She really hadn't had to think twice.

Vengeance is back.

Finn had sat on the other side of the glass from her, his face beat to hell, and from what he'd said, Saoirse wasn't in good shape either. She knew the world had been going to hell. Someone had been stupid enough to try to start a fight with her in the exercise yard and if she hadn't had the reflexes to grab the barbel and bash the large woman's face it she might have been another penitentiary statistic.

Get back from the fucking glass. Now.

He'd barely had time to move and she was through it. A person would have thought that a City-State Pen might have the sense to use plexiglass with someone like her inside. A couple of elbows to the guards' faces and she grabbed Finn by the back of his shirt and pulled him out the window. She felt bad, because Vallen had always been fair to her, and she felt awful for how her face was going to look after that, but this was kind of a literal life or death matter.

Thankfully she managed to land them with the impact taking her between Finn and the pavement.

She wasn't going to lie and say it didn't hurt. If she didn't have Slayer healing that might have actually sucked.

What came next was worse, though. She'd never met Vengeance face to face. She'd heard the stories. Little Miss Perfect Blonde never shut up about blah blah blah I had to send my boyfriend to the Tower or Red's endless nannering about how she just didn't know what he was like, because only Saoirse was ever an expert on anything when it came to Anders and she was more than willing to tell you about it.

Kahrin had never taken quite the ass beating like she had in that old convent, except that time when Anora had tried to gut her like a fish. What was it with Anders and damned churches and holy buildings?

After he'd knocked her through a few walls and roundly beat the shit out of her everything began to be a blur. Her head rang and she saw Finn shake as he tried to unload the tranquilizer gun into him, and while he was getting better in a pinch, he kinda miffed on the aim, then he was tossed casually aside.

Kahrin felt her head hit the bricks, and she dazed for a few minutes. She hardly had enough sense to pull the syringe from her pocket and ram it into her hip while Anders was distracted by climbing over the pile of rubble.

"You will not stop me from this."

Finn scrambled away, bleeding from the ear a bit. She was proud of the guy. Back in Ferelden the guy would have fainted dead away watching her stake a vamp, and here he was not even flinching from his own blood. All grown up and bustin' gals outta jail and getting his hands dirty.

While she was busy being proud she took a boot to the gut. Why in the world Vamps were so fond of god damned combat boots she didn't know. They didn't need them to do damage to a spleen. She caught Anders' leg and spun around. They traded a few blows, hers slower than she liked. When Vengeance took over he was faster than even her almost premonitory instincts.

"And here I thought you were down for the count."

"What? And miss all this fun? I was thinking of updating all my wardrobe to go with head wounds."

"You always were just a pretty mouth."

"I'm a lot more than a mouth."

"You've got the thirst, just like me," he swung at her and she blocked most of them, but her vision was blurry, and her tongue was getting thick. She landed a kick to his chest that sent him back a bit but it was weak and she managed to knock herself back.

"I'm nothing like you," she spat. She didn't have this need to avenge anymore. Not after Anders had helped her. The bright blue glow of his eyes narrowed as he lunged at her, and her reflexes were too slow to dodge away in time. But that hadn't been the plan, anyway.

He yanked her up by the hair, exposing her neck. "No, but you will be."

She couldn't make any noise when the teeth sank into her neck. The numbness began in her shoulder and sent sharp, painful tingles through her arm and into her fingers. The blood was pulled from her neck and she could hear him take it in heavy gulps, greedily. It fucking hurt, and all she could manage was a throaty rattle.

Usually her job required her to not get to this point.

Whatever was necessary, though, right?

She didn't know how much it was going to take for it to take effect, and while some part of her hoped it wouldn't really require the whole tank, she silently hoped it would.

Redemption.

She hit the ground like a bag of hammers as Anders staggered back.

"What did you..." He rubbed at his forehead, wincing, his eyes settling back to brown.

Even as she felt her vision tunneling out, she smirked smugly. "One last dance, baby, just for you and me. I did what I had to do. You'd have done the same for me."

Her head hit the concrete hard as he disappeared from her vision.

