Alex pulled his truck into the driveway, then got out and ran around to help Ani out as she stumbled out and practically fell into his arms. He shuffled her into the house and helped her onto the couch before jogging out of the room, then coming back with a shirt and two soda's. He handed Ani the shirt and one of the soda's before turning away, allowing Ani to change out of her blood soaked dress shirt. He himself took his dirtbiking outfit off, leaving him in just shorts and a tank top, revealing his muscled body.
"Can you get me some shorts or something too?" Ani asked. "These pants may look good, but they're not comfortable."
"Yeah sure." He jogged out then came back, handing her a pair of his shorts which she changed into before laying on the couch. "You should drink something."
"Unless you have O+ laying around, there's nothing I can eat or drink." Ani answered.
"I'm AB-." Alex shrugged. "So you really are a vampire?"
"Yes. Now just... be quiet so I can sleep." Ani told him.
"No. We need to talk about this." Alex said. "You and Aeriin have been living together forever, why would she just suddenly hate you?"
"I let her parents die! I could have saved them! But I chose to save myself instead!" Ani answered, covering her eyes. "They're dead because of me!"
"Ani, calm down!"
"They're dead Alex! I can't bring them back! She blames me for it, she'll never forgive me for it! She hates me!"
"She does't hate you Ani! Relax!" Alex said as he stood up. "You have to calm down!"
"Calm down!? Calm down!? I can't calm down! You have no idea how it feels to be rejected by your mate! I love her Alex! I love her so fucking much the thought of her disliking me even a little bit is like a sword to my chest and now! Now she can't even look at me! She wouldn't talk to me! She just hit me!"
Ani's hands went back to her chest as she whimpered.
Alex grabbed the sides of Ani's face, forcing her to look at him. "Ani! You need to calm down!"
"I can't calm down!"
"Ani." He said, more stirn but also quieter. "Everything is going to be alright. Just calm down a bit okay? We'll get through this."
Ani wanted to keep arguing, but she couldn't force herself to argue when he was so close to her. Not after realizing he wanted to kiss her so bad.
Instead she pushed him away. "I can't Alex." She told him. "I get you want to help me... but if you try to take advantage of me-."
"I'd never do that to you!" He said. "The only thing I'm interested in is getting you back together with Aeriin. My wants and needs mean nothing."
"Why help me get back together with her if you want me?" Ani questioned.
"Because you obviously wouldn't be happy with me." He said. "You want Aeriin instead. Probably because she's a girl and I'm not."
Ani smiled. "I'm not a Lesbian. I'm Pansexual."
"Really? So you don't care at all?"
"Most vampires don't. Blood is blood."
"You're dating Aeriin because her blood is good?" Alex questioned.
"No. I was dating her because she's perfect. And her blood is good."
"Well then that means that I have a chance. But fixing your current relationship comes first."
Ani shook her head. "Just stop trying Alex. Let it go."
"Don't talk like that. She loves you. That I can promise."
"Mortals promises are so easily broken." Ani sighed.
"I mean it. She really does love you." Alex told her.
"I don't believe you." Ani answered. "You didn't see her face."
"I don't have to." Alex told her. "I've seen you with her, and I know you two care about each other."
"No! She's mad at me! She hates me!"
"Anikke. You need to stop yelling." Alex told her. "Just lay down, and collect your thoughts. You aren't thinking straight and you can't keep blaming Aeriin."
"Why the hell not!?"
"Because Ani. You're not thinking straight. There must be something you're missing. Something you're overlooking."
"I'm no-"
Agora and Zia did this. This in't my fault.
She still blames you for it. She doesn't care for us!
She doesn't know what happened! Its not her fault!
She rejected us!
She misunderstood me!
She doesn't love us!
There is no us! There is only me! You're nothing to me!
"I'm everything." She heard behind her. "The darkness in your heart, and the cruelty in your blood. That's me lurking within."
Ani held her hand up to Alex to tell him to be quiet. "I'm not a cruel person. I have no desire to be cruel and induldge in my demonic cravings. The only thing I care about is her, and she misunderstood me. Agora and Zia did this, they wanted to break us apart."
Mirror Ani put her hands on Ani's shoulders and smiled. "Aeriin was never going to care about you. She was using you for her immortality, and she tossed you aside as soon as she was given a chance."
"You don't know her!" Ani yelled.
"I spend all my time in her thoughts because she's you're mate! But she rejected you! You have no reason to spend your time in this worthless dimension. Let us leave and go home to mother!"
