A/N: This chapter may be a bit gorey, so I apologize and warn those of you that don't really like the violence stuff.

Chapter 26

It's Me or Her!

Months ago, I had the naïve thoughts that I could overcome anything. I was independent and quick with my words. I did things my way, not the way others wanted me to. But that had all changed when I met Alec. He'd brought upon me this blasphemy, and I was going to accept it with everything I could so that I didn't appear weak.

But holy hell, goddamn shit! I never suspected a conversion from human to daywalker would be so…so…painful!

Alec didn't release me as I grabbed onto his shirt, bloodying it as I flailed and cried out in agony. It felt like my skin was tightening against my bones, and that my bones were hardening to steal. But I couldn't exactly compare. My five senses burned as if they were being touched with a hot flame.

My mind went blank from all the pain, and the only thing I heard was what sounded like an eerie, obnoxious ringing in my ears. My eyes were watering from the burning.

Something was brushing through my hair, but I could barely comprehend it from the ridiculous amount of hurt I was in.

And then it all stopped.

The burning in my eyes, ears, mouth and nose and skin faded to a dull throb. Tears finished dropping from my eyes, and the noises around me came back once more.

I heard the yelling, and I was wondering how long the conversion had taken.

Someone wiped a finger across my cheek, and I peeled my eyes open to look up into the impatient face of Alec, though deep in his eyes, to my astonishment, I saw worry and concern.

"Are you okay?" he asked. His voice sounded like a million bucks. Whoa, when had that happened to me? I slowly looked around me dazedly, and realized it was as if my vision had multiplied. When I squinted, everything around me magnified, and it was a shocker.

I saw in shock my daywalkers fighting unfamiliar nightwalkers. Where had Jakobi and Renova gone?

And suddenly all my thoughts shattered when a rancid smell overcame my nose. I gagged and my hands went up to cover my face. "What the hell is that?" I demanded.

"Nightwalker blood." Alec said grimly. He stood up suddenly, leaving me on the cold floor.

Cold floor? I looked down at myself and groaned. This always, always seemed to happen! Was it a curse?

A white, bloodied shirt smacked me in the face then, and I quickly yanked it off my head to look at Alec. He was now shirtless, and holy shit! I couldn't tear my eyes away. He shot me an annoyed look.

"I don't think my family can hold off the oncoming army of nightwalkers, so you want to hurry up and get dressed so we all don't die from your lack of speed?" he snapped. I blinked and a small smile spread on my face. He seemed bewildered.

I stood up, surprised when I felt like I could run a million miles, and quickly pulled on his shirt, buttoning it with my newfound vampire speed… this was amazing. The shirt was loose of course, but covered every part that needed to be covered, and ended at my mid-thighs.

I caught blonde hair out of the corner of my eye, and saw Brent slam a nightwalker's face into the wall with the chains. As if sensing he had eyes on him, he looked back and flashed me a huge smile. I felt more tears well into my eyes, but not from physical pain…from heartbreak.

I can't believe I'd ever accused them of anything horrid.

Alec grabbed my wrist then, and yanked me towards him as he turned on his heel. "Come on! I can smell the other nightwalker's coming. Jakobi and that other chick went to go and fetch them. We all need to escape, and now you can keep up with us."

"W-what? I can?" I stuttered in surprise and nearly tripped over my own feet as he dragged me after him up the basement stairs. Nightwalker's were being slaughtered from all around us, and I caught a glimpse of Claude and Lukas as well.

They were doing awesome.

On the other side of the basement door, light flooded through the house. Furniture was turned violently, and the kitchen table and chairs were broken, including the large window. It appeared the nightwalker's had fled through the house via window.

Alec didn't stop to examine it, and he obviously wasn't going to allow me to hesitate. As we ran through the kitchen and towards the front door, I stepped on small shards of glass, and was astounded that it only caused a dull pinch in the bottom of my feet. The pain wasn't even there.

What other amazing things were I going to find out as being a daywalker?

With a grunt, Alec ripped open the front door, and my breath caught in my throat. At the edge of the driveway, under the dim light of the outdoor house lamp, stood Rylan and Cassidy. Two cars sat patiently next to them, already running, but no headlights on. Of course, if you were a vampire, your vision in the dark increased.

"Hurry up!" Cassy hissed, opening the back door to Alec's car. Alec non-too-gently shoved me into the backseat, but I realized something. As Alec shut the door after me, he gave me one look, and turned his back to the window as the nightwalker's that Jakobi had summoned came bursting forth from the forest around the Darquecaster mansion.

They were going to risk their fucking lives to save me.

I rolled down the window as fast as I could. "Alec! Get the hell in the car! There is no way any of you are-"

"Shut the hell up! This isn't just for you! If we don't kill them, then they'll get loose in the city and kill all the humans!" Cassy barked at me, and then suddenly the cars and the house were surrounded by dark figures.

