This story was originally written in pen, about three years ago. It has now been type, faithful to the original wording. (I was afraid if I did too much poking I would end up with still another draft, rather than a transcribed story.) The story has been re-written twice since this, each time with a dramatically different flavor. Enjoy.

Awakened In Blood

It was an overcast day. Not yet raining, but the sky still thundered its restlessness. The man sat alone on a bench, watching the people scurry like ants. To their homes, to their jobs, to the rest of their lives. The man tried not to laugh. To the rest of their lives! He could kill over half of them with a thought, no further effort required... But he was full, and so was tired. Or maybe lazy was a better term. Lazy... and old.

"Mister?"

The man turned sharply. No one should have seen him, they all should have looked right past him, right through him. Who...

It was a small girl. A human child. She was holding an ice cream cone, dripping all over her and her overalls. He smiled, against his better judgment.

"Mister? Do you want some ice cream? You look lonely."

The man blinked, caught off guard. Lonely? Certainly, but... "What do you want, little one?"

The girl crawled up onto the seat next to him, nearly dumping her ice cream into his lap. Sighing with defeat, he rescued the cone, and thought to himself how odd he must look holding it. Nearly as odd as he must look talking to a child.

"Where is your mother, little one?"

"Shopping," the girl said, hopping up and down on the bench, finally settling into a squat only after he stopped trying to hand her back her ice cream cone. During this time, she turned to him, and sticking out the sticky hand, said, "My name is Karen."

The man stared at her ice cream stained little hand for close to a minute. A thousand warnings flew through his mind. Finally he said, putting as much conviction as he could muster into the statement, "You don't want to know me, little one. You don't want me to know who you are."

The girl blinked, confused, then shrugged, hand still outstretched. "Sure I do. That's why I asked. My name is Karen." She sat smiling at him for another two minutes before with a sigh, ut no less of a smile, she whispered to him, "Now you're supposed to say your name." She then resumed her almost manikin-like smile.

The man stared at her in disbelief. She should have turned and left. She should have started to ignore him like every other passerby... Were children really that different from his normal prey? Of course he was lonely, but why was she so insistent that she befriend him?

Just as he was about to stand up to leave, a voice called out from the crowd. "Karen!" He heard the woman whisper, under her breath, "Damn that child! Where has she gotten to now?" The woman scanned the crowd, scanned the bushes, looked right past the bench, (as well she should have,) scanned the street in the distance...

With a sigh, the man dropped the degree of his defenses. Now the woman would still instinctively avoid him, but at least she would be able to see him, and thus her missing child. "Your mother is looking for you, little one. You should go to her." He did not bother putting any compulsion in his voice. It obviously was not working anyway.

Crestfallen, Karen dropped her hand. The jumped up onto the bench seat and started waving her hands. "Mom! Mom, I'm over here!"

A hiss erupted next to her, as the man grabbed her flailing arm and pulled her back to her seat, camouflage again at full. "I don't want to meet your mother," he growled, watching her face drop. Damn it, girl. The last thing you should want is for me to meet your mother! Releasing his grip on her arm, he said, "Go on, run out and meet her. She's worried about you."

Karen looked desperately back and forth, first at her mother, then at him. Her mother was acting strange. She was looking in her direction sure enough, looking straight at her, but did not seem to have spotted her yet. Absently, she rubbed her arm, not noticing how the finger shaped bruises were already fading. The man just looked tired. A little angry, but the way he was rubbing his temples, he mostly looked tired. Just like Uncle Richard when he called her a...

"Am I a pest?"

The man looked up, shock clear on his face. The girl looked positively horrified at the realization. He was shocked to find himself wanting to comfort her, just as he was shocked to discover that he was healing her arm... "It's not that you are a pest... It's just that..."

"Oh no!" She looked so angry that he nearly laughed. "Mom told me not to. She said if I was a pest that I would have to stay next to her all day the next trip. She said I could only go out if I promised not to be one!"

He did laugh then. Watching her distress, imagining the original conversation. He felt the warmth of the laugh bubbling up from inside him. How long since he had last had a healthy laugh? Not a smile, not a cruel chuckle, but a healthy laugh. And all the while, the mother skimmed the crowd, becoming more and more desperate to find the daughter that she was sure she heard. She was now standing practically on top of them, but deaf to the conversation.

Settling out of his laugh, he patted the girl on the shoulder. "You have not been a pest. But go now. She needs to find you."

Karen looked at him then, reading whether he was making fun of her, or if he actually meant it. Satisfied with whatever answer she found, she nodded, and hopped off the bench, running to grab her mother's hand. Behind her she heard, as though the wind whispered it, "I am Alabaster, little one." Turning, she waved, and was shocked to see an empty bench. She turned back to her mother, who was walking briskly away, as though caught by a chill.

"...and where were you? I was looking everywhere for you for the last fifteen minutes!"

Slightly abashed, Karen answered, "I was talking to my friend."

"Friend!," her mother laughed, pulling her along. "More likely you were pestering some old man..."

"I wasn't! He said I wasn't. He said I wasn't a pest!"

Her mother paused for a moment, smiling down at her, "Fine. So you weren't a pest. But I hope you were polite. Now come along. The bus will be here any second."

From his seat on the bench, by this point some three blocks behind the mother, he smiled. "A friend am I? Who would have thought?" And he stood to throw away the ice cream.

They met next a month later. He had been hesitant to go back to the park, uncertain if he wanted to encourage this unhealthy relationship. But in the end, what she had said was true. He was lonely. And the idea of talking to someone who was not terrified of him was far too tempting of a draw. Even if the time was fleeting. Even if he knew he would have to kill her in a few years when she grew up. Even then, he was lonely. And so he watched for her.

And on his second trip, he spotted her.

There was no compulsion, no draw. He was playing a very dangerous game. If she just ignored him, he could try to forget her, try to make her into one of the thousands of faces who never noticed him. That would be unquestionably better for her. But if she did notice him, if she did give him someone to talk to, there would be no going back. And so, while there was not compulsion, there was not distancing. She was as likely to spot him as any other person passing by, and it was clear that she was, without question, looking for someone.

Again he felt a small knot of anxiety melt, felt a warm joy in the pit of his stomach, when spotting him, she smiled and ran over to his bench, calling, "Allen!" He supposed it was the closed she could pronounce to the name he had given.

Their meetings were sporadic. Sometimes Allen would watch for her at the park. Sometimes Karen would find him at the zoo. There were never any set times. Never and set locations. The only consistents were that there were always crowds of people around them. And that those people never seemed to see either of them, or even hear them converse.

And so it continued for seven years. Karen talking about her friends, her school, her hobbies. If she ever noticed that Allen never spoke of himself, she never mentioned it. When she was old enough that her mother let her ride the bus alone, she would find him wandering the beach, or sitting alone near the railroad tracks. She did not find him every trip, and sometimes when she found him, he seemed very surprised to see her, almost waiting for her to notice him. And then one day something went wrong.

Allen strolled happily down the street near his residence. He was hesitant to call it where he lived. It certainly was not where he slept. But it was his residence. His name, or one very much like it, had been on the deed to that building for the last fifty years.

Pausing to reminisce, he studied his reflection in a nearby window. Not a day over thirty. He found that a pleasant age. People seemed to think you respectable, refined, when they thought you were thirty. The younger women thought they were daring for flirting with you, the older women saw you as a reminder of how young they could feel.

Smiling, he straightened his brown-blonde hair in the reflection. It was amazing how young she made him feel. He had never realized how boring it was living his months from one meal to the next, until she came along and broke his routine. Carefully, he brushed the graying streaks at his temples. He had added them just recently, and was still not sure if they looked right. But it would not do for Karen to notice that he did not age...

A scream interrupted his thoughts then. Loud, terrified. Smiling, he continued his primping. It was nice to hear that the local boys were getting some fun, though he would have preferred that they knock the girl out. Her screaming was very annoying... mind you, he thought, they probably found it exhilarating. He knew he had in his younger days. It was not like anyone living here would take notice. He had made certain to thin out anyone who did not mind their own business at least twenty years ago. As such, it was not like the girl didn't know what she was getting into. No one went walking in this neighborhood after dark, no one who wasn't looking for trouble.

Finishing patting down his hair, Allen turned toward the noise. It really was annoying. Something about it was setting him on edge. Rolling his eyes, he set off toward the disturbance. Not to stop them, just to mention the value of a good gag.

All through the walk he heard them, or rather heard her. "No!" "Stop!' "Please!" Help!" He was a bit disappointed that she wasn't more original in her shouts. Perhaps it would not have been so annoying if there was more to listen to. He longed for the days when a woman really knew how to beg. Even practiced as he was, it had been close to a hundred years since he had gotten a really satisfying plea out of one. He blamed the age of reason, really... And then he stepped around the corner and into the alley.

His world stopped. Stopped and turned cold.

There were six of them. All boys. The oldest was perhaps seventeen, and was clearly the leader. The youngest looked twelve, and from how he was huddled in the corner was praying that they would not ask him to participate. One of them held her arms, out above her head. Another two held her legs, pulled as far as they could. She was still trying to kick, and as a result they were pulling so hard that they nearly dislocated one leg. The leader had already unfastened his pants and was cursing to his gang to hold her still, staring at her nethers as exposed by the unturned skirt. Her panties we long since torn away and discarded among the refuse of the alley. The remaining gangman looked as though he were about to kick her. A piece of Allen's brain noticed that there was blood dripping from the boy's arm. Apparently they had tried to gag her. But most of Allen's attention was on the girl. Cut in at least a dozen places, torn, battered, and bruised past likely anyone else's recognition: Karen.

It took less than a heartbeat for him to see it all. For him to memorize their faces, their scents. And then he struck. No physical contact required, the leader was simply thrown backwards, into the wall, pieces of brick crumbling off the surface, his neck snapped. Everyone else scattered before the angry force that flowed down the alley. Everyone except Karen, who had curled into a ball and was still whispering, "no, please, no, stop."

He scooped her up into his arms, feeling her struggle against him. When he whispered, "Shhh," he felt her stop, and then turn, clinging to him. His breath caught, and then holding her close, he began walking. He was not sure where at first, just that he needed to get her away from here, but then, when he realized that he was walking home he was not terribly surprised. Was there any other option really? He needed to find out how badly she was hurt, to find out if...

