Huntress Ch. 04

Okay, well Chapter 4, here it is. Thank you for those of you who are reading this and are enjoying it and commenting and rating. Like I said in one of my comments (that I'm sure was not read by anyone other than me) I have up to chapter 9 written, and I am just editing as I upload, but I think after this chapter, I will slow the uploading down a little bit just so I don't get behind on my actually writing and completion of the story.

Enjoy..

++

Sage had looked into the eyes of many dying vamps.

And many a-times she had responded to those looks with a swift kill.

Not because she couldn't stand it, the sad eyes, the trembling lips, the whole package, but because she didn't want to hear them beg. Begging was a human attribute. These bloodsuckers were not human, no matter what resemblance their bore to who they were in a previous life. Sage had heard a theory once. A theory that vampires were humans without souls, a shell of who they had been. Sage didn't believe that for a second. Once you accepted the blood, once you endured the death, you were just that. Dead. So a bullet to the head or a major artery made no difference.

As Edgar Black looked up into Sage's eyes, she had to wonder who he had been before joining the afterlife. He seemed young. Probably no more than twenty when he was turned, and Sage almost felt bad. He probably could have lived a decent life. Raised children, gotten married, become the CEO of a company or became a rock star, whichever he preferred. Instead he had chosen this.

Or maybe it had chosen him.

'Either way', Sage told herself. Today was not his lucky day.

People all around her screamed for their lives. If they were in a human club, security and the cops would have already been called. In Lucid Nightmare, it was every man or vamp for his or herself. If someone was shot, it was sadly his problem and no one else's. In the human world, you could live through a gunshot. In the vampire world, a shot to the foot with a silver bullet could be the end of you once it traveled through the bloodstream to the heart.

Sage came down on one knee, looking into Edgar's eyes. The young vamp looked as if he were trying to melt into the floor. His arm, which was turning an odd pewter color due to the slow release of silver into his bloodstream, was clutched tightly at his side. She kept her gun pointed at him.

"I'll tell you anything! I swear to God, just don't kill me. Please. I don't wanna fucking die."

Sage actually believed him. The man was sweating, profusely, and she doubted, although it might have been a contributing factor, that it was because of the bullet in his shoulder. Without taking her eyes off of him, she reached into the top of her dress, pulling out a picture and the business card she took from her sister's house. She flipped the picture around in her finger so that it was facing him.

"My sister was attacked tonight by a bunch of vamps. Why do I get this nagging feeling that you were involved with this?"

Edgar shook his head adamantly. "No, no, no. I ain't ever seen her before. I swear." Sage tapped her gun against her chin, contemplating what he had just told her. "I don't believe you." She lowered the gun back down to him and fingered the trigger.

"Alright! Alright" Edgar held out his bloody hand as if he could stop the bullet with his fingers. Sage placed the gun back under her chin. "I'm listening."

"She's a Giver here. I seen her a couple times, she's real friendly with everyone. I mean real friendly." Sage returned the gun to its previous target, his leg. She fingered the trigger again in a warning.

"Alright! She started showing up with some guy. I don't know who he was, but he had money. He dressed like it, acted like it. Everything. That's all I know. I swear!" A lone scarlet tear fell down the boy's cheek. There was something startling about seeing a grown man cry. Something even more so when he cried blood.

"Whom did she come here with on a normal basis? Who introduced her to supernaturals?"

The boy managed a one-shouldered shrug. "I don't know. The only time I saw her, she was by herself or she was with the rich dude." Sage nodded. She could only assume that this same 'rich dude' was the evil man her sister had brought around the boys.

"I heard about you and your friends," Edgar said, his voice shaking. "Huntresses. Please don't kill me. I ain't never hurt nobody."

Edgar was trying his hardest to become the tile he sat upon. He pushed his body back into the floor more. His eyes were red with the threat of more bloody tears, and his forehead had taken on a reddish tint as his pores released the only substance within his body.

Sage continued to stare down at Edgar. His arm had already almost turned black. Soon it would start to shrivel up, and if he didn't die first from the silver, it would eventually fall off. She didn't need to kill him. It would happen on its own. "I didn't even need to press the button," She muttered, referring to the thin remote still strapped to her thigh. Edgar looked around. "Wh-what button?"