"No!" Ani roared. "I'll never go back to her! I will stay here until I can explain to Aeriin what happened!" Ani roared.
Mirror Ani grabbed Ani by the neck and pushed her off the couch and onto the table as Alex stood up and walked around her.
"You are making this very difficult for all of us." Alex growled.
"W-What?" Ani asked as she tried to pry mirror Ani's hands off neck.
"You should just go back to your mother and leave all this bull shit behind. Instead you sit here and suffer when obviously home is your salvation." Alex glared.
"Alex?"
Alex laughed and rubbed his eyes. "Do you know how hard it is to pretend to care about some worthless Stargazer having an emotional breakdown?" he pulled contacts out of his eyes then pulled his rings off his fingers, revealing his gold irises that swirled with a wild, violent hatred. "Father asked me to play nice with you and pretend to be the good boy, but in reality all I wanted was to tie you up with your own spine like the worthless animal you are."
"Fuck!" Ani whined, trying to push Mirror Ani off herself, but her body was so weak from her loss of blood and weakness of Rejection. "You're Alice's brother!"
"Its amazing how stupid you are when you're too busy kissing that worthless hunter's ass." Alex snickered, the kindness in his eyes completely replaced with anger, hatred and insanity.
"This stupid copy of me is your doing?"
"My unique is the ability to pull the darkness from someone's heart and manifest it however I choose. I can let everyone see it, or just you. But the copy is very, very real, and very much able to kill you."
"Then why are you hesistating? You're family just took everything from me! I have nothing left!"
"Isn't it great to be broken!?" Alex laughed. "To have all your hope and reason for living torn from your fingers like it was never meant to be there!?"
"Bastard!"
"You're a Pureblood vampire. You don't belong with those worthless mortals! You shouldn't even be here!"
"Alice killed you, didn't she?!"
"Agora used powerful magic, stolen from the Stargazers to make a copy of each of us. The real Alice renounced Agora due to us tormenting her. She murdered my copy, while I remained here waiting for the perfect moment to drag you back to Zia kicking and screaming."
"Why didn't you just convince me to go back?"
"You should be broken! If you go back willingly, you can turn on us! So you must be broken so you'll be reminded never to do it again! You'll stay in your mother's castle and sit there like a good little vampire bitch."
"I'll never go back willingly!" Ani roared.
"We're going back!" Mirror Ani snarled. "We're going to live in the castle and do as mother tells us! And if you refuse, Aeriin will be the one to die."
"You can't hurt her!" Ani roared.
"She'll see me as you and let me walk right up to her. She might shout and yell, but when I bury my teeth in her neck and rip out her throat, I don't think she'll be fighting very hard."
"No! You can't!"
"She can and she will! Even if you do go back someone's going to kill her, because she's a worthless mortal and doesn't deserve to live." Alex smirked before sliding his rings on Aeriin's fingers. "Enjoy the seals."
"I'm already weak you fuck face. There's no point in sealing me." Ani growled.
Mirror Ani stepped off as Alex took her place, holding a dagger. "I'm sealing you so you can't heal from this till I want you to." Alex smiled devilishly. Ani tried to push him away but he grabbed her wrists with his free hand and pinned them over her head on the coffee table. "I've never been able to disect a Stargazer. Escpecially one who fights like a Daybreaker. Do you think you'll look the same on the inside?"
"I wouldn't know Alex. I never had the chance to tear your stupid Kaage limb from limb."
"Would you like to? I can call him right over."
"I wanna know how you and your sister have clones."
"Using my magic, and the magic of Stargazer's, Agora created clones of us so he could always have us to do his bidding." Alex smiled. "Maybe I'll use the same magic to make this clone real so I can keep her forever as my pet."
"Even as a clone I would never serve you." Mirror Ani laughed. "I just want to see the world hurn."
Alex laughed. "Your dark side is worse than mine!" He smiled. "How are you able to live with yourself when every moment of every day you're stuck being the nice guy when in reality you want to tear people apart and make them suffer."
"You made this dark side! I've never wanted to do any of these things and they only started talking about it when I started going to school with you didn't they!?"
"I've always been here." Mirror Ani smiled. "Even if I wasn't given a body, I would still be there in your head."
"You're worthless!" Ani roared. "You both are! I'll never go back to Zia as long as I live!"
