Authors Note and Trigger Warning: This one turned out to be a bit... gorey? As in the written version of a splatter film. As a lot of you probably lived through as well, last week was ... well. Let's just say there are a lot of feelings I needed to let out and when revising this chapter, my hate towards men thinking they have the right to govern a woman's body... I'm not American, but I am shocked and appalled at what happened last week. Just know this is your save space over here. Feel free to to a little escapism in my little story and stay for as long as you like, maybe vent a little if it helps. Let's mourn and cry and scream so we can be ready to stand back up and fight, for when it counts. 

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It took a moment for me to regain my bearings.

If I ever had to admit it, I'd probably rather die than give Eric's ego another boost, but whatever he'd just done to me had knocked me off course—completely. My legs were shaky, weak as jelly, and my pulse pounded so hard I could hear it thrumming in my ears. As for the rest of my body... well, let's just say a cold shower wouldn't be enough to fix it. Maybe a cold bath. In the Antarctic. For an hour...

Despite everything—the blood loss, the trauma, the endless fights, death, and sleeplessness—I felt energized, focused, strong, invincible and desirable.

God help me, but I felt like I'd just had amazing sex. Minus the actual sex part, of course. Well... almost. His blood was still pulsing through my veins. I could see why someone might get addicted to this feeling. To his blood. His body. His... But that wasn't the point.

I shook my head and scolded myself.

For heaven's sake, we were in the middle of a battle, and I couldn't stop thinking about sex. And Eric. Or sex with Eric. Which, if this little taste was anything to go by, would probably be mind shattering.

"Get your head out of the gutter!" I hissed at myself, flinching as a snarling vampire was hurled my way, turning into a glibbery mass of dead vampire, splattering said mass on me in the go. I gulped, raining in my urge to puke. At least that woke me from my stupor. From the room ahead came a deep, satisfied laugh. As smug as it sounded, I knew it was Eric's. The bastard had heard me. So much for not feeding his ego.

Perfect, Ashley. You're really nailing it today.

I closed my eyes, just for a brief second, feeling the rush of energy surging through me. When I opened them again, I was finally focused and took a quick scan of the room, looking for some way to be useful. But it didn't seem like there was much left to do. Monroe and Eric were still tossing each other around, smashing through expensive paneling, paintings, and tacky plaster as they threw each other across the room.

The marble floor was littered with goo and slime, which, as far as I could tell, were the remains of several vampires. In the center of the chaos, Pam was tearing through the newly arriving vampires with a kind of casual elegance. If I didn't know any better, I'd say she found the whole fight a bit boring—if not for the gleeful grin that showed off her sharp fangs.

At least someone was having fun.

The girl we'd come here for was nowhere to be seen. I prayed she'd made it out and at the same time feared for her, wandering alone and unprotected through the city streets. I vowed to go after her – if I survived this mess that is – even though I had no idea where to start looking.

I scanned the room again and realized Tom and James were also nowhere to be found. My feelings were... conflicted. Part of me hoped they were now part of the slime at my feet. But they were also the only family I'd ever known. To say it was complicated would be an understatement.

Another wave of guards stormed into the room—both human and vampire. Pam was already making quick work of them, so I decided to help by taking on the humans. A man in his thirties came charging at me, pulling a taser from his belt. One swift kick to his spleen, and he crumpled to the ground like a sack of flour. 1:0 for Ash.

Adrenaline surged through my veins, and I felt a grin spread across my face.

"Bitch!" another man shouted, and I instinctively turned toward the voice, only to be met with his fist square in my face.

Okay, that hurt. On any other day, it might have knocked me out. But not today. My training kicked in, and I flipped the man over, twisting his arm behind his back in a way that made him howl in pain.

"Scum like you deserve to die," he spat, cursing me.

"Sure it was smart to say that to the girl currently in the position to dislocate your shoulder?" I twisted his arm further until there was a satisfying pop, followed by a scream.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" I snarled, licking the blood that had trickled from my split lip onto my finger. Then, with one well-placed stomp to his carotid artery, he passed out cold. I stepped over his splayed out hand before leaving him behind, hearing his bones crunch under the sole of my shoes, for god measure.