They reached the building quickly enough. It was full dark now, but it had been sunset when he found her. Willing the front door open, he walked down the hall and across the steps to room 7. It used to be an apartment building. No one else had lived there for a very long time. Every now and then it would appear on town lists to be demolished, but then no one would get around to it, or the lists would be misplaced and have to be rewritten, this time forgetting his building. Once it had gotten far enough for someone to come talk to him about selling. While the man had left, it was quite sad what happened to his family the next day. And the list was lost again. Carefully, Allen balanced her in his arms as he opened the last door, and stepped into his darkened living room.

Sitting her down by the dining table, he hunted for a light switch. He did not need light, what predator needed light? But it should comfort her, right? And then he sat down across from her and tried to calm his thoughts. All the while here he had been trying to calm himself, trying to tell himself that he was angry, angry that someone else had tried to take his prey. Lying to himself. Now, sitting at home, where he could no longer run, he was forced to admit that he was afraid. Afraid for her. Afraid that...

"Karen?" he asked the shivering pile of girl sitting across from him. "Karen, are you alright?"

It was a much more straightforward question that one might think. He had healed the laceration on her arm and face when he picked her up. Healed her scraps and bruises as the walked. By the time they reached his building her rib was no longer cracked, and he knew with a certainty that she had not been physically penetrated. The only thing that the question referred to was her mental health. But that was all that was in question. If she was afraid, if she was afraid of him...

After an eternity she looked up at him, shivering, pain and fear clear in her eyes. He felt a cold sweep over him. But then she reached out an hugged him, clung to him, and he felt himself melt. He let out a breath he had not meant to hold, sent out thanks to a prayer he had not realized he asked.

through the next hour he comforted her, massaged her back and tried to listen to her explain what had happened. But his attention was elsewhere. He was trapped in images of what could have happened. She was getting older. He had known it would happen, but had not appreciated what it meant. If she had been afraid of him, if she had been old enough to realize exactly what type of threat he was, he would have just "rescued" her into a hell a thousand times worse than anything those armatures could have dreamed of...

He set her to sleep that night. Setting locks on certain doors. He was not worried about her wandering around the house without him, but he did not want her to find a particular room... and given past experience he did not quite trust her to stay asleep at one of his compulsions. So he also tucked the covers around her and fluffed her pillow, wondering if this was how such a thing was done. Finally, satisfied, he left. And hunted.

The first of the boys was already dead, a fact he only regretted because of how little the boy suffered. The fool had held her arms first lost his hands, then his toes, then slowly more and more pieces, forced to choke down swallowing them, before Allen finally let him die of blood loss. The two who had held her legs, brothers, they were sliced to tiny ribbons, each forced to wield the knife on the other. The brat who had tried to gag her, who had obviously kicked her in the ribs, every bone in his body, all 206, from the tiniest hand carpals to the plates of his skull, was broken. Only the youngest boy was left alive, the one who had not laid a finger on her. But he was made to watch as Allen flayed his brother alive, showed him exactly what they were playing with. Ad then he burned Karen's image into the boy's mind. And told him her name. And told him to tell anyone, to tell everyone that she was off limits. The what they had done before was done in ignorance, but that if ANYONE knowingly laid a hand on her, what had just been finished would seem very kind.

The attack heralded a change in Allen's life. The first and most obvious result was that Karen now knew where he lived. He had modified her mother's memory when he took her home the next morning, so that no one thought anything of her staying at a friend's house. But he could not bring himself to make her forget what happened.

It was a month later that he next saw her. He was at home, in his basement, "entertaining" his dinner, when he heard a knock at the front door. Pausing, he felt outside the room, and smiled as he put away his tools and donned a reasonable set of clothes. Then he headed upstairs, grateful that he had went with his idea to soundproof the room.

Karen was just turning to leave when the door opened. Smiling she gave him a warm hug of greeting, and then stood in the hallway waiting to be invited inside.

Her smile warmed him more than he had expected. He had been hesitant to go look for her, afraid that she might ask why he had known where she lived, afraid that she might be hesitant to talk to him.

But whatever scars she carried from that night, she had covered over them well. At the very least they were covered enough that she had still found her way here, covered enough that she still greeted him like the old friend she thought him to be.

Once inside, she filled him in on what had happened since that night. Her new school. The fact that her family was moving to the other side of the city. She would be losing most of her friends, she told him. She was so happy she had found out where he lived, so that she could visit. Did he mind that she came to visit?

Allen drank it all in as a plant drinks sunshine. This is why he had been afraid, this is what he had thought he would lose. Soon, yes, but please not for a few more years... When she finally left, Allen wandered downstairs to discover that his dinner had died of blood loss. With a thought he cleaned up the mess, then headed out to look for more.

The years ticked on. Karen finished up middle school and moved on to high school. Her parents for a short time thought about sending her off to a private boarding school, but just after she mentioned it to him, they changed their minds. She excelled at art and history, the two subjects that Allen was happy to tutor her in, although he did not always agree with her teachers about the motivations for certain events. All of her other classes were passing, if not note worthy.

Neither of them ever spoke of what had nearly happened that night. It seemed they both wanted to forget about it. All the same it was a year before Karen next came to visit him near nightfall, and another six months before she was comfortable returning to the bus pickup without him. True to his warnings however, no one ever gave her so much as a fleeting glance.

It was almost eleven at night when he heard the knock. Carefully sealing his victims wounds, (it had become second nature now), he hurried up the stairs to find out why she was here so late.

When he opened the door, reality hit him like a slap. There she stood, high heels, far too short of a skirt, mascara running down her imitation face. A distant part of his brain realized that she was talking, something about what a monster Bobby was, how she had barely gotten out of the car, how she couldn't go home, that she was a nervous wreck... He didn't hear any of it.

Mustering as much control as he could, he stared into her makeup smeared eyes and said, "Get out. You are never welcome at this door again." And then he slammed the door in her face.

He tried not to listen as she burst into tears and went running out into the street. He sighed, once he was certain that she was gone. It had taken all that was in him to not drag her into the living room right then and lay into her. What was she now, seventeen? How could he have been so blind?

With a sigh he pulled himself up to his feet and stumbled down to his dinner. With the mood he was in, he didn't expect her to live through the night.

Kate kept running for the next mile, until her left heel broke, causing her to fall. She was blind with tears, furious at Allen, and would have killed Bobby, if she had any idea where to find him. It suited her mood just fine when the sky started raining buckets just after she fell.

She had been sitting in her puddle crying for the last hour, thoroughly lost about whether to bemoan her state in life, he location, or her state of dress, when she saw a hand stretched out in front of her. Looking up, she saw a stranger smiling down at her.

"You look like you could use a drink. Need a hand?" His smile was warm and friendly.

Karen thought of a dozen snappy retorts to this obvious come one, and then, with a sigh, she said, "Why not," and let his hand lift her to her feet.

An hour later she was drunk past thinking. Her friend was funny, he listened to her, and he bought her drinks so that she wasn't carded. It was a little annoying that that other guy kept trying to get his attention a half hour ago. They had stepped over to the phones in the corner, but she still heard them just fine, not that it made any sense.

"Mister," the new guy said, "She's bad news. You got to leave her alone!"

Her friend shrugged, and glanced over at her, "She don't look so dangerous." He laughed.

"It's not her! It's the guy that wants her. He kills anyone that looks at her, and they ain 't quick kills!"

She had shaken her head and ignored the rest of their conversation. Allen was the only person that she had known who might have watched over her, and he obviously wasn't doing that anymore. Taking another sip of her drink she watched someone who must have been Allen's twin pick up a hooker across the street. With a huff, she turned back to the table just as her new friend was retaking his seat.

It was a half hour later and Karen was laying face down on the table due to an assortment of pills that had been slipped into her drinks.

Karen blinked herself awake wondering what had ran over her head. Then wondering what was in her mouth. By the time her brain got around to wondering why she couldn't move her arms, she had already started to panic.

Her eyes opened to an old abandoned room. She was lying bound across a table. She was naked. She had some sort of rag in her mouth as a gag. She could hear her assailant standing up. Lifting up a prayer, she began to turn her ring.

It had been years ago. She could not remember why he had given her the ring, or maybe she did not want to remember. Allen had always acted so funny sometimes. He liked to pretend that he could do magic. He liked to pretend he could hypnotize her. Usually she played along. The time he gave her the ring, he had slipped it onto her finger, a slim silver band, and told her that she would forget that it was there, that no one else would see it, and that if she was ever in trouble, to turn it on her finger and he would know what was wrong. She remember how silly it had all sounded, and yet she had nodded her head and pretended to be entranced. Now she prayed that he actually did know magic. She could think of nothing else that would get her out of here.

Allen swayed in the basement cell of his home, pumping into his whore. The first woman had been dead within fifteen minutes of Karen leaving. This girl had lasted four hours now, and showed signs of easily living until tomorrow, despite how hard he was pushing her.

She was unusually quiet. It took Allen a moment to remember that he had sliced out her tongue. Ah well. It couldn't be helped really. All of that screaming had become very annoying. It figured as much. What else do you expect when you have one target in mind and that is not the one you go after? The one you get becomes annoying. But he couldn't yet bring himself to hunt Karen. Karen, who right this moment was likely...

The vision slammed into him in that instant. And as he slammed into the woman beneath him, she was suddenly dust, drained of her life force so quickly that not even a body remained. Snapping his fingers, Allen cloaked himself in his hunting garb and then his hunter's face. That bastard had been hunting far too close to his territory for months. It was high time to show him the punishment for such action.

He had originally given her the ring as a warning. He assumed that when she was old enough to find a male threatening, that would be a heads up for him to act. When she had not used it verses Bobby, he had assumed it must have malfunctioned He had been putting all his faith for the past five years in a piece of faulty magic.

But then, feeling where she was now, he could not blame her. If this was what she saw as a threat then he could not blame her. Bobby had to have been child's play to get away from, compared to this ass. She just had not wanted to bother him with trifles.

It was not a pleasant smile that graced his lips as he appeared outside the room, and pulled the door off the hinges. He was going to regret spending this much power if he didn't get food tonight, but then, food was in the next room, it was why he came here, wasn't it?

