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Izzy shook her head at his response. “It lasted until I saw you for the monster you are,” she amended, her voice trembling slightly with both anger and anticipation of where she trusted this conversation was going.
She looked fully to Cerasus when he stepped forward, every muscle in her body tensing as she took an instinctive step away, but her heel hit the door of the farmhouse.
“It was more of a guess,” she breathed, her breaths quickened by dread and the suffocating weight that now saturated the air.
With heavy steps, she moved so her back was no longer against the farmhouse, her gaze never straying from Cerasus. If this was going to happen here, she needed to keep him as far away from the building, from its current single occupant, as she could. All it would take was a single misplaced blow for the whole structure to come crumbling down on top of Trevor. She silently cursed herself for putting him in danger yet again. If she lost, he would be an easy target, an ant to a lion with the appetite of an entire pride. Not that she felt like much more than that herself. He was the ancient hunter, and she little more than a foolish cub who dared challenge him. He had at least five-hundred years of experience in both fighting and killing. He knew all the tricks in the book, every single one of her weaknesses, while she knew only what he had bothered to tell her, and had never killed anything more than insects.
But she could not afford to think like that. She tried to shake the thought off, but with little success as he continued speaking. She took a deep, shaky breath, trying to steady her nerves.
I can do this, she thought halfheartedly, taking up her own defensive stance. She needed to find out his fighting style, any patterns or preferred methods. After all, she had only glimpsed a fraction of the surface of what he could do. And rushing in, even if she had wanted to, had since proven a poor idea to figure that out.
She took another breath, and put on as brave and determined a face as she could muster. “Then what are you waiting for?”

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Izzy watched him warily as, instead of beginning the fight, he continued to speak, trying to not let his words get to her. Her brows furrowed and she looked at him disbelievingly at setting the rules. Blood would be spilled, but to him, that meant nothing. It was just another day in his life, a chance to play.
She gasped and staggered back when he hopped forward, placing a couple feet between them, his gaze enough to make her stomach do an uncomfortable flip. She could not bring herself to meet it for long.
Something tells me turning into a tree won’t do me much good, she thought bitterly at not having the same limitations on her vampiric abilities.
She inhaled and held her breath as he continued. She nodded stiffly when he finished, but stopped mid-action. “How do I know the moment I show any kind of promise, you won’t break your word?”

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Izzy shook her head slightly with a snort at there being “no sport” otherwise.
“Even if you hadn't bothered to even the odds, I wouldn’t be ‘abandoning our battle,’” she said with only slightly more confidence than she felt.
A battle they were going to have in the open. In broad daylight. When this realization dawned on her, without thinking about it, she looked from Cerasus toward where the road wove its way through the fields a good distance away. If someone was somewhere around, or drove by while they were fighting...
Cerasus’ voice drew her attention back him, and she swiftly mimicked his stance, only with closed fists, her body angled slightly. Her brows twitched downward in confusion when he reassured her. He smelt no humans? Did that mean he was somehow unaware of Trevor?
It took Izzy a moment to realize he was referring to her friend. Anger bubbled in her and crossed her face at him being called “rations.” But that meant Cerasus did know Trevor was there.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she growled warily. “And I swear, if you so much as contemplate using him as ‘rations...’” Her fists tightened, her gaze boring into him with a surprising fierceness.

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Izzy gave a heavy exhale shaky with emotion, and her gaze darkened at his ridiculing comments.
She could not--would not--lose. For Trevor’s sake, if nothing else, she had to put aside the gut-wrenching feeling about killing someone. No matter what shred of humanity he had shown her on the school rooftop, Cerasus was not human. He was a monster. But she only knew one sure way of doing the job, anything else falling under nothing more than speculation.
She held her ground as Cerasus stalked toward her, watching his every move, every tense muscle that might indicate his first strike.
“I am not your servant!” she snarled, then closed the remaining space between them, ready to bob or lean around any blows he attempted before trying to land an uppercut.

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The outcome of her blow made Izzy falter in shocked horror, but the emotion scarcely had time to register before her own head was detached from her body. It was an unnerving feeling, to say the least, being nothing but a head, with no sensations beside the glimpse of two headless bodies before the world went black. When she came to only a second later, she gasped and staggered back when she realized the sensation of having a full body had returned.
Her eyes wide, she reached up and gently fingered her neck as if checking that her head was securely fixed to it, all but her head spattered in glistening crimson.
She swallowed hard and looked to Cerasus, who had recuperated just as quickly. That ruled out beheading as a means of vampire slaying. And she was fresh out of wooden stakes to try the other method she had heard of. If it was a test of whose immortality and regeneration would give out first, she doubted hers would hold up to his. Her gaze settled for a moment on his jugular at the thought of the remaining option.
When he leapt at her, Izzy dodged his attacks as well as she could, her body turning and crouching slightly to make his target as small as possible. She stepped to attempt getting a clear shot to his side and thrust a couple jabs before trying to pull away, watching for any opportunities.

