Disclaimer: Same as before.

Thank you animus.vox for being my first and sole reviewer.


They ask her name. She shakes her head. They ask her name again. Again she shakes her head. It goes on like that for a while until they ask her to explain what happened. As soon as she finishes recollecting, they call her a liar. Delusional. Accuse her of schizophrenia even. A Redfern called Ash insists there is no such person called Kieran in his bloodline, made, born or adopted. She must be making things up. There is only a baby Kate Redfern in Ash's family and she is barely 6 months old. Another Redfern, Jez, nods stupidly at everything that Ash says.

A naïve human, the lover of the Redfern, Mary-something, shoves glass after glass of putrid tasting water at her, as if water was magically going to heal everything. Pah. Stupid humans.

She didn't catch the name of the organization, Circle something, but the leader, Thierry Descouedres, does give her a scrutinizing look and intone dryly that demons who could take other's powers didn't exist and there was no such possibility of something like that ever happening.

Resentment bubbles up in her guts. These people are calling her a liar. What purpose would she have to lie?

Insane idiot, she knew they were thinking.

Betrayed by her soulmate, accused of being hallucinating, they even have the nerve to unsubtly ask her if she is on any anti-psychosis medication and missed a dose or two! Then, her uterus decides to shred itself and cramps settles in, giving her a permanently 'lemon-sucker' face.

It took a while before a shifter pointed out she was bleeding to death before some swallowed their doubts of her being a spy for Night World and took her to a gigantic mansion she always grew up dreaming she might own one day as a kid.

The smell of her sweat combined with the antiseptic stinging her wounds and the guarded stares that follow every little twitch she makes almost forces her to loose the little control over herself she still possesses.

Just what is wrong with these people? Can't they just mind-read her torn mentality and find out for themselves whether she is to be trusted or not?

Someone is assigned to watch her while she rests.

She dreams of burnt flesh, helpless screams of her family echoing loudly, their last dying moments replaying vividly in her mind as her soulmate cackles evilly amidst the smoke and decay.

She cries out hoarsely in her sleep, twisting and turning furiously, re-opening her raw wounds, careless, unaware, as his image torments her even as she is recovering physically.

When she wakes, it is sundown, birds flittering and chirping chaotically outside, rushing to get home before night falls. The air is chilly and her stomach rumbles. She stenches of something awful.

Someone comes to take her to a bathroom where she sits in a bathtub slowly turning crimson, staring blankly at nothing in particular, trapped in her own thoughts.

Eventually, a lamia girl comes in and tells her to dress in some garments that belonged to a werewolf out on patrolling duty.

She dresses, hesitantly, reluctantly, mind racing.

She emerges from the bathroom, hooded and sullen; shuffling warily as yet another unknown face leads her to a dining room. The sight and smell of food makes her nauseous but she swallows the rising bile at the back of her throat, telling herself fiercely that throwing up on a feast at the host's house is considered rude and will get her sore ass kicked back out on the streets.

The utensils set on the table bring tears to her eyes as memories of her mother surges through her brain. Such a simple thing triggering enormous amounts of pain. She wonders how she will survive this world as an orphan. She can barely summon enough will to keep breathing. She has lost her will to live.

Dinner overwhelms her. Undisguised staring errantly fixed upon her as she shuffles her food around the plate with her knife and fork. She longs to scream, cry or punch something. Anything to rid the build up of tension inside her.

The final stroke for her is when a werewolf pounces on her, sniffing intently, declaring loudly something in a language she didn't understand. Her body didn't have the strength to sustain her anger. She faints. But not before white light erupted from her vision, taking over all her senses, petrifying her silly.

And all in the same day too. Why did it always have to happen to her?