Karen lay on the table, struggling, trying desperately to turn her ring, as the man walked over to her. He had something in his hand. It took her brain a moment to recognize "ice pick." And then she was lying very still because the point of the pick was pressed up against the soft of her jaw. She tried to fight the reflex to swallow.

Looking down on her the man smiled. "Not so brave are you now, Flirt?" Pulling the pick away for just a moment, he struck her across the face, and then shifted it so that the pick was loosely held directly above her right eye. Then he leaned in, as if to kiss her neck, and the door flew open.

Karen watched the pick drop as the man jumped away from her, wondered if it would actually hit her eye, or if it would just graze her cheek. And then it stopped. Stopped and hovered no more than a hair's width above her eye. She fought the urge to blink, afraid that the action might bring the pick closer. And then it began drifting upwards. Floating midair, it suddenly hurdled itself across the room. From the scream that erupted, Karen guessed that it found its mark in her assailant. She turned her head to look at the new arrival.

Her first thought, overruling all others, was that he was a ton of dynamite in a small package. He could not have stood more than 5' 6", within a couple inches of her height, but he had the weight of a hurricane surrounding him. She was mildly surprised that her hair wasn't blowing. He wore black leather from head to toe. Midnight black with no hint of fading. Some of it was snakeskin, the rest she couldn't tell. Just that it was tight enough that he might as well have grown it. His hair was coal black, and his eyes, the iciest blue she had ever seen. Ad he was a complete stranger. Desperately, she continued turning the ring.

The man in black advanced into the room. Karen tried to follow his progress, but with so little neck mobility, she gave up and just listened. She heard her rescuer's voice first, cold enough to shatter steel.

"I am very disappointed in you."

"Who the hell are you..."

"I was willing to ignore you for months now, for, what was it? Twelve women now?"

Quieter, "Who are you?" He sounded pained.

"But then you had to touch her. They told you she was off limits?"

Karen heard a squeal, followed by a scream. Then thrashing, like someone trying to stand up on a slick surface. And footsteps. Whoever was still moving was walking toward her. She looked up into ice blue eyes. They looked amused.

"Listen closely to me, woman." He reached over and placed a hand over her gag. "I will remove this, and in exchange, you will not scream. You understand?"

It was not said with a compulsion, though it was the same tone that Allen used at his stranger moments. Not a compulsion, but a conviction. It said, if you scream, I will shatter your jaw in so many places... and there is no one to hear you anyway. Closing her eyes, Karen nodded. And felt him draw out the cloth that had been her gag.

Testing her jaw, she felt his hands slide along her body. At first she shivered, but then she calmed, as she realized his goal were the bonds securing her feet. His fingers merely took there time getting there. Once she was free, he offered not resistance to her pulling her knees up close to her body, while he freed her arms. It was his arm that secured her back as she sat up, and his hand that held her hair out of the way, as she threw up all over the floor. It had been the sight of her would-be assailant that did it.

The man lay sprawled out on the floor. He had basically stopped twitching, lying in a deepening pool of blood. He looked as though a spike had been driven into him. Driven and driven and driven. A moments thought told her that an ice pick would leave holes like that. But there were hundreds of them.

"How..." she started to say, when she caught her breath. She had not realized it was out loud.

"Two hundred thirty-seven. One for each wound he gave to each woman who should have still been walking my streets." His voice was cold, Karen thought, shivering. He didn't do it to avenge them, just to amend this slight to his property... Still, she looked closer at the man, feeling her throat try to close.

The wounds were grouped, she saw now. His stomach. His groin. His hands. His face. There was also some one his lungs, some breaking his kneecaps. There was one that went straight through his neck. The more she looked at him, the more she wondered how he could still be alive. She heard her own voice ask such, though it felt far removed from her body.

"He is still alive because I have not let him die yet," whispered a voice by her right ear.

Shivering, she pulled back, and heard him laugh. Then she felt him pull away, and heard him tinkering with something on the opposite side of the room. Against her better judgment, she turned to watch what he was doing.

There was a trap door. It looked out of place. Too old style, made out of too new of material. It opened down to a flight of stairs. The man was looking for somewhere on the wall to secure the door to.

"Where are you going?" she asked, puzzlement getting the better of her.

"You're coming with me," he said, giving up and letting the trap door fall open to the floor.

No! No! No!, her mind screamed as she shook her head. He's insane! He'll... He'll...

Motioning with his arm, he indicated a coat hook that she had not noticed. It looked to contain a woman's shirt and blouse. "Put those on, then come along."

Karen stared at him in shock. She couldn't. She wouldn't. She... She could see the storm in him beginning to rise once more. She didn't have a choice. He wanted her to follow him, and truly did not care if he needed to break a number of her bones to get that obedience. Wouldn't it be better to follow willingly now, and still have legs to run with when the opportunity came? If it comes, a piece of her mind chastised, the same piece that continued to turn the ring. Giving up, she stood and approached the garments.

The skirt was leather, not quite as black as his clothes. It was so short that unless she kept it slung at her hips, it did not even cover enough to be worth wearing. The blouse was the thinnest white cotton that she had ever seen. It was hardly worth wearing, save that the idea of descending those stairs nude terrified her. Looking down at herself, she thought, I look like a whore.

Memory struck her then. A whore. Earlier this evening... was it still even evening... Someone who looked like Allen picking up a whore. She was dressed like this. No, with a calm certainty her mind corrected her, she was dressed in this. And with that memory came another memory, a conversation in the corner of a bar, a piece of conversation... "He kills anyone that looks at her..." What the hell had happened to Allen?

She looked up into this man's eyes and saw him smiling at her as he motioned for her to take the stairs first. It was not a warm smile, or rather it was not meant to warm the heart. He took her hand as she took the first step. It was not until she was on level ground, seeing the light disappear as he closed the trap door, that she realized he had removed the ring from her finger.

He had the tunnel built just after he bought the apartment building, just after he built the basement. It was not a long tunnel, not more than a hundred paces, nor a dangerous one. Its one defining feature was dark. Complete dark. Its merits lay in its entrance and exit. One end spilt into his basement, his playroom, his dining hall, if you would. The other opened to a trapdoor, or a closet door, or wherever he felt like opening it. For only he could open it, and it closed without a trace. But he could open it anywhere within a thousand miles of his lair and suddenly be only one block from home.

"Who are you?' Karen called into the darkness. She could feel him circling her, feel the heat coming off of his body.

"No one you know, little one."

The nickname stirred memories she did not want to name. "What have you done to Allen?"

"Allen?" He laughed, and pushed her into walking along the trail. "Should I have done something to Allen?"

Shivering, blind in the dark, Karen wondered, what have I done? One foot in front of the other, she asked, "They... they say you kill anyone who looks at me."

"Do they?" He sounded so amused she was almost nauseous."And do you believe them?"

Karen tried to choke back the urge to spin around and hit him. She couldn't actually see where he was anyway... "That man back there..."

"Ah." She could hear his condescending, knowing nod. "Well, Allen never looked at you like that."

True... but, "How would you know?"

It happened to suddenly to think. One moment she was walking next to him, the next his left hand was wrapped around her jaw, pinning her to the wall. His tongue was inside her mouth. His right hand had pushed up her pitiful excuse for a skirt and was very active against nerves she had not even realized were there. And then, in less than a heartbeat, it was gone. He had stepped back as though nothing had happened, and Karen collapsed to the floor, her knees too shaky to hold her. She felt him reach his hand out toward her, felt him caress the side of her face with his right hand, still damp from her own fluids. "I know, little one. I know because if he had ever looked at you like that," a pause in which she could wonder if he meant just this, or some earlier look, "If he ever had, I would have been there at the speed of thought."

Karen sat there, shivering, feeling him caress her face, eyes pinched tight against the darkness, against the cold, against the memory of how her body reacted.

She felt him slide his hand under hers and make to lift her to her feet. "Not much farther now."

She let him lift her to her feet, but then fought the first step. "Where are we going?" More than a hint of fear in her voice, she continued, "What is going to happen to me?"

She heard him start to take a step, heard him stop, and she assumed pivoted to face her. She thought she could feel his eyes roaming over her body as he answered. Caressing, but very dangerous.

"Where are we going?" He repeated, a smile in his voice. "I am taking you to my lair." He paused. It felt as though his eyes were paying particular attention to her chest and groin. She let out a gas for breath even before he answered. "Once you are there I plan to rape you. Often. Repeatedly. Painfully. Until you break." Each word felt like a blow. She tried to step away from him, but found she could not move. His hand gently brushed her cheek. "Once you are broken, once you will look at me and beg me to do whatever I ask, once you give up, then I will kill you." Karen's heart raced. "Until then, I expect to have a great deal of fun."

He took her by the hand then and pulled her into a light every bit as blinding as the darkness had been.

"Karen, you can open your eyes now."

Curled into a ball, back against a wall that shouldn't have been there, cold marble floor beneath her legs, Karen cringed. This wasn't happening! It wasn't real! Slowly it sank into her brain that the voice she just heard was not the same as from the hallway. It wasn't just the acoustics. It was a similar voice, but...

"Allen." She looked up, into his face, and felt tears overflow from her eyes. She was safe! He was here! She leapt up and lunged to hug him.

He stepped out of her grasp.

"What?" She looked at him confused. Something was wrong with his face. His face was smoother, but not quite satin. The gray was gone from his temples. But his eyes... The look in his eyes when he looked at her, that had no business on Allen's face, that look belonged to...

"Who are you?" She tried to hold her voice steady.

"No one you know, Karen. No one you have ever known." She watched his face change as he spoke. Cheek bones, chin, skin tone, hair, and eyes. One flowed into the other, a thousand faces. They started and ended with Allen's rich blue eyes.

"No..." She shook her head in denial."No, you're my friend. You're..."

"I never said I was your friend, Karen." She felt the air beginning to change, thicker, yet colder. "You told me I was your friend. You often came to find me. When I first met you, I told you that you didn't want to know me, that you didn't want me to know who you were. But you rarely listen." The air thinned, back to normal. Just as Karen as taking a breath he added, "Take off your shirt."

