November 23rd, 2014.
She was walking sown the cobble stoned street towards the Inn on silent feet, that carried her along, the pace slow.
The other night had resulted in an event she'd prefer hadn't happened, and half hoped was a dream until the sluggish way her limbs moved registered. Mathian's little mind tricks were getting too much.
The light drizzle of rain and mist helped, though. More because she enjoyed standing in the pitter patter of water falling than anything else.
Stopping, she leaned against the porch for a moment, and fished around inside her blazer for something.
In that inner pocket, Les kept a few items of importance, but most significant was the vial she pulled out.
Unstopping it, she hesitated for a moment, before the rim met her lips and she downed a small measure of it's contents, wholly unaware that it would be her saving grace later.
She shook, as the blood took it's effect on her system, far more potent that normal human's blood, this stuff packed a punch. From that point on, she felt the day would improve. She was wrong.
Rain always did put a damper on Mathian's little mist mode of transportation, so today he settled for wolf.
His large canine feet padded down the street of an alleyway around the corner of the Inn. If wolves could grin? It would upon seeing Lesinda.
Continuing forward, he shifted, the fur becoming clothes that fit him perfectly along with an umbrella that he immediately popped up to cover himself from the rain. An umbrella would shield the younger vampiress from the rain she'd yet to get out of when he got closer.
He was curious to what was exactly in the vial but instead, he would give her a hard time, "Imbibing narcotics now are we, sweet Lesinda?" He purred, a slight smirk to his lips, meaning it as a joke...he wasn't funny.
This of course resulted in Lesinda attempting to back hand her tormentor, whipping around to try and break his jaw. She didn't quite miss, but Mathian always being faster, stronger than her, intercepted the hand. The solid smack of her wrist connecting with his palm was somewhat muted by the mist and fall of rain, as was Les' quiet snarl of frustration.
His reactions, fast as they were, weren't enough to keep her from trying again and this time, it Lesinda's knee that moved, aiming for somewhere rather, ah, sensative.
She had both, remarkably good aim and power behind that driven knee.
Mathian would tisk, a cluck of his tongue, a sound of disapproval, "Is that any way to greet me?" He had to release her to step back to avoid the knee to his tender bits. He maybe a soulless blood sucking monster...but it still hurt.
His eyes narrowed slightly, "Rather hostile tonight, I see." Mathian rumbled dryly.
"For reasons you ought to know perfectly well." Lesinda retorted after a silent snarl at her sire when he evaded her second attack. Taking an opportunity now, she backed away from Mathian. The reply she got of "Other than the usual, no."
Les snorted. "Oh please. The usual is always the reason. But you know what you did.
I've told you, stay the hells Out of my head!" Her hands clenched at her sides as she fought down the anger.
She'd long ago worked on locking her empthic senses up and away so she didn't give something away, but she couldn't do much about
any errant sparks of fire that flickered from her fisted hands as her emotions grew stronger and more angry.
Mathian blinked and ticked his eyes down to her hands that began to spill with magic before looking back to her face, "And I have....why....thinking about me without my influence?" The vampire smirked again, "How sweet."
Her snarl would have been heard, to anyone outside on the porch. "Only when I've been planning how I'd like to have your corpse arranged after I'm done sticking it with iron spikes and silver needles." Les replied, with a sweet smile that was anything but.
He gave a snort, smirking still, "...Hm...somehow I don't believe you, Lesinda...you've been having other thoughts. Those thoughts you claim to have had about me would bring you a smile, like that...not the rage you were just displaying.
None of this could have ended well with Mathian's continual baiting, trying to make it out that Lesinda wanted him, after everything he'd done to her. She knew he'd been playing in her mind, she knew it....Didn't she? And so what if the only other vampires she'd met so far had all urged her to do as Mathian commanded, or chastised her for not doing as he said? She did not want to be with him!
"I have plenty of reason to feel rage at you." Lesinda retorted shortly, with a small curl of a snarl on her lips again. "You have no idea how much." How long had it actually been now? 7 years felt like too long and at the same time, to little... Her internal monologue was interrupted by Mathian's voice.
He sighed, an unnecessary action, but one that showed how weary he was for the moment, "And you'll hang onto that until you die it would seem. You know, it will give you wrinkles."
And that, some how, shattered her temper. "No I won't, you saw to that rather neatly, didn't you?" Her hands flexed, clenching again soon after. "You know my birthday was a few months ago? I'd be 25. If it wasn't for you." She brought a hand up, touching her own cheek lightly. "Instead, I'm stuck. Bearly a couple of months away from 19." Her hand curled into a fist again as her angry flared up once more and she snarled once again. "And then you came along and now I'm stuck in this never dying body of dead, cold flesh. You bastard"
"Oh come now, it's not all that bad, is it? You do not age, you are stronger, faster. Your magical abilities are stronger because you needn't worry on the worry it can take on a mortal body." Mathian waved his hand in a dismissive gesture, "So you have to drink blood? So what? A small price to pay."
"Eight pints, Mathian! I drink drink eight pints of human blood or I die! Most people only have 8 pints in their body. I have to kill to live, you bastard! " She snarled again and this time her hand dived into the pocket of her blazer, yanking out the revolver Kitty had given her some time ago. She was going to end this, one way or another, she was going to end this torment Mathian kept putting her through. Her thumb caught the hammer and pulled it back, priming it as she brought the weapon up to point at Mathian's chest.
