Fire Dies Down

The best way to describe the sprawling scene set is endless, vast fields of tall, thick, golden grass, the sun barely kissing the horizon, the tips of tall mountains. Cool, crisp wind blew restlessly over these fields, only being temporarily disturbed by a small cottage nestled within the confines of it all. A small stack of dark gray smoke billowed at the top of the cottage's chimney and danced with the wind, swirling majestically, as if trying to reach the mountains before dissolving into nothingness. A peaceful death. 

Arzu stepped out of the small cottage, carrying a large, empty cast-iron cauldron in her arms. She's slender, but healthy-looking, she has muscle tone and even a little chub on her cheeks, but only a little. She sets down the black cauldron overtop a flameless fire put, charred logs within the hand-laid stone and ash. Without thinking she twisted her elegant hand and a flame flickered to life beneath the deep, heavy pot. She walked back over to the cottage and stepped back inside to grab some ingredients. She has a lot of work to do today.

Hatred.  Oh there was so.  Much. Hatred.

An no one to take it out on.  

She had already wreaked havoc all over Europe.  For one whole year she had found handsome, strong men with dark hair and wide grins to rip apart limb by limb.  

There was so much blood on her pretty little hands.  

Somehow she'd managed to avoid getting a bounty put on her head.  
Though a hunter did manage to track her down and find her in the process of draining every last drop of blood from one of her victims.  

Oh it was a sight.  

She had been perched on a fire escape, hissing and sucking the man dry.  His arms and legs were broken in multiple parts.  His kneecaps were completely gone all together.  

She was full but she was still going to drain his veins anyway.  She filled her mouth up as much as she could and then spit the blood out, letting it fall over the fire escape and bricks, the liquid painting everything around her.  Her dress was soaked, even her white hair was clotted and red.  

The prim and proper girl was gone and this was what was left of her.  
The once beautiful woman didn't even have a shred of humanity inside of her anymore.  

She was just a monster.  

No pretending anymore for sweet little Jenevieve.  

The Hunter had found her like that, spewing blood and taking deep, animalistic breaths.  

She shouldn't have lived after that.  The hunter had caught her unaware and nearly exterminated her on the spot.  

The battle that ensued left her crippled and broken for a long time.  
She wasted away, the anger only growing. 

So.  Much.  Hatred.  

She couldn't even remember what other emotions felt like.  All that was there was this seething, burning, uncontrollable anger that consumed her entirely.  She could feel it physically eating away at her, rotting away in her mind.  

An entire year of hunting and torturing young men had done nothing to quell this hatred.  

No.  

She had to do more than that.  

She had to kill the ones responsible.  

She remembered the woman that Smiley had been spending so much time with right before he turned on her and betrayed her.  

Yes, that pierced up skinny little thing needed to be punished.  

She needed to die.

"Vera," Arzu cooed into the cottage as she strode in, plucked bottles of brightly colored liquids and preserved animals and plants off shelves effortlessly, "The fire is going, you can stay inside today." 

"Spasibo child," the sturdy voice of an old witch cackled from the loft of the cottage, "I'll make dinner while you prepare." 

"Da," Arzu chimes very lightly as she steps back out into the breeze, a fox-fur lined cloak about her shoulders, she killed those foxes herself. The cloak rippled around her waist and ankles. In her mind she thought about her nephew, about how she wanted him to join her for a few weeks, maybe once he had grown stronger... She wondered if he would want to... Or if Tahir would want him to. 

She uncapped a few of the bottles and started measuring their contents, pouring them in as she needed them.

The sun was gone behind the  mountains, but a blue light remained.  It wasn't totally black outside yet.  

Perched on the roof to Arzu's cottage was a feminine figure, but it was hunched over like that of an animal.  Red eyes glimmered, reflecting the burning fire below.  

It had been a long and hard road to try and track the female lycan down.  But Jenevieve was pretty good at finding what she wanted to find.  

Her pale lips curled back and her aching fangs extended.  

Faster than the eye could comprehend, Jenevieve was upon Arzu, pinning her down to the ground.  

An inhuman hiss pierced the air as the small vampire wrapped her hands around Arzu's throat, threatening to extend her claws by inching them out just a little bit.  Enough to break the skin  but not puncture anything vital.  

"I found you!" Jenevieve screamed with triumph, a manic expression on her face.  

Her white curls were frizzy and loose, and it looked as if she hadn't brushed her hair in a long time.  

She wore no makeup, nor shoes.  Just a torn and tattered dress speckled with caked blood.

