A/N: I told you guys I'm not done LOL it does warm my heart everytime I read an email of someone favoriting/following/reviewing though

For the record, I am FLYING through this due to the mild obsession I have with writing Lurya scenes...
-shrug-

But here I am! I promise I'm not going anywhere.
Not even for an original series that could stand a sliver of a chance at making me real money -awkward/nervous laugh-

xoxo
Kuraki-chan

Part III to Rise
Kuraki-chan

01: I'm a Terrible Liar.

"Zarya! Zarya, wake up! Please!"

There had been nothingness. A complete void. No trip to Hell, no sarcastic remarks from Lucifer; had she passed out? No, she definitely stopped breathing. She felt her own body give up and stop. As Zarya's eyes pried open slowly, the beaming sunlight made her recoil. She felt the ground on her back and cool hands on her face. After some effort, her eyes finally opened and met the black honey eyes of Katia. There was deep concern on the dhampir's face. Katia helped her sit up against the car she was in the accident in, allowing Zarya to look around a little better. A lot of things had been destroyed - cars crashed, trees fallen, power lines down.

"What the hell happened?" She groaned. Her head was pounding and the sunlight was hurting her eyes. "Where- where's Sam and Dean? Why can I see you?"

"I'm alive, Zarya," Katia told her slowly. "The Other Side collapsed, but some of us got saved beforehand. You… you didn't make it to Sam and Dean. Rowena did the spell to break the Mark of Cain."

Zarya's head lolled over so she could look at her arm. The Mark was indeed no longer scorched into her flesh. "That's a good thing then, right?"

"Not exactly… when the mirrored Mark was forcibly ripped from you, it had already latched onto your cells, Zarya… it was burrowed deep in you. So when the spell ripped it out, it caused too much trauma to your body…"

Her eyes widened regardless of the ache from the light. Her lips began to tremble. "Does that mean that I… am I dead? I-I don't remember seeing Lucifer… I always remember that son of a bitch before he kicks me back up here. I can't be dead!"

Pity and sorrow filled Katia's countenance. "You didn't make it to Hell this time when you died this time because Lucifer wasn't there… Damon had made a deal with him because he knew something was going to go wrong with the spell to bring some of us back from the Other Side. Him and Nova… they had to die and get over there too. So he asked that Lucifer bring Nova back in case it went wrong. You died, Zarya." Her soft voice broke a little. "And the dhampir gene in your blood is what brought you back this time."

Zarya was frozen solid where she sat. She could barely process the information. Her breathing started to become erratic as it all came together. "I can't… I can't be a dhampir!" She argued. "I'm a hunter! I can't have fangs of any kind!"

"I'm sorry, Zarya, but you don't have a choice anymore unless you want to die and stay dead this time because that's exactly what will happen if you don't feed in the next hour. You're not the only one suffering loss right now. The Darkness was released when the Mark was broken so it's up to you if you want to keep fighting and saving people. The world is a better place with you in it whether you have fangs or not, Zarya."

"I have to feed on someone or I'll die for good this time?"

She nodded. "It's a part of our breed - human blood seals the transition because that is what your nourishment is from here on out. As a dhampir, though, you can easily sustain yourself with human food still. But you do still need human blood as least mildly regularly. You are both now, Z - still human, but with vamp on the side. No matter what happens, I'm here for you. I will help you through this. As it stands… we're the only dhampirs left to my knowledge. Remiel will seek us out even harder now."

A dangerous idea began to form in Zarya's brain. "So I… I could still 'technically' be human? People will think I am if I don't let them know or show them what I really am?"

Katia cringed slightly. "I mean, I suppose, sure. Unless one knows details of dhampirs they wouldn't be able to see a difference easily. You would just have to keep your emotions deeply in check and not display your extra power. Or feed in front of anyone. Vampires blend in like it's their job." She thought about for a moment before a chastising look appeared on her face. "You can't lie to Sam and Dean, Zarya. They're your hunter family; your friends. They deserve to know."

"All it will do is push them away. They won't take it well, believe me. They don't have to know and believe me when I say they won't notice. Especially not if we're focused on this Darkness."

Katia shook her head and sighed. "I don't agree with your decision to that but that is exactly it - your decision. So does that mean it is also your decision to complete transition?"

