I'm not receiving very many reviews, pah! Grr at you all! You hate me you really hate me!! grins wickedly it's ok tho! I still love all of you who have written to me! I would really like some new takes on this tho. Yes: a love story Yes: full of gore Yes: plenty of mystery ( I think anyway.) What I don't know is what all of you would like to hear. Tell me and the story may take a few surprising twists and turns toward your own ends, maybe not, all depends. I would like to hear from all of you tho.

Chapter 6

Tears rolled from squinted red eyes, as she looked at his rotting corpse. The smell didn't bother her, she had fought worse in the caves and ruins, it was his face. Flesh hung in wads around one side of his head, the birds had already flown in and eaten his eyes, but she could still see him. Lucian, the only man that had been like a father to her was gone. How she hated them, despised them in the worst possible ways. He was still hanging from the rope they had tied him with, she cut loose his bonds. Lucian's maggot-ridden body fell to the floor and exploded with fresh larvae. The maggots splattered across the floor the way his blood should have. How disappointed she was with him. That didn't exclude her surrogate father from a decent burial tho. She had already dug the hole, shallow, but it would do. Sybelle had allowed all of her hate, her frustration to power her dredging arms, to make her breathe, when she so desperately wanted to lay in the hole and cover herself over. What a waste of tyme. . .

Instead, she pulled Lucian's corpse into the hole with the rope he had died wearing and covered him over.

"I pray that the Night Mother will make you pay for your betrayal," she whispered, while trying to wipe the tear streaks from her dirty face.

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Sybelle had never felt more free than when she looked at Frostcrag Spire. She never felt more alive and whole than when she walked thru the front doors and gazed at that icey hand. A misnomer if there ever was one, Frostcrag Spire. She dreamt of it when she was awake and read in the library while she was asleep. These dank hallways covered in blood could never be called home.

The placed smelled almost as bad as a fresh Septim. The taste was the same, the aching tang of metal on your tongue. It was almost sickening. She needed the money tho, at least that was her excuse. She hated killing. She hated the begging for mercy and the blood. She buckled her armored corset tighter around her absently as she stalked the hallways and thought. In the end tho, they were all quiet and then she got to go home. It was worth it. No longer her family, her only family died screaming with a rope tied to his ankles. . .

"You seem distracted," Vincent's cultured voice purred from the shadows. Sybelle slowly turned her head toward the dark corner of the hall she was rounding. He stood there, mute, awaiting her response, tall and proud, just like always. Wearing that long coat and belted breeches he always wore.

"Do you always lurk in shadows, Vincent, or is it merely for my benefit?" She queried, arching an eyebrow at him.

He laughed good naturedly and said, "Sometymes, I do believe it is just for your benefit." He smiled showing his fangs, he never did that to anyone else. He would never let his fangs slip into view in front of anyone but her, just her. It was quite odd, now that she had come to think of it. "You do seem troubled tho, my pet," he scolded, "Come now, you can't hide anything from me, as you well know." The darkness of the shadows filled his eyes as he stepped into the torchlit corridor.

"Do not play this game with me again, Vincent, I don't feel like it," she warned, "and don't call me your "pet." I am no one's property, much less their pet," she spat the last words at him. A pained look crossed his face.

"You do me wrong to not accept my gifts," he whispered, looking at her thru the corner of his eye. "I would think that you would appreciate the attention I give you," he said. Sybelle watched his hand as it slid down her arm, then she turned her eyes to his, a black shadow of hate filled them.

"You haven't overstepped you bounds this badly before Vincent. I've told you tyme and tyme again, " her jaw set in anger, " I will not become a vampire. I will not become what you are. Seeing what you did with such pleasure all that tyme ago has taken a piece of me," she whispered the last in reverence as she gazed farther into the darklit corridor. "These walls are covered in blood, and I have helped with that, but I will not kill for pleasure." She turned a heated stare up to him.

"You do me wrong to think of that," he whispered. "I told you once and I'll tell you again I was merely doing as I was ordered by the Night Mother, Herself," he explained, again. He grabbed her arm, "That piece of you is what I want, I want you to need me. And to remind you, I don't kill for pleasure either,"

"No, Vincent, you have a harem of young and beautiful women to give you all the blood you need without killing them," the anger sparked in her eyes. "Me and all of my "peices" are leaving now, I am done talking now, I don't want to see you again, ever. I don't care about what you have to offer, and I don't care about you. The only man I thought anything of is dead," she spat at him as she tore her arm away and stalked to her quarters.

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The clang of armor and weapons and spells echoed in the hallways from the training room. It made her head ache sometimes. She didn't know why she had to stay until they made their decision. They could've just let her go home until they had decided. Thank the Creator Vincent was leaving her be. They had chosen the new Black Hand, and she was not one of them. Why did they need her to stay? They had questioned and tried to torture her at first. . . . . at first. When they saw that she was just going to laugh at them they stopped. Trying to make her scream at the site of her own blood? She had lost almost all of her limbs once in the arena, before the Grey Prince had taught her all that he knew of battle. They thought a little bit of blood was going to hurt her? Sybelle smiled as she walked the dark paths of their sanctum. She had spellcast her parts back on with her one hand and healed the flesh together herself. She wasn't a very good healer but one knows ones own body. The spelling had left her drained and unconscious for over a week because of it tho. The Prince had fed her gruel and water and kept her alive until she awoke. Then, after he saw that she wasn't going to quit, but go back into the arena, then he taught her. He had been a good friend and all she had brought him was pain. . . and then his absolution. Killig her only friend, and then Lucien had come. . . . These mongrels knew nothing of pain.

A scurrying behind her, a soft cough and silence. "Murderer?" she inquired.

"Yes, Red Eyed Needle, the Esteemed Council of the Black Hand of Sithis would require your attendance to a meeting tonite, m'lady," she said, her head humbly bowed.

"Very well then," Sybelle said. So, they'd decided then. . . very well. Sybelle smiled, let them try and kill her, just let them try, for they would never succeed.

AN: Sooo?? Whadda ya say? Give me some reviews? PLEASE!!