Saphire – Thanks for the review, I figured I needed to find a way to explain Lorne's heavy involvement in the vampire world. I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Sparkly – Elizabeth's first feeding is going to be both a good and bad thing I think, in my weird twisted sort of way. I'm glad you liked the bit with Michael and thanks for the review.

Fyd818 – Yes I know what you mean and I'm glad you enjoyed catching up on the fic; I've missed your reviews lol. In my twisted sort of way I think Elizabeth's feeding will be both a good and bad thing. That's really weird that we both thought of Teyla being afraid of mice lol and I love Lorne too. More Ronon in this chapter so I hope you enjoy that, thanks for the review.

Steph – It's always great seeing Elizabeth kick some but, I don't think the show made enough of her so AU's are the perfect place to explore that lol. I hope you enjoy this chapter.

LadyNiko – Thanks for the review, there's a little bit about Laden's death in this chapter and I'm glad you're enjoying all the twists, hope you enjoy this chapter.

Stargatecrazy – You're right it's not Elizabeth's fault but I think we all know she won't see it that way lol. I hope you enjoy this chapter and thanks for the review.

Chapter 12

John had returned from dumping the body in a nearby river to find Elizabeth exactly where he had left her. In fact it hadn't looked like she'd moved a muscle in the entire time he'd been gone. Her face had been pale and her eyes had been completely vacant, it was as though Elizabeth wasn't in there anymore. She hadn't said a word to him, he'd tried talking to her but his efforts had been met by silence.

He'd been forced to leave her knowing that sooner or later she'd probably fall into guilt ridden sleep. His own sleep had now been much better; he'd spent most of the night staring at the ceiling getting more and more frustrated with his lack of sleep as the hours ticked by. He'd drifted off a few times but what little sleep he'd gotten had not been restful.

Morning had finally arrived and he'd given up on any idea of sleeping and got out of bed. He'd taken his time in the shower, he wasn't sure what state he'd find Elizabeth in and he wasn't sure he was ready to find out. None the less when he was finally ready he went to her room, she was sleeping, curled up in a ball on her bed. There was still a damp path on the pillow from where she had obviously cried herself to sleep and her face held none of the peacefulness people usually had when sleeping.

He didn't have the heart to wake her, knowing he would take her from her nightmare filled sleep to the torture of reality though he knew she was going to have to face it sooner or later. Deciding to let her sleep for as long as her tortured mind would allow, he knelt down beside her brushing her hair out of her face. Despite the fact the fact that vampires didn't age she looked older now than she had when he'd brought her here, less naive and innocent. She was still beautiful though, the same as when he'd first seen her on the street that night.

He stood up and walked across the room, her waitress uniform and the coat she'd been wearing when he'd turned her were neatly folded in the corner. They'd been there since her arrival, a constant reminder of the life she'd left behind, the life he'd taken from her. Once again he felt a wave of guilt so strong it made him nauseous, he'd been the one to do this to her, he'd been the one to cause all of this.

The sound of movement behind him caught his attention and he turned to see Elizabeth waking up. She opened her eyes as he made his way back to her and she looked at him, sadness in her eyes that he hadn't even seen when she'd discovered what she was. "That wasn't a nightmare was it?" she questioned and John sorrowfully shook his head as she sat up. "I killed that man," she whispered.

"What happened?" he managed to ask after several moments' silence.

Elizabeth looked at him, he didn't want to make her relive it but he needed to know and he knew that she was going to have to relive it a thousand times. The memory would eat away at her until it faded into the background.

"He tried to grab me, he had a knife and we struggled and he must have gotten cut, when I smelt the blood..." she trailed off, guilt and sadness so thick in her voice that John struggled to hold it out of his own.

"Your vampire instincts were already in control when you smelt the blood, you're new at this, there was no way you could have stopped yourself," he tried to tell her though he knew it wouldn't help much.

"I should have tried harder, part of me knew what I was doing but too much of me didn't care," she argued getting out of the bed and walking to the other side of the room. "I'm a monster, a killer, just like the rest of you."

