A/N – There's something about being back in your old room in your parents' house that brings out the creativity. Maybe it's all the residue teenage angst that seeped into the walls. *shrugs* Lol. Anyway, here's the next chapter for y'all. Feel free to leave me a review if you've got half a sec.


Chapter 11

Pam paced the length of her apartment, agitation screaming from every step. Every now and then she would pause to toss her progeny a sidelong glance. Eyes the color of a clear mountain sky somehow managed to simultaneously convey a blistering glare and a soft look every time Pam trained their gaze onto her reticent child.

Tara was leaning against the wall by the window, her location of choice it seemed. A bottle of O-neg Bloodsky sat on the windowsill, half drained. In the dark skinned vampire's hand was a blood-stained shot glass, its sides smeared with the dark liquid. The vampire reached down for the bottle, poured herself another shot then downed it with expert ease.

Pam sent the bottle a deep scowl; when breathers had first manufactured a vampire's equivalent of 80-proof whisky and put it on the market, Tara had been ecstatic. Her election quickly fell by the wayside however, when her maker had explicitly forbid her from drinking what she deemed was "swill." It had resulted in one of their worst fights, with both sides throwing barbs so vicious that had they manifested into physical weapons, both maker and progeny would have been shredded to pieces.

And now, watching Tara down shot after shot without so much as blinking, one of Pam's well concealed fears was transpiring before her very eyes: her progeny, like her human mother before her, was turning to the bottle to find that caress of functionality, that boost of comfort. Pam's jaw cinched tightly as Tara poured herself another shot and tossed it back almost carelessly but refrained from voicing her thoughts aloud.

Two days had passed since Tara had begun unveiling fifty years of memories that were painfully absent of Pam. Tales of debauchery, blood, sex and death, accounts that seemed to become more sordid, more dark and more desperate than the last.

Pam knew that she could leave, could simply walk out mid-story, save her ears, her heart, her soul from the sharp talons of Tara's words. But try as she might, she couldn't find it in herself to leave. There was a morbid, masochistic part of her that held her captive in that apartment with Tara, confined her to stalking up and down the length of her apartment like a caged animal.

The blonde shot another look at her progeny when she heard the clink of the bottle against the windowsill; Tara simply returned her gaze with an unreadable one, her dark eyes devoid of emotion, of life. It was akin to staring into twin black holes, where nothing but blackness and darkness lay. It frightened Pam that she could read not one iota of emotion from her child's eyes; Tara's eyes were always the window to her soul, her thoughts. Whilst her face may have remained expressionless and impassive, her eyes always gave her away.

Now, Pam could glean nothing from that dark, flat, empty gaze. All she saw was blackness and beyond that, a vast vacuum of nothing. Quite against her will, the blonde allowed a shiver to overcome her; it was intense enough to cause her shoulders to shake and for her steps to falter. She stopped, turned to face Tara and simply stared at the vampire across the room as she waited for the tremors to stop wracking havoc through her body.

Tara remained silent even as she witnessed Pam's inner turmoil manifest into a physical reaction. She was unaffected by cobalt blues eyes that bore into her midnight ones, refused to provide the answer to the question that lay half hidden in those spheres of arctic blue.

Pam watched as Tara remained eerily closed off, the features on her face chillingly still and impassive. Her entire body seemed lifeless and inanimate, save for the arm that worked the hand that poured the shot. It seemed that whilst Pam had retreated deep inside of herself, Tara had lashed out. At herself, at the world, at everyone. Because she had nothing left to retreat inside to; like scooping out the insides of a pumpkin, Pam had ripped everything out of Tara. Her heart, her soul, the very essence that made Tara, Tara.

And now, the blonde's handiwork complete, Tara was…empty.

Pam's left hand formed a strangled fist, fingers clenched so tightly that the skin stretched over her knuckles glowed a pure white. The metallic stench of blood peppered the air ever so slightly as the blonde's nails dug into the palm of her hand, slicing opening half-moon shaped wounds.

The wounds deepened, the air above and around Pam rapidly clogging up with the smell of blood as the blonde recalled Tara's latest narrative.

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Tara had always wanted to travel. It was just unfortunate that her aimless wanderings across the globe were a result of her maker releasing her.

It was Christmas Eve and Tara, feeling sentimental, if only in retrospect, found herself in Stockholm, Sweden. The homeland of her grand-maker and subsequently a city Pam had come to call her own. The dark-skinned vampire had previously been in South East Asia and as she slowly made her way across the Asian continent into Europe, she left what had now become her signature footprints: a trail of blood and screams.

She was currently imprinting her mark on the idyllic town of Stockholm; staining the picturesque scenery of wintery white and twinkling Christmas lights with splotches of scarlet and tainting the air with pained whimpers and petrified gasps.

The dark-skinned vampire had a lone jogger pinned to a gnarled tree, an ebony arm pressed painfully tight against the front of his throat. The jogger's Adam's apple bobbed, or at least it tried to against Tara's unrelenting hold.

"P-please," the jogger choked out in Swedish, stifling a shriek as Tara dragged the nail of her thumb down the plane of his cheek; a line of crimson was left in its wake, oozing dots of blood. "L-let me go."

