Her entire body hurt, except this time when she fell down there was no wolf lapping at the wound, no father to pick her up and patch whatever had gone wrong, just pain beyond belief. She couldn't imagine a part of her that wasn't covered in bruises.

"Oh come on Lycissa, that's no fun." She managed to open her eyes, looking up at her mother's boyfriend. Asshole. That wasn't even her name, it was Alexander. If she had the energy she'd have glared. She must have because he kicked her onto her back, pressing his foot down on her ribs. "I'm not sure I enjoy that look on you. Grey eyes look better when they're sleepy." She gasped for breath as her lungs struggled to find somewhere to expand.

"Keith, at this rate you'll kill her." Her head lolled towards her mother's voice, though the woman wasn't looking at her. Since when were her mother's eyes red? Now that she looked, Keith's eyes weren't violet anymore. They were red too.

This was one hell of a nightmare. It had to be.

"Why not? Nobody's gonna look for her and you sure as hell aren't gonna take her with us, are you?"

"Of course not." Keith grinned. That was realistic. That stupid shit eating grin he gave her every time he walked into HER house. Like he owned the goddamn place and her along with it. Fuck him.

Maybe he'd heard her thoughts because he chose that exact moment to slam his foot down on her chest. She could feel several ribs break, embedding themselves into the soft tissue of her lungs. They would collapse after something like that. She'd seen it on some tv show.

She let out the involuntary cough, wheezing as her lungs filled with blood. Every breath brought up more air.

She needed to WAKE UP.

WAKE UP. WAKE UP. WAKE UP. WAKE-

She wheezed, coughing as she curled up on the cold floor. It was daytime. Everything was a dream. the worst dream ever.

She winced at the sticky feeling on her mouth. She'd drooled. Her hand reached up to wipe her mouth, sore from sleeping on the floor all night. When she pulled it back it was covered in bright red. Like blood.

She looked down at her floor in horror, seeing the splotches of dried blood on her floor. What the hell was going on? Was she sick? Should she call 911? In the meantime she settled for scrambling away.

"I thought I heard something strange." She bit down a scream as she looked at Keith behind her. He had red eyes. He looked like a demon. Even worse, once he stepped into the sunny room she could see his skin shimmering like he'd rolled in glass. "Figures you'd be so disobedient you couldn't even stay dead Lycissa."

She shook her head. That was a dream. Dead people didn't just wake up.

"Though that is helpful. Now I have a nice little snack whenever I want." What the hell was he talking about. Nothing made sense. "I don't suppose you'll sit still for me, so I'm going to hold you down, okay?"

"G-get the fuck away!" She couldn't even scramble away when he pinned her down so fast her head smacked against the floor. "Get off me!"

"If you scream like that I'll rip your throat out." He was a fucking psycho! She struggled against him, panicking as she couldn't even manage to lift one of his fingers. Her feet kicked at him, and despite her being a star of the track team, her legs were useless. It was like kicking a statue. So, she settled for screaming.

Until she wasn't. She couldn't even breathe, the action causing a wet, gasping sound but she couldn't fee air pass her nose. And then the pain hit.

"I told you I'd rip your throat out." She was seeing double of Keith, but she could see blood smeared on his mouth and chin. Well at least she could still cry. The pain was excruciating. "Now that's an expression I like." He bowed his head, sucking at her bleeding neck like it was some kind of fruit.

She was going to die on this dumbass floor because her mother's psychopath boyfriend decided to make a fucking meal out of her. Either this was a very elaborate nightmare, and any moment she'd wake up to Anubis licking her face and her dad shouting he'd made breakfast, or she really couldn't die, in which case she was about to learn the true meaning of hell.

She'd lost count of how many times he'd fed on her, but it was enough for her to figure out she didn't die. It was also enough to figure out her nightmare was real. Somehow, vampires were real, and Keith and her mother were both vampires. What she did know was that Keith took some sick joy in killing her, and it was all she could do to piss him off enough to kill her more quickly. It wasn't like she could escape, and she was running out of things to remember to pass the time. If she imagined hard enough, she could feel her family, minus her mother of course, in the house with her. Even better she could remember the hikes the three of them went on, sometimes four if her grandfather was in town.

They'd go out of the city and upstate to where forests sprawled. At first all the animals around them had scared her, but she'd gotten used to the wolves her size that would lick her face affectionately and nuzzle her like a child. Anubis wasn't particularly pleased about other wolves around his mistress, but he listened when she told him not to bully them. Well he more or less listened. The larger the wolf got the more he realized he could bully her back. Her favorite part was always all the deer her father would draw towards them. Once he'd even let her ride one, though they went very slowly like the pony rides at the zoo. She used to wonder why animals didn't flock to Solomon like they did to the rest of them until they'd stayed until night. The hooting didn't stop until morning and she quickly learned what happened to the parts of animals an owl couldn't digest.