Lifting my head, scanning for more threats. My gaze locked with Eric's for a brief moment, his eyes blazing before he ducked another one of Monroe's furious swings. Pam, less occupied, eyed me with open curiosity.

In a blur, she was suddenly in front of me.

"Perhaps I can finally see what Eric finds so fascinating about you," she purred, stepping closer before unexpectedly licking the corner of my mouth, catching the trickling blood with her tongue. I was too stunned to react, and her eyes widened in surprise. "Or taste."
An entirely new kind of hunger darkened her gaze, and I froze, overwhelmed. Pam leaned forward again just as a furious growl shattered the tension.

"Pamela!"

She stopped instantly, and I exhaled in shallow breath of relief. She rolled her eyes at me, sighed, muttered something like, "He's always the only one who gets to have fun. Selfish bastard," and then melted back into the fray in a swift, fluid motion.

I needed a moment to catch up. Why the hell did everyone  want to kiss me today? I rubbed my lips together, glancing back at Eric, who seemed annoyed by Pam's interruption. A look around the room told me the fight was winding down.

The place was a wreck; the floor littered with disgusting fluids I didn't even want to identify. If I ever got out of here, I'd spend a month in the bath, scrubbing myself down to a cellular level. Most of the guards were either dead or running for their lives.

I was just about to breathe a sigh of exhausted relief when a sudden sharp pain in my neck made me gasp. My scream quickly turned to a gurgle, and the lights around me dimmed. Someone flipped on the mood lighting, I thought hazily. How absurd.

An inhuman hiss, a snarl, and a fierce yank pulled me back, slamming my head against the filthy ground.

Ouch. I think...

The throbbing in my skull felt distant, as if it were happening to someone else. I lay there, drifting. A sinister, guttural laugh cut through the haze, and revulsion crawled across my skin. "No one crosses my business deals, Mr. Northman!" hissed the voice behind the laugh, metallic and hollow. Monroe. "If I can't have her, then no one will."

It took my blood-starved brain a moment to piece together what had happened: In short?  I was dying. Again.

Monroe must have pounced on me during a split-second of distraction, torn open my main artery, and drank. He must have flung me aside when Eric rushed over. Something had cracked. My hair and the back of my head felt wet. Not a good sign. I didn't have the strength to lift my head to watch the rest of the fight, however that wouldn't have help much anyway. Whenever I managed to open my eyes, my vision was fractured like trying to look through fractured glass. All I could do was listen. Which was... even worse. My strength kept fading in an alarming speed and with it, the pain. I welcomed that part, while listening to my surroundings. Growls, a gunshot. The sounds of battle faded, though this time, without me.

"Let go, my dear," I heard a familiar voice whisper close to my ear. Tears sprang to my eyes. I'd missed her.

"Grandma?" I whispered, or at least I thought I did.

"I'm here." Warmth flooded me, and the darkness around my vision closed in, blurring even the last pitiful pictures I saw. "Where are you?"

"Let go," she repeated. I felt her hand brush my cheek. I wanted to let go. I truly did. Just drift away. But I wasn't finished. My mission, my purpose—to make those responsible pay...My shallow breathing faltered, my heart pounding fiercely, fighting to keep me alive.

Who was even guilty?

I'd lost track. Eric hadn't killed anyone... not anyone close to me, anyway. He wasn't innocent, sure, but he wasn't guilty, either. Tom? My heart wrenched painfully, then resumed its weakening beat. It was strange to hear it slow, softer and softer.

Tom... Tom was a lying, filthy, conniving bastard. My first love. He'd let me believe he was dead. He'd joined some underground blood cult—or whatever that sick business was—and sold me to the highest bidder. But was he a murderer? Was he guilty?

