Air
A cool, sixty-degree breeze rolled in off Lake Michigan. It flapped the pages in Rhiannon's lap, the sound of which awoke the brunette from an accidental nap.

The promise of fresh air had drawn her out of the hotel, the linens-and-room-service scent of which had begun to nauseate her. Outside at night, at the far end of navy pier, she had found a secluded place to sit and sketch. Slight sounds came to her, of carousel music and upraised voices, but more closely she only heard a food wrapper taking a skittering journey along the sidewalk, and the buzz of a streetlamp overhead. She had used its base for a back support. Ultimately that noise must have ushered her into a doze.

Rhiannon breathed in a waking breath and rubbed her eyes. Peripheral view was slightly obscured by a hoodie she pulled on to protect her from the air coming off the water. Such disregard of her surroundings had left her wide open. Realizing her vulnerability, she hurriedly nudged the hood back from her forehead and looked to her right. In the distance, the skyscrapers of Chicago rose towards the cloudcover, their scattered, square windows twinkling light, their size making miniatures of everything else. No one was there.

A page ripped off the pad. Forgetting the reason she'd looked up, she blindly reached for the paper and missed it. It flew off towards the park and made scruffing somersaults on the concrete.

The soft brush of grass against the balls of her feet had lulled Deanna into a sense of serenity. The walk had been so long, so peaceful. The sounds of gulls suggested water nearby. Sounds of music and laughter carried aloft on the wind, a sing-song of another life.

With half-opened eyes she pushed forward, slightly surprised as the lushness underfoot changed to concrete and gravel. Sensitive ears picked up the scratch as pebbles skittered with each step, as well as the flapping not associated with wings. Paper circled her ankle before continuing its journey.

And then... breath. Measured, even. She wasn't alone. A figure no more than 10 feet ahead, draped in warmer clothing, head covered. Too relaxed to be homeless.

How long had it been since the vampire had fed on anything so substantial? There was no doubt; this was her reward for patience and devotion.

"Thank you," Deanna whispered into the air.

The half-voice sparked a pinprick of unease at the base of Rhiannon's neck, a feeling that trickled down the length of her spine. The sound assured her that despite looking, she wasn't alone. As in her girlhood, she found herself stuck, seemingly unable to command her muscles to investigate the noise behind her chair, behind the shower curtain, in the closet, outside the back door.

Move. Why are you afraid?

The Slayer's chin began to turn, creeping towards her shoulder in increments. Her eyes followed along the sidewalk to a pair of bare feet. They were pale, the golden hue of the streetlamp unable to inject color into the dead flesh, as blue-white as the moon peeking from between clouds.

All was silent, except the water lapping against the pier.

Rhiannon raised her eyes.

The simple dress flapped lazily with the eastern wind. Cotton, dyed blue and faded over time and wear, straps along the shoulders, small tears along the base and midrift. Arms completely bare. The freckles that dotted her skin mixed with goosebumps. Red hair cascaded off her shoulders.

Why have you stopped?

Her face was feral. Deanna wasn't hiding, there was no need to. She was proud of who she was, what she was becoming. Every road begins with a single step...

She took one. Stopped again as the figure propped against the light pole turned to look at her. Their eyes locked. And she smiled.

A shot of adrenaline gave Rhiannon's muscles the impetus to get up. The sketch pad flew to the side in a flurry of ink-darkened pages. She was on her feet then, the hood falling completely back from long, brown hair. No remnant of sleep was left in her eyes. She was instantly a fighter on defense, fear born of respect mixing with a killing urge. Nobody else could make her move like that.

Well over a year gone by -- over 400 nights -- and every one of them, Rhiannon considered a free pass for Deanna to keep on existing. When she left Las Vegas, part of her figured she'd never get the chance to put a stake in her enemy. And here she was on the pier, not ten feet away, in the most unusual of circumstances: Rhiannon, ever ready, getting caught with her guard down.

"Don't you fucking move," she warned, an index finger marking a line the vampire was not to cross.

Every nerve came alive, a shock of energy from fingertips and toes straight into the brain stem. The fire that dimmed roared back to life. She'd chocked up the Slayer's disappearance to a bout of sanity: keep alive by staying out of the vampire's reach. Since the night they last were together at the burning tenament. She'd escaped perdition's flames but not the mob nor Rhiannon's contempt. Deanna knew there was more for her to do, a path to follow, a calling to heed.

And it led her back here.

"Or what," the redhead snapped at her enemy. "You'll sick the seagulls on me?"

"You know you can't take me," Rhiannon snapped back.

There wasn't a morsel of salvaged pride in the statement. The Slayer believed it to be utterly true. They had gone around and around in that dance for too many years for her to believe she'd fall for the redhead. Hatred and contempt were breeding grounds for survival instincts.

