Whoa, can't disappoint my readers. O.o; I have readers. Lolzz, omgosh I have readers. –sniffles- I heart readers, 'specially ones that pump me up to write the next chapter. I wasn't about to do it this early (not that 4 days earlier is much of a difference). But chea. You should see me. I have this stupid grin on my face whenever I read reviews. Is that what it's like for everyone? Hmm…

No, you silly goose, I don't own Darkstalkers. (But I do own the plot? Muhuhahaha! I own something! XD?)

Chapter 5

"WHAT! Why didn't you tell me that last night?"

"I'm sorry. I was just so worked up, that I couldn't talk and—"

"I didn't know that he wanted to lose his head that badly…" she said to herself as she pushed from the wall and started a trail back and forth in front of the bed.

"—I couldn't think correctly. Not with what had happened. I really did want to tell you before, but I was so exhausted. And I was so relieved when you came home. Morrigan? Listen, I don't want anyone hurt—" The voice was a couple notches under frantic.

"How could you say that? Lilith, if I let him slide this one time, he's gonna think that it's alright for a second performance." Frustrated. So very frustrated, Morrigan paced around the room, seconds from what looks like, ripping her hair out. She tried to calm herself, but was failing, with closed fists at either side of her.

Lilith had just woken up not too long ago and was sitting on Morrigan's bed watching the woman pace the floor at the foot of the bed. She drew the sheet up past her nose so that only her eyes and unruly hair were showing.

The night before, one of Morrigan's "friends" came over and was a little too friendly.

"A little too friendly. That could be anything with Jedah. What the hell is 'a little too friendly', Lilith?"

And even before she started to explain what happened, the whole situation was drawing itself out in Lilith's head, even down to the part where Morrigan would be thinking about mounting Jedah's head. But seeing and listening to it in person was more than Lilith was bargained for.

The older woman and stopped pacing and took a seat in one of the chairs near the window in the room. She stared out and up, to the clouds that covered the noon high sun, with a sinister grin on her face. Her mind was clear and calm for the moment, ignoring everything in the room.

"Morrigan?" Lilith knew that when she had that look on her face, she was thinking up something dark and disturbing. Not from experience, but from sheer instinct. You don't want to mess with someone who looks like that.

Why would he do something like that, Morrigan wondered. She didn't really want to kill him, not yet. But, damn, she was close.No one touched Lilith without her consent; not long and live. Lilith was more important to the whole plot than some random help that she could possibly find somewhere else. Possibly.

Jedah was good at what he does. Whatever the hell that was.

"Morrigan…?"

Morrigan had been thinking over Jedah's death for some time before Lilith crawled across the bed and placed her two feet on the floor. She stood up slowly, tentatively, and walked over to where Morrigan was seated. She kneeled, tucking the spaghetti strapped silky nightgown (that Morrigan must have put on her last night), under her knees and sat on her legs, looking up at Morrigan's still eyes. From what little light that was coming through the window, it made her emerald eyes seem to glow softly.

Lilith reached out and cautiously touched Morrigan's arm. The sudden touch drew Morrigan back from whichever planet her mind was on. In a quick movement, almost too fast for Lilith's eyes to follow, Morrigan was staring down the girl with her wrist held tightly in Morrigan's hand. Her eyes, even though her head was turned from the window, still had the eerie glow to them. Lilith's heart sped up as she caught the sight of this woman's eyes. But the feeling was overpowered. She winced and whimpered softly as her wrist was grabbed.

Morrigan blinked slowly and her "normal" eyes flooded back, softening into the face that Lilith thought she knew. Just realizing that she held Lilith in her hand she quickly loosened her grip and drew Lilith's wrist close to her mouth. She placed a kiss on the girl's soft skin before letting go. She reached down and cupped Lilith's face in her hands and bent forward, pressing her lips gently on the younger woman's forehead. "I'm sorry. It shouldn't be you who says that." She moved down to Lilith's nose and left a soft kiss there. "I can't even leave you alone anymore, here, by yourself."

"I'm not a child, Morrigan. You can leave me by myself—"

Morrigan tilted Lilith's head slightly so that their eyes met again, "And what if something like this happens again."

"It was an accident. It won't—"

"Lilith. Lilith…" She placed a chaste kiss on the girl's lips. Even though the kiss had stopped their lips were still very close together. Morrigan spoke again as Lilith kept her eyes closed. "I don't care. I'm just that selfish. I don't want anyone but me touching you…"

"But to kill him? Isn't that a bit much."

