Chapter One: Blueprints to the End of My Life

Nathan is a less-than confident alchemist without a will of his own. He lets himself be used as fodder to create a Demon in guise of an emaciated, androgynous child meant to end the world.

The phone in Nathan’s pocket vibrated incessantly as he came out of the Wal-Mart he’d just clocked out of.

“Kyland, what’s up?” he answered, heading for his car.

“I had an idea. Everyone’s on the way here so come over and I’ll tell you everything when everyone shows up,” Kyland said before the connection crackled and went dead.

Nathan snapped the phone shut, a worried look spreading like spilled water over his face. New Year’s Eve night wasn’t the time to be gathering for ideas other than the ones that ended in a party. Whatever Kyland had in mind made chills run down Nathan’s back, and he didn’t even know what was going on in his friend’s head yet. Yet? If he was feeling this shaken just over a phone call, maybe he shouldn’t go at all…

Unfortunately, Nathan was a follower. His own will was easily tramped under the wants of others, and his curiosity was overwhelmingly strong. Although he was leery of Kyland’s intensions, he couldn’t deny his own need to know.

Nathan got in his Jeep, heading up the mountain to his friend’s ideas.

+

The vehicle pulled into the driveway with its headlights off, the light of the huge full moon enough to cause Nathan to dare driving without artificial lighting. He didn’t want anyone to know he was there just in case his better judgment got the better of him and he decided to leave.

He didn’t listen to his inner voice telling him just to leave and pretend to have never gotten the call, to go to his other friends and party with them like he’d been planning to do all day. Nathan got out of the Jeep, went up the stairs and through the door. Not a decision that would prove good for him. Not good at all…

“I’m here,” Nathan called in the entryway as he unzipped his coat.

“In the living room,” Kyland’s voice came from the doorway a few feet up on the left.

A calming breath was needed to propel Nathan forward into the warmer living room with its large hearth ablaze. The warmth was more than welcome after the cold drive with his heater refusing to work. He greeted the other three people whom Kyland had thought to invite, and just seeing the choices gave him a hint of Kyland’s intensions. Every person in the room was a practicing Alchemist. 

Kyland had stood up, and his excitement was so apparent that Nathan’s hesitation grew.

“All we’ve done since we started Alchemy was make gold and knickknacks. We need to really do something,” Kyland urged them, his whole body glowing in existent.

“Like what?” Melinda questioned. She was set back in one of the plush leather chairs, swallowed in it more like. The chair was large enough that she looked more like a Goth doll in a play set.

“Something alive. We need to make Life,” Kyland said.

The quiet in the room settled suddenly and with the same consistency as quick sand.

“Yeah… I don’t think that’s going to work,” Maury said slowly so the words seemed to roll around in his mouth before they fell from his lips.

“No really, we can do it. I have everything we need; all I need are you guys to help me and we’ll be able to make a human.” Kyland’s confidence was infectious it seemed. The atmosphere in the room wasn’t as disbelieving as it had been just a few seconds ago. Maury looked at his brother Tom; Melinda glanced at Nathan. Nathan felt unease weigh his stomach with nausea.

“How do you suppose we go about the Alchemy to do that, Kyland?” Tom asked. “No one’s succeeded in making life that wasn’t a homunculus or a twisted chimera. If you can deliver you’ll be making legends of us all.”

“Do you want to be a legend Tom?” Kyland asked.

“Yes; yes I do.”

“Are you going to tell us how we do it?” Nathan tried to bite back the mocking tone to not much success.

The tone did nothing to dampen his spirit. He picked up a very well preserved tomb from the coffee table, a book Nathan had known him to keep with him at all times since Kyland was 14 years old.

“I’ve been reading this thing for years. There are so many explanations and experiments documented in here that all failed only because they didn’t have the technology that we have now. If they’d had the electrical power they would have made an artificial person centuries ago. All they needed is everything we have to take advantage of.” Kyland took the moment to look at everyone, his expression stonily serious. “If we try it and it fails, what do we have to do? Just clean up the mess, but if everything goes right? We’ll wipe Nicolas Flamell out of history.”

“I’ll do it,” Maury announced. “Tom, you wanna do it too?”

Tom shrugged. “I’ve got nothing more productive to do I guess.”

Melinda nodded her agreement, leaving only Nathan to make the last decision. “We can’t do it without you, Nathan,” Kyland said quietly, “ It takes five people.”