How many people had Jakobi taken the time to change? The Darquecaster's were outnumbered by far. Alec shot me a glare over his shoulder. "Roll up the window! You need as much protection as you can get! And don't even think about getting out to try fighting! You're a newborn and don't have any control over your power!" he hissed, and then suddenly, him and Cassy disappeared in the first line onslaught of nightwalkers.

With an angry huff and a big burst of letting go of my pride, I rolled the window up and sank back into the seat. None of the nightwalkers seemed interested in me. Instead, their attention was all on the house.

I wearily glanced down and rolled up the loose sleeves of Alec's shirt to survey the leftover bite marks from Jakobi. There were no marks.

What…?

With faint realization, I noticed the only faint scars of fang marks were from where Alec had bitten me. It tingled when I touched it. My eyes widened. Oh. My. God. I was a daywalker. A vampire now! How had that not processed before? My hand automatically went up to my chest. I could feel my heart beating still.

That's because I was still alive… right?

Nightwalker's were the ones that died. Daywalker's remained alive.

Not to mention the only daywalker's I knew and…loved, were out there fighting for their lives and then some. And I wasn't helping. I paused and looked down at myself. I could fight now, couldn't I? Hell, I'd known karate before I'd turned vampire, so my skills would be probably five times better. With an exasperated sigh, I reached for the door handle to rip the door open so I could help fight.

It opened for me.

With a gasp, I looked up with widened eyes. Rylan stood there, looking in at me with his familiar green eyes. Nightwalker's were coming towards us, now realizing I was also a threat.

Like before, with a swift sense of déjà vu, Rylan was helping me do something dangerous. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me out of the car and said, "I knew you wouldn't last as a conformist for long."

I gave him a wry smile and without hesitating, turned to the fifty or so nightwalker's in the nighttime, not including the ones probably currently inside. Just how strong were daywalker's compared to the evil vampires? It seemed Alec and Cassidy were doing a hell of a good job.

"All you need to do is-" Rylan paused one moment and grabbed an incoming nightwalker by the throat and ripped its head apart from its shoulders. I stared in horror at the scene unfolding and the disgusting smell of nightwalker blood. "rip their heads off or, make them bleed until they have nothing left."

He claimed it so calmly that it scared me.

It was startling how serious Rylan was.

Glancing down at my hands, I took a deep breath. "So from here on, they won't hesitate to kill me, will they?" I asked quietly. Rylan didn't have to answer. In fact, he didn't have time to answer.

Five nightwalker's came upon us, snarling, blood dripping from elongated fangs. Their eyes gleamed dangerously like rubies, blood like crimson staining their clothes. The terrible sight of them froze me. Rylan sprang into action, blocking one from reaching out to me with an elbow to its face.

"You can't just stand there." he stated vivaciously, and backhanded the nightwalker so hard that I heard a snap of bones. With a shudder of disgust, I processed that these creatures were going to kill us if we didn't kill them.

It was time to lift my chin up and fight like the daywalker I now was.

And when I did lift my chin, I was tackled from the left by a jaw-snapping beast. With a shocked cry, I grabbed it by the face as it zoomed in on my neck, and pushed it away as far as I could to knee it as hard as I could in the stomach. It barely fazed it, but it hesitated a moment, and with a sharp intake of breath, I grabbed it -his head and twisted and yanked.

Blood splattered over me and I instantly held my breath to ignore the smell and looked away. Out of my peripheral, Rylan sent me a satisfied smile that I'd killed my first nightwalker, and then he returned to fighting.

I shoved the body off of me and quickly sprang to my feet as a couple others approached me. They were flooding in like waves! I honestly wasn't sure if I could handle this.

So, instead of trying to think like a daywalker would, I thought like Ava. I gathered up all the emotions I'd been holding in these past eight months, and let them reign terror.

I grabbed the nearest monster and yanked him towards me, flipping him over my arm and snapping his neck in the process. It seemed so easy to me, but I was sure he wasn't dead yet. Before I could finish him off, something swiped across my cheek, and I felt a cool liquid drip down my jaw.

I lifted a hand up to my cheek in shock and it came back bloody. My eyes shot to the side of me, and one of the nightwalker's was smirking, a large knife in his hand. I obviously underestimated them.

Lesson one: never turn your back on a nightwalker. But duh, wasn't this a "no, really Sherlock?" moment?

I let out an annoyed growl that sound inhuman, and left the unconscious vampire on the ground with a snapped neck as I practically teleported (or what it seemed like anyways) in front of the nightwalker with a knife. He seemed shocked for a moment, and stumbled back a step. I reached my hand out lightning fast and took hold of his neck.

Did I mention the newborn Nightwalker's were stupid?

Of course, I'd just now found that out.

