her curfew. She stood with no help from him, of course, and straightened out, sucking in another quick breath when she pulled at her back. This was going to be an amazingly horrible car ride; the awkward silence would be nerve-wracking; or at least, it would have been if she didn't have confidence to sink into her own mind for the duration of it. She didn't know if he'd give her the opportunity - right now, Victor's best bet to keep her crazy from having time to mend the cracks in her sanity with their own chaotic glue was to keep her focused on the present.

  Not that she'd tell him that; she didn't know to. Daphne was very aware, however, that if she didn't pull herself together enough for Irulan's psychiatric evaluation, she was going to effectively nail her coffin lid shut. She began to scheme, doubting herself enough to rely on the strange serial killer mentality she had of preparation and careful thought. She had taken psychology courses, and she could lie without being detected. Would Irulan hammer her with questions, or would she just try to talk to her? Daphne didn't know what to expect.

  She climbed into the car and put her seatbelt on, because wouldn't it be a pity of she was flung through the windshield before everyone found out how insane she really was? She leveled her gaze ahead, letting her eyes unfocus as she attempted to reconnect her normal self to her psychotic self. She didn't seem to notice that they were at the Guild house when they had arrived, and it took the snappy tone in Victor's voice to bring her back to reality. The fact that she couldn't remember most of the car ride suggested that she was incredibly tired, physically and mentally, but with a sluggish movement, she pulled herself out of the vehicle.

  She'd never walked anywhere with an escort like a prisoner before. Victor held her arm at a spot where there were no cuts, and he held it firmly. She couldn't say that she liked it, but then again, he could have been digging into her stitching, too, so she wouldn't object. Her steps, however brutally torn apart her back was, were as fluid as she could make them. When Irulan met them at the entrance of the infirmary, Daphne locked eyes with the Serpiente, as if giving her a momentary evaluation of her own.

  The studious gaze was not overlooked by Irulan, who cradled a notebook to her chest, an ink pen attached at the spiral. "I'll overlook the hostility in your current state, Miss Holliday, but please don't mistake my calm disposition any more than his," she warned. She pushed open the door to let them in, and then grabbed Victor lightly by the shoulder, turning him as Daphne wandered into the room and sat down on a table. She ignored the girl as she slowly peeled her tanktop off of herself and tried to look over her shoulder at her wounds, focusing her dark eyes on the doctor.

  "She needs to be at a considerably lower amount of pain than she is right now if you intend for me to make a proper assessment. I shouldn't even have to tell you this, Batten," she said, her voice hushed. "I can easily attribute anything rash she says to those wounds - humans especially are prone to saying things that they don't necessarily mean when they're in pain, be it mental or physical. I don't discredit her ability to withstand it, but I will have doubts about any answers I get from her if I question her now."

  Her frown was firm, but she was more fearful that Victor would try to make a decision based on information she didn't deem to be entirely true. "If you can stitch her up and get her held somewhere, I can proceed. If you want me to do it now, I don't trust what I'll learn. I don't want you to act with bad information." Her tone was more gentle, now, as if she was trying to appeal to his sense of judgment. She didn't know if she could; my Daphne had done a lot of collateral damage.

He didn't like the silence, but there was only so much he could say without feeling like he was damaging the situation more than it already was.  He couldn't talk to her, not about normal things, because he couldn't bring himself to just let everything else go so soon.  His right hand had started throbbing on the wheel of the Lincoln, but that wasn't a good topic of conversation and a wound of his never would have been, so that was out.  He could have gone on about what had happened, what she'd done, and even just how much the hunters at the scene seemed to dread going back in that basement, but bringing it all up again while he was driving didn't strike him as a good idea.  There was nothing that he wanted, or needed, to talk about, and so he didn't.

He would have if he'd known that it could have done some good.

It did strike him that the way he walked Daphne into the guildhouse was very much like he'd have done it with a prisoner, and that wasn't all that far from the truth.  She was a prisoner, and she wasn't going anywhere without him deciding that she could.  Before this was through, he was going to be the one to decide if she lived or died, and that was weighing more on his mind every minute.  He was careful to hold her arm in an area that didn't have any stitches or raw, damaged skin, and that was for the best.  His grip couldn't be trusted not to become too tight, not now and not with what was tearing through his mind every second.

He might have to kill her.  She'd killed those people for no reason, she'd killed the vampire for a very good reason, and she'd done it all with an incredible level of violence.  She might have to be killed.  She'd lied and hidden it all from him.  What would he have done if she'd told him sooner, told him that she liked to kill and she liked knives?  Would he have still freaked out?  Maybe.  Maybe not, though.  Maybe he could have gotten her into hunting.  She could have channeled that need to kill into hunting down vampires.  Would he have liked it?  Abso-fucking-lutely fucking not.  Would he have accepted it as the alternative to finding out she had a basement of gory goodies and polaroids?  Yes.