Morriganhad to work on either speaking softer or keeping thoughts inside of her head.She sighed. "What if he had hurt you?" she said as her right and slid from Lilith's cheek and brushed the small bite mark on the girl's neck. "…more than this?"

"But he didn't."

"Lilith…" She drew back and was staring down at the girl in front of her. "I don't want to go to the studio and worry about your well being. If I can just get rid off the threats, it won't build up so that I'll be neck deep in shit I can't handle."

Lilith understood her reasoning. But killing was something she didn't want and would find a way to get Morrigan to understand that and find some other way of getting back at Jedah. She wasn't dead so why should he die? "I know, but… " Lilith fingered her bite mark, "…I don't know. Just, there has to be another way."

"Why are you standing up for him? He nearly raped you."

"I don't think he did that or would do that…"

"You don't know him well enough to say that," Morrigan had sat back in her chair and stared out the window, glancing back at Lilith.

"But he had that guy with him that kept telling him to stop or not to go any further. I think that he'd intervene if—"

"There was someone else with him?" Lilith had some how forgotten to tell Morrigan that. The older woman turned her full attention back to the girl, "Who?"

"Promise me that you won't kill him…"

"Lilith, you know I can't—"

"Morrigan please. There has to be another way. I'm not going to give you another name to add to your list if there isn't." Lilith got to her knees and sandwiched herself between Morrigan legs, so that she could rest the side of her head on Morrigan's stomach and wrap her arms around her waist.

"So how am I supposed to help you then?" Her hand ran though the girl's hair; smoothing it back. She brushed the bangs out of Lilith's face, leaving her forehead bare. "I need to do something…" Lilith nuzzled Morrigan's stomach, making the older woman smile, "Why are you doing this…? Not that I mind of course."

"I'm trying to distract you." It was kind of sudden, but it might help, Lilith thought, to calm her down.

"It's working… But you have to understand…"

"I do. But right now, all I want from you is to be comforted. I really need that," Lilith held on tightly and buried her face in Morrigan's shirt. "What I don't need is for you to be out there taking people's lives. If you'd get caught and where would that leave me?"

The older woman sighed and ruffled Lilith's hair, "They'd never know it was me."

That made Lilith glance up at the woman's smirking face. She was slightly confused about that. Or was it scared that she was feeling. She had an inkling that Morrigan would do anything to keep her safe. But did that come at the price of someone's life? "Morrigan…"

She smiled and motioned Lilith to her knees before leaving a kiss on her forehead again. Slowly Morrigan got to her feet and walked towards the door. "Get dressed. I'm having Zabel, and those two women you met last night, come over."

That made Lilith's cheeks flush. She'd almost forgot how she ran and nearly bum-rushed the sisters on the other side of the door. They had dragged her inside and tried to calm her down as much as they were able. The crying had been much louder than the sobbing Morrigan walked into.

"How come you were so calm when I was hanging over…" She didn't remember the name of the lady she was clinging to last night and badly tried to remember it. Crying can do that to you at times. If you cry hard enough, long enough, you tend to forget little things like the random person's name that's comforting you. Especially if your crying is louder than their voice.

"Lei-Lei" Morrigan finished for her. She rested in the doorway and looked at Lilith. "I was about to hurt her, for thinking that she made you cry. But the both of them explained that it wasn't them that caused it. So I calmed down… a little."

"What would you do to them if they had made me cry?"

"Did they?"

"No, but…"

"Then it doesn't matter."

"Yes it does," Lilith says as she's sat on her knees, glancing down to the floor.

"Lilith, please… Not now. Later, okay? If you really want to know, then later. Not now." Morrigan sighed and felt bad about keeping things from her. But what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her, right? Morrigan was only looking out for her. Even if keeping her in the dark was making Lilith confused. Besides, she never explained her motives to anyone, not yet anyway.

"Morrigan…"

"Lilith." The older woman sighed and shook her head. "Get dressed. I'll see you down stairs if you come down. Stay up here if you want…" And with that Morrigan left.

This whole situation was different for Morrigan. She never felt this protective over anyone, but herself. So, she didn't know how to handle it, how to truly comfort some one, how to do any of this "true love" business. Was this true love? Morrigan didn't know. It felt like it, tasted like it, looked like it. So why was there this doubt. The older woman closed the door behind her and walked down stairs, leaving Lilith to her own devices.

"I'm just lost, Morrigan. I want you to help me… I just want you to tell me that I'll be okay. I want you to tell me why? Why am I here? Why do you want me? Why don't I know what's going on…?" Lilith was talking to an empty room as she hunched over and curled up into a make shift ball. She sighed deeply and wondered more. Why was she here? And why didn't she know anything about the situation? It was tiring to be the one left out of the inner circle. She hated it and thought that living with Morrigan would change that. But it hasn't, not greatly anyway. "Maybe I'm just being selfish..."