Under the hopeful looks of his friends, Nathan agreed to other peoples’ wants over his own.

+

The quintet descended the stairs into Kyland’s basement where the fluorescent lighting cast the black lines painted elaborately on the white floor into sharp relief. Kyland showed everyone where to go, each person placed strategically in an exact place, told precisely what to say at what time, what to do. An hour passed as they practiced, seconds ticking by on an analog clock by the stairs.

“I think we’re ready. Everyone sure they want to do this cuz as soon as we start there’s no stopping without serious consequences,” Kyland warned. Nathan wanted to back out so badly by that point. His stomach was in knots. His head was beginning to pound from the tension building in his body. But no one else was taking the escape; no one else looked as if they were even concerned with the fact that failing could get them killed. Zombie-apocalypse crossed his mind and for a millisecond he was afraid he may vomit.

Nathan knew the consequences that came with tampering with Alchemy better than the others, having once lost both his legs at the knee trying to bring his dead hamster back to life when he was fifteen. Luckily for him Kyland had been there and a much better transmutator than Nathan. Kyland had effectively transmutated a pair of shins onto Nathan’s stubs before any significant blood loss could occur, but the new parts were pale white and heavily tattooed in swirls that looked like writing. In the ten years that had passed Nathan had neither worn shorts or found anything resembling the writing on the additions to his legs. As far as he was concerned, they weren’t his. They didn’t even feel right, like they were attached wrong so that the muscles always hummed.

So why didn’t he back out? He couldn’t bring himself to say no, but couldn’t build any enthusiasm for the Alchemic act.

No one backed out, leaving the business at hand ready to be attended to.

Melinda looked at Nathan with a nervous giggle, her electric blue hair tied back into a messy ponytail. “Totally a strange way to spend New Years Eve, hu?”

Nathan nodded, swallowing down an anxious lump that had formed in his throat over the thought of what was about to happen.

Kyland took his own place on his knees inside his box with his hand on the beginning switch. “Is everyone sure?”

“I’m ready as I’m gonna get,” Maury said, voicing the thoughts of most of everyone in the room.

“Here we go, kiddies.” And with that he threw the switch.

All five concentrated, murmuring the same mantra over and over again while the spherical tank in the middle of the transmutation circle began to fill with a liquid similar to amniotic fluid and all the ingredients that made a person.

The overhead lights buzzed, the rubbery, clear tank bulging as it filled.

Nathan chanted softly, his eyes closed in concentration. He closed out the sounds of everything around him, enclosing himself in the silent inner world he retreated to to perform Alchemy. He focused on nothing but the words he said, his own life’s energy leaking out of him and into the circle, directly into the blob of flesh that had formed inside the surrogate womb.

The thing twisted and writhed into and inside itself as cell division made it grow from the size of a fist to that of a fully grown person. A line appeared in the middle of it, splitting it cleanly into two uneven halves that moved as far away from each other as possible in the small confines. The different halves of flesh began to shape themselves until they resembled the human form, one larger and stronger looking, the other too delicate to be realistic. Features sculpted themselves onto the figures’ faces. Hair erupted from their scalps and nails grew from their fingers and toes.

Above Nathan the ceiling bulbs exploded in a rain of nearly powdered glass, but he refused to be distracted. He was too terrified, believing that if he faltered even a little he would die, be reduced to nothing or mutated into a zombie (an all-time fear that over ruled his own death). Even the lights that played white-blue and golden on his eyelids and the scent of frying machinery wouldn’t break his concentration. Nathan kept his eyes clenched tightly together against the outside world.

Only Kyland giving the ending signal got Nathan to open his eyes and relax. He took several long, deep breaths before he looked up at the tank. Worry overcame him before shock and a wash of anxiety took its place.

“There’s two of them,” Melinda  mumbled, standing up with her face a mask of blank aw. She moved forward to the tank as the fluids drained out of it. Nathan go to his numb feet, pins and needles starting up as blood rushed into the long-immobile capillaries. He stared at the two human-like creatures laying in the bottom of the empty tank, the tank itself opening so that they could be taken out. He gazed at the smaller one, whose shape was that of a twelve-year old boy, but missing the vital piece to make it male Nathan realized it must be female if it was going by gender. Her hair was long, so long that it was plastered all the way down to her knees, shining white with chunks of black. Her skin was clinically white, blue veins showing softly through.