He'd gotten Daphne to the guildhouse, gotten her into the infirmary and even notified Irulan, and now, he wasn't going to take shit from a doctor who dealt with the crazies all day long.  She shouldn't have touched him, he didn't like being touched even under normal conditions, but she shouldn't have.  She didn't know him well enough for that, and turning him around so that she could tell him that Daphne wasn't in any condition for this?  Wonderful.  Absolutely brilliant. 

"Flores, might I remind you that this is already not an ideal situation?  If I sedate her to stitch her up, or even simply medicate her to ease the pain, you will have to worry about the medication interfering with your results.  If I fix it without the pain-killers, she'll be in even more pain.  What do you want me to do?" he demanded, and if she told him to wait, he might hit something else, which his already abused hand couldn't take. 

Actually, he also wanted to take a few moments while Irulan spoke with Daphne to take some painkillers himself, so that he could put in her stitches without worrying that his own pain might affect his attention to detail.  He had no intention of letting that happen, but it had been a rough day.

  Irulan stared at him for a long minute, and then looked beyond him, to Daphne. "Daphne, tell me, do you plan to try and kill yourself or anyone else when you're here?" she asked, her voice loud. It was almost patronizing. Victor was pissing her off - he was too close to the situation, and his behaviour was too erratic. She didn't blame him, but he didn't need to be trying to dictate what was happening and when due to the fact that he was personally involved.

  Daphne, who'd been sitting on the table in her bra up until this point, tank top in her hands, didn't even bother to glance up. "I don't plan on it," she said. She looked up at the brunette and narrowed her eyes. "But if you put your fucking hands on him again, I might make an exception." No, now was not the time to paw on Victor, not when Daphne was running on borrowed time. She knew she was, too - it was only a matter of time before they came with a shotgun to put her down like a feral dog. May as well make a few marks on the way, right?

  --- wait, no. She shouldn't have said that. The resolve on her face faltered for a moment, and Irulan saw it happen. It was like a shift, like she was trying to determine how she wanted to behave. If she could consciously choose what to say and what not to say, than there might be help. Still, Irulan wanted to bet that a lot of the hostility was coming from the pain she was in, and she tested this theory by walking closer to her, and closer still, 'til she was only mere inches from Daphne.

  She inspected her back, ignoring the obvious irritation from Daphne at doing so, and then looked back up to Victor. "If you can stand to get her taken care of, give her something to sedate her, and do it. I can deal with this when she wakes up. She's not in any sort of state to do any damage, to anyone except herself."

  She walked briskly out of the room, turning to glance at him. She opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again. He was too close to this situation. He was trying to dictate how to do her job. Did he really want to know whether or not Daphne was sane? Irulan didn't think so; not really. As she saw it, the girl didn't have a chance. It went against her merit not to say something to Connor about ripping him off of this particular instance, but it wouldn't do any good - and if she did, she'd make waves, and have permanent repercussions, regardless of the outcome.

  Daphne raised her eyebrows at Victor. She didn't feel like talking. She didn't want to explain herself to anyone, let alone a complete stranger. She wanted to punch a wall - but of course, Victor's obviously swollen hand suggested that it would be a bad idea. Did he want her to lose her shit on the shrink? Is that why he'd cornered her in here? No, that couldn't be it -- could it? Was he trying to trip her up? No, Victor wouldn't do something like that.

   Would he?

  Doubt began to flood her mind, and she focused on the shirt in her hands, trying to find a air in the ocean of confusion, something, something to hit bottom and push off of. They were trying to kill her. They were trying to kill her. She twisted the tank top, twisted it and twisted it until she heard the fabric start to rip.

The problem Irulan would have found in asking Connor to take Victor off of this particular case wouldn't actually have been that Connor wouldn't and it would make waves.  It was actually that Connor couldn't, and Victor would be the first to point that out.  It wasn't 'officially' a guild case.  Victor had asked for help with what he called a personal problem, and would continue to call a personal problem.  Connor had recruited help that wasn't being paid for their skills, and he'd come to help his uncle due to a familial bond and genuine sympathy.  He couldn't force his uncle out of there.  He could be an absolute ass and TRY to get Victor to leave it to someone else, but he couldn't force it.  Victor would not have it. 

It was actually just as likely at this point that Victor would lose his shit as Daphne, especially with Irulan's patronizing tone and refusal to do what she'd been asked there for.  If she hadn't been willing to do it, then why had she come?  He wasn't asking for a miracle, and he wasn't even asking for a guarantee.  All he wanted was a simple guess; did it seem to her as though it was possible that Daphne could function as a normal person without carving people up?  Circle one: Y/N.  That was all.  He wanted to know if there was a chance, or if he would be wasting his time and getting his hopes up, not to mention Daphne's. 