----------

Downstairs, Morrigan was lounging about in the study. Well, it was just sort of a room where you could come for quiet. No one really studied here, maybe except for Lilith.

Lilith… What was Morrigan to do? What she wanted so badly to do was to rip someone's throat out. But Lilith wasn't for that idea.

"I guess.. I'll just have to do it when she's not around, or something…" Morrigan sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She threw her legs up on the coffee table and threw her head back, staring up at the ceiling and the books that stretched along the walls.

Knock-Knock! Ding-Dong..

Morrigan lifted her arm up to look at her watch, before propping herself up and getting to her feet. She exited the room and her eyes caught the stairs. She looked up to see Lilith standing up there, wearing her white and black striped thigh-high socks and pleated white skirt. She wore a black button up short sleeve shirt with a small white tie that matched the skirt. She'd combed down her hair and wore her glasses, no rims, and looked down at the woman at the foot of the stairs with her blood red eyes.

"Nice," Morrigan said.

"Thank you."

Ding-ding-ding Dong!

"You're welcome," she said as she moved towards the front door. "But if you stand up there, Zabel might notice that your panties match your hair and not the rest of the outfit."

Lilith's cheeks flushed with color behind her glasses and she turned heel to go and find a longer skirt.

Morrigan had that classic smirk of her worn across her face as she finished the distance to the door. She sighed and leaned against the frame, counting how many more times Zabel was going to ring the bell.

"Having fun?" she said through the door, loud enough to carry.

"Bloody fun, love," Zabel said, sounding a bit irritated. Hey it was almost twelve thirty in the afternoon and here he was knocking at Morrigan's door while she sat there satisfied with herself. Whereas he could have been in bed a little longer, dreaming of Lei—

"Just open the door please…"

She stepped to one side and opened the door for him. She rested her shoulder on the door frame as he walked pasted her and into the hallway, "Mornin' stranger."

Zabel slowly turned his gaze back to him and glared at her. It was a lazy leer though; not much of a threat. "Ya love doin' this. Don'tcha? Messin' with ma 'ead any chance ya get. Even if that means, wakin' me up before I'm ready." He had started to walk down the hallway and sighed, back hunched and arms swaying slowly in front of him.

"Yea.. You give me the best reactions." She laughed a bit and walked up to him closing the door behind her.

He wore his hair back in a ponytail again today, leaving only a few strands to dangle in front of his face and the deep red-violet tips to spike in the back. Zabel never seemed to go anywhere without his numerous accessories. Only he seemed to wear less of them this afternoon, only a couple of bracelets and necklaces, with various symbols lengths and colors. That's if you counted black, grey, and off white as colors. He even left the spiked ones home, must have been a rough morning. He wore his dark grey cargo-type pants (he liked the pockets) and a long sleeved white shirt that hugged to him. "So 'appy you find me funny, love."

She walked past him and he followed like a good shadow. "Is Lei-Lei…'ere yet?"

Morrigan glanced back at him and raised an eyebrow at him, "Not yet. You're the first one here."

"Lucky for me," his voice was bland as he hunched over and trailed behind Morrigan into the study.

"Heh. Don't worry… They called not too long ago and said they'd be here."

Zabel flopped on the nearest couch in the room, away from the books and fine wood chairs. Just looking at them and the desk made his head hurt. He sighed and rested his head on the arm of the couch, "So d'ya figure out what was wrong with 'er?"

It took a second to realize that he meant Lilith. "Yeah, Jedah stopped by."

That made Zabel sit up, "What'd ya mean?"

"What do you think I meant?"

"Jedah was 'ere with Lilith... By themselves?"

"No, he probably had one of his shape-shifters with him. That's the only thing I could think of when she said that he came with some guy," Morrigan took a seat on one of the chairs facing the couch, and lifted her legs up and on the coffee table. "Since it was a guy, it either had to be Jon or Rikuo," she said this last bit more to herself than him.

"What?"

Morrigan told him, in a calm, or pretty damn near calm, voice. Saying everything from when Jedah came in and forced himself on Lilith to when Lilith woke up and pounced on the sisters.

"So what'cha gonna do to 'im?"

"You know what I want to do to him. He's been stepping over the line for years now. Just pushing me to the edge. I've been holding back though." She got up and paced the room, with Zabel's eyes following her. "I just needed a reason to do it… A really... good one… and he gave me that."