He swiped at me again with the knife, and I barely dodged it by grabbing onto his wrist with my other hand. I swept my leg out and tripped him onto his back, and with a wince, I twisted his arm until I heard it snap. He let out an agonized cry.

That was a huge mistake. His cry was like a signal, because half the beasts surrounding us that had been occupied with the other daywalker's, turned to glance warily at us. When they saw me, my eyes widened.

"Shit."

I ripped the knife out of the broken arm of the nightwalker and stabbed it into him three times before nearly tripping back towards the car as the other evil vampires came stalking towards me.

Alec appeared beside me, covered in blood. His chest was marred with a few wounds here and there, but they were slowly healing before my eyes, and the bloodthirsty ones of the nightwalker's.

"I can't believe I'm seeing you holding a knife and kicking ass." he commented, kicking the head in of a nightwalker brutally. I reached forward and staked the knife deep into one of their chests. Ripping the knife back out, I sent him a sidelong smirk.

"I can't believe you came back to save me."

He took out another, much more smoothly. "Yeah, well, I figured we'd have to make up for lying."

"I think I forgave you guys awhile ago." I muttered. He heard, but didn't say anything. He grabbed a nightwalker and shoved his fist through his stomach, and then heaved him back into the crowd of his kin. "And that was nasty."

Alec only smiled genuinely. "Would you rather that happen to you? They're slower than us, and maybe dumber, but they can be vicious."

"Come to think of it…" I trailed off to slice my newfound knife across any part of another monster's body, and then finished with a gruff, "where the hell is Jakobi and his sidekick?"

"They disappeared awhile ago." Rylan's voice echoed beside me. I looked over just in time to see him knock out a nightwalker that was reaching for me.

"Disappeared?" I exclaimed angrily. He left us to deal with his dirty work?

Rylan was about to say something else, but there was an piercing scream from the house. With a jolt of comprehension, I recognized the voice to be Cassidy's. The nightwalker's around us froze, and glanced back at the large house probably in shambles on the inside.

"Mom!" Alec gasped breathlessly beside me, and I was shocked to see him fly into action so fast, especially for the woman he had once held a grudge for. How much had I missed while they were gone? Alec disappeared, shoving and ripping his way through the nightwalker's.

Rylan grabbed me around the waist, and I cried out in surprise when he practically cleared the whole driveway of nightwalker's with a single jump.

We rushed in after Alec, fully aware of the monster's of the night coming after us. In the center of the den room, the furniture torn and nightwalker bodies laying everywhere, Cassidy was being held by Jakobi, who had a bruising grip around her throat. Her clothes were torn, and her once gorgeous face had been scratched and marred. Her hair was everywhere, and the look on her face told us she was frightened.

Alec, Claude, Lukas and Brent were surrounding them, fists clenched, jaws set. Rylan remained calm beside me, glancing back warily at the noisy nightwalker's breaking in through the door.

"Come any closer, and I'll kill this bloody bitch." Jakobi threatened. My hands went to my mouth to muffle the gasp. How could he be such a vengeful bastard?

His eyes turned on me suddenly, as if now recognizing I was in the room. His eyes were wild and bright red, and they flickered behind me. "No! Don't go near her! She's mine!" he snarled. I looked behind me and Rylan and all the nightwalker's froze in their steps. We had lowered the numbers by a lot.

Now there only stood at least fifteen or twenty. That wasn't including the nightwalkers across the den room, behind Claude and Lukas. They too, were watching the scene with amused eyes.

"We want to taste her, though, master." One of the braver nightwalker female's purred, taking a step toward me. "I've always wanted to taste newborn daywalker blood."

I unconsciously stepped closer to Alec, and Rylan stepped between me and the female. She hissed and bared her fangs at him, but he only gave a low growl back, showing the tips of his deadly fangs as well. I remembered those fangs quite clearly, too.

Looking back at Jakobi, I saw him watching me with heated eyes. "I can't believe you chose to become one of them." he spat.

I narrowed my eyes and opened my mouth to make a snarky comment, but Alec interrupted me. "She didn't have the choice. I forced her, because otherwise, she wouldn't have made it out of here alive."

"Yes she would have. As one of us." Jakobi motioned to himself and then his kin, and Alec snorted.

"That isn't alive."

Jakobi tightened his grip on Cassy's neck, making her give a weak cry. Claude snarled, and I'd never seen him so terrifyingly angry before. His pupils dilated, making his irises completely black. Before he could dive in for the kill, Brent grabbed onto his arm and kept him back.

Claude didn't take his eyes off of Jakobi, and growled, "What do you want? I'll do anything, just release her!"

Jakobi smiled. No, it wasn't a smile. It was a morbid smirk. He looked at me, and I got a sinking feeling. He couldn't possibly want me now! I'd become a daywalker, I'd foiled his plans!

"Allow us to kill the girl, and I'll release your beloved Cassidy."