Zarya bit her lip, finally realizing how dry her throat actually felt. Begrudgingly, she nodded. Katia helped her to her feet and steadied her so they could walk towards the town. It was astounding how destroyed the town looked. Katia told her that was what happened when the Darkness was released and it will only get worse. Unfortunately, there were no people around. And the ones they did find were either dead or unconscious with black veins spread across their bodies. They looked like there had been a giant mob and they just killed each other.

What sounded like a shotgun cocked behind them suddenly. "Show me your necks!" A man demanded.

Zarya felt her revolver somehow still in her belt loop. She quickly (and realized it was even a second faster than normal already) whirled around and whipped out the gun in defense. The man had messy brown hair, light brown eyes, some scruff on his face, and glasses on his nose. His grip on his shotgun wavered as shock crossed his face. "Z-Zarya…?"

"Who the fuck is asking with a shotgun in my direction?"

Part of him wanted to lower his gun, especially after seeing the greener-than-blue eyes and revolver, but all the revolver and blood on her clothes told him was that she was no better than her mother. "You're one of them. Just like your damn mother."

"Don't you dare speak ill of my mother."

"I can say what I want about her considering Siya was my sister." Zarya and Katia's eyes widened just then. "And she would still be alive if she never became a damn hunter!"

"She didn't die because she was a hunter, Ryder!" Zarya argued, remembering the man's name from her research. "She died because she was a Vasile. Katherine Pierce ran our car off the fucking road."

"And it never would have happened if she didn't get into hunting to begin with! The moment she stepped foot into the world of those monsters was the moment she opened herself up to be found out and killed. You're no better than her - covered in blood with a revolver in your hands. I wonder how many kills you already have under your belt."

"Lost count. Care to make it one more?"

"Zarya," Katia warned. "You are coming to a crossroad I'm not certain you want to be at. Let's go find Sam and Dean and regroup."

Ryder laughed mockingly. "Oh, that's rich. Hunting with Winchesters. You really are your mother's daughter. You're gonna end up in Hell with her too."

Zarya could feel her blood running cold as the rage settled in. She began to lose all sense of morals. Suddenly she could see Ryder's carotid thumping quickly with anger and fear in his neck. The sound of the blood pumping through found its way to her ears. And this is exactly how it starts, the rational part of her realized. Her body moved on its own with barely any thought. She uncocked her revolver, slipping it back into her belt, and it was downhill from there. Her heart sped up, gums aching as her natural, human fangs sharpened and grew. Her eyes that once turned magenta with her power bled into a bloody, crimson red with dark veins extending beneath. Horror filled Ryder's face immediately. He dropped his shotgun and it went off, just missing Katia who didn't flinch in the slightest. Zarya needed to figure things out for herself as best as she could.

Ryder turned to run but in a split second Zarya had him by the throat. "You shouldn't have ran your mouth about my mom," she hissed venomously. "Today I woke up from dying to turn into a fucking dhampir."

Before Ryder could even get out one more breath under her grip she had torn into his jugular. He struggled for maybe a minute until he lost so much blood everything was going black and fuzzy. Katia could hear his heart slowing dangerously. "If you continue you will kill him, Zarya," she warned the new dhampir. "The choice is yours."

She heard Katia, sure, but she didn't care. Feeding relentlessly on Ryder was soothing her rage and hunger. Only once his heart stopped and he therefore stopped producing blood did she let him fall to the ground. Zarya then stood over his corpse with blood dripping down her chin, eyes still blazing crimson and fangs visible. She could actually feel half of her blood cells and DNA having turned into that of a vampire's with the other half still human. Slowly, the veins vanished, her fangs receded but were still slightly larger than what they used to be, and her eyes returned to normal. All that remained was the warm blood still dripping off of her chin. She stared down at Ryder's body with a partly blank yet partly mortified expression.

"Five minutes into meeting your mother's brother and you end his life," Katia commented rather boredly with a small shrug. "I guess that's one way to complete transition."

Zarya's head ducked down, the indigo tinted locks covering her face. She felt immediate regret. Maybe she shouldn't have agreed to complete transition. "Now Sam and Dean really can't know." Her voice was low and shaken. "They'll never look at me the same again…"

Katia approached her and gently put a cool hand on her shoulder. "It stays between you and me. But they will pass through this town eventually to investigate. Ryder's body is clearly a vampire attack and therefore out of place. You need to go get cleaned up; I'll get rid of the body."

"Katia?"

"Hm?" The elder and resurrected dhampir looked to her before grabbing Ryder's body. There was something fearful in the girl's greener-than-blue eyes.

