Chomp

I was angry.

Angry at myself, mainly, but there was plenty of blame to go around and share. My rage soaked through all the pain, almost numbing me. If I could concentrate on my anger, I could forget the torture my body had been through.

It had always been my tactic, ever since I could fight.

But, as I laid on my back, my one eye drowning in blood dripping from my head, and god knows how many broken bones, I realized anger wasn’t going to be enough. My blades had long since been out of reach, the needle with the counter-virus long crushed beneath the man’s feet. At this point, I wasn’t even sure if I could clock him a good one if he let me.

“Are you finished?” came his stupidly calm voice.

That was the worst part; his voice was gentle, as if he still hoped to hide the fact that he was an abomination, even among groups of abominations—the worst of the worst.

I grabbed the jagged hunk of concrete that lay beside me and tried to pull myself up to sit. It was slow work, and I had to stop when I felt a blinding jab of pain in my side.

“Not… yet,” I whispered. “Not ever.”

“You really should stay down, though,” he said thoughtfully. His voice drew nearer, but I couldn’t hear the sound of footsteps. His gait was like his fighting, and he was far too light on his feet. “You could fatally tear something at this point.”

I let out a hoarse laugh. “Like you’d give a shit,” I spat, looking around for him. It didn’t take me long.

He had made his way closer to me and was now perched on top of one of the broken statue bases.

“Like I’ve said before. I’d rather not kill you...”

His voice trailed off, taunting me. If that was true—and I found it impossible to believe it was—he should have just offed himself in the first place.

The anger surged in me again. I hadn’t felt this helpless in a long time, and the sensation returning didn’t give me any sense of nostalgia. I clenched my hand, feeling the already broken bones crack.

If only I had brought my scythe.

“Well, it’s almost daytime. I suppose I should be heading back.”

“You little shit—don’t you dare!” I snarled, getting to my feet shakily with a lot of effort. “Don’t you know who I am?!”

The masked man remained silent, simply staring back at me. He had a few cuts and bruises along his arms and chest, but nothing major, and it made me even angrier.

“I am Agnes Randt,” I spat, taking a shaky step toward him. “My mother was Celia Randt—head of the Organization, and one of the best hunters your sorry ass won’t ever know. My father was Joseph Randt—one of the best scientists for the Organization that discovered how to turn your kind into something useful for a change! You will do me the honour of finishing here, or I’ll—”

I was interrupted by something landing in my lap. It wasn’t terribly heavy, but the sudden impact caused me to plop down onto my butt again. Cursing him, I stared down at the item that Plague Mask decided to chuck at me.

My breath caught in my throat.

There wasn’t much light—especially since I had lost my night-goggles—but the dawn brought just enough for me to see the steel barrel glinting. The revolver was small, but it was certainly a beacon of hope. A quick check of the cylinder told me it was fully loaded, save for a single bullet.

It was more than enough. “Are you retarded?” I called, half laughing at him from across the way. From here, I didn’t even need to stand to hit him.

“How’s this; you kill me with those bullets, and you win. If you don’t, you stay laying down here until noon. Sound okay?”

It was decided.

This was now officially the strangest vampire encounter I had ever had—including the time I had to wreck a beauty pageant in Paraguay. This guy must have been the stupidest, most short-sighted creature in the existence of—

Wait.

No one was that stupid, least of all someone who could beat me down as easily as he had. I felt a lump in my throat.

“What’s the catch?” I demanded, taking the safety off the trigger slowly. “Are these dye bullets? Or is this thing loaded to explode on me when I pull the trigger?”

“No, and no. It’s a gun I collected off some guy in Brooklyn, fair and square. No tampering, as far as I’m aware.”

Ugh, the idiot was even rhyming.

It was probably all too much to hope for that he would stay still, but he never mentioned whether or not I could pause in between to adjust. I raised my arms straight out, one holding the gun and the other bracing its partner at the wrist. Taking aim at his head, I squeezed the trigger.

To my surprise, he didn’t move. The bullet ripped through his jaw, sending bits of flesh flying. Despite the hit, he remained where he was, unflinching. I squeezed again and again. My arm shook, but I still managed to peg him in the shoulder, and then in the hip; I took a deep, steadying breath before letting the final bullet go.

It whizzed through the air, but hit him before the sound of the shot rang through the grand entrance hall. It sped right through his heart, hitting the basement door after.

I smirked. Vampires had a nasty reputation of being immortal.

They weren’t.

They might have been stronger and better at healing than humans were, but they were just as mortal as we were.

The man stood there a moment, blood pouring from each of the bullet wounds. I wished again that I could see his face so that I could see the surprise and anger in his face. He had clearly thought I was too injured to aim and fire.

And he was what I liked to call wrong.

But my grin slowly faded away as I watched him. His knees had bent slightly and his arms were out to steady himself, but the man was still standing. As the seconds crept into minutes, his posture improved. Slowly, the rivers of blood that ran down his body became trickles, then disappeared completely, leaving only dry stains.