Though he knew she'd only said the words because she was angry, he also knew that she meant them, that some part of her must already have been thinking them. "We're not all monsters Elizabeth, things kill other things, that's life and the sooner you learn to accept that the better off you'll be. Life isn't black and white; in fact most of it's grey, including this."

He left the room then, needing to clear his head and leave her some time to do the same. As if he wasn't having enough problems today, Chaya and Michael walked down the corridor in front of him. Chaya smiled her usual seductive smile which John ignored in favour of Michael's smug one. "You look like hell," Michael stated.

"And yet I still look better than you, what do you want?" he questioned and anger flashed through Michaels eyes at the off hand comeback.

"We just came from the elder's chambers," Chaya told him "Daddy and the others were just keeping us up to date on what's going on."

John groaned inwardly, they were back to this then were they? With the mood he was in right now he was likely to beat what was going on out of them.

"Careful Chaya," Michael began in his annoyingly smug voice "John here hasn't been informed about it."

"Really?" Chaya questioned in surprise "I would have thought you'd have been told, given that it's about your little toy."

"What?" John asked, his voice a mixture of anger and annoyance, this was the last thing he needed right now.

"I suppose it couldn't hurt to tell you," Chaya stated thoughtfully and John took only a second to enjoy the disappointed look on Michael's face. "One of your new toy's friends is looking for her, she's gotten too close to the truth and the council have deemed her a threat to our secrecy, she's been added to the hit list, pretty high up there too."

Outwardly, John didn't react at all, just excused himself and walked away. Inwardly was a completely different story, he felt like screaming, this day was just getting better and better. Whilst Elizabeth was dealing with the guilt of her first kill he was going to have to go and tell her that one of her friends was on the elder's hit list.

Finally finishing another shift at Pegasus Teyla left the building and headed for her car. She hated how much life seemed to have moved on, Elizabeth was still missing but the world continued without her. Everyone was getting used to the fact that Elizabeth was gone, even Laura seemed to be coming to terms with it now.

Teyla however was the exact opposite, she knew Elizabeth was alive, that she was still out there somewhere and she felt more determined than ever to find her friend. Elizabeth was the closest thing to family Teyla had since her father had died two years ago and she wasn't prepared to let that go just yet. She got into her car and left the parking lot, she still had a few hours before it got dark and she had shopping to do, her mind had been all over the place and she'd been too busy to do it for over a week so now she was left with nothing but scraps of food in the house.

She pulled into the parking lot outside the supermarket and grabbed a shopping cart from outside the store. She went inside, walking up and down the aisles, grabbing whatever she needed and tossing it untidily into the trolley. There was a woman who seemed to follow her up and down each aisle but Teyla ignored her, not everyone was a vampire servant out to get her.

She paid for her things and left, unpacking the flimsy brown bags into the trunk of her car and taking the shopping cart back to the store's entrance. It felt like she was being watched and looking around Teyla could see several possible culprits. There was the woman from the store, slowly unloading her bags into her own car. A man standing near the entrance, leaning against the wall and looking intently at the floor. Another man was leaning on a car not far from her, the hood of his dark green coat was up and it casted shadows across his face preventing her from seeing the direction of his gaze. There was a man and a woman stood nearby, talking quietly, every now and again one of them would glance her way.

Teyla picked up her pace back to her car and got into the driver's seat, starting her engine and leaning her head on the wheel. "Get a grip Teyla," she instructed herself, it was possible that none of them were vampire servants and that no one was watching her at that moment. She was just being paranoid, she'd been doing it all day, Laden's death last night had for some reason put her on alert and she was looking at everyone suspiciously.

She sat herself up straight and backed the car out of the parking space, making her way out of the parking lot and deciding to pick up some food on the way home. She didn't like cooking under normal circumstances and today she had neither the patience nor the will to try.

