Important note: This chapter deals with the aftermath of a character being sexually assaulted. There is no visual depiction of the assault. In keeping with the character, expect some self-blame and some explicit descriptions as she tries to come to terms with what happened.
Melinda, April and Wyatt had been playing on the same arcade machine for almost two hours. It was just like almost every Friday night that Melinda could remember up until that fateful night that April had accidentally turned her. With one distinct difference. Faith, who was a dab hand at every arcade machine in the place, had been replaced by Wyatt who was nowhere near as good at blasting aliens.
They had blown through most of Wyatt’s cash and some of Melinda’s in their time within the faded candy-coloured walls, trying to finally get the high score on the one machine that had mocked them since they were children. One hundred and seven minutes in and they were one boss away from victory, Melinda was certain of it.
“Remain focused, Maude!” April barked, sounding a lot like her mother. “Just a few more shots and we’ll be at the end!”
“But they’ve taken out my best shield!” Melinda hissed, and whacked the blue button to use her backup. “I don’t think we’re going to do it.”
“We have to do it! We’re on our last ten simoleons!”
“Shoot, are we?” Wyatt sounded panicked.
“Wyatt! Focus!” April snapped and lined up her shots, pressing her red button crucially just in time.
The big boss withered into a puddle of pixels and the whole screen exploded to white, leaving nothing but a black one with blinking green text.
“Oh my goodness, we did it!” April screamed. “First place! We did it!”
“Thank the Watcher. How can you two play this for that long? My back is killing me.”
“You’re such an old man,” Melinda laughed. “So come on… which sucker did we beat?”
“Oh,” April said softly. “We beat Faith.”
Silence fell on the three as they took in the green text before them. Melinda took over the control and entered their three initials, while Wyatt placed a reassuring hand on April’s.
“Are you okay?”
“I just… I just miss her,” April said quietly. “She’s never going to come back, is she?”
“She might,” Melinda said softly, but thinking back over the last conversation she’d had with Faith, she still wasn’t sure if she’d want her to come back.
“I wonder what she’s doing,” April continued, fiddling with the joystick beside her. “I wonder who she’s with.”
Melinda didn’t wonder any of these things. She knew that Faith would be living by night, murdering innocent people and mingling with all sort of unsavoury types. But she didn’t want April to worry. “You know Faith. She’ll be fine.”
April nodded a little sadly. “I hope so. I just hope that she’s safe.”
“Yeah,” Melinda said earnestly. “I hope she is, too.”
Faith waited until Caleb had dressed and left before she got off the bed where he’d left her – half on, and half off in a disarray of limbs and bedsheets.
She wiped her cheeks – goddammit, why was she crying?!
Feeling sick to the stomach, she pulled on some clothing, anything, her hands shaking so much that she could barely manage the zip on her skirt or the buttons on her blouse. She scraped her unruly hair back into a ponytail and stumbled to the bathroom.
She gazed, dazed, into the empty mirror and angrily scratched away another tear. Her skirt just didn’t seem to want to lie right. She idly clawed at her wrist as she stared into the pane of glass before her.
The mirror wasn’t reflecting her fidgeting, just the stillness of the bathroom.
It made her want to scream. Why did a bloody vampire mansion need so many fucking mirrors?! She felt like punching it, shattering the glass into a thousand sharp pieces and digging each one into Caleb’s stupid face.
Enraged, she raked her hands through her wild hair and wiped her cheeks again.
Her skirt still wasn’t in the right place. As she yanked on it, she became aware that her thighs were wet.
Shame rolled hot inside her, followed by ire. She balled up a towel in her fist and wiped herself down with such ferocity that the fabric took away layers of skin.
The scream finally left her lips and she threw the towel into the bath. Knickers, that’s what she needed.
She rooted through her drawers for anything substantial. Heck, she’d have worn a pair of bloomers at that moment. She thought back to the mere slip of lace that had made up her underwear and the sickness returned.
It had been no barrier. He’d simply ripped it off.
The look on his face as he’d walked in and seen her in that next-to-nothing. Why had she fucking teased him?!