Tom and Maury pulled the other one, a fully-formed male, out of the tank while Nathan and Melinda got the female. Each was taken to a separate metal table, a sprayer used to wash them each with warm water while the fluid was sucked out of their noses and throats.

Nathan got his first look at the female’s body when her hair was moved out of the way to wash her. She was gaunt, ribs irregular and protruding sharply. The expanse of hr abdomen was caved in and smooth, not a dip for the belly button, making barely the beginnings of an hour glass shape with the miniscule flare of her hips. But Nathan wasn’t entirely sure she was female now because he could see not even the hint of breasts or even n*****s.

Diagnostics were taken of their vital signs. The male came up perfectly normal; the female showed a slow heart rate. Kyland took out a set of defibulators and pressed them to her chest, applying a small shock in an attempt to raise her heart rate.

Nathan felt his skin go cold. The female’s boney arms grabbed the metal plates with alien speed in a grotesque movement that reminded him of how the little girl in the Ring had moved. The electricity that should only have lasted a second was still flowing into her as if she were sucking it through her skin, making the air thrum with the static that rose the hair on their heads. The monitor showing her heart rate beeped faster and faster until in moments it seemed her heart should burst.

Kyland took hold of the handles and strained to pull them from her grasp with no effect. She held onto the paddles and pressed them hard against her ribs. Electricity washed over the plastic handles and into Kyland’s hands.

Instantaneously the other Alchemists backed away towards the door while violet cords of electricity made Kyland spasm on the debris-strewn floor. It stopped, and Kyland could only lay on the floor gasping for long seconds while the rest of them wore blank expressions, trying to figure out what had just happened.

“Holy f**k,” Tom said in not more than a whisper, edging closer to try and help Kyland. He knelt down by the other man, Maury coming up on the other side, and together they gently carried him out of the immediate danger zone.

The girl didn’t move on the table but for a small rising and falling in her chest, and Nathan only just noticed that the male had disappeared completely.

“What are we going to do…” Melinda hissed, an edge of panic in her voice. “I’ve already tried the door; it’s locked. I cant get it to open for anything.”

“We’re going to dissect it,” Kyland said in a very horse voice. He struggled to raise himself up onto his elbows. Nathan glanced at him long enough to see Kyland’s eyes gleaming manically.

“Are you f*****g kidding me?” Maury  yelled, the girl sitting up. They all crouched lower behind the large generator hiding them from her line of sight. Maury lowered his voice. “That one thing already disappeared, and do you wanna know what I found in it? Fangs; I found a huge set of FANGS in that things mouth, and now you wanna go playing doctor on that one. What the hell is wrong with you Kyland? We have to kill it, not play bio-class with it!”

Hyland turned on him with a seething glare. “I’ve been obsessing over something like this for ten years; there’s no way in f**k I’m letting you take it away from me now. I’m going to pull it apart piece by piece, run tests, and make a complete study of it and there’s nothing you can do to take it from me!”

Too stunned to speak, Nathan stared at his creation while it stared at him with too big eyes the blue-white of blindness, long hair draped over her body. Something was starting to click in his mind the more he looked at her until he realized what it was, as if she’d been sending him the answer through brainwaves.

“We didn’t make humans at all, did we?” Nathan asked calmly. His eyes never left the female’s.

Kyland gave a short laugh. “No.”

“Didn’t think so…” Nathan said, watching as her gaze drifted over to Kyland.

Her face twisted furiously and that same electricity, icy blue this time, sang through the space betwixt them, wrapping Kyland in an embrace that blackened his skin. His mouth fell open before his body cracked open, falling to chunks, solidified blood falling like blue crystals.

Tom and Maury made a break for the door with Melinda only a few steps behind. Nathan didn’t bother to move. He stayed fixedly in place as the others ran to the door. Detachedly, he heard the heavy thuds of their attempts to free themselves.

Tom screamed, driving his foot into the metal door. His ankle snapped on contact. The following scream barely made a squeak before the girl attacked them as she had Kyland. She squeezed her eyes shut and covered her ears against something Nathan couldn’t here. He found himself suddenly alone in the room with the murderous thing amid the frozen remains of his friends. As we watched, one of the frozen blue chunks began to melt into a red puddle. He wasn’t horrified like he should be. He was only numb as of yet. Soon he expected to loose his mind to panic and end up like the others, but until then he wasn’t sure what he should do.

