Order of Business

He should die, she thought as she held the forty pound stone block above the unconscious head of Marc Antony. He raped me. He hurt me. I actually fooled myself into thinking that I had a crush on him. If only he'd wake up, then I'd kill him. She dropped the stone about six inches from his head. Pulling his short Roman sword from the scabbard at his waist, she crouched down and was struggling to pull his jeans down when she felt a presence behind her. Turning to the tight hallway, she saw the Praetor Cicero standing there, making no move to come closer. He had his hands out in front of him, trying to look harmless.

"May I ask what you intend to do to, Marcus?" His voice was calm and betrayed no emotion, as if she wasn't covered in blood and nearly feral in her mind.

She stared at him for a long time, listening for any reinforcements that he might have called and being very alert to any trace of his mind trying to invade hers again. The rest of the residence was silent and his eyes were just eyes so her body relaxed a little. "I'm going to castrate him," she replied just as calmly.

"I really do wish that you wouldn't. Marcus is difficult enough to deal with, if you take that from him, he'll be unbearable." As he spoke, he sat down on the small bench in the outer hallway of his underground home and was careful not to show any threat to the damaged slayer.

"He raped me. He helped Padma rape me. He helped you and the others feed from me." Her breathing increased as she spoke, starting to let the anger seep into her words.

Holding his hands out again, Cicero calmly said, "He did not do those things to you, my dear."

"...What?" Her anger disappeared in her puzzlement at the incredible statement. She had all the memories. They were fuzzy like she was drunk when they happened but she could remember them all well enough. She could remember everything, every indignity they made her suffer.

"I know, my dear Valkyrie, that you do not understand, but the truth is that Marcus is only a slave. Just as you were treated like one, so is he and has been for more than two thousand years. I suppose you could say that Marcus has himself been raped many times and he is now only a product of his servitude. He is a victim, child. Too kill or harm him in vengeance would certainly be a sin and a future regret for yourself."

"He acted like he enjoyed himself," she responded, completely mystified by this line of reasoning. She was supposed to see HIM as a victim? Why was this vampire telling her all of this? "You're his master, then that means that you're guilty for all of this then, right?" she asked as she came to her feet, Antony forgotten underneath her.

"Yes, Valkyrie, I am guilty for everything. You apparently do not remember it, but I also enjoyed the bounty of your body, without Marcus's help I might add." He stood back up carefully as she stepped closer. "Before you act out though, Slayer, I would give you a word of caution," he said as she neared, her eyes swimming in the darkness of her violent other nature. She stopped a few inches from him and waited as he continued, "On my way here, child, I dispatched two of my more faithful servants to kill Rami Carlyle." She froze, a soft snarl escaping from her lips. "They enjoy their work, sometimes a little too much. If you waste no time, you may be able to save her. I give you my word, Jennilee Hawser, if you leave my residence without doing any further damage to anyone or anything, I will mentally tell my slave at the end of the hall Rami's location and then she will show you the way. You could kill me, but you will never get to the room within this maze quick enough without help and your time is running out. You should decide carefully, Slayer, what is more important to you, vengeance or friendship."

She stared at him for a moment and then ran past him to the hallway outside of the residence. She would remember the way back if Rami wasn't there or she wasn't in time to save her friend. She would remember the way back.

"Valkyrie!" a young Asian girl of about twelve called out from down near the adjoining hall. Her black hair shaved bald on one half of her little head.

Jenn ran down to the child as the other denizens of the walkway quickly moved out of her way. Even for the forum, an angry vision wearing a corset and splattered in blood was intimidating. Just as she neared, the white sheer-silk slip wearing girl took off running and motioning her to follow. As they ran through the complex, several passersby acknowledged her as Valkyrie as they went on their own ways. Other than a movie with Tom Cruise in it, she still had no idea what that name meant or why she was called it. She wondered as she tried to keep track of the turns in their rapid journey in case she did have to find her way back to this area.

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The largest bone in the leg shattered under the impact of the lead pipe. Kabuki stood back and listened to the sweet sounds of the black girl's pain. He would have already taken his pleasure from her body; he loved to fuck them to death. But that crazy vampire bitch Jewels was here and she fed on pain so he was reduced to turning his potential sex toy into a pulverized sack of flesh.