“You are my fledgling and I’m going to make sure that you understand that.”
It wasn’t meant for him. Nothing had been meant for him.
Not finding anything but skimpy thongs, Faith slammed her underwear drawer shut. It jammed partway on the left side and stayed there, awkwardly hanging, threatening to spill her scant lingerie onto the dirty floorboards at her feet.
She jiggled it, but couldn’t make it right.
Fuck this drawer! Fuck the underwear! Fuck everything!
Faith kicked the pile of torn, discarded lace, sending it flying across the room. She sank to the floor in its place, clawing away tears that just would. not. stop.
Stupid fucking Caleb. What was he thinking?! That a forced fuck would make her want him again?
The fucking arse.
She hadn’t made it easy for him. When he didn’t have his hand locked over her mouth, she’d screamed and spat and swore at him continuously, calling him every name under the sun and more that she’d made up.
She’d left him with some nasty gouges in his back, his dick, his already fucked-up face – anything she could reach with her sharp acrylic nails. Faith had wrestled hard with him until he’d inevitably won. Her own vampiric strength didn’t mean a damn thing against another vampire. A much bigger, faster and stronger vampire.
She’d eventually had to give up the fight and let him have his way otherwise he’d have broken something. Or everything. Her ribs sure hurt.
As she caressed her tender bones, a noise at the door sent her heart into her throat and she bolted to her feet.
For a moment she thought it was Seth, then she heard someone clearing their throat and she knew that it was Caleb. She wondered how long he’d been outside the door, and why.
Guilt? Was he going to apologise? Was he back for round two?
She froze on the spot. She wanted to confront him but an unfamiliar fear gripped her in place of her usual bravado.
She looked towards the window but it was no means of escape. Even if it could be opened, which it couldn’t, the fall would probably break bones, she’d never get away.
As she toyed with her options, she heard footsteps retreating down the stairs at a pace that could only be Caleb.
And then she heard the front door open, the sound of heavy boots.
Male voices.
She ran across the room to the door and pressed her ear up against it. She could just make out what sounded like a curt greeting before the unmistakable squeak of the kitchen door and the slide of the bolt on the door that led to the basement.
The heavy footfall slowly ascended the stairs and Faith backed away from the door, looking round at the disarray of the room. Bedsheets stained, bits of ripped underwear everywhere, a few new holes in the wall…
She couldn’t let him come in.
Thinking fast, or not thinking at all, Faith slipped out of the room just in time to see Seth reaching the landing. She slammed the door to her room behind her and leaned against it in a way that she hoped appeared casual.
Seth raised an eyebrow at her and she adjusted her wayward skirt and patted down her hair. She wondered if she looked as lost as she felt.
“Fledgling,” he greeted her with a cautious smile. “At least let a man enter his dwellings before you waylay him with your wiles.”
Faith’s stomach flipped and Seth’s brow immediately furrowed. He approached her slowly, a question on his lips and she panicked, throwing herself abruptly into the stability of his arms.
He caught her with a winded oof! and held her fast as she trembled.
“I’ll go with you,” she mumbled into his filthy collar, wetting it with yet more bloody tears. “Let’s go now.”
“What’s this all about?” he asked, gently stroking her hair.
Had Faith had her wits about her, she might have read into the set of his jaw as he cradled her head.
“Nothing, I just… I was… thinking of Joy and got a bit emotional. It’s nothing, I’m fine.” She tugged on his chest belt thing and looked up at him coyly as he glanced down the stairs. “I’ve been thinking about a lot of things-“
“You’ve been thinking?” he teased. “Did it hurt?”
“Ha ha. Look, I don’t think this place is right for me. I think you are.”
Seth lifted her chin, and tilted her jaw, his eyes tracing down her neck where they abruptly stopped.
“Really. Yet I see that you and Caleb have been busy while I’ve been gone.”
If he hadn’t been holding her so firmly, Faith’s knees would have probably given way at this point, turning her into a sobbing puddle on the rotting floorboards. “Seth, it’s not what you think.”