She could even remember her grandfather. Until she'd started drawing the wolves, she'd sided with her mother that he was a strange old man. He never cut his hair, instead wearing it loose around his shoulders. A wolf just as old and grey as he was was always at his side, the only one Anubis was never rude to. He always called her Little Dawn for some reason, despite Dawn only being her middle name. He was always nice to her though, and whenever she wanted a snack he would always have a bit of jerky that he made at home for her. After they started going on hikes with him, she didn't think he was so strange. She even stopped cutting her hair just like he did.

"What's got you smiling Lycissa?" And just like that, her small moment of happiness disappeared like smoke.

She didn't answer Keith. Whenever anything made her happy, he could somehow fuck it up for her. She wouldn't let him fuck this up.

"You were so excited for me you made yourself smile, huh?" Something was wrong, and when she finally looked up at him, she could see a large iron spike from their gate in his hands. It was nearly as tall as he was. "Well I hate to disappoint you, but your mother and I are going to be gone or a few days." She could survive on little food, hell, she was good at going a long period of time without food if she was well fed, but they barely fed her as was. Just enough to keep her from passing out because her body inevitably regenerated back to a healthy state if she died.

"What are you going to do?" Keith grinned.

"Dear, don't be too long or we'll miss the plane." She watched her mother loop her arms around her boyfriend's shoulders and kiss his cheek. She didn't even look at her. Alexander hated the fact that it still hurt, but she swallowed it.

"Don't worry, just making sure my little snack doesn't go anywhere." He kicked her over, and she suddenly realized what that stake was for.

She managed to get down to a grunt as he rammed the spike through her abdomen. She tried to kick back at him uselessly. Not because it didn't do anything, but because she couldn't move her legs. Either he was smarter than she thought or extremely lucky. Even if she was able to get off the spike on her own, not having legs made that utterly impossible.

"You should be fine until we get back. Now don't go throwing any wild parties, okay?" Keith laughed at his own joke. If she were in any less pain she'd have said something smart. By the time she'd adjusted to the pain, she could already tell she was alone in the house.

She stared up at the ceiling, trying to count down until she inevitably bled out. Instead, she found she'd black out for a bit, only to wake up god knew how much later to bleed out even more. Well shit. At least with the house empty she could make as much noise as she wanted. Compared to most of the other things Keith had done, this was towards the bottom of the list with regards to ranking on a pain scale. If she imagined hard enough, it wasn't too much more painful than getting a shot at the doctor. Singing usually got her through those.

She was pretty sure she was deliriously mixing up the words of Mary Had a Little Lamb with the melody of Old McDonald Had a Farm when she heard the banging. It wasn't normal knocking on the door, it was more like it was being bashed in by a robber. Judging by the streetlights filtering into her room, she'd say that it was late at night.

"Alex!" Solomon? She hadn't seen her brother in forever. She twitched her upper body, immediately causing her to cry out. Now it hurt less like a doctor's shot and more like being impaled should have. "Dad she's in here!" Her father was there too? She hadn't seen him since the last divorce hearing.

"Alexander!" All she could do was scream now. She heard footsteps running on the stairs.

"Dad! She's in here!" She watched Solomon run in, identifying him more by the blond mass of curls on his head than his face. "Oh my god!" He ran out the room and she could hear him retching.

"It smells like blood!" She saw her father and now she felt something wet on her face that wasn't blood for once. He looked exactly the same. Her mother had been aged by the stress of the divorce but her father didn't even have an extra smile line. "Oh my god. Alex- We'll fix this, okay?"

"Dad." He gripped the pole, yanking.

"Solomon help me!" Her father was one of the strongest people she knew. If he needed help. Her brother ran back into the room, gripping the pole and pulling. She couldn't even feel it move an inch.

"Dad, it's not gonna move." Her father wouldn't stop pulling. "Alex, we're gonna have to pull you off." She nodded.

"Don't worry. I'll just wake up later." Solomon nodded.

"You'll wake up later and we'll tell you everything." She closed her eyes, preparing for the pain as they lifted her up through several feet of rusted iron.

She was wrong, she didn't die immediately, instead she screamed even when they'd finally laid on the floor.

"I thought for sure it was going to kill her." At least they were making her comfortable.

"She'll die slowly at this point, and it severed her spine. It's better to let her die quickly. She may still be able to walk if the wound's open when she dies." Her father was oddly calm for somebody who found their child impaled to the floor. He sounded more like a doctor on one of those medical dramas. Alex took deep breaths, adjusting to the pain quickly.

"Do it." They looked down at her. "Dad, you know how to do it right? Just make it quick and painless." He knew how to hunt, meaning he knew how to take an animal out of their misery. She couldn't have been that different.

"Are you-"

"Dad if you don't I might just kill you myself." He tried to smile at her attempt at humor, instead only looking like he was wincing.

"I'm so sorry." He cradled her head, and she didn't even feel it as he snapped her neck.