My mouth hung open and I could barely breathe. It was impossible—it didn’t make any sense. He must have—

“Well, you know what that means, Miss Randt,” he said in an annoyingly chipper voice. Honest to god, he would probably do well in retail if he were human.

“You lose. But, as promised, once it’s noon, you’re more than welcome to come and find me again.”

I was fuming by the time I managed to drag my ass over to the office. Every bone in my body ached despite the rage that ran through me. Everything about the masked man made my blood boil—especially his false act of kindness. He had to have had an agenda, not to mention a bullet-proof vest with dye that looked like blood.

It was the only explanation. The alternative was far scarier than I would have allowed myself to believe. Vampires were all the same, and they could all die.

Period.

I lugged myself through the revolving doors, past the secretary that demanded I explain why I was ruining the carpets with my blood, and up to the elevators. The sixth one came first, and I plunked myself down onto the floor after pushing the button for the twenty-sixth floor. When the doors closed, they drowned out the sound of the screaming receptionist and replaced it with a relaxing hum.

It wasn’t possible.

Yet it was—somehow, he was different. I tried to recall any information I could during our fight that might have made this make sense, but nothing surfaced, and I couldn’t blame that solely on a head injury. Was there anything else that I missed? Anything at all?

When the elevator finally reached the twenty-sixth floor, I barely had the energy to sit, let alone stand up and walk out. Instead, I settled for crawling. I was midway through dragging my legs out when the doors decided to be assholes and close on me. They had sensory stops built into them, so it wouldn’t have normally hurt to have doors pressed against my sides, but this was no ordinary circumstance. I yelped as they bared against me before opening back up again.

“Is that a soldier?”

I looked over to see a group of feet that I could only assumed belonged to a group of people. Too tired to raise my head, I just nodded. “Y-Yeah… Hi…”

The paramedics were at my side immediately.

One moment, I was lying belly-down on the elevator floor, the next I was in a stretcher being rushed down to our medical floor. The fluorescent lights flashed, unmemorable as I was moved from room to room. They became more and more hazy as the seconds—or was it hours?—dripped by, and finally, I closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, I was in a courtroom. No, I wasn’t brought to a hospital where I could heal my injuries and rest up, oh no. No, some bigwig thought it was a good idea to have a woman on a stretcher in a courtroom.

My hearing took a little while longer to fire up, so I spent the next few seconds glancing around at what my situation was like.

The room was void of an audience, so at least I had that going for me. Darius stood by my side, against the other governors. He wore his usual black suit, sans tie, which was odd to see. His shirt was wrinkled, like he had worn it twice in a row. Also very odd. His intense gaze stared them down as he looked like he was arguing something. Whatever it was, it was heated, because the others looked just as angry. Finally, one of my ears popped, allowing me to get in on the conversation.

“—order had come from you, Winters. She would not be like this if you had effectively scoped out the places you had given her on that list!” Darius spat dangerously. It was the closest thing I had ever heard to him yelling. “Furthermore, your carelessness—”

“My carelessness?” Winters bellowed from across the room. Ah, yes. What a wonderful sound to wake up to. “If Miss Randt had just done her job in the first place, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation! Her team was worried that she couldn’t complete simple tasks—something that’s clearly been underlined here once again, because the targets in the house she visited are still alive!”

You prick! I tried to scream the words out to him, but it came out as a lame ‘Yn pih!’

Oh well, at least I tried.

Darius whipped around to look at me, his face rouged with anger. “Agnes?” he whispered. “You’re awake?”

Well it’s hard not to be with everyone shouting.

“Yeh…” I managed. My tongue felt like it had been glued to a giant cotton ball. “Away…k…”

“Has Miss Randt woken up from her little nap now?” Winters barked from across the room. “Good. She can have her last words before she’s discharged.”

My speech may have been impaired, but my hearing certainly wasn’t. He most certainly said ‘discharged.’ It may not have been every soldier’s nightmare, but it was for most, myself included.

I struggled to sit up, to force my body to fight once more, but my limbs wouldn’t cooperate. The fact that I could barely feel them told me I still had some sort of anesthetic running through me, keeping me as motionless as possible.

“Agnes, just lay down,” Darius ordered, glaring at me.

“No!” I forced out through gritted teeth. My fingers tried to clench around the handle-like dividers that kept me in the bed, but they refused. A few of the council members at the long table gasped, as if my struggling was somehow offending them personally. “A-A dev…iant—u-unknown..”

Winters scoffed and crossed his arms. “Can someone please get this sorry excuse for a soldier out of my sight? She’s spouting nonsense now.”

The obscenities I screamed back at him were lost in the muddle of my mouth. A nurse stepped forward to wheel me out of the room.

It was complete and utter horseshit that I had been brought in there when I was unable to defend myself. Winters probably knew that, too—if anything, it was his plan. The guy clearly had something against me. Instead of explaining to them what I had wanted—that there was a legitimate reason I couldn’t clear the targets—I was left fuming in a hospital room for another few hours.