Karen stared at him, shocked. Her hand had reflexively flown up to her collar before she realized what it was doing. Then she thought. There were two options really. Either this was not Allen, and she was still trapped with a mad man who seemed capable of anything, or this was Allen and she really had never realized who he was. She was not sure which idea terrified her more. Then she looked up into his eyes and realized that it didn't matter. Whoever she was in the room with, she was trapped. And he clearly expected her hand to have started unbuttoning.

Distancing herself, she let her hand move where the compulsion led. It wasn't that difficult really, and it left her mind free to take in the room. It had sixteen sides. Every other panel held a mirror. Of the remaining eight, one held a painting of a set of shackles. The others held paintings of red curtains. The floor was solid marble, with a collar chain set near the center. It was the strangest decorating she had ever seen. And then she looked down to discover she had finished.

A shiver ran over her body as he smiled approvingly. Then he motioned her to the wall painted with shackles. To place each hand by the shackles, arms spread. She looked closely at the wall, a faux painter's dream gone mad, and closed her eyes. Then she felt the shackle close around her wrist.

Her eyes flew open, and she stared forward, shocked. His hand was in the wall. Except that it wasn't his hand. His hand, rather his arm, stopped where it met the wall. A painting of his hand now existed, moving, manipulating the painting of the remaining shackle, and bringing it out of the wall. Stone, it was solid stone. Karen left her eyes close again as he fastened the second shackle. Thinking about this was going to give her a headache.

She was standing in what she grew up to consider "the position." Arms spread, legs spread, but still standing upright. It was what a cop would need for a good frisking. She had never realized how vulnerable in made the subject feel. And then he was touching her back, smoothing her hair, parting it, pushing it aside so that it draped around her shoulders. She was trying to catch her breath when she heard him whisper in her ear, "Knives or whip?"

She felt all of her hair stand on end, terror sweeping through her. "I don't understand," she said in an unsteady voice.

Opening her eyes, she saw him smiling at her. "I think you do actually." He brushed gently along her back. "I think you know exactly what I am asking."

Fighting for breath, trying to find a way out, she asked, "Are those the only options?"

He turned her face to him. Again he smiled, watching her eyes. It was not a friendly smile. "No. No, those are not the only options." He paused, as though studying her, then continued. "But as I would like you to live through the week, those are the only options I am giving you."

She felt the shiver start at his touch and run all along her body. He could not be serious! He can't mean to kill me! He can't...

"Do you want me to use knives?" A casual voice, as though asking what she wanted for dinner.

Shivering, Karen shook her head. And watched as a smile filled him. Damn him, he was pleased!

"The whip it is." His voice positively purred.

He reached out to the curtain on her left. She could not quite call it a painting anymore. She managed to only be marginally surprised when his hand passed through, into the wall, brushing the curtain aside. She could tell it had covered a display case, but she was not quite the right angle to see what was in it. Or maybe she didn't want to look. Either way, when he drew back from the wall with his prize, she felt all of the blood leave her face.

She was not sure what she has expected, but it wasn't this. She supposed it could honestly be called a whip, though she thought that that style had been called a cat-o-nine-tails. Though even then, she never envisioned one like this. The handle was braided leather, same as Allen's clothes. The straps, there were at least a dozen of them, each at least a foot long, were made of the same knotted leather. But it was what was held in the knots that made her blanche. Little slivers of metal. Each finely polished. Somehow she knew, each razor sharp. If she had to, she would have guessed that there were nearly fifty shards. She was too busy imagining what it would feel like. To feel all of those edges descending on her back with the force of a whip behind it.

He turned to her then, and she tried to pull away. There was no give. She looked across at the "painting". As far as her wrists cared, the shackles began where they left the wall. Almost three links. There was nearly a foot still in the painting, but it was useless to her. She was trapped. She had not even realized she had stopped looking at him, until she felt his touch. He was behind her, a quick glance in the mirror confirmed that. Behind her, reaching between her legs. The things he was doing with his fingers made her want to collapse. Instead she began to cry.

It lasted less than a minute. It lasted an eternity. She was not sure what had made him start., and was even less certain what had made him stop. One moment his hands were stroking, twirling, fingers plunging deep into her. The next moment he was drying his hand on her rump. A distant part of her brain tried to follow what he was saying. Something about screaming.

"I understand if you feel the need to scream, but do not do so lightly. I am not fond of it. If I feel you have screamed without justification, I will give you sufficient motive to justify that scream."

What was he talking about? And then he struck. The scream that ripped through her mouth she thought only palely echoed the pain that was ripping through her back. But suddenly it didn't matter. Pain. Pain unlike anything she had ever felt. Every nerve, every fiber of her being. She had no body. The pain was everything. And then she was back in the room, fallen to her knees. She could see herself in the mirrors, blood running down her back. And she saw him standing there, waiting. Waiting for her to regain her feet.

With a deep breath she steeled herself, and then discovered exactly how many muscles from the back are used when standing. She was shaking when she regained her feet, but this time when the lash struck, she remained silent.

She did not count how often the whip fell. She tried not to imagine what her back must look like by now. The amount of blood pooled at her feet stood witness to how deep the wounds must have been. And then, after an eternity, he stopped. A piece of her mind noticed that his clothes were gone. She had no idea if he had stopped at some point to remove them, or if they had simply vanished. The piece of her mind that would care was curled into a tiny ball, putting its full focus unto trying not to scream.

She felt his hands along her back. Running through the bloody ruins that used to be her back. Felt him press close, and run his tongue along her spine... But that was not where she felt it. It was deeper. Not a part of her body, but somewhere much deeper inside her. The little spark she thought of as her soul. He does not belong here!, her mind screamed, as his mouth caressed her deepest self. She recoiled in terror. And felt him plunge his body into hers.

She screamed. It echoed through the room. And a piece of her was disappointed the Pain did not come. He apparently felt this scream was deserved. Feeling him push inside her, however, her own body came to her rescue. She fainted long before she felt him climax.

Karen woke to the sound of furniture moving. What? Remembering where she was, she shivered at the thought of what "furniture" her captor might see fit to add. She listened for a handful of heartbeats before, steeling herself, she opened her eyes.

Card table. There was now a card table set in the center of the room. It looked like a single bowl and cup decorated it. Two chairs surrounded it. If her nose spoke true, there was tomato soup set on the burner beside the table. Her stomach growled in response. And at the noise, Allen looked up.

He was dressed more casually now, though the sight of him still made her shake. She tried to pull away from him, only to realize that the neck shackle had been solidly attached to her. So she sat, and waited, praying that whatever he did when her reached her would be quick. All her did was unfasten her shackle. That and motion to a chamber pot and wash basin behind her.

She cleaned up quickly and then, standing carefully, approached the table. Allen was already seated. He had left free the chair nearest the food. She took the seat, then gave closer scrutiny to her surroundings. Yes, it was a bowl of tomato soup. And a mug of water. There was a soup spoon, (she had always preferred those, the one's with the half sphere lips,) and a cloth napkin. She was still breathing in the aroma when she heard Allen ask, "You do prefer it without crackers? You seem to change."

She stopped cold, staring at him. "What are you playing at?"

Allen smiled at her, clearly feigning mock innocence. "Playing?"

She glared at him. "Yes. Playing. As in what is your game today? Whatever you plan to submit me to, I would rather it was on an empty stomach."

His eyes sparkled with amusement.

Karen continued to glare. She still had not touched her spoon. "Why aren't you eating?"

"I've already eaten." He was amused by something, she just could not tell what. "I'm actually quite full."

"I'm supposed to trust you that this is safe to eat?"

"No." That stopped her. Then he continued, "You are supposed to eat it anyway."

A shiver ran through her. She resisted the urge to throw the bowl, splattering it against the mirrors... barely. She remembered where she was. She remembered she was at the mercy of the monster sitting across from her. Therefore, rather that shouting, she contained her voice to a light hiss. "You expect me to eat food that you admit you poisoned!"

His face still smiled, but his eyes had sobered. "I admitted no such thing."

Her water cup went flying as she slammed her hands on the table. "How dare you..."

A cold fell on the room as he stood up. A small cup drifted into his hand. Karen suddenly realized that she had not heard it hit the floor. He did not take a sip, he returned it to its place in front of her. As though distracted, he commented, "You have no idea what it is like to finally be full. I have been living the last fifty years half starved and never realized it until you came to my table." A chill ran down Karen's back. Then he turned to face her, his eyes faded to the ice blue that she had first seen dressed in black. In calm measured tones he said, "I did not say that I poisoned the soup. You asked if you should trust me. It does not matter if you trust me or not. It does not matter if you think the food is poisoned or not. It is the only food you are getting. You will eat it.

Karen's heart raced. It was true. Damn him, but it was true. If it was all that she had, she would eventually eat it. Carefully, as though the object were distasteful, she picked up the spoon, and began to eat. In almost no time she was scrapping the bowl for the last of it. Allen held up the pot. "Would you like another bowl?"

She shook her head, cautiously, then nodded, "Can I trust you?"

Allen sat the pot down slowly, never taking his eye off of her. She watched them darken to emerald, then fade back to the deep blue she was familiar with. The silence hand been hanging for almost longer than she could stand when he finally broke the stare, saying, "That is a difficult question."

She stood up from the table, away from him. She was trying not to shake. Why wouldn't he answer her? It was a straightforward question! She said as much to him.

When his face turned to capture hers, his eyes were emerald green. "No, Karen. It is not an easy question." She stopped, held by his eyes as strongly as if a compulsion had been worked. "There are two ways I could read that question. They have very different answers. If you mean, 'Can you trust what I say?', then the answer in yes. I may withhold information from you because I feel it is not necessary, or simply because I wish to mislead you. But I will not ever directly lie to you. If that is trust, then yes you can trust me." He rose from his chair, a predatory grace about him. "If by trust you mean, 'Can I trust his actions?' or 'Does he mean me harm?'..." He paused in front of her, catching her chin in his hand, eyes burning into her. "Why, then, the answer to 'can you trust me?' is no. I do have every intention of killing you. It will not be fast. It will not be painless. On the contrary, it will likely be as drawn out as I can make it. Does that answer you question?" He dropped her chin and walked away from her, just as her eyes had begun to fill with tears.