Sage shook her head as she stood up on the bar. The silver in some of her bullets was probably leaking, despite having been melded shut. She would need to check them when she got home.

Sage re-holstered her gun and looked around.

Below her, standing behind the bar, a brown haired vamp stood, looking at Edgar. His forehead was wrinkled, with anger and concern. "You got a problem?" Sage asked. He looked up at her. His lips were pulled tight, and when he didn't open his mouth to answer. Sage crouched back down on one knee and leaned over to him.

"I said do you have a problem?"

"You should put him out of his misery," the vamps voice startled her, like velvet sheets running over her body. She felt it everywhere. It made the hairs on the back of her neck stand-up. His soft brown eyes met hers in a silent challenge. One that Sage was, for some reason, not willingly meeting.

The vamp seemed to look passed her tousled hair and slightly brown eyes. Looking into her....

How was he doing that? She felt strings on her arms, as if she were a marionette, making her reach for the gun in her dress. And she still couldn't look away.

"Put him out of his misery," he repeated, softer, and Sage felt his breath whisper over her ears even though he stood directly in front of her.

Who was he? Where had he come from? But, Christ, did she really even care about that though?

All she wanted to do was put Edgar out of his misery. He didn't need to suffer like that. How could she be such a monster to such a young kid? Sage pulled the gun out, removing the safety. Whoever the brown haired vamp was, he was completely right. The velvet feel of his voice in her mind, made her shudder.

It felt right.

She felt right.

Felt warm. Safe.

"Do it, Sage."

The sound of her name seemed to bring her out of whatever spell he had put her under, and she blinked once, twice, and then looked away.

She had gone somewhere. Sage glanced around, remembering how she had gotten there, what had led to her shooting the vamp in the shoulder.

Everything.

He had gotten into her mind. The idea hit her the instant her mind cleared of the silky fog he had created.

He had tried to persuade her. Using his vampire voodoo on her. Sage felt her face burn with heat.

She should kill him. Right here, right now.

Sage aimed her unholstred gun at the vamp in front of her, and meant to pull the trigger, but it never happened. In a matter of seconds, Sage's gun was knocked out of her hand, and she was dragged by her hair to the middle of the empty dance floor by an unseen hand. Through half clenched eyes, she saw her intended target, clutching the bar, not moving, but the expression on his face told her that the attack was as much a surprise to him as it was to her.

When she reached the middle of the floor, Sage felt the hold on her hair release and she was up on her feet in an instant, looking around. There was no one else around. The strobe and disco lights that had been left on even as occupants had evacuated the club were her only companion. Her heart slammed out of her chest as she spun around multiple times looking for her attacker and her gun. She didn't see either.

"Show your fucking face," she murmured. "C'mon"

Almost as if answering her command, another invisible hand wrapped its hands around her neck, shooting her up into the air then body slamming her on the floor. What little air that had been in her lungs was pulverized out of her instantly, and the pain radiated throughout her entire body.

Sage flailed her arms, trying to hit anything, anyone, something. She scratched at her neck, but there was nothing there except her own skin.

Alarm bells were going off all over the club, or maybe they were in her head. Loud sirens and shrills shrieked at her as she struggled to take a breath. Lights to match the noise around her began flashing in front of her eyes.

No way, she told herself. Not like this. No freaking way.

Sage's lungs burned, and her eyes watered. A small tear left a hot trail down the side of her face, dripping innocently into her ear. Around her eyes, darkness began to move in. She was getting so tired. Her fingers that had been clawing at her neck furiously, fell next to her, limply, and she found that it was impossible to pick them back up.

Her vision blurred, and Sage closed her eyes, not wanting to see the world around her darken. 'Not like this', she screamed this time, but of course no one heard.

She needed to figure out who had attacked her sister.

She needed to find him and kill him.

She needed to kill the vamp at the bar.

She needed to help Brie raise Caleb.

She needed to have kids and raise a family.

She needed to see the sun rise in the morning.

She needed to live.

++

Caleb awoke silently.

And that was how she knew something was wrong.

It was soundless.