"Then you're no use to us alive." Alex smiled before digging the dagger into Ani chest causing her to wail in pain. "You said you wanted to tear your own heart out right? Allow me to tear it out for you."
Ani scremed in pain as Alex tossed the dagger to the side, and prepared to reach into her chest when the front door swung opened followed by a gun shot.
Alex and Ani turned their head to look only for Alex to gasp a bit and hold his stomach before glaring. "Your bullets might have hurt Alice, but they don't hurt me!" Alex roared.
Ani felt the hilt of the dagger on the floor, just above her hands as Alex leaned back to glare. Her energy was too far gone to be able to push him off even still.
"Get the fuck away from her!" Came Aeriin's voice.
Another crash followed by feathers and the mirror Ani flew across the room, being slammed into a wall before revealing a spear of light sticking out of her eye socket, pinning her to the wall before she vanished into a pile of black mist. Darcel pointed another spear to Alex's throat raising his head via his chin.
Taraka grabbed him and pulled him off Ani before the vampire grabbed the dagger and slammed it into Alex's leg causing him to fall to the ground in pain.
"The only person in this world I want to slaughter is you!" Ani roared.
"Are you going to take my power too?" Alex smirked. "I really hope you do."
"Your power isn't worth my time." Ani snarled. "Just kill him already!"
"With pleasure." Aeriin said before firing several shots into Alex's face as he started laughing. He collapsed forward and lay lifelessly.
"Darcel try healing her wound." Aeriin said as she ran over and pulled the rings off Ani's fingers to allow her to heal better.
"If she can stab him in the leg she'll be fine." Darcel smiled as she leaned over Ani and started healing her with her magic.
"What the hell were you thinking?" Aeriin sighed as she took hold of Ani's hand. "I understand running away, we were both frustrated, but you should have just went home."
"Home? There is no home." Ani shook her head. "You rejected me!"
"Rejected you?? Why the hell would I reject you?"
"You slapped me, yelled at me, and told me you couldn't forgive me!"
"I said I didn't know if I could forgive you. But if you run away, and go to some guy's house when we didn't technically break up-"
"I tried to fucking kill myself Aeriin!" Ani roared.
"What!? Why? We just had a fight!"
"More like a full blown pissing contest." Taraka shrugged.
"Vampires are different than humans when it comes to dating. If they're mates then the vampire's mind can't comprehend an argument that ends in 'leave me alone'. It instantly goes to 'I hate you and never want to see you again.' You survived rejection?" Darcel questioned.
"God it hurt so fucking bad!" Ani wailed, holding onto her chest like she was trying to reach in and grab her heart to tear it out again.
Aeriin took her hands and pulled them away, finding the vampire's resistance at none. Her strength completely drained from her body giving her the strength of a new born child.
"Ani, we just had a fight, I don't want you to die. I want you to come home so we can talk about this." Aeriin explained.
"You want me to come home?"
"Of course I do. I don't hate you Ani. Hell I still love you. But we have to talk about this, we can't just pretend it never happened."
"Mortals aren't weak. Fragile, but not weak... Their wills are so much stronger than ours." Ani explained.
"We'll talk about this when we get home okay? You need to heal yourself." Aeriin told her.
Ani thought she would hear her own voice telling her to leave Aeriin behind and never look at her again, but her thoughts were finally silent. She missed Aeriin's voice in her head, but she was grateful to not have the dark verson of herself whispering hate to her.
Aeriin and Darcel lifted Ani carefully before taking her outside and setting her in the back seat of the car with Darcel sitting beside her healing the vampire. Taraka sat in the passenger's side as Aeriin drove back home. Upon arriving back at the house, they helped Ani onto the couch where Darcel continued to heal her, and Taraka went into the kitchen to make breakfast, as they've all been up all night.
Aeriin sat on the coffee table beside the vampire and held her hand. Ani looked like her body didn't want to breathe, and after a few minutes she gave up trying giving her the appearance of a dead corpse. Darcel had removed her shirt to stitch up the wound that Alex had left, revealing a lighter scar like someone had tried and succeded in punching a hole through her chest.
Aeriin leaned forward. "Is that from you?" She asked.
"It hurt so bad." Ani told her. "I just wanted the pain to stop."
"Does it still hurt?"
"Sometimes."
Aeriin rubbed the vampire's shoulder. "I'm not, nor will I ever reject you Ani. I love too much to give you up for anything."
Ani nodded slightly, but refused to make eye contact with the hunter.