At the very last second Arzu sensed the creature's presence, even her attack, but she was too late to react defensively and was only able to turn so she didn't land on her face as she was being pinned. The werewolf's upper lip curled to bare her teeth in anger and shock and her hands scrambled up to clutch Jene's forearms to try and pry them away. When she felt the vampire's claws start to sink into the flesh of her neck she made sure not to make any sudden movements, but her eyes were full of searing anger. 

"Dig those claws any deeper and I'll shoot the rays of the sun up your asshole," the raspy voice of the old witch warned sternly as she jabbed Jene's back with an old staff, power radiating off it very clearly, "Get off the wolf blood bag." The witch looked serious, intimidating, and very clearly ready to kill. Her long, curly gray hair swayed around her ankles, nearly touching her bare feet. She had a slight hunch, but still had a strong air of power about her, emerald eyes glinting in the near darkness.

Jenevieve could feel that old woman's massive power very strongly.  

"Such a vulgar thing to say to a lady!" She gasped, not taking her eyes off of Arzu's even though she was talking to the witch.  Her voice sounded eerie, like an old shell of the person she used to be.  

Finally she snapped her head to the side so she could look at the woman over her shoulder.  

Her breaths were heaving, guttural whines coming from deep inside her chest.  

"Let me kill her.  Please?"   She asked, fangs still on show.

"Keep touching her like that and I'll make sure your fuck'in head gets blown off so you don't have to hear profanities ever again," the witch snapped, her eyes growing quickly more serious by the second. The old bat jabbed again with the staff, it's little carvings starting to glow, charging with power. 

Arzu only stayed perfectly still beneath Jene, eyes narrowing, recognizing something familiar though the images were muddy. Who was this woman? Why so much bloodlust? Why for her?

Jenevieve sincerely contemplated killing Arzu and then letting the witch blow her head of in return.  

But there was still that part of her that wanted to live.  She had too much pride to let herself die.  Even like this, she couldn't.  

Her eyes melted from unadulterated anger to hopeless despair and she blubbered out a little sob. 

"But I came all this way." She whimpered, a few tears rolling down her cheeks and landing on Arzu's face.  

"She took him from me.  She turned him."

Arzu winced as the tear slid over her cheek, her heart still beating quite rapidly, what on earth was this creature talking about? But it didn't matter as long as the vampire had her claws hooked around her neck. She needed Vera to act and fast. 

"Get off and we'll settle this like women, not like animals," the witch hissed, her arms starting to glow with the same markings as the staff, "I'm going to count to three and if you're not off the wolf I'll make sure your head'll be blasted halfway down the field before you can say 'But'. One..." The witch started counting, her eyes only getting greener.

Jenevieve trembled and by the time Vera counted to "Two" she let go of Arzu with a defeated cry full of all the pain and anger she had within.  

She rolled onto the ground and pulled at her hair, curling up in a pitiful little ball.

She suspected that now that she was no longer a threat they would still kill her anyway. 

This would be the way it all ended.  

In this field in the middle of nowhere, all alone and completely forgotten.

Arzu clambered back and quickly got to her feet, taking her place next to Vera. The witch was preparing to blast the creature's head off regardless of the fact that she let Arzu go, but the werewolf touched her shoulder and the woman started to slowly cool down. 

"Don't..." The werewolf spoke quietly, "I... I think I know her." Vera scoffed audibly, not taking her staff away from the defeated vampire. 

"Obviously she knows you if she tracked you here," the witched grumbled to Arzu, "Vampire, why the hell are you on my land and why the hell do you want to kill my apprentice?"  Her voice was much stronger than expected for anyone who was near her, a powerful sorcerer indeed.

Jenevieve looked up, her fists still pulling on her tangled hair.  Tears tracked down her cheeks in a constant flow.  

"Everything was so perfect until she came to the coven.  She took him away into dark places and he changed after that." She hiccuped, the memory cutting her deep.  

How could she have let herself fall in love with that man?
  
"It's her fault." She looked at Arzu again with a look full of hatred.  

"First I kill her, then I kill him.  Then it'll be better.  Then the pain will go awa-" Her voice cut out and she crumpled yet again, hiding her face and sobbing.

The werewolf and the witch looked at one another, brows raised and Arzu was the first to turn back and gaze, very confused at the blubbering mess that was Jene... Or once was Jene. 

"...Who?" The werewolf questioned after a soft pause, Vera still clutching tightly onto her stick since the word "kill" hadn't quite left Jene's vocabulary yet.

"B!" Jene hissed, her eyes wild as she snapped her head back up to look at Arzu.

Arzu paused for another longer moment, "...You mean Smiley?" 

"God dammit," Vera huffed out in an exasperated tone, "That fuck'in vampire does not know when to quit. Christ almighty I remember a time before men came into the picture. Things were MUCH simpler... For fucks sake-Did he send you here?" The witch spoke gruffly.