"Why?" the vampire returned in fluent Swedish. Tara's voice was bored, the expression on her face never shifting as she backhanded the jogger across the face, splitting open his lip. The cut wept red, trickled down his chin and fell in glorious ruby droplets onto the otherwise pristine white snow.

"I have k-kids," the jogger pleaded, flinching violently as Tara grabbed one of his fingers and curled her own around it.

"Ask me if I care." Tara snapped the finger backwards; it popped out of its joint, bones splintering in two. A burst of adrenaline shot through her veins, momentarily warming Tara from the inside out. But the feeling was fleeting and when it ended, the vampire found herself disappointed and empty all over again.

The man whimpered, a film of panic and fear clouding the green of his eyes. His damaged finger throbbed, the broken bones and torn muscles all but crooning out the universal song of pain all iving bodies were intimately familiar with. Said eyes widened when Tara cocked back a fist, took a moment to lock her dead, empty eyes onto his petrified ones before she thrust it into his solar plexus.

The jogger grunted, his screams lost in the breath of air he was unable to take as his body seized up in agony. He doubled over as much as his current position would allow, tasted something coppery at the back of his throat. Instinct had him coughing it out; blood spurted from his mouth, splashes of it anointing the side of Tara's face and the rest staining the snow at their feet.

There it was again. That caress of thrill against her loins, that brush of adrenaline against her nerves. Tara smiled; it sat wrongly on a face that was otherwise expressionless, a face that housed eyes that were darker than oil. Through the miasma of pain curtaining his temporarily blurry vision, he made the mistake of looking at that smile; he'd never seen a smile quite so menacing, so devoid of happiness and cheer. It sent a lick of fear down his spine and a tremor to shake his toned frame. Death was imminent, the smile was his death warrant in physical form.

Tara felt the man shiver, knew that it was the look on her face that caused it. She removed the arm that she held against the man's throat, watched dispassionately as the man crumbled to the ground, his body folding in on itself to protect him from Tara's particular brand of torture.

Not that it worked; Tara reached down, grabbed a fistful of thick blonde hair and yanked the man back onto his feet. One ebony arm whipped out, its elbow connecting with the jogger's chest. He howled in abject agony as something cracked beneath his flesh, screamed when that cracked something pierced what was probably his lung. He choked, his hands clamping over the injured spot to no avail. Blood retched from his mouth, bursting forth through the open seams of his lips as his body rejected blood that flowed into the wrong parts of his body.

A sweet starburst of pleasure. It coated Tara's veins, soothed her troubled mind, if only for a moment. Then it was gone again, a brief reprieve that dissipated just as quickly as it appeared. It was like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands.

Tara released the grip she had on the jogger's hair then kicked his feet out from under him with a well-executed flick of her boot. Her face was still as a marble statue and just as unresponsive as eyes of pitch followed the jogger's body's descent onto the snow. His impact kicked up tufts of the snowy white material, his body sinking slightly into the white mush. The minute his body stilled, he curled into a fetal position, his mouth still vomiting streams of dark blood. Already the color of his cheeks were graying, his pallor mirroring that of a slowly but surely dying individual.

The air around Tara was busy with the metallic stench of blood but the smell and sight of the life-giving liquid didn't tempt the vampire's thirst anymore, as evident by fangs that were still encased in their respective sheaths. It was the thrill of the hunt that she craved, the rush of adrenaline, of arousal when she held her victim against their will, felt their bones shatter beneath her touch, their screams of undiluted pain caressing her ears.

Tara wanted that hit of being alive again.

So she he stamped hard on the man's exposed arm resulting in a high-pitched shriek that would have made dogs whine in discomfort. Beneath her boot, she felt the bones in said arm break, gave herself a mental pat on the back when she bore witness to one sliver of bone jutting through the flesh, the skin around it peeling backwards like an opening flower. She knelt down next to the helplessly whimpering jogger, now too drugged with pain and fear to do little more than to flinch away from Tara's crouched form and curl into a tighter ball when he couldn't move any further.

Tara touched the jagged edge of the protruding bone with an almost child-like curiosity. She experimented with pressure, observed how a light touch would produce a pained gasp from the jogger and how an almost playful flick against the side of the bone would provoke a strangled cry.

Blood trickled from the broken arm in curving streams of crimson, wetting and redding the snow. Tara dragged a lone finger through the mixture of red and white, turning the snow into a pale rosy pink. When the jogger attempted a valiant move to scramble away from the vampire, she simply reached out with a casual hand, wrapped supple fingers around the jutting bone and used it to pull him back to her.

The jogger howled and thrashed, the pain in his arm excruciating. The side of his body that lay against the snow was damp and numb with cold but his arm burned with the fires of agony, multiple teethes of pain gnawing on nerves that were well beyond frayed. He didn't try to move again, knowing that the vampire, his torturer, would only aggravate his heavily abused arm.

Tara sensed it the second the jogger let all the fight go out of him, saw it in the way his shoulders slumped, his curled body relaxing ever so slightly against his bed of snow. His forest green eyes bore the look of resignation even as the edges were fringed with pain and his mouth was set in a grim line.

