Torn Asunder

Chapter 11 Dante

A/N: now that Dante is in Valentine's skin and Valentine is in Dante's, I'm blending the Point of View's more. This might make things a little confusing and that's actually the tone I'm going for. But if it stops making sense entirely, let me know and I'll fix it.

_________________________________________________________________-

It was quite the transition, going from the throes of passion with my Valentine to having something tearing into my neck. I screamed and the sound was impossibly feminine, a fact I couldn't focus on as I started to struggle. My strength, enhanced since being Turned, was gone. With horror, I realized that the hands I fought with were dainty and small, the body I was wearing, slim and female. I was somehow in control of my twin's body and something was Feeding on me.

In a desperate move I jammed a sharp nailed finger into the vampire's eye and he instinctively hurled me away. Even though Valentine's body was still basically mortal, I knew how to fall far better than she did and thankfully I managed to avoid wounding her body anymore than they already had. I had wanted to give my twin the strength to fight back against her attackers but I hadn't expected this to happen.

Some sick and twisted higher power seemed to think it would be best for me to giver her the strength by taking care of it myself. Fantastic. Just when I thought I understood the rules of the game, they go and get changed on me. It was strange to roll and get to my feet in a female form, the center of balance lower than I was used to, my reach reduced by inches. But I adapted as the vampire that had bit me came snarling towards me, eye weeping blood. The female vamp that had lured my twin here hissed in the corner, seeming unwilling to become violent herself.

Breaking some of the furniture I didn't have a chance to appreciate, I jabbed the wood at the vampire, hoping that years of pop culture woul prove to be correct. To my astonishment, as much as the attack vampire's, it was. The wood sunk into the vampire's chest, and although he didn't burst into flames, an impossible amount of black blood poured out of the wound and he fell to the floor as a corpse.

The vampire whose house this was hissed at me and I prepared to kill her too when the door to the house burst open and in stepped the man I had seen kissing my twin. Without a moments hesitation he leveled a pistol at the vampire's head and suddenly her head exploded in an eruption of brain matter and gore. I gaped in surprise, not having expected the quick and easy kill. Grabbing my wrist, the man pulled me back outside in a run, not giving me a chance to ask any questions.

Having no better option but to go along, I somehow knew this man wasn't a threat to my twin or I. Although I had seen him last trying the moves on my twin, now that I was chaperoning her flesh around, I could guarantee that noone touched my twin anymore. The Hunger that was my constant companion burned in possessive jealousy at the thought and I knew that things were never going to go back to how they were. They couldn't now, though I didn't know what that meant things had become. It was too confusing and right now was so not the time to be worrying about it.

The man holding my wrist pulled me along and it seemed like a gasping eternity before we stopped and caught our breath. And to my vast surprise the man's first actions to me specifically weren't to check and see if I was alright, or to have any amorous actions. He pointed the gun at my face and thumbed back the hammer. "That's her skin but you ain't her soul." he stated in a New Orleans drawl.

"My name is Dante and I'm her twin." I said, raising my hands reflexively.

The man gave me a startled look and pointed the gun somewhere safer. "No shit, for real?" he asked, seeming to believe me. I guess Valentine's been telling them about me, a fact that made me grateful as it seemed to save time and trouble now.

"Wait, how could you tell I wasn't her?" I demanded, confused.

"I'm houngan. Voodoo dude." The man replied with a shrug.

I just nodded as if that made anysense to me, which it didn't. The Hunger which had been so controlled in my own body flared up and I grimaced as it cramped in my stomach. It was even worst than the sudden flare ups I'd experienced in my own flesh and as I gasped for breath as the pain of resisting it washed over me, I wondered how Valentine had done it for so long.

"Shit you're bleeding." The man seemed to just notice and it took me a second to realize that it was still dark out and he was a mortal without the benefits of night sight like me.

"Yeah, vamp decided I looked like good midnight munchies." I retorted, hand lifting to my gnawed on neck instinctively. I flinched when my own fingers touched the ruined skin, surprised to find a lot of wet blood and very little actually damaged tissues. I was healing, no wonder the Hunger suddenly flared. It was demanding sustinance to make the recovery process stronger.

"Let's get you back and fixed up." The man suggested but I hestiated and gave him a suspicious look. He raised his hands, as if recognizing that I still had no reason to really trust him. "Hey don't give me that look, you aren't exactly swimming in options now are you?" he countered.

"I don't even know you're fucking name." I groused at him, trying to sound hostile.

"Andros." he countered with a smirk.

"Yeah well Andros, if you can't keep you eyes where they belong I'm gonig to have to rip them out of your head." I snapped as I saw his eyes dart down to Valentine's cleavage once again. Now that he drew my attention to it, being more aware of the female body I wore made me suddenly awkward. The Cajun laughed at my threat and shrugged, not seeming to take it personally.

"Oh man, I cannot WAIT to see how Caleb reacts to this." Andros sounded obscenely pleased and it made me a little paranoid.

"Who's Caleb and why the hell should he care?" I demanded, wishing that Valentine's husky voice sounded more intimidating. Her voice was better suited to phone sex than fight club.

"Caleb is the leader of the Sentinels and the man currently in your twin's bed. Though I suspect that fact is solely due to the fact that he's been Feeding her." Andros frowned, looking angry as he admitted that.

I snarled silently, perversely glad to be wearing my twin's flesh now. "Well that's going to stop real quick. If he thinks for one second I'm going to let him touch MY Valentine he has another thing coming." I expected to feel the pressure of fangs fill my mouth but Valentine's body was still alive. Though my sight pulsed with a strange golden glow that showed me Andros' pounding heart.

It didn't help assuage the Hunger any, my healing and the repeated provocation of my anger, and I think Andros saw something on my face that warned him of my sudden change in friendliness. I tried to haul the anger and Hunger back, but it didn't work. My body hunched and knotted as I pounced at the Houngan. He responded to my attack slow compared to my inhuman swiftness and we tumbled to the ground with me snapping at his neck like a rabid wolf.

He put an arm up and my teeth latched around the skin of that instead of his vulnerable neck. My teeth scraped against his forearm and I lapped up the blood greedily when my blunt teeth tore through. Andros snarled in responce to my attack and bashed his fist into my face, tumbling me away. I gasped as he jumped over top me and slammed his hand against my ribcage. Somehow a calming wash spread out from his hand and I lay gasping on the ground as the Hunger disappeared as suddenly as it arrived.

"Shut up and don't move." Andros hissed, surprising me as he tore open the top I was wearing. Valentine's body lay exposed and I instinctively punches the man for his actions. He decked me right back and my vision blurred. Valentine simply wasn't as strong as I kept expecting after so much time in a body Turned. As I stopped feeling woozy, I realized that Andros was sketching something onto my chest with his own blood and it seemed to fill my nose with his smell. Knowing intimately how much a vampire uses its smell to hunt, the houngan's actions made sense.

When he was finished his spell, the voodoo man offered me a hand and helped me up, the both of us bleeding now. "You're lucky I like your sister. I'm helping for her sake. You can go fucking die for all I care." Andros said coldy.

I stared at him for a minute, about to say something snarky but I kept my mouth closed. I wasn't sure I could undo whatever it was that made Valentine and I switch bodies and that meant I couldn't burn any bridges. I might just need a voodoo man before this is all over with and I would hate to have to beg for his help when the time came to reclaim my twin.