Val stood before the canvas, staring at the sight she had just painted. It was her, dead. She had a string wrapped about her neck, and...there was the duck.

Looking over into the corner, there he sat. Her wooden toy duck, that quacked when you walked him by pulling him along with the string. He seemed to be smirking at her.

"What? What are you staring at?" She frowned and looked away, catching sight of her other wooden and stuffed toys from the corner of her eye. She began to talk to them. Again....

"I miss talking to you guys. You know, you used to answer me. The rats, too, but they haven't been around since I had to...eat one of their brothers. I'm afraid to hunt on my own, and Belle has been so busy."

From the direction of her tattered and ratty stuffed bear, Mine, came the soft sound of what she knew from before to be his voice,"Don't worry, Valentine. We're still here with you. You've just suffered from a momentary lapse of sanity. We've missed you, too."

Gasping, she dropped the rag she had been wiping her brush with and whirled, facing the bear. Grinning, she ran to him, dropping to her knees as she hugged him close. "MINE! Oh, Mine! You're back!"

Laughing, she rocked herself of the floor, pink blood-tinged tears slipping over her alabaster cheeks. They were back, the normal voices she'd had since Earth were back!

Her fangs tingled, the monster she associated her hunger with curled within her belly and growled, awakening. Tonight, she would hunt with her teddy. Tonight, she would find out if she was her old self again!

After completely destroying her works, or tossing them out of her sight, she stormed upstairs to her studio, staring at the sketches of Jial she had pinned to the wall.

Fury still pounded in her blood, her face still contorted into a half snarl. She looked around, unable to bring herself to defile her last sanctuary. Her thoughts turned to the streets outside her windows, and she fought the urge to leap from one of them, running through the alley ways, slaughtering anyone she came across. She was hungry, angry, and alone.

Belle's memories, what had passed to Val, ran on a continuous loop through Valentine's mind. She drooled at the sight of all those luscious bodies layed before her Sire in their moment of damnation, the moment they partook of her unholy kisses. The sounds of weeping from Hell, the thrilling feel of a priest laboring away above her, thrusting into her, and the joy in knowing his soul belonged now to Zaruk, and ultimately, HIS master.

She was wrong to allow him to be tossed from her body, she was wrong to deny him a vessal. But, the time for regrets was gone. Now was the time to continue with Belle's work, for the vampire who had sired her had gone soft. She was "in love," and therefore useless.

With a snarl, Val lept to the window sill, stepped out the window, and stood on the narrow ledge of the building. The wind gently ruffled her ebony hair, her crimson lips curved back into a smirk, the tips of fangs gleaming in the moonlight. Val would find company in this town, she would seek out those who sought to destroy innocence, and join them.