"You're of no use to me if you're just going to lie there, waiting to die," Tara spoke softly, her voice almost admonishing as she looked down at the jogger. When he didn't response with an insult or another attempt to flee, the vampire sighed in dramatic disappointment. "Have it your way." With vampiric speed, she flipped the man onto his back, clamped a hand over his nose and mouth and watched impassively as his body flailed and his working hand reached up instinctively to try to pry Tara's unyielding hand away from his face. He made a choking noise, from the lack of oxygen or the blood that was now congesting his airway, Tara didn't know or care. All she wanted was to feel that temporary shot of elation as she took the life of yet another person.

The jogger's movements were sluggish now, limbs slowing their actions in the snow. When his hand fell away from Tara's and his eyes turned glassy, Tara spared only the briefest moment to listen for a pulse. The absence of that beat of life enticed her to remove her hand from the now motionless jogger's face; the man was dead, the blood in his veins already cooling and slowing to a halt.

Tara stood, brushing snow off her jeans. She glanced down at the dead jogger, felt nothing as she raked dark eyes down the lifeless body. Then without so much as a backward glance, or even a flicker of remorse or guilt in her eyes, she turned and made her way down the empty, windy path.

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"You're staring."

Tara's voice cut through Pam's turbulent ponderings. The blonde shook her head slightly, realized that when she had taken an impromptu journey into her head, her body had rebelled against her and froze itself to the spot that was in direct line of Tara.

"Where did you go?" It may have seemed impossible to sound uncaring yet concerned but that was the cadence of Tara's tone. The dark-skinned vampire stared unapologetically across the room at her maker, was impervious by the sapphire blue eyes that regarded her with what looked like thinly-veiled dismay.

"You're upset with me," Tara continued when Pam failed to respond. "Or disgusted." She caught a flash of protest pass across her maker's features. "No need to lie. I can see it in your eyes. I could always see everything in your eyes."

Pam's back went ramrod straight as she inhaled harshly, cerulean blue eyes icing up in response to Tara's remark. "You don't know me anymore," the blonde spat out, unable to keep her acerbic tone in check.

"Maybe not," Tara conceded quietly as she toyed with the empty shot glass in her hand. She ran her thumb along its rim. "But you have to admit that I've always managed to see right through you, even from the very beginning."

That much was true. Even in the earliest of days, when their fledging relationship of maker and progeny had barely began to register; Tara already had the uncanny ability to see past Pam's prickly demeanor and sardonic banter. She would often call Pam out on her bullshit, which would usually result in a punishment of some kind but it had unnerved the blonde to no end that her progeny could read her in a way that not even Eric could.

Tara saw something fracture behind Pam's crystal blue eyes and her fingers tightened subtly on the shot glass she rolled absentmindedly across her palm. Eyes cut from pure black onyx took in the sight of her maker's furrowed brows, the way her throat worked as Pam corralled her thoughts to be put into audible words. Tara's dark gaze followed an alabaster hand that reached up to card frustrated fingers through thick golden-blonde hair then tracked it diligently as it descended back down her body only to prop itself on a hip.

"Why are you doing this?" Pam finally spoke. Her look was steely with barely repressed agitation as she scrutinized Tara from across the room. "Why hash up every fucked up thing you thing you did? What is the fuckin' point of your twisted version of bedtime stories?"

Pam had loved until her heart broke, mourned the loss of that love until the light went out of her eyes, her heart shriveled in her chest and her soul turned ashen. Now, all she wanted was to try to repair what was left of her heart and soul; there wasn't much to salvage but she was damned if she didn't try. She knew that she would never love another like she had loved Tara, knew that for a fact. And she accepted that; she had found that great love, that epic bond between two people that storytellers and poets waxed poetic about. Tara gave her that once in a lifetime love, bathed her in, let her taste it on a daily basis, blanketed her in for well over a hundred years. And for that, she would be forever grateful to her progeny.

But now, now it was time for goodbye. For them to let go of the past, of each other. But Pam couldn't do that, couldn't strive for a clean break if Tara kept lingering, kept digging up the past. Where her progeny was once the glue that kept her together, now she was the hammer that kept breaking her apart.

Tara turned a solemn gaze onto her maker. "I need you to understand," she intoned, her voice monosyllabic.

"Understand what?!" Pam cried out, her calm, icy façade shattering into smithereens onto the floor. "Understand that you turned into a monster? Understand that I helped facilitate that change in you? What the fuck is it you want me to understand?!"

"Killing. Eating. Fucking." Tara's tone was brusque, its inflection carrying just the slightest hint of savagery. "Wasn't that your particular brand of vampire philosophy?" Eyes darker than the deepest of nights blazed into stunned Prussian blue. "Wasn't that the kind of vampire you wanted me to be?" Tara set the shot glass down by the bottle and pulled herself up to her full height. "Isn't this–" she gestured at herself. "–what you wanted?"

As those words poured out of Tara's mouth, Pam could only stare at her progeny, her jaw slack and her mind reeling.

TBC