Allen walked to the table, but did not sit, instead placing the pan of soup on the table, beside the bowl. Karen, shaking, fighting the tears, obediently took her seat at the table. His voice was the same relaxed calm she used to hear when looking down at her, he said, "I will leave the food here. I think you have had more than enough of my company for this evening. Sleep soundly." He turned and walked toward the walls. Karen expected him to move a curtain. Instead he walked up to a mirror. Turning to face her, he added, "I was very impressed, by the way. I had not expected you back to heal nearly so quickly, or so well." And he stepped into, through, the glass.

She sat there, in a daze, trying to process what had just happened. He left. They talked. He gave her food. And he left. He left and she wasn't bleeding. Her bones were whole. Her... What he had said about her back slowly sank in. Healed? But that... She had forgotten about her back when she leapt up from the chair, yet the muscles had not screamed. If he was telling the truth...

She was on her feet as soon as the thought formed, closing the distance between herself and the mirror he had exited through. Absently, she touched the glass, confirming that, yes, it was a solid mirror. Then, turning her back to it, she pulled her hair to the side, craning her head around. Nothing. Not to much as a scar. How... She collapsed on the floor, finally letting the tears flow. She was trapped in a world gone insane.

Smiling, watching from the other side of the glass, Allen turned and walked up the stairs. He was not sure what he had expected to happen when this time came, but it certainly looked like he would enjoy it.

Karen had no idea how long she slept. She remembered waking once in the night, consumed with panic, trying to remember where she was. Eventually she fell asleep again. When she finally woke for goo, she opened her eyes to see Allen standing over her. Her hand reflexively flew to her throat. There was no shackle. A piece of her laughed, Why should there be? There had been no consistency in any of the rest of this game he played.

"Will you be lying there all day?," he asked, amusement filling his voice.

She glared at him, pulling herself to her feet. And swayed. When his hand came out to steady her, she clung to it, but refused to look up into his face. She didn't want to know what look she would see there. Worry or...

Once her feet were steady, he led her over to a curtain. A quick count told her that it was the same curtain he had taken the whip from. Motioning for her to stand there, he reached into the wall and pulled the curtain aside, then turned to her. "When last we spoke of it, you seemed opposed to the idea of knives." He motioned at the weapons chest as a shiver ran up her back. "I thought it fair to give you a choice."

Karen stared at the glass display case in awe. Centered in it was the whip. At compass points from it were four simple knives. Simple was not the right term, but her mind could not find a better one, not now. Above those, to the left and right, a set of clamps. They looked... they looked like they had teeth. A shiver chased her mind as it continued down the case. Two silk cords ran down the sides of the case. A distant part of her mind told her that those and the clamps were a set. She did not question it. At the bottom of the display were ten small silver cones. The way they were arranged they reminded her of immitation nails.

"Well?" his voice interrupted her thoughts.

Karen tried to swallow. Tried to soothe her throat. "You already used the whip."

"That's correct." His voice was patient, waiting.

"So it is off limits?"

A nod.

She thought for a moment, thought about how the case was arranged. "The whip held the dullest edge in this case, didn't it?" She turned to face him as she asked.

He smiled. A warm smile, a cool voice, still patient, not yet cold, but cool. "What do you choose, Karen?"

She closed her eyes. She had decided when she first saw them, a strange curiosity pulling at her. She trusted that he would heal her afterwards, but she wanted to know what they were capable of. "The nails," she said, in a voice that fought not to shake.

She kept her eyes pinched shut, and so did not see him reach into the case. Did not see him carefully slip each case over a finger, and then flex his hands. He left the case open, a small edge of glass hanging out of the side of a painting. He left the curtain pulled. Stepping around, so that he faced her directly, Allen reached out his left hand across the short space and gently caressed her face, along the jaw. Karen felt her blood begin to flow.

They were the sharpest objects in the case, arguably the sharpest in all of his arsenal of toys. Each nail, if used carefully, could slice the skin so finely that the nerves did not even register until the subject breathed. As the rivulets of blood touched her shoulders, she gasped, eyes flying open, as he kissed her.

Karen fought to remain still. To not shudder. To not breath. His hands played a deadly song over her nerves all the while. A light touch here, a caress there. If he only used his palms, she was safe, but if his fingertips even lightly brushed the skin, she felt blood flow. Through it all she kept her eyes closed, not trusting her heart rate if she could see what was happening. All the while she stood, and tried not to cry. And his hands wandered down.

When his hand reached her hips she shuddered. When his palm touched her groin, her eyes flew open. No! That was too much. She knew, a cold part of her knew, that none of the slices he had inflicted were accidental. He had meant them all. He had told her he meant to kill her slowly. Bleeding to death would be slow. But that... that... He was smiling.

She tried to take a step back from him. Nothing, no room. It was as though her back were to a wall. Steeling her nerves, she tried to take a step toward hip, pushing his palm harder against her. His eyes widened in surprise, but she did not move. Now... a distraction, something to keep him from mutilating her... When the idea came she didn't fight it. It was necessary. She did not even register it as distasteful, merely a needed distraction.

She dropped to her knees with a distant calm. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him jerk his hand away from her stomach, then both his hands were away from her... as her mouth consumed him.

The sigh that ripped through the room as her mouth closed over him, was not just sound. It had a thick musky scent. A velvety texture. As her tongue moved over him, pulling him deeper, harder, she felt his pals on the side of her head. Only his palms, nothing more. She knew that he was trying to keep control. That this had been the one thing he had not expected her to do in protest. Feeling a smile curve at the edges of her mouth, she continued.

Neither of them counted the time. Counted the thrusts. When her mouth finally released him, it was not because he had come, but because he had, very carefully pushed her away. She let herself fall backward, catching herself on her palms. She stared up at him defiantly. And he laughed.

It was not the cruel laugh she had heard most recently, but neither was it tame. Looking down at her body, spread out before him, his smile was dark masculine. "Very good," he said. And she was not sure if he meant the blow job, or the glare. All she knew for certain was that he had given up upon using those nails on her opening. Instead he was leaning down, and onto her, and into her, with his shaft.

It lasted an eternity. It lasted less than a minute. But then it continued, and with such, she felt him brush against her self. Shields she did not know she had flew up around the spark she called her self-ness. Shields his probe did not see, or did not dignify to notice. All he saw were the little scraps of energy, slowly pulsing. He did not gather them yet, but watched them, and as he watched, so did she. After a time she realized that the scraps were pulsing with the rhythm of him pumping into her. And as she realized that, the rhythm changed. It took her a moment to realize that her breathing had shifted. She watched.

When finally she climaxed the scraps of energy pulsed with a blinding solidity. They were no longer scraps, but a single, solid unit. As she felt her body buckle, she felt him pull those threads away, into himself. She choked a sob as she felt his hand upon her face. Fingers over her eyelids, gently brushing them, as though to close. She wanted to scream. It wasn't fair. She played the game. She stayed a step ahead of him. Her eyes...

Very slowly she realized that the warmth running down her face was not blood, but tears. Try though she might, she could not actually feel wear his fingers had sliced her eyelids. Must have cut her eyes.

As she felt him draw out of her, felt him walk away... First the few steps to close the cabinet, then the remainder of steps to his exit. Slowly she realized what must have happened. He removed the nails.

She opened her eyes carefully, cautiously. And then looked down. Into the mirror. Back at herself. She applied light pressure to her eyes to make sure. Yes, her eyes were whole. A choked sigh, looking at her reflection. Her eyes were whole but the rest of her was still covered in blood. Most of the wounds has tried to clot, but they were still wounds. Along her face, her sides, her breasts, her stomach. He left her her eyes, but there was not miraculous healing today.

There was something wet on her cheek. Something warm under her head. Fighting to hold her breathing level, she felt the warm cloth drag along her skin, down along her side. Her eyes opened to look up into his face. She blinked, confused. The angle was wrong. He dipped the cloth in a bowl of water and stroked her side once more. With that action her balance centered. She was on her back. Her head was propped up on something. Something warm. Turning slightly, she was Allen's stomach (shirt covered), and the world fell into place.

She was on his lap. He head was on his lap. No!, he mind screamed, as she pulled away, dizzy, and lunged at the chamber pot, emptying her stomach into its bowl. Not again, her mind pleaded. When she stopped heaving, she looked back toward him. He was still sitting there, calmly, cloth neatly folded in his hands. She saw a red speck behind him in a far mirror, and only half comprehending, turned around to a closer one to see her own reflection.

Blood. Caked, dried blood. She was coated in it. She must have continued to bleed after she fell asleep. Her face, her trunk, all down her legs. Her hair was clumped from it, not that it had been doing well before. The only clean skin ran from her cheek, down across her body, stopping half way down one side. Where she had felt him using his rag. Underneath the blood, she could still see the scars.

She turned her eyes on him then, a fierce, angry look. He still sat there, waiting. After a time, he set the rag gently on his bowl's edge and, rising, said, "I take it you would rather finish bathing yourself." He waited for her nod, then turned and walking away, said, "I will be back shortly with your food then."

My food, she thought, lightly probing the neck muscles that had tried to cramp at her nod. He is still refusing to eat with me. She carefully walked the handful of steps to the bathing bowl and water. It was still mostly clear. When she finished some twenty minutes later, the water was so tinted it was impossible to see the bottom. All but her hair was clean.

She walked back to the mirror and was examining her scars more closely, when she heard a cough. Changing her focus in the mirror, she saw Allen, the card table returned, this time decorated with a plate already filled with food. Beside the plate was a glass and a pitcher of water. She felt her mouth start to salivate, and giving up, with a sigh, turned to walk toward the table. He held out a chair for her.

Taking the seat, feeling him tuck her into the table, feeling his hands begin to massage her shoulders, she looked down at her plate. Steak, medium by the look of it, a large cut, already diced. A large side of spinach. Also some broccoli. She picked up her water glass and had it mostly empty when he finally spoke. "You cleaned up well."

Not his angry voice. Not seductive. NOt distant. This was what she had always thought Allen's voice was. It was the same voice he had used at the very start and very end of her last meal. Perhaps because of that familiarity, she spoke without thinking. "I don't like spinach."

Strong hands massaged her shoulders, her back. He seemed very careful around any of her new scars, hesitant to reopen them. "You will eat everything on that plate."