Her entire body quaked with pent up rage. "It's not a small price to pay to me!"
"So what? They are humans. No better than cattle. Besides, did your friends not turn you away? Run you out of town just because of what you had become? If anything, they deserve your scorn, not your sympathy. You should be happy that their lives sustain you, at least then they counted for something useful." Mathian bared his teeth at her, "You are not human anymore. Be happy for it. You should be grateful for what I did for you, Lesinda. Because of me, you have found far more than you would have in that little town of yours."
She shook. Her hand shook, and so did the gun at the end of her arm. How dare he try and trivialize this. How dare try and make it seem like a good thing! Her red eyes stared at Mathian for a full second before she blinked. "They turned on me because they were afraid, because of you and everything you coven did to them...To us" Her clenched for a moment before she carried on.
"I wish you'd killed me that night" She said, quietly.
Faces popped up in her mind, people she'd fed on in the last year, since Mathian's reappearance. Her real family were dead and burned. Her friends, people she'd called family, had driven her out of her home when they learned what had happened. Beaten, traumatized mentally, physically and emotionally thanks to her empathic abilities, then brutally used and abused. Because of him!
All if it, all because he wanted...Her.
Without warning, the revolver in her hand came up, until the muzzle was pressed against her own chin, and her finger twitched lightly on the trigger. But, she paused, hesitated. This, was not the first time she contemplated 'suicide', if you could call it that. She is already dead after all, but she did want to see the look in Mathian's eyes as he watched her standing there with a gun against her own head. Just...To see his reaction to the threat of having the thing he obsessed over so much, gone, out of his reach forever.
What Lesinda saw, was the first bit of panic on the vampire's face she'd ever seen. In an instant it was closer, he moved in a surge to reach her before she could do anything stupid. Before the umbrella he'd been holding hit the ground, his hand was between her skin and the muzzle. A futile attempt to stop Les from removing that one thing he obsessed over. Her. She pointed this out in a strangely calm voice for such a maddening situation she'd forced him into.
"You realise if I pull the trigger now, the bullet will just got straight through your hand, don't you?" Her head tilted to one side slightly. "You have no idea how many times I've tried to pull this trigger since I got this gun"
His face was stern and his eyes red from the use of power to move so quickly, "...Why?" Mathian almost whispered, "It is a gift. You are stronger, not weaker...I saved you from disease. From death."
How could she make him see? Make him understand this...This thing, she walked around with every day, this almost unfeeling lump of dead flesh called a body, the need and urge to rip out a persons throat and dance in the arterial spray afterwards, was not something she wanted, nor desired....She didn't want to be faster or stronger, she wanted to be Les. Just plain, simple Les.
She smiled sadly. She could never make him see, make him understand."I don't want to kill another just so I can exist, Mathian, I can't do it. I don't want to. I nearly did....I have done. I hate it" Her grip on the revolver shifted slightly, getting tighter, the rain made it slick, difficult to hold. Les glanced at Andu, Icer and now Maliya with a small, sad smile.
He'd never stop, never quit and she didn't have the strength to stop him. "Please..Tell Thorn, I...I'm sorry....I'm just, not strong enough" There was a way, though. One way, open to Lesinda right now...
Her eyes closed, finger twitched again, squeezing trigger. A single gunshot sounded, surprisingly quiet, even to Icer's ears. The bullet, silver of course, had been intended for Mathian's black heart. Instead, it only pierced the older vampire's hand, and carried on upwards. To leave the gore aside, it did what bullets are meant to do and erupted out the back of Lesinda's head. She, of course, dropped. Falling to the wet ground in a crumpled state and lay still while the rain fell all around.
What transpired between Icer, Mathian, Andu and Maliya were never seen, heard or hinted at by Lesinda's mind. That, should have been the end of Lesinda.
Some vampires could exist without a brain. Lesinda could not, and the bullet had wrought catastrophic damage. Should have, but not quite. Most of her brain was still intact, if the bullet had been anything but silver, she would have made a fast, conscious and painful recovery.
As it was, Andu's blood, the blood from the vial she's drunk from, that had held Mathian's interest so, saved her life. The fresh, powerfully potent blood coursed through Lesinda's body, quickly added to by the more than normal blood provided by Maliya moments later.
After a day, the whole affair was barely re-collectable to Les. Were it not for the fact she awoke several hours later, in Icer's lair, covered in her own blood, she might have waved it off as a fanciful dream and forgotten it.
It wasn't a dream, though. She'd actually made a very good attempt at killing herself, and the fact she'd come so close scared the holy living hells out of her. She didn't know what she'd been thinking, apparently, the piece of her brain she'd shot, held memories, and exactly what thought processes she'd gone through to arrive at the conclusion that killing herself was a better alternative to facing Mathian down, were gone.
She would...Have to tell people, what she'd done to herself. The odd occasion where her memory skipped out on her couldn't be easily explained all the time. She'd told Dad, at Thorn's request, or ultimatum really. He'd examined her mind as best he could, and concluded that the bullet had caused minimal damage, it was the silver that had made the real issues.
It would heal, in time. Some things would be lost forever, but they didn't appear important. Of course, only Les would know if they had been important, when it came time to remember them.
