I had only ever been inside the mind of a vampire once before. But back then, I was less experienced than I am now, and all I had gone in there for was a fast info pull. I jumped in, grabbed what I was looking for, and yanked hard. I didn't have time to stop and look around, see what the mind of a vampire was really like.

Inside the vampire that was trying to eat me, there was a blood moon hanging heavy in the air.

All around me all I could see was thick jungle trees, heavy brush that would make walking through all but impossible, and rivers and brooks that were red and thick with the smell of coppery blood. They sky, what little could actually be seen through the canopy, was a haze of red light from the above bleeding moon mixing and contrasting the dark purples of clouds that held storms within them.

I could hear no animals in this jungle. There was only the sound of my own heart in my chest and the breath in my lungs, both of which were just illusion, something to make me frightened and hyper aware of the silence of the jungle. You don't need to breath in your thoughts, and your heart doesn't beat inside a chest that isn't real.

"You are becoming sloppy, my host," a voice called to me. It was muted from the density of the tree and foliage around me.

I sighed, turning to face the athletic, beautiful form of the fallen angel, Lasciel.

She stood before me in a form like the one she always chooses. Tall, athletic, and curvy, dressed in a long white tunic that goes down to the middle of her thigh, belted with a cord of silver silk rope. She had a lovely, almost radiantly beautiful face. Her hair was different this time, though, a dark shade of brown that nearly became black. It made her pale features glow in contrast.

It reminded me far too much of Lilith, and the effect that she might have otherwise had on me was suddenly gone.

I folded my arms, glaring at her, though I knew she did nothing to deserve it. I was just pissed that she was right. "I hardly think it's sloppy to be disorientated from an explosion nearly killing me."

She interlocked her fingers together in a stance of relaxation. "Perhaps," she replied, "but I do think it sloppy that you would charge at one of the Red Court as you did." She tilted her head at me, studying. "You were angry. But your anger does not usually make you stupid."

I felt my shoulders slump. "I don't know. I just had to…" I shook my head. "Wait, I don't have to explain myself to you. Look. we're here now, stupid mistake or not. I'm going to make this asshole mine. Either get out of the way, or help."

She nodded, not at all perturbed by me shutting her down. "I will of course help in whatever way that I am able, my host." Then her face became a bit more grave. "But if I might share my opinion, your arrogance is beginning to outweigh your skill. Tread lightly, my host. Not many creatures have had the opportunity to do to you what this creature has. This will either embolden your resolve for more power, or shatter your ego."

I just stared at her, absorbing. Then I said, "Noted. Now, suggestions?"

Lasciel folded her hands in front of her stomach, moving to come stand next to me. "You have never had to withstand the true test of wills that is invading the mind of another before. If you are not careful, inexperience and inattentiveness will be the death of the both of us."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, I get that part, I don't need a lecture." I began to scan around the jungle, searching for anything that might give away where my quarry is.

Lasciel looked at me with a very serious expression. "Caution, my host. This is the vampire's mind, not yours. Invading their mental landscape was perhaps one of the few things you could do to save yourself from death, but it has the advantage of territory."

I nodded slowly, my eye darting between shifting foliage. "Homefield advantage."

"Precisely. However, not all is without hope. The goal, for our purposes, is quite simple."

"Find it and kill it."

I saw the fallen angel nod in the corner of my vision. "Indeed. Doing so will kill everything that its mind is, destroy what it knows; every memory, learned skill, and instinct. But the danger goes both ways."

I grimaced to myself. "Yeah, that figures. So kill the vamp without getting killed myself. Sounds like Tuesday."

I felt the demon shadow's hand come to rest on my shoulder, and I nearly jumped like a frightened cat. I turned to glare at her. She gave no acknowledgement of startling me, simply saying, "In the end, this is a battle of the mind, not will or might. Be smarter than it." And then she was gone. No fan fair, she simply disappeared.

I watched the spot where she had been then grumbled to myself. "Couldn't even stay to help…"

I shook my head. Right. No time like the present.

Time to hunt some vampires. Wizard style.

I began to walk. I walked for what felt like forever and in what felt like circles. All the while, something in the back of my head screamed at me that something, everything, was wrong. The blood moon still hung in the sky, deep and foreboding, an omen of old of the coming of death.

When something finally happened, it happened fast and I was only barely ready for it.

There was the gentle shift of brush from somewhere behind me, the thick and humid air of the jungle sticking to the raised hairs of my neck. Then something heavy and strong pounced on me, throwing me bodily to the ground, and a split second later I felt sharp teeth sink deep into the back of my neck.