She hadn't woken up screaming, nor had she been startled awake by something that wasn't there. She hadn't had a nightmare. She hadn't dreamt at all. It had been a soundless, uneventful coming to consciousness.

And it scared her.

For a number of reasons, but the main one being: her visions and hallucinations had become such a normal part of her daily life that she didn't feel right without them. They had become a part of her.

She almost...missed them. Since her first memory, she had seen things other people couldn't. Things that weren't there. At age four it had been cute stuff like beautiful princesses and fairies, greeting her with open arms, showing her their ancient homes in faraway lands. At age five, she learned the word 'hallucination', and that was when things began to change.

Fairies turned into screaming children, yelling at her for help. Princesses were no longer beautiful, soft haired angels. Their hair and beauty fell from their bodies along with their skin. And that was when she stopped eating and sleeping.

'The fact that she is even alive with how she eats and sleeps is a miracle.' She remembered listening to one of her doctors say that to Brie. They never returned to that doctor again. On the drive home, Brie's knuckles had been ghost white as she gripped the steering wheel.

The doctor had been right, though. Caleb assumed that that was what scared her sister. She'd been fighting to keep them alive since their parent's death, and until the day Caleb's visions became unbearable she had done a damn fine job.

'That fucker didn't know what he was talking about,' Brie had said over a carefully pushed down sob.

Caleb had been thirteen at the time. Thirteen and she'd weighed 45 pounds. That day had been a Wednesday, and Caleb hadn't been able to stomach a meal since the previous Saturday.

As she got older, she learned to keep food in her stomach. To sit at a dinner table long passed everyone else had finished, with her eyes closed, mouth sealed tight, and her mind focused on one thing.

'Keep it down, keep it down, keep it down, keep it down, keep it down.'

Most of the time it worked.

And it made Brie happy.

Made her think that she was getting better.

For a little while, she learned to sleep with a makeshift gag tight around her mouth so that when she screamed, no one would hear and think that she had relapsed. She learned to withhold a scream and keep up normal behavior whenever a vision hit her like a man holding a baseball bat to the back of her head. She learned to put make up on to give herself a little more color so that no one could tell the days her anti-vomiting mantra or her sleeping habits failed her.

Yeah, for a good year, Caleb managed to make her sister and her roommates think that her hallucinations had gone away. That she was completely cured.

Then the nightmares came back with a vengeance, one night.

And Caleb woke up tied to a gurney.

And her sister found out about the make-up. About the gag. About everything.

It had broken her heart, and in turn had broken Caleb's.

Since that time she hadn't been strong enough (or perhaps her hallucinations had become too strong) to sleep through or ignore them. They had become debilitating. Caleb spent most of her time at home, in the darkness of her room, sleeping because of her meds. Occasionally, she would go out into the living room with the girls, listen to them talk about the men they were seeing or no longer seeing. During her good days, she would have dinner with them, and if they decided to hunt she would see them off.

She didn't go out dancing with them. The amount if stimuli from the club would probably make her have brain aneurysm. She didn't even go to the grocery store. Or to the park. Or to the mall.

If she wanted outside food, the girls would get it. If she needed new clothes, Carmen would sit down with her and order it off the Internet.

The farthest Caleb went was to the hospital.

Which is what made her swing her legs over the sides of her bed, onto the carpet floor. She wanted to walk. No, she needed to. The desire to stretch her legs was almost unbearable, like an itch she couldn't scratch.

Caleb picked herself up from her bed. Her room, as usual, was an odd gray black. It was small room, only big enough for a twin sized bed and a small computer desk and a miniature closet. She had chosen this room for the den effect it provided for her. There were no windows. Barely enough walking room. It felt like a hug.

Outside of the room was dark, and she gripped the walls as she exited. Her sister and roommates had probably not come back from the club. Down the hallway, hanging on one of the walls, red numbers glared at her.

1:27 AM

They would be back any minute. Caleb made a quick left into the kitchen and flipped on the light switch, heading for the fridge. The giant door opened silently, and bathed her in cloud of cold air, that was welcomed with a sigh. Caleb grabbed a bottle of water, opened it and took a healthy swig.