He turned to her to find her reaching her feet towards the glass-strewn floor.

“Stop!” Nathan ordered, and her foot stopped just short of touching it. She looked up at him with large, innocent eyes, like a child who’d gotten caught in trouble. He walked over to her and picked her up bridal style, careful to keep her from getting hurt for no reason he could understand. For a moment as he made his way to the locked door, Nathan was sure it was her brainwashing him into caring for her. But that was absurd. Of course it was just his mind going into shock.

Or so he thought, until he felt, not heard, her ask him who he was. Then he began to wonder.

“Nathan,” he answered.

She inclined her head and rested it against his shoulder.

Nathan was almost to the door when he remembered that it was locked, then he heard the tumblers inside it moving and the door swung open.

“Thank you,” he said, thinking it best to acknowledge her for letting him out of the mausoleum of a basement. She could just have easily left him down there to rot slowly among the remains, so he was grateful for the escape.

At the top of the stairs the door down to the basement swung shut behind them. Nathan waited till he’d gotten into the living room to set her down where the plush carpeting wouldn’t hurt her feet. While he’d been downstairs the power seemed to have gone out. Through the large set of glass doors that led onto the deck he could see down the mountain at the city, but the cityscape was a terror it had never been before. Blue flames that looked more like liquid ice was turning the busy streets into a wasteland as an earthquake brought buildings down everywhere. Why the shaking wasn’t reaching the house was beyond Nathan’s overloaded brain.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, going into the hallway where the coats were. He grabbed his own, a large, warm black one that he’d gotten at a Goth store. Back in the living room he helped her into it, careful not to get her long hair caught in the zipper.

He went into Melinda’s room looking for other things she could wear, but only found her lingerie drawer, so he brought the girl a pair of undies to put on under the jacket for modesty. A bra seemed useless, as she was too flat for one.

She put them on without him helping her. He didn’t think at first that the panties would fit, but they seemed to shrink until they were perfect for her.

When she was dressed she wandered out onto the deck where the wind was only a whisper, but cold enough to make Nathan shiver even if he’d had a coat on. Together, they looked out on the ravaged city. Clouds that were black on the top and faded to white from the illumination of lightning hovered over the buildings. The unrythmic flashes of lightning mirrored themselves in the large, glassy surface of her snow-blue eyes, almost hypnotizing her as she watched. Nathan surveyed her from the corner of his eye. She didn’t look as menacing as her earlier actions, only standing there staring.

He stood as well, thinking as he did so, wondering what he was supposed to call her. Nothing at all came to mind. None of the names he knew would ever be fit to call her.

I already have a name.

Again, he felt the words in place of hearing them, and the weirdness of it made him nauseous.

“So what is your name?” he asked. A hesitance had rooted itself in his lower stomach that she may get angry for his asking, however, her demeanor didn’t suggest harmful intent.

“I don’t care what her name is.”

Nathan’s head snapped to the source of the rude voice, but missed it entirely as a blur of flame colors tackled the girl off the deck. Over the railing they fell, and the guy shoved her beneath him so that when they landed she hit the frozen ground with his weight slamming on top of her. He pulled back his fist and smashed it into the side of her head where her temple was, her face so shocked he was sure she hadn’t the foggiest what was going on.

He had his fist pulled back ready for another hit when blue static swarmed around his body and lit him up; a great screech of pain welled up his throat, aching to escape, but was trapped inside by the paralyzing effect of the electricity. The pain was awful, so terrible he nearly wished he wouldn’t survive it, and then suddenly it was over and he was panting on the frosted ground. He scrambled to find her, finally spotting her crouched behind a large holly bush staring confusedly at him with those freakishly huge eyes flashing snow blue and indigo hypnotically.

Gladeke drew the broadsword on his back, launching himself at her. She turned her head curiously and dodged him. He swung around with the blade turned on her, but she didn’t look concerned, just confused, and the aggravation of it pulled his eyebrows down angrily.

I don’t want to kill her, Gladeke thought miserably as the girl watched him, but I don’t want Katsutozu or Broshin  to do it either.

Gladeke had been battling with himself about whether he could actually go through with the murder since he’d heard the ring of vim from her back in the Caverns. That had been just barely ten minutes ago and he was still having problems deciding if he’d do it.