It took more will than I would like to talk about to avoid giving into my brainstem fear that pulsed through me in that very second, but I found the courage and reached a hand up before I had even finished falling to grab at the muzzle of the thing before it could shake its head and snap my neck.

I forced my will down my hand and snarled out a word, the scent of melting flesh wafting into my nose as I heated the contact between my hand and the muzzle.

There was a feline yelp as the weight pushed off of me. It was enough for me to roll forward and onto my feet, spinning quickly to face the creature.

The thing that pounced on me wasn't quite a jaguar, but looked like it could be the deformed second cousin of one. It had the same lean and swift cat body, but the spotted fur that should have been there was absent. Instead, it had a thick black hide that had the barest layer of furs, more single strands that poked out a quarter inch than an actual pelt. And where I thought I had grabbed a muzzle was actually a more flat faced combination between a cat and a bat. It had the same stubby nose as the true form of the creature I was fighting, but slightly longer and with more fangs along its length. Its joints were reversed, giving the thing a sickly gait to it as it began to circle around me, snarling viciously. Right on its face was a patch of distorted and off-colored hide in the shape of my hand.

It snarled at me and charged again, leaping high into the air.

For the briefest moment, my mind blanked on what it was I should do to retaliate. But then that feeling that you only get in a dream came over me; a feeling that rushing through your metaphysical body and tells you that you are in a dream and that you need only wish it for it to be true. A sense of absolute freedom and control, but lesser somehow. I wasn't exactly in my own head, so that part made sense to me.

So I simply let myself act, and my imagination gave me something that I could never do if I were awake.

I moved too slow for the pounce to miss me entirely, and I felt claws, longer and sharper than any real jaguar's, brush past my cheek. I brought a hand close and hissed out, "Pisk av ild!"

Fire blossomed in my hand and filled the space between my palm and the thing's body. I stumbled back but turned with the blow, facing the creature as it landed and spun around.

There was a new mark on its side, a long, thin line of similarly distorted flesh to the print on its face. It hissed and snarled at me in pain and began to pace a circle around me.

I chanced a brief look at my right hand and saw that there was thin cords of fire that extended from my fingertips and down, winding together to form a thicker strand. The shape, hot and bright, hung limply in front of me like a whip (No, exactly a whip). Despite the heat, I felt no pain in my hand or fingers, though there were muscles in my arm, shoulder, and neck that convulsed at the sensation of the heat.

A whip of fire. Nice. Wouldn't in any way be able to actually do this if I tried, but within the mind the same rules as reality don't apply.

I planted my feet, turning as the creature continued to circle me. I flicked the whip at it mockingly. "Come on, ugly. Don't wanna dance anymore?"

It hissed something at me, a high and thready sound that tickled at the base of my neck. Most people would have been startled by such a noise. Me? I just smirked at it. I heard my heart pounding in my ears.

It pounced again, but this time I was ready for it.

I ducked low, letting it begin to sail over my head. Then I lashed my whip out at it and flicked, wrapping it around the thing's leg.

I jerked as it landed beyond me, and saw as it fell low to the ground, its feet taken out from under it. Then I moved against it, exerting my will to extend the tongue of the whip even longer. Then I set to hogtying it.

Fire licked and grew at the limbs of of the beast, and it hissed and snarled at me in pain and fear. It struggled, wriggling hard and erratically to run and get away. I held firm, pushing my will against the vampire's, and felt as the physical strength of the beast weakened and wavered as I willed it to be still.

Eventually, I had the thing on it's back with all four limbs tied and burning in my whip.

I willed and jerked my hand, letting the end of the whip connected to my hand detach from me. Then with a thought I brought my dagger into existence, and brought it to bear against the thing's throat.

I leaned in close and snarled at it. "Hope you got a mouthful, asshat."

Then made to draw the blade across the throat.

There was a shift, a wind against my senses, and suddenly, the creature was no longer beneath me.

I blinked. I found myself still kneeling in the exact position where I had been. I got up and looked around. I was still in the jungle, though not the open space where I had run into the vampire.

My brow furrowed. What the hell? What had just happened?

I felt a presence next to me, and I nearly jumped and shouted a word at it. I turned to see that it was just Lasciel.

"Be careful," I told her, scowling. "Coulda just turned you to glass."

She gave me a deadpanned look. "Need I remind you that none of this is entirely real? The only one's under threat of dying are you and your combatant. Nothing you could do to me here would matter, in the end."

My scowl deepened. "You here for a reason?"

She bowed her head. "Merely to advise and counsel you in your time of need. The vampire became clever in their last moments, performing something of a mental hat trick."

"What?"