She used her foot to close the fridge, and as the door swung shut she noticed a black silhouette stood in the dark hallway. She could just barely make out a women's body by the shadowed length of the hair, and slender figure. Caleb placed the water on the island next to her and squinted into the darkness. The body type didn't resemble any of her roommates. That realization set her blood pumping.

What if a vampire had found out where the girl's lived? Caleb never had a reason to fear vampires. She never left the house. But she had indulged in the stories her sister and roommates told like a child with a bedtime story. It had never felt real to her.

Until now.

The silhouetted figure seemed to lean against the line of shadow that separated the darkness of the hallway from the dim light of the kitchen, the same way a person leaned against a brick wall.

Caleb stood unmoving, and the silence of the house made her ears ring. Maybe if she moved slowly, she could reach the phone? Caleb doubted it. Vampires were fast, from what she had been told. Faster than any human could move. She didn't stand a chance.

In a moment of valor, she took a slight step back, barely lifting her foot off of the ground.

The silhouette, whose posture expressed a favoring of the left leg, took a slight step, moving in a quick jerky motion. Caleb's heart kicked up triple time, and she fought down the urge to cry out.

Although the figure was not significantly closer, Caleb could make out a slight bend in the knee. A bend that went opposite and a little to the left of a normal human's range of motion. Caleb could feel her hands begin to shake, and willed herself to wake up. It had to be a dream. No one could walk with their knee bent behind them without howling in pain.

And a big part of Caleb didn't want to hear the woman make a noise.

Caleb dared another step back. The figure did not move. She could feel eyes on her, and it made goose pimple erupt everywhere.

"Am I dreaming?" She didn't recognize the sound of her own voice interrupting the silence. She sounded scared. Like a child. God, she felt like a child. Wished she was in her bed, underneath the blanket.

"Please answer me."

A labored wheeze echoed through the kitchen. Unconsciously, Caleb brought her hands to her chest; afraid her heart would fall out of it.

Suddenly, the silhouettes figure changed. The knee that was bent backwards, seemed to reach back farther, and the one good leg, seemed to twist at the shin till the foot turned in the opposite direction. The sound of cracking bones and popping muscles made Caleb's hands rise to her ears. Trying to block out the nauseating sound.

Another wheeze echoed through the room.

"This isn't real." She said it more for herself than for the shadowed woman.

Had she taken her meds? At the moment, she couldn't remember. Was too scared to remember.

The shadow rock back and forth on its deformed legs then, before Caleb could run, jerked into the light of the kitchen.

Unexpected kind blue eyes stared at her.

A wealth of blonde hair passed the woman's shoulders in a cascading wave, and when she took another step back, Caleb could see that none of her limbs were deformed, like the silhouettes. Despite the billows of material, Sage could see that she walked perfectly without a limp.

She had no idea who the woman was or how she had gotten into her home, but by the look on her face, Caleb no longer felt that she was in any danger. Despite her unusual dress that reminded her of something a princess from a Robin Hood movie would wear, Caleb felt no alarm when she lifted her skirt and took the final few steps to stand in front of her.

Pale, baby soft skin covered her flushed cheeks, and a moderately sized nose Kind eyes were encased inside perfectly set apart eyes and heavily lashed lids. The lady was beautiful by every account of the word.

Caleb was having a hard time believing that the wheezing and even the deformed shadow had actually been the women standing in front of her.

"Who are you?" Caleb whispered, mesmerized by her beauty. The woman's soft features turned upward in a smile. The gold that trimmed her green dress gave her an unearthly glow.

"Help me," the woman said. Her smile never left her mouth or her eyes. She said the words as lightly as one would discuss the weather. Caleb leaned in, not sure she had heard correctly.

Caleb's breathtaking intruder leaned forward as well, but not because, she hadn't spoken loud enough, but because once again the sound of popping bones and muscles echoed into the air. Caleb practically jumped away from her.

"Please, save me. They're going to kill me." A baby soft hand reached up and out to brush some of Caleb's hair from her eyes. "Please save me." Still that smile and yet from her words, Caleb could swear she was being tortured. Even the sound of her voice sounded empty and weak, like someone who had not had water in days.