Hello, Gladeke.

Mentally he jumped cleanly out of his skin, caught off guard by the sudden voice.

Why do you want rid of me?

I won’t answer. It’s not real.

Why?

He shook his head furiously and lashed out again, bringing the giant blade about with every intension  of loping her head off. Green sparks flew as the edge of his sword raked against the edge of her own. Shocked, Gladeke teleported several yards back. The sudden appearance of the weapon was jarring, and the possibility that she could use it reasonably well  edged worry into his mind. But he pushed the thought away with battle plans. He scanned all he knew of sword play and fighting in general, trying to put together something that would put a quick end to the whole thing.

Attack. Gladeke put everything he had into a brutal, full-force barrage. But somehow, she kept up with him. Gladeke teleported behind her with a smaller kunai speedily making its way towards her spine. Bare centimeters from contact a massive blast of indigo and ice-blue electrical static flung Gladeke away with the force of a small bomb. He just barely managed to keep himself from landing directly on his skull; however, his head still slammed into the ground with a hideous explosion of color in his vision.

Groaning, disoriented, but otherwise unhurt, Gladeke sat up and tried to get his bearings. Centuries of training and practice told him he needed to be on his guard now more than ever because his opponent had the upper ground of not being injured. She was in the perfect position for attack with him unable to tell what exactly was up. Some other intuition told him he wasn’t in any immediate danger, that she was still deciding what to do. Looking up. He saw that the girl was doing absolutely nothing. She stood there watching him with her hair being blown into her face by the wind.

His intuition prickled a moment before she moved and was suddenly at his throat.

He couldn’t gain ground for long minutes, not  until she moved just a slight too much to one side and the very tip of his blade gashed open her arm.

Bright, electric blue liquid splashed across Gladeke’s face and bare upper torso. The deep chilling cold was so surprising that momentarily he stopped trying to end her. In the heat that smoldered from his skin the blue boiled and burned to black.

She faced him with her eyes larger than ever with what he was sure was surprise. While her wound still oozed the blue fluid a lavender static started up inside it, visibly knitting the flesh back together. He wished momentarily that he could do the same; his own lacerations, though small, were bleeding freely. Droplets of it fell onto to the deadened grass.

There was hardly time to think as the fight began again. Static healing her little cuts and bruises lit the moonlit night with a splash of color. Gladeke was left to suffer with his battle wounds, wondering how she could get all those little cuts in when to him it looked as if he should dodge the blow.

The girl shifted her sword, and a flash of lightning from the incoming clouds cast a glare on the blade, allowing him to see that the metal part of the blade was edged in a gem-like substance a half-inch thick. Something of a light bulb went off. Deyphire, a gemstone with origins in the Demons’ realm, was definitely on the edge of her tool, spelling a bad luck poem for him. It was mildly poisonous when it cut him.

When she came at him again to attack he sent up pyramidal barrier to protect himself. He needed a break, time to think and strategize, to figure out how she was able to attack him. From the inside the brightly lit orange pyramid he heard her crash against the side and saw a wave where she’d connected. She couldn’t get in.

She was blinded by a bright light on the side of the thing he’d disappeared into. It flared up whenever she went near it until she finally backed farther away from it, and from there she watched it with intense curiosity.  Everything he thought was still perfectly clear to her ears, which made it less of a curiosity as to why he was gone. So he wanted a pause away from her? Let him have it; she’d wait. Everything he’d thought since showing up was firmly etched in her head: how to hold a sword, proper stance, balance, even all of his tangled thoughts. So she followed his example and began to formulate a plan based on the one he was coming up with. According to what she’d learned from him, all she had to do was ‘oppose’ all of his actions, do the opposite of what he did so that she could continue to play the game. As long as she didn’t stop him the way she had the last ones then the game could continue.

Inside the pyramid, Gladeke spread firey hot vim throughout his body, focusing first on his wounds, the minor frostbite, the bruises. Tiny wisps of smoke issued from the mending areas as the air inside the prism shimmered with intense, blissful heat. He had set up another barrier, this one around his mind to keep his thoughts safe the way he did from his own father, in case that was how she was learning so much.

Nathan had broken out of his daze and went to her side, inspecting all of her healing wounds. He was stunned by the static. Tentatively, he reached a finger out to touch it. The jolt electrified him, making his hair stand on end, a cold chill running down his spine. He jerked his hand back and cradled the tingling numb limb to his chest. The girl wasn’t even paying attention to him; all of her was focused on the glowing pyramid the new guy had hidden in.