No, Rhiannon thought, the vampire could not take her. She'd slit her own throat before that happened. But they could deal one another a world of injury, scratch and claw until there was nothing left, all over again.

"Everything they did to you, you deserved," she said. "I could've done it myself, but letting those people rip you to shreds was poetic justice. I knew they wouldn't finish you off, but I will."

"Talk, talk, talk. Soooooo much. Building bravado before the first strike," Deanna countered. "Let the muscles tense, fingers flex with your fury. Gather the rage you need, bury the fear."

The vampire hadn't moved a centimetre. But in her mind, she was already at the brunette's throat. Fingers entangled in the back of her hair. Nails dug into Rhiannon's stomach, pushing deeper until she could feel the woman's lower intestines and pull them free as a souvenir.

So it is willed, so will it be done.

"You think God created you to counter the darkness. Made you my equal." No show of emotion displayed by the redhead. No quirk of an eybrow, the lips thin. "C'mon Rhiannon. Prove it. Show me that you're special."

Rhiannon's jaw slipped to the side, a grinding of teeth that had gone too far. "We're hardly equals."

It was possible to store up so much anger that its release came with unreasonable potency; a fighter's version of a miraculous feat, like a regular woman lifting a car off a child. It was like that now.

She didn't know how she covered the distance. One moment she was standing in place, and the next she was bearing down on Deanna with all the righteous fury that powered her, an emotion as strong in her being as the Calling was in her physical self. A hardened set of knuckles plowed into the vampire's ridged nose on fast-forward, drawing a crack unpleasant enough to send shivers down the spine.

A second fist followed the first, this one to the vampire's sternum. An answering lightning strike of pain and then numbness shot from the Slayer's knuckle up the back of her hand. Rhiannon had hit her hard enough to do temporarily stun a nerve.

No one could move that fast, least of all Deanna. The blows rained down and caused the woman to stagger, bare feet scraping against pavement. Blood flowed from her nose. She bent back slightly as the second punch moved with more force than she anticipated.

Her right hand shot up and, as it played in her mind's eye, grabbed the scruff of Rhiannon's hair. The redhead pivoted slightly to avoid a third shot to her midsection and instead lifted a knee as she forced the woman's forehead into the bone. A wave of pain carried through her own body as she impacted the Slayer with her counterstrike.

Stars in her eyes.

Rhiannon's consciousness seemed to waver. A blurry, darkening film covered the world. But she didn't need to see straight to fight. Barely aware of sending the orders to her limbs, they moved. She grabbed Deanna's arm, its fingers still buried in her hair, and twisted herself around in a circle, sacrificing strands of hair that were torn out by the roots. Deanna's arm was bent backward at an unnatural angle.

Rhiannon straightened up and kicked the underside of the vampire's elbow.

The slam sent whatever grip was left into the air, along with a piece of straight brown hair. Deanna gritted her teeth as the pain slammed into her nervous system hard. There was a small pop as her shoulder dislocated.

No small talk, no quips now. Just two gladiators on an even playing field.

The redhead spun slightly to keep her vulnerability hidden, bent at the waist and raised her right foot, swinging backwards to connect her bare foot to Rhiannon's ribcage. She hopped three steps backward, putting enough distance between the pair, and ran herself into the light pole to put her dangling arm back into place.

One of Rhiannon's ribs fractured badly. The pain was acute. She wrapped a protective arm around herself, imagining she could feel the bone poking against her skin. The human instinct was to stop and catch her breath, but it was dangerous territory to let the redhead have a single second of time.

Unexpectedly, a feeling of dread gripped her, right there in the middle of the fight, when all she usually thought about was the strategically best way to win. Time seemed to stand still as she watched the vampire regroup. As much as she wanted to finish it, she also wanted to get back to that place on the sidewalk where she'd been sitting. To rewind it. Deanna was a piece of the life left behind, the old Slayer, a chapter in a book she'd already put down.

She couldn't be here.

Rhiannon was moving then, towards the streetlamp and the guard railing and the lake beyond it. She went past the vampire and jumped, getting a foot on the rail and using it to reverse direction. Airborne, the Slayer kicked at the redhead's face.

The boot caught the vampire square on the chin and her head swivelled as lights exploded behind yellow eyes. Focus became harder now, as blinding pain from her limp shoulder -- which she couldn't cradle for protection -- joined forces with the blow to the head. Deanna stumbled backward into the metal railing, the same that her opponent had just used in an insane display of gymnastics.