Elizabeth sat at her dressing table, staring at her reflection in the mirror. She looked a lot healthier than she had yesterday, no longer pale and clammy thanks to the blood she'd taken from that man, the life she'd taken. Judging from the times between her first two feedings, it was going to be another four or five days before she needed to feed again and she had no idea what she was going to do.

Did she want to live beyond those four or five days, did she want to live until then?

That man's face, the look of pure terror when he'd realised his mistake was burnt into her memory, she couldn't seem to shake it out. She wasn't sure how long she could live with the guilt of knowing she'd taken his life, taken someone's son, maybe someone's brother or even worse someone's father. He'd had a life, maybe he wasn't necessarily a nice man, he'd attacked her in the street thinking that she was some poor defenceless woman who wouldn't put up a fight but he didn't deserve that. Thinking about it, John was no different to him, he attacked people once or twice a week, took their lives from them, he'd taken hers. He'd done exactly what that man had done last night even if his intentions had been different.

It had taken her half an hour of brushing her teeth before she'd been satisfied that the taste of blood was gone from her mouth. She didn't need the reminder, nor did she need the vampire in her enjoying the after taste of her actions.

There was knocking on the door behind her and she ignored it, she knew it would be John, he was the only person that ever came here, a fact she was grateful for. She hadn't met many of the other vampires but so far she didn't really like any of them. Another knock and she called for him to come in, he wasn't the type to just give up and walk away and she wondered briefly how she knew that when she'd only known the man for just over a week.

The door opened and as expected John walked in, he looked more troubled than she did at that moment which she figured was quite and achievement. He sat down with a heavy sigh and she turned and looked at him expectantly.

"I have to tell you something," he told her, the tone of his voice doing nothing to alleviate her worry. "I've been wondering around for the last few hours trying to figure out an easy way to tell you this but I can't come up with anything so I'm just going to tell you. Michael and Chaya, well mostly just Chaya told me what's been going on, what Michael's been gloating about knowing that I didn't and I did some digging so I could find out more and..."

"John, you're babbling," she told him, somehow keeping her worry out her voice and guilt at the back of her mind.

"Your friend, Teyla Emmagan, she's been looking for you and she's found out about this world. She's still looking and she keeps learning more. The Elders have declared her a threat and put her on the vampire hit list and from what I've heard she's pretty high up on it too," John told her and Elizabeth froze completely. Her mind was blank for several seconds before a yet another wave of guilt and various other emotions washed over her.

She hadn't even heard Teyla's name in over a week and today of all days she has to find out that her friend, the closest thing she had to family, is on a hit list all because she was looking for her. "She knows I'm a vampire?" Elizabeth asked, she'd kind of hoped that no one she'd known would ever have to find that out.

"Yeah, she's been working with a police detective, he's a known pain in the ass but since he's a cop the council won't have him killed unless they have to. Police take care of their own, if a cop gets killed the investigation could lead them straight to us and the last thing the elders want is exposure. Apparently the detective had a vampire informant, we don't know how much he told them before the hit squad got to him," John explained sounding a little calmer now that he'd gotten the worst part of what he had to say out of the way.

"Have they actually tried to kill her yet?" she questioned and John nodded.

"A few times," he replied "We've actually lost quite a few vampires trying to get her."

The room fell silent again as Elizabeth took in what he'd said, staying here, staying away from everything she'd cared about in her old life was supposed to leave Teyla and the others protected from this world. Now this world was going after them, where was the fairness in that, in any of this?

"I'm sorry I called you a monster earlier," she stated which seemed to surprise John. She really was sorry, for some unfathomable reason, she actually liked John despite the fact that he'd turned her into this thing.

It was dark outside and Teyla went to close the curtains, out of the corner of her eye she though she saw man standing outside but when she looked there was no one there. She closed the curtains and went to pick up the ringing phone.

"Hello," she answered.

"It's Lorne, I just got a call from Carson, he says he and the others have something interesting to tell us. If you're not busy we can go tomorrow," he told her and despite herself she felt a spark of hope.

"I'm working tomorrow until four," she told him.