She stared at the spinach, noting that his voice had not changed. She still held the empty water cup in her lap. "Why?"

A sigh. His hands stopped their motion, and with a last squeeze to her shoulders, he removed his hands and walked around the table. He was speaking before he sat, but when he sat he turned a very tired set of deep blue eyes toward her. "Karen," he began, "Do you have any idea how much blood you lost?"

Karen swallowed.

"I am frankly amazed that you have healed as well as you have. If you are going to remain healthy, however, you need to replenish your iron," He motioned toward the plate, "and your fluids." He motioned toward the pitcher.

"Why do you care if I am healthy?" she asked, staring down into her empty glass. Damn him, he looked so familiar! So much like the man she had thought she had known. "I thought you were going to kill me?"

Allen sighed, letting his hands settle on the table. How to explain this to her? "Yes," he nodded, noting the tears that were beginning to fill her eyes. "Yes I do plan to kill you. But not until after... until you... You have so much strength left in you right now!" He threw his hands up, letting one settle onto his forehead. "You don't realize what is happening. You..." He tried to start again. "You should be exhausted by now. Tired. Gray. You should be about to crack." He saw the tears running down her face and fought the urge to brush them away. Instead he continued. "Instead... instead, look at you. You woke up when I brushed you. Your body is still trying to heal itself. You..." He did not say, You are still sane, but he had to fight that. Rubbing his eyes he continued, "I don't know why. But whatever the reason it is the truth. For now, you are still alive, and still healthy, and I do not wish to do more than I must to end that condition."

She laughed then, an empty laugh. Shivering, she said, "And if I want to end that condition?"

"You don't." She looked up, into his face. The certainty there startled her. THen she heard his reply. "If you had wanted to die, you would not have actually found a means of distracting me last visit."

Karen felt her face flush. He knew... he realized that that was all it had been... He...

"Now eat your meal." His voice smiled.

Rolling her eyes, she picked up her fork and began.

Karen lay awake staring at the brush. It was a reasonable size, one of the flat head variety. Its smooth metal body and black leather grip matched the rest of his decorating sense. He had left her with it when he departed after the meal, saying that her hair was a mess and he expected it to be well brushed before he returned. When she had asked when that would be, he had said he would wake her an hour before he arrived. She woke up about five minutes ago. The room was dark.

She supposed it made sense that the room would be dark when she was asleep. Sense!, her mind laughed. Sure it made sense. Just like it made sense that he walked through mirrors. Just like it made sense that the chamber pot was never full. It was the damnedest thing. She had been disgusted by the idea of being forced to use one at first, but as soon as she had finished, when she turned around, it was empty. It was always empty.

Rocking, her body lost while her mind tried not to think, she looked down at the hand holding the brush. It was so dark she should not have been able to see anything, but she saw the brush. And she saw the scars along the hand. They seemed to glow in the non-light. She was still sitting there, rocking, when he stepped into the room, causing it to erupt into light.

Disappointment, a piece of her identified. He was disappointed. Did that explain him grabbing her by the hair and dragging her to the center of the room? did it explain the grooves in the floor, just the right shape for her feet, that helped her stand exactly where he directed? He seemed to have forgotten them, telling her that if she moved from that spot she would start by breaking her knees. How could she not know where he wanted her to stand with those grooves here? They were shaped like footprints.

First she was made to stand, legs spread. Then he had her bend down and grab her ankles. She felt her hair fall forward, across the floor, while he used a rope to secure her arms to her legs. As a test she tried to flex one arm, and discovered that the ropes cut. It was not deep, but it would not be a good idea to move. She watched the rest of his actions through the mirrors across from her. third curtain, not second. He opened it and, selecting something, walked over and knelt down in front of her. She was so focused on the reflection that she was startled when the genuine article disrupted her view.

He was kneeling in front of her, looking into her upside down face. In his had was something that looked like a dildo. A life size mechanical phallus. She opened her mouth to ask about it, and got as far as "What..." when he slapped her across the face with his hand. Ropes cut into her arms as she took the blow. It was an effort not to scream. But instead she just stayed there, and glared at him.

When he spoke, it was a quiet voice. He was not looking at her eyes, not letting her see his expression. So instead she watched his hands as he talked. Watched him stroke the strange small toy, watched as its gears began to turn. "I ask very little from you, Karen. What I do ask, is usually for your own good." She fought the urge to laugh. Something was wrong with his temper. But, apparently he did notice something, because he continued, with a smile playing across his lips, "When it is not for your own good, I don't bother to ask."

The gears still hummed, seemingly in rhythm to the stroking of his hands.

"I asked you to do one simple thing for me today. Every time I have asked you to do something, you have fought me, and today you deliberately ignored me. Did you think I would ignore that?"

She didn't dare move, even to shake her head. The device in his hands had begun to shake. Still he stroked it, and held it up for her to see.

"This is your punishment." One more stroke, two more. At the fifth it exploded. She felt cuts in her arms and legs from where she had flinched, but she had stayed put. She had stayed in the footprints. Then she saw the dildo.

Blade came out of it from a dozen different angles, all of the "out". If it had been inside her, it would have shredded her. Even if he wanted to, she doubted Allen could have repaired that kind of wound. Stopped the bleeding, likely, but not repaired.

As though he heard her thoughts, he said, "I will be placing this inside you." With a twist, the blades retracted, once again giving it the shape of a pleasure tool. Standing, he held it over her opening and explained. "It takes a great deal of effort to set this off, and as such, I am sure you are more than capable of the concentration necessary to keep it slim. All you need to do is remain calm. Every time you clench your muscles around it..." He stroked her opening with the cold metal shaft, sending a shiver through her body. "Every time you clench your muscles, it will advance another notch. I have never bothered counting how many notches it takes. But I can assure you it takes fewer than you will pray." Smiling, he thrust it inside her.

Karen felt her heart rate speed up, felt her body shudder at the instruction. She heard the device begin its hum. A cold fear swept through her as she felt him pat her rump, then watched him walk away, to the far wall, where she had been rocking. He returned a moment later with the brush, and sat down behind her, her knot of hair easily within grasp. "Now," he said, placing a hand on her hair.

No!, her mind screamed. She could see him in the mirror. She could see his hand resting on her hair. She could see it, by all there was! But that was not where she felt his hand. A warm presence, cupped over her, touching, but not yet stimulating. She did not feel his hand upon her hair.

He smiled. "Remember to stay relaxed." He began to brush.

Her heart nearly burst, shudder upon shudder flying through her body at his touch. She was half way to orgasm before she caught control of it, forced herself to stop. She couldn't... She didn't know how long was left, but she couldn't... Again she felt the brush touch her, again she shuddered. No! She clenched her arms, feeling the ropes bite, but did withstand the next stroke, and the next. Which was good, because that last clench had taken it from humming to shaking.

The tangles helped. Short sudden fights with her hair that did not resemble the smooth strokes that he wanted. But slowly, as the tangles cleared, as her hair became smoother, it became worse. She fought, she fought for all she was worth. But every dozenth stoke made her shudder. And then every tenth. And then every fifth. She was biting her lip, trying to focus, trying to keep from clenching at the third, then he stood. Stood and removed the device.

She tried to remember how to breath. She felt her whole body shaking, shaking and shuddering. As he knelt down in from of her, she heard him say, seeming to purr, "Very impressive."And then he was in front of her, kneeling again, blocking out the mirrors, holding the device. "Would you like to know how close you got?" he asked, holding it carefully.

Knowing her role, Karen did not answer.

He smiled, and gave the device a single stroke. It erupted.

He mind felt numb. One stroke. One clench. That close. That near to... She watched him reset the device and return it to its case. Watched as he untied her and returned the ropes to their place. Watched as he walked away, smiling, to his exit. The last thing she heard him say, as she stood there, numb with shock, terrified to do more that blink, was, "You can move once I have left. I think you have learned your lesson."

She was awake again. In the dark. Holding the brush. She suspected that since he had left it, he wanted her to continue with grooming. She shook at the thought of touching her own hair.

It was all mind tricks. All illusions. She had suspected it off and on. She had never seen illusions like these before, but that didn't keep it from explaining. A giant illusion of curtains. Another on the exit. Another on her hair. She did not think about the chamber pot, about the healing. She would not think about them. Her mind could not quite grasp how those could be illusions, and she could not quite accept that part of her mind called it magic. Illusions was all it was. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Karen laid the brush across her hair. And felt hair. Tears ran down her cheeks as she brushed, quick, fierce movements, forcing the tangles out, away from her.

When he eventually stepped through, her hair was long finished. He ducked the brush as it was thrown.

"I hate you!" she screamed, pacing around the room. He just stood there, having the nerve to look startled. "Hate!" she screamed. There was nothing left to throw. She considered getting close enough to grab the brush back, but decided against it. Instead she eventually stopped, stood, and glared at him.

He calmly looked back. He did not ask her why she hated him. He did not ask what brought this one, though he was actually curious. He just watched, and waited, for her to say what was on her mind.

"You're a monster!" she shouted. Then, with a growl she continued. "You keep me locked in here! You keep threatening to kill me. You won't even let me take a shower."

He waited. She looked like she was trying not to cry, though they were likely to be tears of rage.

"You keep switching back and forth. One minute you're civil and almost someone I recognize. The next you're this sadistic bastard that won't even let me answer a damn question, much less ask one!"

He waited.

"You're an animal!"

He began to walk forward at that comment, not quickly, but forward.

She slid to the floor in tears. "You... you won't even eat with me. You bring me food and then sit there and watch me like I'm a bug. I'm not even worth eating with."

She was shaking. Most of it was because of the tears she was fighting. The rest of it was because he was no longer coming closer. Instead, he was directly in front of her, kneeling down to be at eye level. "Karen," he began.

"Can't I even have some clothes." The voice was hoarse from tears.

"Karen, listen to me."

Terrified young eyes looked up at him, cheeks stained with tears.

"Karen," he began, thinking how to phrase this... "Every meal I have taken since your arrival here, every one, has been with you."

She shook her head, denying it. "Full," said that frightened voice. "You always say you are full."

Calm, he thought, just say it calmly. "I am full when I come to feed you. I have usually fed the visit before."

Visions flew through her mind. Scraps of energy pulsing with his thrusts. His mouth caressing the spark of self within her... "I don't understand," she lied.