With her one good hand, the redhead pulled hard on the metal and managed to make the distressed pole groan but not move. She needed all her strength if she wanted to break it free and use it as a weapon. The vampire was laid bare. No sword, no pipe, no stilettos. Just teeth, nails, cunning and guile.

Deanna considered the options. She needed to take away any advantage the Slayer had. With that, she leapt over the railing, a one-handed vault and somersaulted off the pier and landed feet first into the lake water below.

"No!" Rhiannon made a wild grab for the vampire and missed by centimetres. She rushed back to the railing and leaned over it, watching for Deanna's head and shoulders to reappear above the splashing water.

Don't jump in.

It wasn't just about the possibility of being held under. It was the water temperature at 65 degrees, a factor that would never make a difference to Deanna's muscles, but could impair Rhiannon's if she stayed in long enough.

She knows she can't win on even ground.

Yet Rhiannon felt herself getting onto the railing, balancing on the balls of her feet, and remaining there until she saw the top of Deanna's head above the wake she'd created. The brunette launched herself with feet aiming directly for her target.

If she timed it exactly...

Despite the murky view underwater with just a half-moon and street lamp for illumination, vampiric eyes could see the adversary climb atop the metal bar. Rhiannon was calculating Deanna's next move. Would she surface or attempt a stealthy retreat? The Slayer knew her far too well. She wouldn't skulk away, couldn't turn her back on a fight.

But no one said she had to play fair, either.

The redhead bobbed up enough to entice the enemy in. As Rhiannon leapt down, she pushed against the water with hands and feet, displacing her position directly to the right of impact. Her choice of clothing -- or lack thereof -- was a blessing. It was far less cumbersome to move. As the brunette made impact with the cold water, Deanna scissored her legs around the woman and squeezed tight.

Of the vampire's intent, Rhiannon wasn't sure. It took her a moment to realize Deanna had wrapped her lower body around her, just because the shock of the water was more intense. But then the squeezing intensified and pressed on her broken rib.

She sputtered for breath and got her feet underneath her. Scratching and tugging on the other woman's legs didn't loosen the vise. "Damnit!" Rhiannon reached for Deanna's face and shoved it underneath the surface. She couldn't drown her, but she could disorient and drag her.

Splashing hard, she hauled her suddenly twice-as-heavy body towards the pier. She pulled the vampire's head above water and smashed it against the concrete, as hard as she could. And then again.

Deanna wouldn't lose this battle. The pain from her shoulder was agony. The double head ram against the pillar of the pier cut open her forehead and the resultant blood stream mixed with water made it near impossible to see. She scrabbled for any hold, and found the hood from Rhiannon's sweatshirt. She pulled it up and over the brunette's forehead, covering her eyes and nose, then willed her damaged limb around Rhiannon's neck in a chokehold.

Legs pushed against the pier to float them both back into the open water.

When Rhiannon lost her footing, the pair went into a barrel roll. Cold seeped steadily into her muscles. Water weighed down her boots and her clothes. Ignoring the hood over her eyes, she fought to gain her feet and keep her nose and mouth above water.

They continued to wrestle, trading places beneath the water.

On her last trip down, something on the lake bottom snagged Rhiannon's jeans. She couldn't see what it was, but she could feet it, metallic and sharp, making a gash in her leg. She couldn't jerk loose. The only way to free herself was with her arms, but Deanna had hold of them.

The Slayer jerked violently. The surface was just inches above her nose. She could see it, a warbling image of a streetlamp occasionally broken by Deanna's face going under as Rhiannon tugged.

She made a sound, precious air bubbling up from her mouth and nose.

It's just a nightmare.

Rhiannon garbled a word into the murky water. The water began to burn her nose and throat.

Wake up.

It seeped into her lungs. Splotches of color exploded before her eyes.

Wake up!

Rhiannon startled into consciousness, her arms and legs splaying out, her lungs gasping for oxygen. A pad of paper slid from her lap and slapped onto the concrete. Its pages rustled in the cool breeze rolling off the lake. Inked images played like a paper movie.

She pulled back her hood and looked around.

The pier was empty.

She didn't need to breathe. The freezing cold water ineffective. Blood spilled into the liquid spaces between them. Deanna couldn't release on her grip lest it give the brunette a chance to break free. While slower underwater, her punch would still be effective.

The redhead opened her mouth and water rushed in. She could cough it up later. Teeth ready to tear flesh.

Rhiannon tried to say something. Perhaps she was begging the vampire for her life.

And then. She disappeared.

Deanna convulsed, trying to force out non-existent lake water. Eyes shot open. She was on the cool dirt and concrete floor. Just as she had been the night before. And the night before that. No sounds of a carnival, nor seagulls. Barely a cricket behind the thick walls. She was alone, as she had been for so many months.