Chapter One

Blood, blood, everywhere. Where it came from no one will ever know.

Slash, smash, crash, down she goes.

Don't get up, maybe it will go away.

A whip, a whip with rope to slay...

...Blood, blood everywhere. Where it comes from you'll never know.

-Anastasia Lee Green

It was everywhere, everywhere she looked. Could it have all come from her?

Seventeenyear old Anastasia Lee Green groaned and turned her head to the side. Red crimson slid from her nose, down her cheeks, over her chin. Every part of her ached.

You swell, you bruise, you bleed.

Her swolleneyes looked around herself, taking in where she was. Once she did, she whimpered.

Basement.

A hell, a hole, HIS haven.

She tried to roll over, to find a little bit of comfort in her own arms, but she was tied back.

A whip, a rope, a baseball, and a bat

restraints, some cuffs, on her back she's lying flat

She moaned again.

Tears rolled down her cheeks. Couldn't she ever catch a break?

HE'LL beat you with a stick if you ever try to leave.

How long she was lying there, she didn't know. But to her it felt like an eternity.

Then out of nowhere he appeared. Out of the darkness, into the room where she lay.

One room, seperate from the house...

"You awake, Ana?" he asked with a malicious grin. She groaned in response and turned her head to look out the one window next to her.

"Good, good." He laughed. She heard something and looked back to see him hitting a baseball bat against his palm. "Let's get this finished. I gotta meet someone downtown in an hour and I need to take a shower."

She turned back to the window.

The first hit was almost a relief. The anticipation always was the worst part. It got to Ana most of all. But after the twelfth or the thirteenth, she'd lost count at ten, she started to whimper in pain.

"That's right," she heard her father whisper. "I hope this taught you a lesson." Ana cried out as the bat hit her on the side of the face. "What's my name, bitch?" he asked. She groaned.

"What is it?!"

"Dad," she screamed. "Dad!"

A tapping on the glass, you look

there's a raven

The symbol for wisdom, a sign for death

You wish, you wish

you want out of this hell

Avilon Veleclutha stared out the window of the store into the raining streets. Clash was late again.

He was tired of putting up with Clash's dramatic shit. He was tired of everything. He'd sacraficed so much for his crew and had gotten nothing in return. He wanted to take a break, hadn't had one in years. It was time for a vacation.

He smiled at that stupid belief. He wasn't going to have a vacation, ever. In this century or the next, or the one after that, or the one after that, or the one...

Avilon flinched as a feeling of great physical pain came over him. Someone close by was severely hurt. He stood up straight, his eyes cutting across the civilians on the street. Ten minutes he stood looking for the sign of a bleeding person. And if it wasn't for his 'ability' to sense pain (physical, emotional, mental) she would've passed right by him.

He bolted out the door to follow the young woman who'd passed the store. It didn't take long to catch up with her because she went straight to the small fruit stand outside the market next to the book store he'd just been in.

Long, dirty, sandy blonde hair fell down her back which was encased in a tight, small, long sleeved jacket though it was eighty degrees outside on the street, even in the rain. She was bare foot and wearing jean shorts with a couple of holes that were a size or two too small.

She had a couple of small bruises over her long, shapely legs. The rain was hitting her head directly and she didn't seem to even notice. He followed a couple feet behind her.

As she reached across the stand to put a couple of apples into the brown paper bag in her hand, her jacket sleeve slid up, revealinga black and bleeding bruise running up her arm. She quickly jerked the sleeve back down and continued to scoop up fruit into the bag.

She was about to go into the market to pay for them, when the wet bag ripped, spilling everything all over the ground. The woman sighed and kneeled down to pick up the apples that had rolled down the street.

Avilon bent to help her. Once all of the fruit was safely off the ground, the two stood. The woman's arms were completely full of apples and oranges.

Now that Avilon could see her face, he didn't like what he saw. A linen bandage wrapped all around the left side of her face and parts of it were dappled with fresh blood. The one eye he could see was a beautiful shade of grey flecked with blue. Framed by thick lashes with a one well sculpted brow that was a shade darker than her hair. Her nose was straight, her lips full, chapped.

"Thank you," she said shyly.

"No problem. Let me help you with those."

She bit her lip and nodded.

They walked into the market together and Avilon paid for the fruit. He also bought her a cloth shopping bag that she could reuse and wouldn't rip. He helped her toss the fruit into the bag, then slid it onto her thin shoulder.

"Thank you, again," she said in a whisper. "My name's Ana Green." She held out a thin, frail hand.

"Shane Randsome," Avilon answered, not wanting his true identity to get back to Invi. Suddenly the woman smiled at him.

"Thank you Shane. It's not every day a good Sumeritan comes along to help a damsel in distress."

"I think you would've handled that just fine," he said as a man in a hoody walked through the door. "You're a very pretty damsel, but distressed you were not."

She blushed and looked down. Suddenly the hairs on the back of Avilon's neck stood up. He barely had time to register the feeling before the man in the hoodie pulled out a gun and shot at Ana.