The ER doors smashed open with authority and Carver grabbed the first person in a white coat that he saw by the shoulder.

"She needs help. Now," he snarled, focusing on keeping his face smooth. He had Kahrin slung carefully in one arm, her pallor pasty despite her normal complexion. He could feel her heartbeat barely holding on, and he'd be damned – again – if he was going to let it stop.

"What's happened?" The startled doctor grabbed a gurney and wheeled it, motioning to a team of nurses, as Carver laid her on it carefully and then stepped back. Her blood was smeared across his sleeve and hand and he shook, staring at it, swallowing hard.

He needed to remember to feed more.

"She's lost a lot of blood." He looked at the doctor as if it should have been obvious. He'd hastily bandaged her neck, but the gauze was soaked through.

"Does she have any allergies? Are you family?" The doctor eyed him suspiciously as he wheeled her into a trauma room.

"I- I don't know. She doesn't have any family here. Just-" he grabbed the handle of the door and tore it off as if it had been attached with double-sided tape. "Just fix her, dammit."

The doctor watched him and narrowed his eyes. "I need you to be straight with me pal. Were you two doing drugs?"

Carver looked at him incredulously for a few moments, and briefly entertained the thought of throwing the ass through the wall. "What? Fuck... No. She's clean. She... shit. No."

The angry looking mark on her hip that was obviously from a needle didn't hold water for his story.

But if they ran a blood test it was not going to come back as anything they'd ever seen.

Lyrium, he was guessing, was not in a standard tox screen.

"If you're lying, she could die." The doctor stood still in front of him, as if refusing to do his damned job until Carver confessed something or another.

If she died, sire or no, Soul-boy was going to have something to answer for.

"I'm not. Fix her." He kicked the door and stomped into the hallway, his hands in his hair.

Kahrin had spent the next few weeks in a coma. The dreams alone had been so trippy she was covered in sweat. She woke up feeling trashed, itching to move, and frankly unamused to find herself restrained to the gurney in a hospital prison ward.

God damn it. Helluva way to thank a girl for saving the world. She didn't expect everyone to make on the floor, but maybe a bit of a "Hey Kahr, we're over it since no one died" might be nice.

She gave a jerk to the restraints, testing the strength. Even in her current weakness she'd be able to manage them. She gave a look to the guard at the door. He was armed.

Outstanding.

That had been weeks ago, and she was more or less back to full form, dustin' and grindin' and keeping just a step or two ahead of the cops. As she sat here on the table in the hole Anders called an apartment, she remembered it. She still had flashbacks of those dreams, and they weren't pleasant. Goddamn slayer dreams, but she was sure the lyrium had done a trick or too on even those.

Redemption. It hurts.

That's what he always told her.

If some ponce was going to go to all the trouble to come world-jumping to take down someone she'd gone to that much trouble to keep alive, then she had a few choice things to say to them. Not too many of them nice.

She didn't know who this Vael guy was, but he was not just going to come swooping in like some Prince of Darkness.

She smacked the palms of her hands down on her vinyl-clad thighs and smirked a lop-sided grin. "Well, then, kittens, if we're finished chatting about it, I'm going to go find this guy and have a nice gentle talk with him." She slid off the table. "And by "gentle" and "talk" I mean "sharp objects" and "not quite veiled threats" really."

Finn grabbed her arm. "I don't think talking to him is going to get any of us anywhere. Not anywhere safe, anyhow."

"We could let Saoirse talk him to death. She's really good at it. Five minutes alone with her and I'm begging for another coma."

Anders smirked, almost fondly. "You just need to spend more time with her."

"I'm sure you spend enough time with her for all of us."

"It's not all like that."

"Oh, of course not. You'd never get all bumpy and grunty with someone you work with."

"Well," Finn said, "short from a suicide mission of one, I suggest we lay out a plan. We'll need to find him, and soon."

"What we need is bait," Kahrin offered, arching her eyebrow. "And you need something edible in this damned fridge, Anders. A girl could faint away around you."

They both looked at her, with slight frowns.

No one ever liked her plans.

What the hell did they bust her out for?