The sharp, strong smell of blood and decay surround Briony. She's lying on something. Maybe several somethings. It is very very uncomfortable. Which is just as well, since the rest of her body is screaming in comfortableness and there is a deep, yearning ache in her chest.
The moment before she wakes is a dark hole of memory.
There's a part of her that wants to keep lying there, eyes closed, despite the discomfort. There is something that feels almost correct about that, like she's somehow the odd one out and if she only stays still enough the problem will resolve.
But it doesn't.
She opens her eyes, and tries to get upright.
The person lying next to her, nor the person underneath her, help at all. The reason why is pretty obvious after half a look. Their necks being ripped out and nearly all the way decapitated. The other three dead bodies nearby are in similar states.
It's sticky and wet and covered in clumps of... something gorey. But the skin beneath is unbroken and her head is fully attached to the rest of her body.
Given the circumstances, she should probably consider her current state to go with an implicit 'for now'. There's no reason whoever brought her or these bodies here can't come back to finish her off.
...Where is here, anyway?
Looks like a basement. A very tidy basement, excepting her and the five dead bodies. There are neatly stacked shelves full of boxes. A washer and dryer in the corner. Various other normal basement stuffs. On the other side of the room is a staircase leading up.
Someone lives here.
If she's very, very quiet, can she hear anything from upstairs?
Nothing! Well, maybe the hum of some generator or a heating system. But no footsteps or busy noises or anything like that.
Then, as quietly as she can–and she can move very quietly when she wants to–she'll try going up the stairs and leaving.
Nothing jumps out at her immediately. The door at the top of the stairs opens easily and the house beyond sounds and looks empty. It's a nice house, quite a lot of art and books. The furniture is old, but still expensive and well kept. The front door is a straight shot across the room.
No reason to delay. Any more time spent here just adds to the risk that someone will come back before she's gotten out. She can clock the address from the mailbox and that's all the information she really needs.
She opens the front door.
A man, a boy really, stands right outside the door holding a paper bag full of groceries.
He stares at her, shock obvious.
Tall. Skinny.
Without a conscious thought, she drops low and rams into his legs, full force, ready to run for it the moment he goes down.
She's not sticking around to help with them. She spares a glance over her shoulder to see if the house number is next to the door, but besides that she's sprinting for the road.
No number! Or at least she doesn't spot one at her quick glance. The boy is still on the ground, stunned, so she gets to the road. There are aren't any cars on the road, but a little bit down the street there are lights on in a few houses. It feels late, past midnight.
Dark. Forget the mailbox. Run to the lights. Even if no one answers the door, if she can orient herself she can keep running now and identify the house later.
She runs into the boy. He wasn't there a second ago and his hands are tight around her forearms and her feet are off the ground.
"No."
–She can't get the leverage that she needs to put force behind her kicks but she kicks at him anyway. She's not going down without a fight.
(Stronger than he looks. Faster than he looks. Too fast.)
His hands tighten painfully when she connects and he - his face changes. The whites of his eyes bleed red, completely black in the darkness, and his veins pulse and blacken. He has fangs.
She hasn't stopped moving, she's still struggling against him, but her brain is starting to catch up to the idea that she's probably not making it out of this alive. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong, with her or with him or with both of them.
Her whole body is screaming at her. From his grip, but also just from everything. Her limbs are sore and weak. And she has a deep gnawing emptiness inside her. Her struggle is meaningless to him.
And now they're back inside the house and he's throwing her onto the couch.
She's tired.
She'd always thought she'd had more fight inside her. The most dangerous thing someone can do is give up, that's just asking to be dead, but... her body isn't up to the task of not giving up, it seems.
She stays where she's been thrown, stunned.
He... paces. Muttering to himself. Radiating confusion and frustration and fear and a high manic energy.
"Didn't mean to," she hears, just, before he keeps rambling incoherently.
After a bit, she curls up small on the edge of the couch and just stares at him, this crazy guy who is almost certainly going to kill her if whatever (poison?) is going on in her body doesn't manage it first.
He flinches back, then forward suddenly. His arms moving. "Drank you whole, neck ripped and nearly off. Dead." Like the others.
Her shoulders go up, her chin down, almost without her realizing it.
Maybe you did it wrong, she doesn't say, because the one thing she knows at this point is that she doesn't want him to make another attempt at it.
"Uh-huh," she says instead, uncertainly.
"You were human. Tasted human. Not human? Vampire. No. Yet? S'all confused and he was - you bit me," he says, at last, suddenly realising. "Had my blood. That's how it works. Vampire blood and when you die you come back."
So she did fight back. There's an odd sort of relief to that realization, the idea that she didn't go down easy and that this... had some effect, at least.
"Why shouldn't I bite someone trying to kill me?"
It's not like she could have known, but she doesn't really want to say that. It's his fault for making assumptions. She's small, looks like easy prey. Nothing to indicate she's not averse to using her teeth. He must have been surprised.
Regardless, she's clearly outmatched. She doesn't know where she is, or who this is in front of her. She botched her only clear option for escape. He's not trying to kill her (anymore? again?) and she's not inclined to play nice with someone who's already admitted to attacking her.
Don't surrender. Don't die.
Mutually incompatible options, now, and one of them might be off the table entirely. She's going to have to figure out her own primary goals from here, and like it or not, it seems the only potential resource she has at the moment is her would-be murderer. If he attacks again, she'll fight again. But for the moment...
"What happens now?"