"What can kill a dhampir…?"

She stiffened slightly. "Well… I once thought decapitation, but that's actually how Claudia died and turned. Whatever spell was done last time worked. I imagine Remiel has the power to do it; maybe all of the archangels. I don't believe a regular angel has the power to smite us and keep us dead. I have heard a rumor that I've been chasing for some years of a weapon referred to as the Dhampir Sword. If it is real then that through the heart should do it. But Sam and Dean, nor any other human hunters, have the means to kill us."

Zarya nodded solemnly and silently before walking away to clean the blood off of herself. Katia watched her walk away with a sense of empathy. She couldn't say she was terribly surprised that Zarya had lashed out and killed Ryder the way she did. Even she remembered her first human kill. None of them were without bloodshed or a body count. She, with her tiny frame, hoisted Ryder's body over her shoulder and vanished off into some woods. Zarya found an empty house already ransacked and left empty and destroyed. She shut the door to the bathroom behind her and began washing the blood from her hands and face. It all pooled into the sink with the water. She scrubbed and she scrubbed but she just didn't feel like she was clean. When she looked up to see her reflection, she actually jumped back a little.

She could see the differences in her features clearly. Her sweetly rounded face had become more defined. Not quite as much as Nova's was or most other Vasiles, but it was no longer innocently human. The blue hue in her eyes was still there but almost swallowed by the green. She was at least a shade paler. Even her fangs poked out more than usual. They could still extend, but the normal shape of her teeth had changed. Behind her there was a full length mirror where she could see that her curves had become more defined; her breasts at least a size or two larger. She could still pass for human, sure, but a supernaturally beautiful one. She was no longer so plain looking. Would Sam and Dean be able to notice…?

The longer she stared at her reflection, the deeper her heart began to ache. Tears welled in her eyes until they slipped down her cheeks in streaks of red. She gasped in a panic. Was something wrong with her? Why were her tears bloody? She reached quickly for a towel to wipe her face but the tears wouldn't stop pouring down her face, cascading down in red. With her frantic movements she slipped on something on the floor, bringing her to her knees where she sobbed bloody tears in pain, anger, and confusion. The door opened suddenly, causing her to jump backwards into a corner.

Katia looked down at her with a deep sense of empathy. She knelt down slowly in front of Zarya, taking the towel, and wiping the bloody tears from her face. "Dhampirs cry blood," she explained softly.

"So I can't even let Sam and Dean see me cry ever again?" Zarya's voice broke. "I can't let myself get too mad or I might break something I shouldn't be able to, I can't be sad if I'm going to cry blood, I literally have to choke it all down and pretend everything is fine…"

"Or you could tell them what happened."

She shook her head. "No, I can't. I… I can't. They'd never look at me the same… and they might even blame themselves because it was ripping the Mark of Cain out of me that caused me to die. They don't need that."

"You can't just lie to them, Zarya. And you will snap eventually by bottling everything up. They will find out eventually. And I'm sure they will be more mad or upset that you felt that you couldn't be honest with them. They're your family."

"And we have too much else to deal with like this Darkness bullshit. They need me as me. Not a dhampir. I'm not giving them one more thing to worry about. They got rid of the Mark of Cain - I call that a success. Now it's just whatever this Darkness is. If they find out about my being a dhampir…" She shook her head.

Katia sighed before standing and offering Zarya her hand. "Very well, Zarya. That is your decision. Then we should be on our way to finding them."

"How the hell are we gonna get out of here with Jenna and the baby?" Sam asked when they realized the hospital was surrounded by infected people trying to force their way in. They wanted to find a way to save them, but it was seeming impossible at least in that moment.

Dean started to look around for some kind of exit when gunshots rang one after another outside. It took the attention of the infected immediately. His eyes widened when he got a good listen at the sound. "I'd know those shots anywhere," he half smiled. One by one the infected fell to the ground with gunshot wounds in their chests but they still couldn't see who was firing the shots.

Realization struck Sam, but Jenna was even more confused. "Do you really think it's her…?"

The ground shook suddenly and a few of the infected were impaled on roots that had launched through the ground. More bullets went flying. The crowd had lessened so greatly that the three could finally see who was clearing the area. Back to back Zarya and Katia stood. Katia's eyes were bright pink, hands held up to control her magic. Zarya had a clip of bullets strapped to each of her thighs to reload her revolver as quickly as she possibly could each time she began running low. The two were practically in sync taking out the hoard of infected. Jenna stared with her mouth agape while the brothers could not have been more relieved.