Maybe he didn't need that bitch, after all.  When he thought about the fact that Daphne's answer had been specifically tailored to the fact that she didn't plan on killing anyone unless Irulan put her hands on him again, and that he could work with.  It wasn't preferred, but perhaps it meant that she COULD stop herself from doing it at all.  That, or maybe she COULD channel it to something useful, like working for the guilds.  Still not preferred, but an option.  There was no way he was jumping into that, yet, though.  He had too much going on to even assume that he might be able to formulate a rational plan, and he was currently more pissed off at Irulan acting like he couldn't stand to get Daphne cared for, like he hated her.

He didn't hate her, not at all.  That was the biggest fucking problem.  Irulan didn't know what the fuck she was talking about.  Connor put way too much stock in her opinion.  Fucking mind-doctors.

Victor actually stood there and just seethed as he watched the bitch roll out, mostly because he knew that saying anything at all to her would just open up a hell of a can of worms.  He had nothing good to say, and anyone who thought he didn't have a filter between his brain and his mouth was absolutely wrong, even if he didn't usually choose to use it.  He had his dignity, and he wasn't going to blow that by losing it in front of the person most likely to tell him he was behaving in an unstable and unprofessional manner.  He might have wanted to hit her instead of the thick metal refrigerator they used for the medication that had to be kept chilled, and it occurred to him immediately after just how bad of an idea that was. 

If he'd thought hitting the Lincoln hurt, he hadn't really thought about it. 

"FUCK," he hissed vehemently, and the only reason he wasn't loud about THAT was because he figured Irulan would be rushing back in over the sound of the blow, nevermind him cursing immediately after.  He didn't bother to cradle his fist or any such thing, however, because he had to tend to Daphne.  He turned his narrowed eyes to her even as he reached for a mild painkiller, and he wished it could have been all business from there.  Really, he wished it could have been, or even if it was all personal, if he could have been teasing her for cutting herself.  Hell, even if he wasn't happy about it all happening, it would have been nice to be able to reassure her that everything was going to be okay.

He didn't know if it was going to be okay, but if Irulan walked in that door again, she was going to get a loud, curt order to 'get out'.  He was done playing her game.  Now, he was doing it his way. 

Swallow painkiller.

Get Daphne a stronger painkiller.

Proceed with needles and medical thread.

He gave it time for the painkiller to work and even offered them to her instead of coming up with a syringe and just stabbing her with it like he could have.  He offered her pills and a glass of water, and then he gave her time for it to kick in before he moved in with the needle.  His right hand needed time to stop throbbing the way it was, anyway.

"Since the shrink has proven herself absolutely useless, we're going to do this my way despite the fact that I'm biased," he told her, surprisingly softly for the fact that he'd smashed his fist into a hard metal object for the second time in a very short period, and he fixed her with his sharp blue eyes like he was trying to see through her and deep inside.  "Don't tell me what you think I want to hear.  There are options other than killing you, so don't think that a wrong answer means I'll hurt you.  Can you stop?"

Million dollar question, first out of the box.  Go Victor.

  No, Irulan wouldn't come rushing back into the room, because she half-expected to have something flung at her the moment she started down the hall. She was mildly impressed that he'd hit something else - by the sounds of it, something large that didn't have a lot of give to it. Good. She sincerely doubted it would straighten his head out, because she wasn't dealing with it. She wouldn't want to tell him how to do his job, obviously, or that haranguing a patient so close to a breakdown could do irreparable damage. No, she didn't mention any of those things, because he seemed to think he had a better way of doing them.

  Basically, she reacted similarly to how he might have if a lippy patient told him how to do his job.

  Daphne, on the other hand, said nothing as she waited for the medicine to kick in. It took about twenty minutes; twenty minutes of literally staring into space, ignoring everything but lights, colours, and sounds. She didn't really care to devote attention to anything in the room at the moment, though she'd memorized it. In case, you know. They tried to kill her. She felt herself wondering if Victor was trying to kill himself for a moment, the way he was hitting things like he wanted them to hit back. Daphne almost opened her mouth to say something, but thought better of it.

  No, best not to let that crazy out.

  She sat and stared at her hands and wondered why she couldn't be normal anymore. She didn't like running in two different directions; it got really old, actually. This was the first time anyone had made her feel bad about her crazy, or at least do a good job of trying to. She wasn't sure she swallowed the whole idea of guilt just yet. She was upset that she had basically owned herself, because she hurt Victor, but she didn't feel incredibly bad about what she'd been doing.

  Was that bad? She was pretty sure it was the definition.