Jene nodded her head.  

Yes that was what he went by.  

She never liked that though.  

Smiley was such a stupid name.  

B was so much nicer.  

"He didn't send me here." She said slowly, her eye twitching.  "He has to die too, you see.  For what he did to me.  Look what he did to me!"  

It was a moment of self realization for Jenevieve.  Here she was on her knees, partially crippled, rambling and crying and screaming as if she were insane.  

Was she insane? 

No.  No no.  This wasn't her.  This thing she'd become, that wasn't Jenevieve.  

She didn't want to be this anymore.  

She wanted to be Jenevieve!

Vera leaned toward Arzu to grumble audibly into her ear, "He used to kill 'em before they got this bad and honestly, I'm not sure I disagree with that philosophy anymore."

"Vampire," Arzu spoke to Jene, ignoring Vera's comment, "Smiley, and B I suppose, have been cured, they are no longer dying... I don't know, what they did to you exactly, but I promise you they never mentioned you to me... We never plot against you... B wasn't even exactly part of the process, but he is cured. That's all I did for them. I cured them of their curse."

Jene's brow was furrowed as she listened to Arzu's explanation.  

"What do you mean they?" She asked, not understanding.  Why was she talking about him like he was two different.... 

....

Oh.

Jene's face lost what little color it had as everything all started to make sense to her. 

The knife... the knife he'd stabbed into his own hand while he treated her so badly.  She'd thought he was just trying to scare her but in reality B was fighting for her.

"Don't leave me!" 


A gruesome feeling plunged into her heart and she appeared as if she could be sick.

Arzu blinked slowly and opened her mouth to speak, but Vera gladly took the reigns. 

"Smiley and... B are two separate entities in one body. Smiley is a demon from christ knows where and B is or perhaps was, I'm not quite sure, an american caught in perhaps one of the worst curses I have ever seen in this day and age," Vera explained and then waved her hand dismissively, "But that's just the synopsis. Arzu here knows more than I do." 

Arzu's brow furrowed and her eyes stayed on Jene, trying to read her expression, her reaction to Vera's words.

Jenevieve couldn't believe that she hadn't seen it before.  She had known from the moment she met the man that he was something else.  

But she had thought he was simply ill.  One of those personality disorders.  She'd never stopped to think of the possibility that there was actually two souls fighting over the same body.  

Her eyes darted back and forth as all the memories came flooding back to her.  All of the signs.  

"I... I c-can't lose...you" 

"Oh my God." She whispered, letting go of her hair and covering her lips with her fingertips.  Her fangs retracted back and she was no longer crying.  

"All this time...  I thought he was sick in the head..." Her voice was quivering.

"And it turns out it was just you who was sick in the head," Vera was quick to respond, but Arzu gave her a very small hush and stepped forward very, very slightly. 

"Listen... I don't know exactly what they did to you... But I think I can help you if you don't try to kill me. All I ever did for them was lift one of the dark curses bound to him, one of the ones that was killing him, that was all. I don't know where he is now, but I may have some ideas..." the werewolf spoke hesitantly and Vera looked over at her with mild disbelief, but said nothing.

"You would help me after what I tried to do to you?" Jene asked, her voice almost childlike in nature, mirroring the disbelief in Vera's eyes.  

She wanted help.  

She knew she needed it.  

She hated this creature she had become.

Vera raised her brow at Arzu, but the werewolf ignored her and took another, very hesitant step forward. 

"I won't forget that, and I will not hesitate to defend myself if you try to pull anything like that again... But yes. If it means saving the soul trapped in a body with that demon... He doesn't deserve such things," her voice was firm, but had an air of softness about it that radiated sincerity. She had known suffering and was still recovering from it, how hard and sever it had been. She can still barely look at her brother... But she knew she could still help others.

Jene nodded. 

"He doesn't... he doesn't deserve that.  I need to save him." the young vampire said, her eyes huge and full of fear.  Not for herself, but for B.  

"I've been such a fool...." She grabbed her arms and scratched down them, deep enough to cause herself to have four long bloody streaks marking her skin. 

All this anger she had, all this hatred. 

She had been pushing it onto others for so long, but now it was being turned inward.

"He did a damn fine job of hiding it," Vera croaked out, shuffling back to her cottage now that she was pretty damn sure Jene wasn't a threat, the door smacking shut behind her. 

Arzu stood still, keeping a safe distance between herself and the vampire, "You were close?" she asked hesitantly, holding her elbows under her cloak. This vampire fascinated her, frightened her a bit... She wanted to know what she knew about B and Smiley, what questions she had as well.