"What are you stopping for?" the Russian vampress snarled as his pause had interrupted her feed. "Hit the bitch, Pussycat! This Slayer can take the most pain without passing out than any I've ever fed from in my life." She licked her lips and brushed the long white hair, splattered with the girl's blood, out of her eyes and leaned in to the quivering child and sunk her fangs back in just as the weretiger smashed the girl's other leg...The pain was glorious, her whole five century old body hummed with the purity of it. She arched her back and reveled in the sensation as she ran her hands up and down the girl's torn body, taking care to probe every wound that she had suffered. She signaled to the tiger to continue and when he brought the pipe down with crushing force on the top of the girl's foot, added into all of the other torments the girl experienced as Jewels fed on her, it was such an explosive feeding that the Russian screamed in orgasm and nearly fainted from the intensity of it all. "Stop Kabuki," she said as she tried to ride the feeling of ecstasy that washed through her. The child deserved a moment for that offering, she thought as she got herself back together.

This is one crazy bitch, he mused as he watched her squirm. He knew from experience that the vampire could only take so much pleasure before she became a wanton creature, willing to do anything for him to fuck her. After their last time together with those Australian tourists, she had been disappointed in his prowess and he had to buy her some of that costume jewelry that the nutjob was addicted to. But this slayer...she was amazing. The damage she could take was insane. Where a normal person, even some of the lycans would go numb and feel no more, this bitch screamed and screamed and felt all of it, everything he wanted to do, she would feel. It was a shame that she had to be killed, he had once kept a wererat queen alive in chains for three weeks. He had no doubt that this woman could last longer than that.
If Jerry Nakamora, the school principal from New York that he had once been could have known all those years ago that one day he would be standing here, stroking the bloody breast of a tortured teenage girl while a sexy Russian vampire writhed in ecstasy...I would have checked myself into the insane asylum, he thought as he slowly smiled when a pair of pale white hands started unbuckling his belt.

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The first image that assaulted her eyes when she kicked in the door was not one that she had expected to see, but then her eyes found her sister suspended by the chains and it took a moment for her mind to make sense of what she was seeing. The open slashes and distorted legs and feet came into focus finally and the slayer broke the surface in a horrifying scream of pure white hot hatred.

The naked white haired vampire managed to swing a lead pipe at her before she could react. The blow sent her into the far wall and she was clearing her vision and the ringing in her ears when the vamp tried to follow up her attack. Jenn caught the swung pipe as it came down again, hearing something in her hand crack at the amazing force that these creatures could generate magically unlike what the physical beasts that the vamps were in her world could manage. She pulled the pipe to the side with her injured left hand and delivered her right elbow, just as Faith had shown her, directly into the delicate nose bones of the snarling woman. The smack sounded like somebody hit a watermelon with a sledgehammer. The vamp flew backwards, screaming as she grabbed her damaged face.
The big tattooed guy lumbered in swinging with more than human speed and caught her with a left cross. She staggered forward, blocking the rest of his attacks until he overextended with a right uppercut. She slipped back from the punch and launched straight up into the air delivering a devastating right roundhouse kick to the side of his head.
As he went down hard, the vampire had regrouped herself and launched forward using her amazing speed to drive the slayer right into the stone wall. The impact stunned her and made her struggle for breath and as the darkness started to close in, she felt the vampire lift her with one hand by the neck, smash the back of her head into the wall again and then start to feed from her.
She didn't know how long she had blacked out for, but the bitch was still at her neck drinking her blood. She could feel Rami more than she could hear her. The impacts with the wall had left a loud buzzing sound in her mind and she was deaf to the sounds of the room, but she could feel her sister, her best friend was willing her to live. Even with her own body as destroyed as it looked like it was, she was begging Jenn to break free and save herself.
She began to fight the lingering black spots that threatened to cover her eyes again and she weakly flailed her hands out. She felt one of the gaudy necklaces that the monster obviously liked and pulled at it, causing the chain to break and the fake jewels to scatter out onto the floor.

"No!" the vamp pulled back screaming.

It took Jenn only a second to clear her mind before she launched herself forward, throwing everything that she had left into a crushing headbutt. The vamp was stunned long enough for the weakened slayer to jab both of her thumbs into the Russian's eyes and ride her to the ground. She held on as the creature writhed in agony and then managed to rip the woman's throat out with her bare hands. She didn't stop though, she keep ripping and wrenching until she separated the head from her body in a geyser of blood that drenched the already covered Texan in more red gore.
Jenn fell back on her butt and was trying to slow her racing heart when the tattooed man staggered back to his feet. Jenn grabbed the lead pipe lying next to her and drove it straight into the man's stomach and out his back. The shot must have taken his spine as he just immediately hit the ground and stared at her while feebly trying to pull the pipe out of the wound. She staggered to her feet and found Marc's sword that went flying when she was first hit by the vampire. She ignored his eyes as she cut off his head with one swing.

She stumbled over to Rami and fell to her knees in front of her and cried. When she looked down and seen the poor girl's foot, she threw up...