My fogged mind refused to agree. Hate was exhausting; it drained you. I didn't want to spend my last moments with the ugly emotion of hate anymore. My limbs felt disturbingly light as I decided to let go of the negative, that was weighing me down, anchoring me. Hate, the thirst for vengeance, all my fears, hopes, dreams, and expectations... they were meaningless. I felt my grandmother's gentle smile above me.

"That's right, dear. Let go. You don't need to fear death. We are here. For you, this is just the beginning..."

It was like being gently lifted by countless tiny threads. I released the weight that held me down. My breath left my lungs and for a split second second, I panicked. 

Wait.

The low growling around me hadn't stopped. Bones cracked, snarls and cries echoed. Monroe's mocking laughter. His hatred was palpable in every word, snarling as he coughed, then gurgled."It took me twenty years to find her. You did hide her well; I'll give you that", he sneered.He spat on the floor, his voice growing louder, which my fading senses barely registered. He sounded distant, a hum under my slowing heartbeat. White noise in the background.

Monroe laughed again, dry and disbelieving. "You'd think kids in the foster system would be easier to track since no one gives a damn about them. But it turns out no one even bothers to document them properly..."

It was true, and yet it stung. His words tore away my peace, anchoring me here, in this filthy, brutal world. I wanted to fly again, to rise. To disappear. 

Please, Eric—just make him shut up. Make Monroe stop talking, lift his head, and remove it...

He sighed theatrically. "At least this way I found a new source of income. Children for sale nobody cared about." 

Eric growled, disgusted. 

My thoughts drifted back to the little blonde girl sitting in Erics kitchen. The desperate fear in her eyes, the nightmares she had suffered. 

She had recognized James. And Tom. And Monroe. 

There was no denying it anymore: James and Tom were part of an organisation that had kept the girl as property. As a vein to use for vampires. She had been a girl just like me. From the foster system, easily slipping through the cracks, no alliances, no grown-ups that would protect her. Save her. 

They would sell her to the highest bidder to do with as they please as long as there was a way to make money out of it. 

Because that's what it all had been about all the damn time. Money. 

Anger surged through me once more, hot, like a fire had been lit inside, and pulled my battered body into a sitting position despite the non existing energy. Limp, my extremities hung beside me. The invisible threads, first lifting my pains pulling me into the afterlife, were now pulling again. Pulling me upright. Making me stand, then hover in the air above the ground, holding me upright. My heavy eyes open. I saw read – literally. As in, the whole world was tinged in a deep, dark blood red as the blood from my headwound was dripping into my eyes. 

"Kill the bastard." My growl was menacing, a voice unknown even to myself. Still it was all around us, reverberating from the walls, cutting through the noise surrounding us. "And make it hurt."

"Too bad if the head of an operation happens to be headless.", Eric snapped before the sound of something wet being ripped apart was heard, paired with angry and pained scream. Then the first piece flew my way. For a moment, my vision snapped back into focus, making out the pound of flesh flying through the room before landing infront of my feet. It was the jaw and lower half of a face. My eyes snapped back to Eric who was holding a gurgling and screaming Monroe in a chokehold. Our eyes locked. When I gave a small satisfied nod, Eric continued ripping that man apart piece by piece, tongue, ear, eyes... everything was being deliberately pulled apart. I could have watched for ours, satisfaction accompanying the sense of justice that was warming my heart. But it was short lived. With my urge for revenge receding, my strength was flagging as well. "That's enough." 

From the corner of my eye I saw  a round heap of hair and blood fly towards me before the remnants of Monroes head rolled towards my feet. An uncanny smile tugged at my lips as the feeling of accomplishment washed over me. 

I looked back at Eric a real, thankful smile grazing my lips. I think he returned it, but as fast as my vision had cleared before, it turned dim and fractured once more.

"Now, you can let go.", the voice of my grandmother interjected. Except she'd turned into more than just as voice. I could see her. See, her intelligent eyes and her kind smile. I returned her gesture, turned one last time towards Eric, who was looking at me with an expression of utter shock, before giving in to her demands. 

My heart took one last, painful beat. Then the whole room turned upside-down as I fell limb to the ground.