Inside the barrier, Gladeke felt her could breath fire. His skin was markless now, as if there had never been a fight in his life. Flames danced and slithered along his epidermis. He gripped his sword tightly in his hand and filled his hollow fangs with vim, prepared to sink them into her. The barrier dropped as he went at her with another attack.

The girl eagerly lept towards Gladeke as soon as he was visible again, leaving Nathan kneeling alone. Gladeke took a second to register just how childish she was before they were fighting again. He was overpowering this time, his mind locked to her ears and able to use experience over just the knowledge of the moves. Taking a laps in her movements as she tried to decide what to do next, Gladeke sideswiped her sword and sent it flying far out of reach, but in the process also lost his grip on his own.

Surprised, the girl watched her sword dissapear. In her moment of detatchement Gladeke tackled her to the ground. He tried to hold her down with his body as his fangs prepared to sink venom into her, but nearly as soon as he had her down she flailed and twisted in demonic anger, her features horrifying, eyes narrowed viciously. She clutched at his wrists in hr metal-clawed hands while arctic cold boiled off her in frost-biting waves that mixed with the extream heat coming off his so that large clouds of steam roiled into the night. She struggled against him so hard his wrist snapped. At the same time the two of them set their fangs into the other’s shoulders.

Gladeke wrenched himself away from her, desperate to get the ice out of his body as the lava of his vim swarmed her veins. Her deafening screams reverberated against Gladeke’s eardrums until blood trickled down the sides of his face. With his hand clamped over his ears desperately, Gladeke focused as much heat as he had to the four points of arctic pain in his shoulder. If only the cold would abate he could go on with the pain. But no, the pain ebbed; the ice wouldn’t leave.

Her screams became more inhumane as she writhed, twisting bonelessly on the dead ground before she stopped everything and lay motionless on the grass.

The fear of murder flooded into Gladeke’s nervous system. He couldn’t bear to turn and look at her. What if she were dead? Gladeke had never killed anything, not once in his 2000 years of life. By no means could he possibley cope with it if she was. Not knowing at all would be better than facing the possibilities.

He teleported, disappearing into a flare of fire.

When he was sure the guy had gone for good, Nathan ran to his creature’s side. She lay unmoving, no breath stiring her body, but he knew she was alive. Thin electric blue tears flooded from her eyes, streaking her snowy face with her own blood.

The blistering venom continued to run rampant inside her nerves until her icy blood carried it to her heart where the flames where finally extinguished. Slowly, her breathing deepened to a detectible level.

Nathan couldn’t stand the agony on her face; however, he also had no way to save her from it. He took her hand in his. She had burnt his best friends to cinders maybe half an hour ago, probably was the cause of the apocalyptic storm going on in the city, but he couldn't find it in himself to feel the necessary hatred needed to leave her there alone to die.

The seconds passed, and though she was still obviously in pain, she wasn’t burning either. Nathan unzipped the torn jacket and pressed his ear to her chest. There was a small, quick beating inside. Not relieved, but also not disappointed, Nathan zipped it again. She wasn’t going to die. At least he didn’t think so. She was recovering too quickly to be buying a farm.

He took her hand again. Her eyes were crusted over with blue until she blinked.

“So, what’s your name?” Nathan asked, wondering if she was well enough yet for conversation.

Siveka… The voice in his head was very soft and quiet, tired even.

He felt a pang for her. Less than an hour alive and already she’d had an assassination attempt. She wasn’t even angry. Most likely she didn’t know what was going on. He didn’t like that such a thing had happened to something that was still so innocent (not including murders, which he suspected was her trying to save herself).

Shivering from the winter air, Nathan picked her up, taking her inside, feeling her exhaustion in his mind. She could hardly keep her eyes open, ending up closing them and burying her face into Nathan’s chest.

Nathan took her into the bathroom and ran her a cold bath, stripping her naked again. She offered no resistance whatsoever. He laid her in the water and began to scrub the dirt and blood from her porcelain skin. Drowsiness was beginning to engulf him by the time he had her cleaned and dressed. He lead her to his bedroom and collapsed on the bed, asleep before his head hit the pillow.

Author's Note

What do you think?