"I'll meet you at your apartment at five," he stated and she was about to respond when a noise from outside her door caught her attention. She stared at the door, listening carefully and she was about to shrug it off as her paranoid brain when there was bang on the door, as though someone had just 

kicked it. It was followed almost immediately by another bang and she saw the door coming off its hinges.

"Detective, there's someone trying to get in," she said in a slight panic, she didn't hear what he said next because the door flew open and three men burst into her apartment. They spotted her immediately and she made a run for her bedroom door, the fire escape was outside her bedroom window and if she could reach it she might have a chance of actually living through this.

One of them cut her off though, moving fast enough that she knew beyond a doubt he was a vampire. Two more people came into the room, a man and a woman and from the look of it they weren't on her side either.

She backed away from the vampire that had cut off her escape and glanced toward her purse which was currently sitting on the small table beside her couch. The wooden stake Lorne had given her was in there, Lorne had probably heard everything, he'd hopefully be on his way with several armed if not completely prepared officers and she just needed to survive until they got there.

The female vampire had followed the direction of her gaze; she picked up the small black purse and pulled the wooden stake out of it. "Looking for this?" she questioned and Teyla sighed inwardly, she had no way to protect herself now. "Is this any way to treat guests?"

"Silly, little girl thought she'd be safe inside her apartment," another vampire mocked and she continued to back away from the group. Unfortunately she backed straight into a corner and with no means of defending herself she knew she was done for.

Suddenly one of the vampires jolted as though he'd been hit with something and he fell forward, hitting the floor and revealing the wooden arrow lodged in his back. Everyone looked toward the door in surprise and the familiar figure of Teyla's mysterious saviour stepped into the room holding what looked like some kind of medieval bow gun. He fired another shot, hitting the vampire nearest to her before the others recovered enough of their senses to attack him.

He discarded the bow in favour of his wooden stake, he dodged a blow from one of the male vampires, slamming the stake into his chest and watching him collapse to the floor dead. The other two seemed to realise they were in trouble and the female vampire turned back to Teyla, intent on killing their target before she left or got killed.

"Here," her rescuer shouted, throwing the wooden stake through the air before the final male vampire launched himself at him. She caught the piece of wood just before the female vampire reached her; she ducked to avoid the woman's fists and kicked the back of her legs. The woman fell to her knees and Teyla stabbed the stake into her back. She didn't bother waiting for the body to fall; the female vampire was dead so she turned around in time to see the final vampire meet his end.

Her saviour picked up his bow gun and then turned angry eyes onto her "Do you have a death wish?" he questioned and Teyla opted to remain silent. "I told you to stop; whatever it is you're doing has got you on their radar, stop and leave before they kill you."

"I can't, they have my friend," she told him.

"If they have your friend, she's already lost to you, give up before you join her," he stated and she felt a small amount of anger at his words.

"No, I'm not giving up, why don't you try helping me maybe then you won't have to keep coming to my rescue," she suggested and he looked at her as though she'd just grown another head right in front of him.

"If you wanna keep getting yourself in trouble that's your business, I don't care," he told her and turned to walk out of the apartment, probably in response to the police sirens she could hear approaching and the voices of her neighbours who had decided it was safe to start being nosy. She ran in front of him, cutting off his retreat.

"You do care," she stated "Or you wouldn't keep coming to save me."

"Well maybe I shouldn't bother, I have better things to do with my time," he said in annoyance and tried to step passed but she once again cut him off.

"I'm going to keep looking for my friend, you can either help me or not, I'm sure there'll be plenty of opportunities for you to kill vampires along the way," she told him and he looked at her for a moment as though he was studying her. "At least tell me your name so I don't have to keep referring to you as 'that guy who saved me'."

He said nothing, just walked passed her heading for the corridor, his heavy footsteps stopped and she turned around to see him looking at her. "Ronon," he said before he continued his way out of the apartment. She turned around to look at the mess he'd left behind, five bodies, two with wooden arrows in them and three killed by wooden stakes. What they hell was she supposed to tell the police?

TBC