"A mental flexing of the landscape and relative time," she told me in that tone of voice one uses for particularly slow children. "It is as I just told you, my host. Anything you can do here, to the time and space of the vampire's mind, is temporary at best. With the right training, all your efforts to unmake them can be undone. In this instance, your traversal through the landscape was undone, and we are reverted back to the point and relative time as when we first entered their mindscape."

I blinked, slowly absorbing what that. "So… It, what? Set back time?"

Lasciel smiled at me, and it was a small, beautiful smile that would have filled me with warmth and joy to see had it come from anyone else. "Time is certainly relative, Michael. For instance, it has been some considerable minutes within the mind of the vampire, but some few seconds outside in the rest of the world."

I nodded. "Like two streams flowing next to each other at two different speeds."

"A vast oversimplification, but not an incorrect one." Lasciel smiled. "You begin to learn, my host."

I waved a dismissive hand. "You can save your condescendence for later. So the vampire basically set the reset button on the fight?"

Lasciel bowed her head. "Again, simple but not wrong."

I scowled. "And they can do this whenever they want?"

"Most probably."

I growled in anger. "Well, great. The minute something goes wrong in the fight, they can just start over."

The demon rose a hand in a conciliatory gesture. "Point of reason; this 'reset', as you call it, affects much of everything within the landscape. If you are reset to the point where we began, it is very likely that the vampire does not have the mental training to resist the effect as well."

"So… It can force us back to the corners for round two, but it still keeps the damage?"

Lasciel nodded.

"So, I just need to wear it down." I sighed. "Great. And this is the vampire's head. It still has home field advantage. It learns where I start from, and it can race here and get the drop on me before I can even react."

"But the same is also true from the other end. And," she gave me a very intent look, "this is the mind of the vampire. If you are able to strip the illusion of the jungle away and find the so-called inner workings of the mind, you can do catastrophic damage to it. And that very much stays after the," she raised her fingers in air quotes, "'reset.'"

Start pulling up roots? I can do that.

I leaned against a tree nearby, thinking, when something akin to a bolt of lightning shoots up my side where I rested my torso against the bark.

That got my attention.

I reached a hand forward, extending my senses to the tree.

When my mind touched against the tree, if felt something flash against my thoughts, hot and fast, the sensation of thirst deep in the back of my throat, the euphoria of blood against my tongue and lips, the pride at straddling down that cowardly wizard and drinking him dry.

I jerked and took a step back. My mind raced as the phantom thoughts and feelings receded from my mind.

Memory. That had been a memory of the vampire itself. A new one too, the one containing it riding me down and drinking at my throat. The memory was in the tree.

A smile spread across my face. "Pulling up roots, indeed."

I planted my palm against the bark, reached out my mind and my will, and lit the tree on fire.

A deep, resonating screech sounded from everywhere at once, emanating from the trees and the brush and the sky. I almost had to cover my ears to block out the noise, but I had kept my hand firm on the tree, sending more of my searing will into the memory.

The bark of the tree literally burst into flames, though none of the heat actually hurt me. It was my fire, and this was a mental conjuration. But there was something as I pushed myself harder and harder against the memory. Some kind of rubber band barrier that kept trying to bounce me back every time I tried to push forward.

I snarled, thrust my other hand at the tree, and redoubled my efforts. The fire slowly withered, changing color around me and within me, taking on a blue hue. The licks of flame began to take a different shape, molding and forming into harder lines, and before I knew it, lightning poured out of me in quantities large enough to be its own power grid.

That screech grew louder and louder and did not let up in the slightest. I started to feel something hot trickle down my ears and the sides of my head.

I didn't let up either. I forced my will upon the fundamental moorings of the memory, and felt the rubber band trying to push me back give way.

Then it snapped, and the memory was consumed and devoured in a storm of thunder and lightning.

I smiled viciously to myself. I felt the attention of Lasciel on me, something hot and excited.

I extended my will farther into the memory, following the roots down as I scorched and left nothing behind. The lightning traveled with me, through me, and beyond me, a piece of that storm I called down raging through both me and the vampire. And like before, all I could do was direct it. So I pointed it right at the threads of interconnected memory, the roots that brushed against one another, and let the storm dance.

Above me, the blood moon faded from sight as storm clouds rolled in.

In the end, I left nothing behind.

A/N: I love writing a character on a power trip. It's just way too much fun.

I think that says something about me. Probably nothing good.

Eh.

I always regret taking so long to write another chapter, but such is the way of it.

If you have any thoughts, questions, concerns, or comments, you know where to put them; in that big ol' box at the bottom of the screen. Any review you leave is appreciated.

And as always,

Thanks For Reading!

~ThatBlueScreenGuy