Allen sighed. "I don't expect you to. But it is the truth. One visit feeds me. The next feed you. The next me, the next you."

Karen swallowed. He had not fed last time. She knew that. But if she told him she knew, he would ask how, and a piece of her mind screamed against the idea of telling him of the visions. Of telling him that she knew how he fed...

When she was silent for a time, and no longer crying, he stood, and turning, walked out the mirror. Her mind spun. "One feeds me. One feeds you", he had said. But now he had had a visit without feeding. And now he had left her without food. What was happening to the pattern now?

He returned an hour later. She stood when he entered, and stared at him, waiting. After a time, she said, "Well?"

He motioned for her to come closer. Hesitantly, she approached.

"Close your eyes," he asked, when she was in arms reach. He had never stepped away from the mirror.

Only hesitating a moment, Karen closed her eyes. And felt him grab her. And pull. Suddenly the air was different.

She was standing inside a darkened stairway. Behind her was to all appearances a two way mirror. Beside her was Allen.

He motioned ahead of them. "Climb to the top of the stairs. The door sticks, but it does open. Go through the next door on your right. I expect to see you within an hour."

She stared at him, trying to follow what he had just said. "You're letting me go?" she asked, disbelieving.

The look he gave her withered any hope she had of getting free. "Don't be a fool. But I am giving you a change of scenery."

Karen stood at the top of the stairs, in shock, her eyes fighting to not recognize where she was. "No," she whispered. "No..." shaking her head, she stepped into the room, letting the stair close behind her. It couldn't be... it wasn't...

A small full size bed, with a blue and green quilt, lightning bolts around the edges. A solid wood dresser with the next to top handle screwed in crooked. A wicker waste paper basket in the corner. Behind the door to the right would be the bathroom... It couldn't be, but it was.

"Why couldn't I have at least suspected!," she cursed herself, feeling the water from the shower beat down on her. She should have thought, should have... She didn't know what. She knew that room, knew it with a cold certainty. Had seen it at least every other time she visited, en route to this bathroom. She had slept in it the first night he ever rescued her. She had somehow accepted that it really was Allen doing these things, but she had never stopped to wonder where she was being held. How many of his meals had died while she was up here eating cookies with him... Rather, eating cookies and never noticing that he didn't eat?

Stepping out of the shower, she turned off the water. IT was cold anyway. She had to be close to the one hour mark, it had taken so much scrubbing to feel clean. Or at least to not feel filthy. She was not sure if she would ever feel clean again. Towel into turban, she stepped out, steam flooding into Allen's bedroom.

She had always wondered why there were no mirrors in the bedroom or bathroom. She supposed she knew now. Looking around the room on e last time, she saw that it had changed. She supposed he had stepped in while she was in the shower. Laid across the bed quilt was a t-shirt and a pair of short. No undergarments, no shoes. She slipped them on, grateful for the feel of anything against her skin. Then taking a deep breathe, she knocked on the door leading to the living room.

"Enter."

The room, again, was just like she remembered it. The soft brown leather couch. The round dining table. The drab porcelain lamp in the corner. The television where she occasionally made him watch movies with her. He was sitting on the couch. With how the furniture was positioned this meant that his back was to her. She felt herself beginning to shake as she walked across and took her seat on the couch. Not next to him, but looking at him.

He looked over at her, appraising. "You found the clothes." It was a statement. She nodded. "I ordered a pizza for you."

She just looked at him.

He looked, if anything, nervous. "Are you feeling better?"

She just looked at him. After an indeterminate time, she replied, disgust dripping from her voice, "Do you expect me to say, 'Why yes! Thanks for the shower. All better now?' Do you think I am that dense? you have all but said you hate me. You keep doing everything you can think of to crush me. You keep trying to kill me. Why should this make me feel better!"

He actually looked hurt by her words. Or maybe he had looked hurt before? Whichever it was, when he opened his mouth to speak, the voice was pained. "I have never said I hated you, Karen, nor have I meant to imply it. How I act toward you is dictated by what I am, and I can not help what I am."

"You're a vampire."

He laughed. A surprised, awkward sound. "No, Karen, I am not. Though I have been mistaken for one in the past, there is very little that I have less in common with. Mind you, as with many opposites, we often have more in common with each other than with our prey." He paused. "But as I was saying, I can not help what I am, but I have never wanted to kill you."

She glared at him. "You could have fooled me! You're always talking about it. 'I will kill you.' 'Be careful, I don't want you to die too quickly.' 'When I break you, you'll die.'" Something tugged at her mind as she said the words. Quieter, she added, "You haven't expected me to live this long." It was a statement.

He nodded. "I don't want to kill you, Karen. I expected you to die, but I don't want to kill you. I just want to..."

The apartment buzzed. Cursing, Allen rose and stepped out to deal with the pizza man. Karen let her mind finish his sentence. I don't want to kill you, I just wanted... to feed. And before she had come, he had never had a prey that lived so long through his feedings. He had been telling her such from the beginning. How well she was healing. How alert she was. Even his reaction to her stubbornly fighting him. None of the others had lasted so long. And so he had expected to kill her, but that didn't mean he had wanted to.

He returned with the pizza as she was wrapping up her thoughts. Just as well, some piece of her said it would be a bad idea to say how much she knew. Watching him carry the pizza over to the dining table, she rose and joined him. It was a small, not much pizza, but for one it would be plenty. Ham and pineapple decorated the top. "I always order pepperoni," she said, her voice distant.

"Not when you are alone. When you are alone you order this."

Karen swallowed. He knew better how she ordered her pizza than any of her other friends. He knew how she ordered her steak cooked. He knew enough to be uncertain if she wanted crackers with her favorite soup. "How long have you been watching me? Watching what I eat?"

"Since the first day you called out to mr. Since the first day I knew that you would eventually be here." He studied the pizza, carefully cutting a slice. She thought he should have looked more comfortable holding a knife. Maybe it was the target.

As he placed the slice on her plate, she asked, "Did you do this for the others?" He raised an eyebrow quizzically. She clarified, "The food. Your other meals. Did you find out their favorites also?"

A look of comprehension in his eyes, he nodded, taking the knife over to the sink. "Not to the same extent. I rarely spent more than a month studying them, not some twelve years."

Twelve years? Had it really been that long ago they met? "Why?" Why do this? Why torture them like that?

He shrugged, walking over to the chair across from her. "The only time they got to themselves was their meals. I always made a point of never touching them at that time. It seemed fitting that whatever food I served should be something they would enjoy."

She nearly cried. He didn't know what he was doing. To be sitting down there, day after day, not knowing why you were picked... Not knowing when it would end. He never at with them. She now believed him that he couldn't. But they would not have known. All they would have known was that he always brought them proof that he could have started any day. She doubted that he bothered to tell them it wasn't poisoned. With how long it had taken her to trust him, even given their past, the others never would have...

"How many?"

He looked confused.

"How many... others? How many," she swallowed, her pizza still untouched, "meals have you kept down there?" How often has that room been empty?"

He closed his eyes, and sighed. When he opened them a moment later, the seemed clouded, and green. "Are you certain you want to know the answer to that?"

She nodded.

"I have owned that room for over fifty years. During that time, it has stood empty for as long as a week at a time. It his rarely full for longer than three days, unless I chose a replacement early. I never bothered counting them, but I can show you each of their faces if you like. I don't forget."

Angry, he was so angry, and she wasn't even sure why she had wanted to know. Looking for a distraction, she dove with a will into her pizza. She felt his temper begin to cool after the first slice. By the time she was done with half of it, she felt confident enough of his mood to look up.

He was still watching her, but he was smiling, blue eyed once again.

Carefully, she chose her wording as she chose her next slice. "You said you're not a vampire. You admit that you feed off of people. You don't age. You seem to have a thing for blood. If you aren't a vampire, what are you?" Trying to be casual, she took a bite.

"Incubus," he replied without a moments thought.

Sex-vamp, or so she had always thought... Sex-demon, anyway. "I thought that was just a type of vampire?"

"Vampires are created through necromancy. Incubi are created through biomancy." She looked up at him and he smiled. "You can't get much different."

"I don't understand," she said, taking a drink of water. Wrinkling her brow she added, "And what does that have to do with blood?"

She watched him lower his head, holding it in his hands. Watched him mill about how to begin. She waited, and eventually he spoke.

"There are many different types of magic in the world," he began. "The rarer the magic, the more powerful it is. One of the rarest types of magic is biomancy, the ability to manipulate raw life. To drink it in, to change it. It used to be said that a biomancer could be immortal if they focused correctly. Could stop aging entirely. I doubt they would ever want to."

He looked up and met her eyes. She wanted to ask why? How? How was this connected to her question? When she remained silent, he continued.

"One thousand years ago there was a mage called Noir Vité. He was the most powerful biomancer that the world had ever remembered seeing. And he was a right awful, power hungry bastard. He controlled over a thousand acres, easily a small kingdom, and all of the surrounding realms were terrified of him. Anyone within his sight he considered an expendable toy. He was not gentle with his toys.

"Noir Vité spent most of his life gathering his own energy, his own magic, but as he got older, as he got lazy, he decided to flaunt his power. One of the most complicated spells a mage can caste is to create a construct. A living, walking, thinking battery. In the case of a biomancer, a construct is an incubus, or a succubus, as sex is the most easily harvested form of life energy.

"He created fourteen of us. Seven male, seven female, though the term means very little... We are all really neutral, wrapped up to look like humans. Each was made to cater to a particular hunger. Someone for people who loved beauty. Someone for people who loved strength. Someone for people who wanted maturity. I was created for people who want to feel pain.

"In the beginning it was simple enough. He created us and so we served him. He would let us loose, one to a village, and we would find our prey and bring him back his fill of our meals. But it didn't last. He wanted power, and he was bored, and eventually we just became more durable playthings.

"First he started testing our physical endurance. Seeing how long he could torture us until we screamed. Sensation was knew. We were often half destroyed before he let up. One of the males he ground into powder while we watched.

"Then he began to starve us. Little bits at first. Going two days without food. Then a week. Then a month. Two of my sisters perished that way. At its worst, he left seven of us in a room together, starved to insanity, and then threw a single peasant in with us to see how long it would take until there was nothing left. It took less that a minute.

