Night's Omen

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

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

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

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

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

He lunged.

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

She screamed, she screamed....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imagine that. A vampire about to pass out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, mostly, anyways.

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

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

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

And smacked his head off the car's ceiling.

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

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

Seriously. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or....maybe it wasn't.

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

How?

"Wait.  How do you know my name?"

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

He hadn't.

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

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

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

They were the easy ones.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

.....

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

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

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

No.  She wasn't.

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

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

"I'm sorry, I... "

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

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

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

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

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