  Daphne stared at him while she felt the warmth wash over her. Victor was biased, it was obvious by the fact that he banked on her being sedate and more willing to comply on painkillers. He should have given her sodium piothental and then told her she couldn't lie - but she knew what that was, and she knew that  he'd be lying if he said it, and she'd lie because she knew she could. Maybe the rapid release oxys were going to have to hold her over for right now.

  "I'm not killing anything right now," she said glibly, tilting her head at him. "I'm pretty sure that means I'm capable of stopping."

  Her voice sounded slow and foreign to her, but her chest bubbled a little as she forced laughter away. What a silly question! Could she stop? What was she doing right at the very moment? Not killing! Clearly, it was obvious that she had every capability of doing the opposite of stabbing people in the face. He couldn't get mad, though - she'd answered his question, and very honestly.

  It may have simply been the wrong interpretation of what he deemed as the 'correct' answer.

  She smiled at him, though. She thought she'd given him a fairly accurate answer. Wasn't she such a good girl?
 

If Irulan had lingered instead of starting down the hall, she MIGHT have gotten some hell out of him, but he'd done well in avoiding THAT.  As far as he was concerned, she was being intentionally difficult.  Even he could make guesses about a patient's recovery, even if he couldn't guarantee anything.  She wouldn't even guess.  See?  Intentionally difficult.

Daphne, however, was not being intentionally difficult.  He knew that because he knew that too much of what he'd given her would absolutely knock him for a loop, and she had a smaller body mass.  He'd known that when he dosed her, but she had a hell of a lot more pain ahead of her and lot less in the way of precise motor functions than he did.  She could afford to be dosed up and not feeling the pain.  He couldn't, though what he'd taken was helping some.  Not enough, but some.

He waited until he knew she wasn't hurting anymore, about twenty minutes, before he settled in, and that gave him time to get his equipment together for the work ahead of him.  He probably could have just knocked her out, but he actually did want to hear what she'd say.  He'd make sure she slept afterwards.

That was more than he'd be getting, unless Connor showed up and tried to force the issue.  As he prepared his materials and felt out the situation with the needle he was going to have to be using with a damaged right hand, Daphne answered his question, and he wished he could have been mad.  He wasn't, though.  He let out a sharp, displeased breath and rolled his eyes, but he wasn't angry at her.  No, he'd just asked a patient on painkillers a broad question, and he'd gotten a very obvious answer.  He needed to be more specific.

He thought things over as he was leaning over her wounds, the first being the one he decided with some inspection was the worst, and was trying to slowly and carefully remove the stitching (what she hadn't torn out herself) so that he could clean it up and restitch it himself.  It looked bad, and it still made him want to kill the raven who'd done it.  "No, you're not killing anything now, you're absolutely correct.  Can you stop forever?  Not kill anyone else?"

Ever?

God, the 'No Smoking' policy in the infirmary was driving him nuts.  Fuck it.  The first chance he got to back off, which was actually to grab some peroxide and a fresh towel, he popped a window open a little and grabbed a cigarette.  It was a bad habit, and he'd be the first to tell someone not to do it because it was extremely unhealthy and it'd kill them someday, but that didn't mean he wouldn't do it.  He could use the nicotine.  "We'll blame Verde if Mitchell asks," he said automatically.  They always blamed Verde when Victor smoked in the infirmary, and Verde never argued.  Personally, Victor thought that the man liked the negative attention.  He seemed to get a thrill out of someone actually being willing to confront him.

 Daphne stopped her haze and blinked her eyes widely at him. "Ever?" she repeated, like she was shocked. She sat back a little, her head tilting with the tell sign of an attitude. "What is it exactly that you used to do? I mean, can't we at least have some terms of agreement here? I'll only kill "bad" people?" she asked, holding her hands up to make little quotes. She ignored deliberately how much it still hurt to move, and she definitely was bothered by how scratchy and weak her voice sounded. She spoke from her chest, which gave it volume, but it still wasn't loud like she'd intended for it to be.

  Damnit. She'd really gone and fucked everything up.

  She held a hand up. "Ugh. I don't want to play anymore. Listen. You want to put a bullet in my head like I'm a rabid dog, do it. Just do me a favour and do it when I'm looking at you and don't shoot me in the back, okay?" she said. She pushed off of the exam table, nevermind all of her injuries. And goddamnit, Daphne headed for that door - like it was some sort of test. But it wasn't, really. She was just kind of over the situation. God, it really was a fucking game to her.

  Yes. At this point it was clear Daphne was clinical - but then again, Onyx had a hunter who'd been in Midnight long enough to lose most of her mind, and she'd been doing her job just fine. "You do somebody one favour," she muttered to herself, pulling the door open. Yeah, she pretty much was just bypassing security measures at that point. Hopefully they hadn't crowded around the door on the outside with arms prepared to take the wild beast down the moment it emerged its head.