He tilted her jaw back so that she was looking him directly in the eyes, slowly punctuating each word. “Did you and Caleb have sex while I was out?”
She could have lied, but the evidence was stamped on her skin, running between her thighs. “Yes.” She grimaced at the low noise in his throat.
“Then it’s exactly what I think.” He made to push away, but she clung on like a limpet.
“It wasn’t… I didn’t…”
“Don’t lie to me, Fledgling.”
That name. It would never be the same. “I didn’t…” she whispered.
“Bloody typical.” Seth muttered. “A whole day spent loving you and the second I’m gone you’re coupling with the witless wonder.”
Faith thought she might scream. Why couldn’t she just form the damn words? She could barely even think the words…
Seth seemed to be filling in the massive blanks Faith was leaving. “So, you thought you’d have one last go on the boy before you left with me? Once more for old time’s sake? Or do you just take me for a completely unobservant fool?”
“No! I… I didn’t…” come on just say it! “I didn’t… want to do it…”
“Oh really.”
“Really.” She shook. “He doesn’t… he doesn’t like ‘no’.”
It was like she’d punched him. Seth staggered back; his demeanour changed immediately. “You told him ‘no’?”
Faith squirmed and wracked her suffering brain. She’d definitely told him to get off, to fuck off and to die, but she didn’t specifically remember telling him ‘no’. And she had beenwearing skimpy lingerie, and she had spurned him on his birthday, and she had teased him.
And, and, and…
“I didn’t tell him ‘yes’, exactly,” she said in a small voice.
Seth didn’t say a word. His fingers flexed and his eyes glowed.
“I was wearing… well, pretty much just scraps… I was waiting for you… he came in and saw me… I did wind him up a bit…”
Every word seemed to be making Seth angrier, but Faith couldn’t seem to stop warbling on.
“I thought he was just fucking about at first, he said I didn’t respect him and he’d – well I can’t remember what exactly he said, some bullshit and then he just… grabbed me and – oh my god – his eyes went completely black – it was like he wasn’t even there.”
Faith didn’t know how to respond to Seth’s complete lack of input into their conversation. Was he pissed at Caleb? At her? She wrapped her arms around herself. “Let’s just go.”
“Oh, we’re not going anywhere.”
“Seth,” Faith sobbed, falling back against him. “Don’t be like that. It’s no big deal, don’t make it a big deal.”
“No big deal,” he repeated, his voice soft but with a dangerous edge. Seth ran his fingers lightly down her throat, gently teasing away the collar of her hastily pulled on blouse. Faith closed her eyes and leaned into his soft touch, until she realised what he was looking for. He turned down her collar to her shoulder, no doubt revealing more teeth marks. “You’re covered,” he murmured.
“He likes to bite. Honestly, it’s nothing.”
Seth’s other hand ran slowly up the bottom of her blouse, pausing at her waist.
He gently squeezed her and she whimpered.
His eyes were almost devoid of light by this point. His voice low, barely above a whisper, and laced with malice. “I’ll kill him.”
Faith pushed away and wrapped her arms around herself in a desperate attempt to stop herself falling to pieces. “Please, Seth, let’s just go.”
“Oh, we’ll go,” he hissed, “After I’ve hacked the bastard’s head off.”
Faith managed a choked laugh around the tightening in her throat, the looming sense of dread. “Sure, okay.”
Seth didn’t laugh back. “Go and pack your things,” he ordered. “I don’t want you to see this.”
“See what?”
Seth reached into his jacket, withdrawing a long, bloodstained and rusted knife with a crudely-carved handle.
“What are you going to do with that?” Faith asked meekly.
“I’ve already told you.”
Faith looked between the knife and Seth’s face, searching for any sign that he was joking and finding nothing.
“Oh shit, you’re seriously going to hack his head off?” she gasped as he crossed the landing. “Seth, don’t – he’s just an idiot, let’s just go. Seth,” she called after him as he started down the stairs at pace. “Seth! For fuck’s sake!”
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Almost Eternal 