"His ending was when he destroyed the youngest. He had shaped her to resemble a small child. It was a different time, but as I implied, he was sick. He had already starved her until she could hardly hold a shape, and then suddenly he forced man upon man onto her. When she filled with energy past her level she began to scream. He continued to force her, and three meals later, she shattered.

"We all felt it. Felt it and went mad. Most of the protections he had placed around us were magically based. They assumed we would use some sort of craft. Pure muscle destroyed them with ease. When we attacked him in mass, he panicked. He was no longer a young mage, but he was powerful, and three more of my brothers died in the battle. But we tore him limb from limb.

"There were only seven of us then, of the original fourteen. I know that four more have died in the time since that fight. Last I knew, myself and two sisters remained, though if so, they have not seen fit to contact me in well over a hundred years. Most likely they were killed taking out young mages."

"Taking out?" Karen asked, fear a small knot in her stomach.

He nodded, not noticing the tone. "We agreed that night, following Noir Vité's end, that the world would be better without them. At least better without his kind. At first we would find one every few years, then one every twenty. The last biomancer I killed was nearly three hundred years ago. I have neither seen nor heard of another since."

Karen tried to remember how to breath, He didn't know. She wanted to ask how he identified them, but did not dare ask him to think on it. He didn't know and so she was still alive. Would he kill her anyway? He admitted he didn't want to kill her, but that had not kept him from trying. Trying to hold her breathing steady, she asked, "Do I go back now? To the cell?"

He nodded. She reeked of fear, though he was not sure why. Maybe she was seeing the tale he told. He had heard that some humans did that. Vivid enough imaginations to make themselves sick.

She returned to his room and stripped without prompting. She took the stairs down without a word. Just before she stepped through the mirror, she asked, "Will I have time to sleep now?"

When he nodded she had walked through, then lay down in the corner. Stilling her heart rate, her breathing, she waited. Waited, and envisioned a room that instead of a mirror held an exit. Saw the exit in her mind. Felt the change in air currents. When she heard the door at the top of the stairs click shut, she sat bolt upright.

She only had a few hours. She could not be sure when he would return but she assumed at least two. Not long at all to learn about a world she had only imagined.

Karen sat in front of one of the mirrors, holding a knife. It had taken most of the first hour to learn how to walk through the exit. It had taken another precious hour to learn to grip the curtains. It wasn't that they weren't there, it was just a fake wall in front of them. After that, opening the first cabinet had been easy. A piece of cake compared to trying to slit her own wrist. But time was fleeting.

Steadying her breathing, she laid the blade gently along her forearm. Then she pressed along the first scar. Opened it slowly, watched as the blood began to flow. And then she began to learn to heal.

Many hours later she felt the familiar tug to wake up. One more hour then. Grateful for the warning, she carefully cleaned and replaced the knife, returning the room to its former state. Then, curling up into a corner, she fell soundly asleep. There was not a single scar on her body.

Karen awoke with Allen's hand wrapped around her neck. She was looking down from a height at raging green eyes. Hot anger, she realized. She suspected she had been reading them all along. Green for hot anger. Deep blue for calm everyday. Ice for lethality. Ah yes, she thought, as he glared up at her, I forgot to brush my hair. She tried to kick at him.

He didn't bother to dodge. He didn't show any recognition of it connecting. Instead, baring his teeth at her, he threw her across the room. She felt her shoulder slam into the wall behind the curtain. Thankfully he didn't notice. He was too busy shouting. "You manipulative Bitch! It would serve you right if I skinned you! Did you think just because I had shown some sentiment toward you a few hours ago, that you could just ignore me. It is not that complicated of a request! You expect me to heal any scrape, and then repeatedly throw your disregard in my face."

Pulling her shoulder carefully out of the painting, fully back into the room, she stood, muttering under her breath, "Hair fetish." Louder, directly at him she shouted back. "I don't want you to heal me!" And felt her muscles lock. She meant to add, "anyway..." but she could not move, could not speak. A cold bitter chill swept through her as she saw ice blue eyes glaring back at her. Saw him storm over to the third curtain, what she thought of as the punishment case.

She had looked at each of the cases last night. There were four hiding behind the curtains. The other curtains held alcoves. The first case she was familiar with, and was where she had claimed her knife. Another held chains, and many vicious edged blades. A third held what she could only think of as electrical equipment. With a battery strong enough to serve a defibrillator. Then there was this case. The third in from the manacles. It held the mechanical dildo. It held a whip that seemed to be made of saw blades. And it held another set of nails. Tinted nails. Tainted nails. It had taken her a long while to figure out why they were there. They were duller than the first set she saw. They would still cut on contact. Just after slicing her finger she felt it. Poison. Or something that she would think of as poison. When she tried to heal the wound, she couldn't. It was only a prick, she had healed much larger scars, but something was blocking it. After seven tries she had finally gotten the wound to close. Shivering, she had placed them back in the case. As Allen turned toward her now, she saw they decorated his fingers.

The first strike was against her face. Half-blind she stumbled, and discovered that she could move, but she still could not talk. She tried to run. Felt the claws contact her ribs, tearing open her side. She fell to her knees, desperately trying to breath, trying to heal. Nothing. Trying again, she felt him kick into her, breaking two ribs. no!, her mind cried. She tried again, tried to pull anything she could. Pulled at the room itself, drawing its illusions to nothing. It didn't help. He didn't notice. Desperately, her mind tried to think of another way to get power. When it occurred to her, in a quote from him, in a memory, she nearly cried out, though she was mute. Sex. Of course.

She was already on her knees. She felt him pacing around her, looking for another place to strike. She thrust her hips up at him, toward hi, inviting him. She felt the claws slice into her back, nicking a lung. Again, more desperately, she thrust, and focused as he stalked around behind her. Focused, and the moment his member touched her, she pulled.

Allen screamed. Or tried to scream. There was no sound, there was nothing, save the lightning pulsing through him. He was conscious just long enough to realize what had happened, to remember the sensation, and then he was gone.

Karen woke up stretched out on the floor. Cautiously, she felt her face, her ribs, then her mind drifted over her body. Whole. She was whole. And strangely charged. She felt as though, if she raised her hands, she could watch sparks fly between them. And then there was the fuzzy sensation. A little speck of energy, it seemed packed together. And somehow it had slipped inside her. If she thought about it she could move it, to her head, to her toes, to her groin. Wherever it was felt strangely warm. She let it settle near her heart.

Finished exploring inside, she opened her eyes. The room had changed. The floor was still marble, the curtains still red. That was about the end of it. All of the illusions were gone. The doorway was now obviously such. The shackles hung and swayed. The mirrors were nothing more that polished steel, able to reflect a shine, but none of their old clear image. Rising to her feet, she turned to look for Allen, to explain. seeing him, her hands flew to her mouth, a thousand snippets of conversation flooding her brain.
To empty to hold her shape...
Incubi are constructs...
I am Alabaster...

There was no name, she realized with a cold certainty as she approached the statue. He had never named his siblings. He had never named himself. She had just thought he had. Had heard it in the inflection. Alabaster wasn't a name. It was a description.

As though drawn, she approached the statue. It was his height. No matter what face he used, he had always remained this height, this build. There were no other features on his face, on the smooth body of stone. his arms hung ridged at his sides, longer than human, claws instead of fingers.

I was created for those who wanted to feel pain... At the meeting of his legs rested a perfectly carved erection. A piece of her mind wondered if that detail, the only detail, had been part of the requirements for the spell, or had been part of the sick amusement of his original creator? Laying her palms across his chest, she began to cry. The warm speck near her heart pulsed. She hadn't meant to hurt him. Pulse. Not take him apart...

Pulse. Holding her breath, hardly daring, she looked inside herself. Looked at the little knot of energy her body had not taken apart as it repaired itself. Looked at it, and found him. He was afraid. Or was. She somehow knew that all sensation, all sense of time, everything, had stopped for him, once he left that body. He had been terrified. In his final moment he had realized what she was and was numb with fear. She took a breath.

Carefully, within her mind, she began to unfold him, to look at what made him tick. She made certain that none of him drifted off, that none of him was absorbed. She did not want to hurt him. Within the first layer, she found his mind, his fears, his hunger. He was not just built to service those who wanted pain. It was more. If the subject wan not in pain as well as aroused, he could not feed. She continued tin. His reflexes, his illusions. It really was best for the head to be featureless. It was what let him change. His memories. She tried not to look, not to see the eyes of every woman he had ever fed from, every man. One thousand years.

Gently, she began to roll him back together. Carefully, she made some changes.

A shield. It would not keep out a deliberate attack, but it would keep her from pulling him loose if she panicked again. A stomach. Nothing complex, she didn't worry about him digesting food, just being able to consume it. The ability to sleep. Not the need, just the ability. A dozen little things she changed. Little, but of more value than that first bastard had ever cared. The ability to forget.

Gathering him up, through her, into her, feeling him pulse inside her, she leaned forward, and felt her lips pressed against the stone. Felt the change begin to sweep through him. Felt him form. And felt him sleep.

Quietly she crept up the stairs and out of the basement.

Allen awoke with a start. Felt his chest tighten with his fear. He was dead! He knew he had felt himself go. Out. Into her. He collapsed to his knees and looked around. Gone. She was gone. Why was he still alive? He had felt...

It didn't matter. It couldn't matter. Maybe he had not been drained completely. Maybe he... It didn't matter. All that mattered was that she was gone. She was easily twice as powerful as his creator, making her almost ten times as potent as any biomagi he had ever found. And that had been at the peak of Noir Vité's training. She was at the beginning, still untrained in how to focus. When she learned...

She couldn't learn. He needed to kill her before she took out the others! Slamming his first against on of the metal sheets, he cursed. He had told her about them. Not just how many, but what gender they were. If they were still alive, they were sitting ducks! She might have already finished them off... Gathering his strength, he sprinted for the stairs.

She had left the door to the basement open, so he flew into his room. Into the living room. His hand was on the door when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Caught it and turned. Asleep. She had stayed. She had stayed, and she was asleep, curled on the couch, a half eaten bag of potato chips in her arms.

Allen collapsed to his knees in front of the couch, and for the first time in his life, cried.