"Who the hell are they?" Jenna finally found her words.

"The one with the gun is our family," Dean answered immediately. "Best God damn shot we've seen in a long time. And the other…"

"She's technically Clarke's family," Sam half answered. "And there's way too much to worry about explaining about that. Just know that they're on our team. You can trust them."

Once all of the infected were dead on the ground by either bullet or magic root, the hospital doors burst open. The two women turned their attention that way, but immediately stood down when they saw Sam and Dean rushing forward. Zarya quickly reloaded her revolver once more before forcing a smile for the brothers. Nothing happened, she reminded herself. You didn't die. You're still entirely human.

"Where the hell did you two come from?" Dean exclaimed with a bright smile when he met Zarya's eye. "I thought you were… y'know…" He referred to Katia and her being dead and on the Other Side.

She offered a half smile. "The Other Side collapsed. Thanks to some of the witches of Mystic Falls and one hairbrained plan from Damon, some of us were able to escape."

"I was already on my way," Zarya added. "Then the Mark of Cain got zapped from my arm which I take it released the Darkness or whatever. I'd been shooting my way through these bastards when Katia showed up and plowed through some with her magic."

"Earth magic," the dark eyed dhampir explained briefly. "Story for another time in which there actually is time. So, what's the plan?"

"Well, Sammy here is trying to stay behind and find a cure for these people."

Sam sighed. "There is always a cure. You just have to want to find it. Get Jenna to the car. Get her and the baby somewhere safe."

"Baby?!" Zarya exclaimed with widened eyes in partial horror.

Jenna stepped forward from behind the brothers then with the infant in her arms. They explained how the child had been born just before everyone became infected and insane, including the child's father. The mother had died giving birth. While they were talking, Zarya's ears picked up on someone sneaking closer to them from a distance. She didn't even register that only Katia might have been the other one to hear before she whipped out her revolver and shot the man down. He was still a good ten or so feet away. Dean commended her on an amazing shot while Sam chastised about how they needed to save the people. Katia gave her a look that neither brother picked up on, knowing it had been Zarya's heightened hearing to alert her of the threat. After some arguing, Sam was left behind at the hospital in an effort to find some sort of cure. Dean got right into the driver's seat of the Impala with Zarya beside him, and Katia and Jenna in the back with the baby named Amara. For the quickest second, being back in that car let Zarya forget what had happened to her.

They just had to get Jenna and Amara to Jenna's grandmother's house and then they could return to help Sam. About halfway there, Amara started to cry. Jenna tried to soothe her, but Zarya could tell by the cry and smell that the baby needed to be changed. She quietly told Dean to pull into a nearby gas station, then offered to take the baby for a few minutes when Jenna admitted to having no idea what she was doing. Hesitantly she handed the baby to Zarya when they pulled up to a pump. She got out of the car and went straight for the bathroom, thankful that there was actually a changing station and it even had diapers. She hummed a soft lullaby as she changed the baby which seemed to soothe the child as much as it did Zarya.

"Zare's great with kids," Dean told the women in the backseat with a small smile, "even if she doesn't care for it. It was only a hallucination put over us by a djinn, but it felt real enough; we were on this case involving a baby - a shifter baby." He chuckled lightly at the memory. "I know it wasn't just the hallucination that made her so strangely… maternal."

"She was made godmother of Nick's daughter, wasn't she?" asked Katia. "Maybe that's why she's good with children but tries to avoid them."

Zarya emerged from the bathroom with Amara being rocked in her arms. They could all hear her singing the infant a lullaby as Amara's eyes began to flutter closed.

"Samia dostia
Ari aditida
Tori adito madora
Estia morita
Nari amitia
Sori arito asora
Semari aisi isola matola
Soribia doche irora amita
Samaria dose ifia mio lora fia sia adora…"

Carefully, as to not wake the baby, Zarya slipped Amara back into Jenna's arms before getting back in the front seat. Jenna just stared at the ravenette with wide eyes. "What were you singing to her?" Dean asked quietly as they began driving again.

She shrugged, her gaze fixed out the window. "It's not a real language. Just something from an old show I used to watch that I would sing to my goddaughter to get her to sleep. I never thought I'd sing it again after she died…"