Looking back on it, it was probably for the best. But in the moment, all I could have done was scream internally at my roommate who insisted on watching old Sesame Street reruns or stay inside my own head, picturing ripping Winters limb from limb with Toulouse.

It was times like these that I really missed my old weapon.

The scientists employed by the Organization worked hard and definitely earned their pay, but they weren’t nearly as brilliant as my father had been. Their Holy Weapons were effective in killing vampires, but they were all fairly basic; swords, knives, and bullets dipped in various anti-vampiric formulae, with no change to the actual weapon itself. They would all do the job, but they didn’t make it any easier.

My father had been twenty years ahead of them.

While I had never understood the science behind how he had achieved it, Joseph Randt had managed to manipulate the polymorphic properties of that vampire so that the weapon could take on the same qualities. Where my current scythe fell flat, Toulouse had the ability to be any size; its stretching and compressing capabilities were useful for covert operations where it was impractical to lug around a gigantic scythe.

Like walking to a battered down castle-mansion thing in the middle of the suburbs and not wanting to alert the locals.

The thought made my rage surge hot once again. If I had had my Toulouse with me, I wouldn’t be in this ridiculous mess.

I supposed it wasn’t the only reason, though. Regardless of what contributed to the situation, I just wanted to get out of it. I refused to allow myself to be discharged based upon something as out of the ordinary—and out of my control—as that. All I wanted at this point was a chance to fix everything in one fell swoop.

But most of all, to talk to Darius.

The hours ticked by, but there was no sign of him; he must have still been arguing for my case against Winters and the others. The best place for him right now, the logical part of my brain reminded me.

“There’s someone here to see you, Miss Randt.”

I must have dozed off, because the nurse’s words startled me. She peered out from behind the curtain, her tiny lips forming into a sweet smile. “Did you want to see him?”

A brief glance out the window told me I had missed night time completely, all sans Darius. Well, it was better late than never.

“Yeah, sure. Send him in,” I replied, thankful the cotton-mouthed feeling from earlier had vanished. As she disappeared behind the curtain, I found myself scrambling to sit up.

I knew I must have looked like hell—god knows if they cleaned me up after my fight with Mister Plague-Mask—but I tried to make myself look decent regardless. Running my fingers through my shoulder-length rat’s nest of hair, I tried my best to get out any knots. No doubt my face was beyond saving, so it would have to do. My fiancé had seen me without makeup several times before, though this time would be quite a bit more of a jump.

However, when the nurse led my visitor past the curtain, it wasn’t Darius. She smiled and left us alone.

“These are for you,” Adrian said awkwardly, holding out a humble bouquet of lilies. He placed them gently on my lap, frowning slightly. “I couldn’t recall if you said you liked flowers or not, but…”

I stared stupidly at the bouquet for what seemed like minutes. They had a gentle smell to them, like they were freshly cut, and their petals were a gradient of white and purple, giving off a periwinkle vibe.

“They’re…” I started, not sure where to begin. Maybe it was because I had been expecting someone else that I was so jittery and confused. “I—Thanks, Adrian. They’re really beautiful.”

He nodded, smiling slightly. “How are you feeling, though?”

“Well physically I’m fine,” I said moodily. I picked up the lilies and held them close to my nose. “But tonight was just a whole hell of a lot of… hell.”

“Tonight?” he asked, sounding a little confused. “I think you mean… Well, the article in the paper said it was two weeks ago.”

“Are you serious?!” I shrieked. This simply wasn’t happening. How long had I been out for the first time? And the second? I threw the flowers onto the bedside table and swung my feet to the side of the bed.

Panicked, Adrian held his arms out, blocking me from fully getting out of bed. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he pointed out softly. He lowered his arms slightly as he looked over his glasses at me with concern in his gold eyes. “You might not have fully healed…”

“Two weeks!” I barked at him indignantly, trying to dodge past his arms. “I have been out of it for two weeks—how could I have let this happen? They’re probably cleaning my stuff out of the Organization as we speak. I can’t—”

Adrian placed firm but gentle hands on my shoulders to prevent me from going anywhere, and I tried not to wince. “Look, you’re not in any shape to do anything. Whatever it is you feel you need to do, it can wait another few days.

“Maybe coming here was a bad idea; I didn’t mean to get you all riled up and whatnot. I just wanted to make sure you were okay; I know that the media likes to sway things this way and that, but I was actually really worried.” His tone was soft and calming, and somehow his words made me feel guilty.

“I’m fine,” I muttered, placing my feet back onto the hospital bed. It was odd, but I felt like I should have apologized to him. I had been pretty young the last time anyone had worried about me, so the emotion felt very unfamiliar. Yet here was this almost stranger, willing to take time out of his day to visit me and see that I was recovering. “But… sorry.”

He sighed. “You don’t have to apologize for getting hurt…”

“Felt like I did,” I replied stubbornly, crossing my arms. “But trust me, I don’t plan on doing this again.”

“Promise?” he asked, laughing softly.

“Yeah, promise.”