"But?"

"But," she stopped walking and looked over at him, "Lilith's a little squeamish about my whole 'really killing him' thing. She thinks that I'm bluffing to try and scare him, or I'm really gonna do it and thinks I should come up with another way to solve this problem." She rested her back on the closest bookshelf and stared out to the doorway. "Isn't that right, Lilith?"

Zabel blinked and had to turn around to face the doorway, since the couch had its back to it. Slowly Lilith crept into the doorframe, peering in; her eyes flickering from Morrigan's to Zabel's.

"'E coulda messed ya up, Lil."

"But he didn't." Lilith sounded as if she was repeating the same conversation she had up stairs with Morrigan. Just thinking of it made her looked back at the woman who had her back against the books and her arms crossed oh so nonchalantly. Morrigan's face gave away nothing, just the calm grin she wore on her face.

"I know that. But Jedah might've been lucky. Usually he's got no control of his powers and things get outta 'and," Zabel said looking the girl over.

"That's probably why she couldn't remember why or when he and his friend left," the older woman said as she lifted off the books and sat back down, eyeing the girl as she did so. "She'd passed out from his energy and how much he took from hers."

Zabel looked back at Morrigan and looked a bit surprised. "I didn't think of it like that."

"You'd never think like that," she rolled her eyes. "Lilith, show him."

She didn't even hesitate as she walked into the room and close enough that Zabel could see her neck. She tilted her head to the side so that the light hit it perfectly, showing off two neat puncture wounds.

Zabel got to his knees on the couch and leaned forwards, like an interested little kid. "Ooo. He gave you that?" He glanced back at Morrigan, "But he shouldn't be able ta do that. He's not a vam—"

Ding-Dong. Knock-Knock.

"That must be Mei-Ling and Lei-Lei…" Morrigan got to her feet once more and passed by Lilith and Zabel, out into the hallway, towards the front door.

"He's not a what?" Lilith asked, when she thoughtMorrigan was out of earshot.

Zabel shook his head and settled back into the couch, "I'm not sure if Morrigan wants me to tell ya." He shook his head again and leaned his head back so it touched the backside of the couch. "And 'ere I was, about to spill info. Sorry, but if I told you without 'er," he pointed out, towards the door, "'in ere, she'd have my head. Says that I might endanger you with too much information."

Lilith looked solemn and walked in the direction of the desk with piles of books on top of it. She had been reading them a couple days back, but now she just took a seat and rested her head on her arms on top of the desk, where there was space. She gazed at the trees through the window, as the rocked in the gentle wind, "Why won't anyone tell me anything." Her voice was small and distant.

"I'm sorry. Really but—"

"You're afraid of her aren't you?" She waited a moment then shook her head and looked back at him holding her hand up to stop him from talking. "No. Never mind," she sighed. "It's just that I thought I was starting to understand her and this world of hers she brought me into. But after last night…" She turned and faced straight forward, resting her chin on her forearms looking over the books spread across the desk, "After last night, I just feel so lost again. I just want to know what going all. That's all…"

Zabel sat there, not know what to say to console her. He couldn't say that it wasn't anything, especially with that bite mark on her neck. Jedah had come in a blinding wave and caused Morrigan to move up the "explain-everything-to-Lilith" date. Something Morrigan didn't seem ready for. Well that was what this meeting was for, right? To plan and figure out what the next step's going to be. Zabel was just hoping that it would be better than wait and gather information.

The front door closed and the sound of voices traveled down the hallway, getting louder with each word.

Lilith sat almost motionless, eyes dancing from book to book. If she heard the voices coming down the hallway it never showed. And she was usually the one to greet people first. Maybe this new understanding of actually being left in the dark, by a person whom she thought would tell her anything, was suddenly too overwhelming for her. Tell her anything? Maybe she'd just been lying to herself thinking that Morrigan would talk to her about anything other than their relationship. The sad thing was, Lilith thought that she'd have to wait to be attacked again, before Morrigan said anything about the "situation" her, Zabel, Mei-Ling, and Lei-Lei where about to talk about.

Omgosh! I totally tried to fit more things.. Like happenings. But I only got this far. I would type more, but I'm afraid that if I do type more that you'll lose interest and want to go make a peanut butter jelly sammich. Or maybe that peanut butter and banana sandwich. Cause I know that sometimes, if a fanfic is too long, I tend to press pause and do something. But then again, I press pause for everything. I wonder if that's a bad thing. Anywayz, yea.. Things are happening…in the story… oooOoOo. I wonder how's this gonna turn out next… It might seem slow, but it'll speed up? o.o