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Izzy tried to pull away from the onslaught, hoping for a moment, even a mere partial second, of a reprieve. A mental and physical agony mingling with a fury fueled in part by the lingering pain burned in her eyes and displayed on her face. The metallic taste of her own blood from the short time it took her to heal coated her tongue in a film. Her chest and shoulders heaved with each breath. Though her body kept healing, she did not know how much more of this torture she could take.
She wanted--needed--this to be over. By any means possible. It took much of her willpower to not just simply give in. But a quick glance to the farmhouse was enough to remind her of why she could not.
Gathering what strength to fight she still had, she let out an angered cry and charged once more into the fray, though every part of her desired to run in the opposite direction. The moment Cerasus let his guard down, she leapt on him, trying to pin his arms to his sides, and her long, sharp fangs aimed at the soft flesh at the base of his neck.

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The ease at which her attack succeeded shocked Izzy. Cerasus did not so much as raise a hand to push or pry her away. With the strength and speed he had displayed thus far, she was sure he could have. What was he playing at? But any reservations that still clung to her faded the moment the thick, crimson ambrosia poured over her tongue. How much she drank or for how long, she could not say, nor did she care. She felt Cerasus begin to tremble in her grasp, but paid it little mind. It took her a short moment to realize when he spoke, but she heard his quiet words all the same.
Then the sound of Trevor’s voice called for her attention. Reluctantly, she pulled from Cerasus’ neck, licking red from her lips as she looked to her friend, surprised he had exited the building. Though he had shown a disregard for his own safety at least once before with Psychotic Episode, this was no battle with a half-vampire.
“What’re you doing?” she groaned out, panic at him being in the open in her eyes. Her brows furrowed at his second statement. He was the one who suggested slaying Cerasus, and now where was something not right about it?
She stared at him contemplatively at his question. Her attention turned to Cerasus again at the change in the atmosphere, but before she could so much as say something, a portion of the barn blasted away. Even half drained of his blood, his powers were still frighteningly impressive.
“Trevor!” she shouted, her grip on Cerasus loosening as debris rained down on her friend. “You leave him alone!” she growled in Cerasus’ ear. She returned Trevor’s gaze when he looked to her, apparently unharmed.
What had he seen that she had missed? She ran everything pertinent to the situation leading up to this day through her head as quickly as she could, from Cerasus’ promise to return her to humanity in payment for the regain of his powers, to his shockingly quick resignation the moment she went for the kill.
Slowly, she looked from Trevor to Cerasus. “You... want this. Don’t you?” Her brows furrowed deeper. “But then, why not have just let yourself die the night I found you? Why drag yourself who-knows-how-far to save yourself?”

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Disapproval flashed over Izzy’s face when Trevor marched toward her and Cerasus, hating his growing proximity, and momentarily wondering if Trevor had a death wish of his own. As he spoke, she fully released Cerasus, Trevor’s statement confirmed by two words.
Izzy ran a hand down her face, her palm stopping over her mouth as Cerasus sat on the ground, much of his energy drained from him. Drained by her. Just as he had wanted. At least, almost.
She listened intently to Cerasus’ tale, her eyes unseeingly turned to the summer-green mix of overgrown grass and weeds of the lawn. She gave a shaky, heavy exhale as he finished, and sunk to her knees not far from him.
“You would...” she breathed, then swallowed. She ran a hand through the lose part of her hair, but stopped with her fingers still entwined in the strands.
He had planned this from near the beginning. A sacrifice for a sacrifice. And all she would have known of it was what he wanted. She would have lived on, thinking him nothing but a callous, murderous monster she killed in a fearful, desperate rage. No matter how many people he had killed to survive, she could not easily push aside his choices with her. At last, she looked to Cerasus when he spoke once more. She inhaled through her nose at his threat, her stare intensifying, before shock at his tears made her eyes widen.
She looked at him for a long moment, then shook her head, slowly at first, then with more conviction. “No.”
She exhaled heavily and pulled her hand from her hair. She turned her head so Cerasus was only just in her sight, her voice soft as she began. “For... For an ancient king of the night, you’re an idiot, you know that? And still a bad liar. No one really wants to die. Sometimes we think we do, but we don’t. Just normally, people don’t figure that out until it’s too late. Like you said, I saved your life, but I won’t let you throw it away like this.” She shook her head again. “He,” she nodded toward Trevor, “thinks we met because he told me a rumor about you. I called it being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But... but you know what? Maybe it was fate trying to say something. As stupid as that sounds. So, no. I’m not going to kill you. And you’re not going on a killing spree.”
Izzy took another deep breath, and continued in so low a voice she was certain Trevor would not hear even if he stood directly behind her. “You’re still more human than you think, Carasus. A blood-thirsty monster wouldn’t have cared enough to even consider this. They... they would have killed me without a thought the night I offered my throat. But here we are. There must be another way out of this,” she continued slightly louder. “There has to be!”
She glanced to Trevor, hoping he had something to offer, but he did not. She looked around at the field of gently swaying grass and wildflowers that extended around them for miles.
So much for restoring balance, she thought with a sigh. But the sound cut off half way through. She groaned and her shoulders slumped as she looked toward the sky. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this. We need to find Riley. If this isn’t a time when things aren’t completely out of whack, I don’t know what is.”
Izzy got to her feet and moved to stand directly in front of Cerasus. “So, Cerasus Orion Damocles. The hot-blooded, cold-blooded, iron-blooded vampire. The King of Aberrations, and Master of Bazaar Jokes. You going to help find him, or stay here and brood about your suicide mission going awry?” She offered him a hand to help him to his feet.

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Izzy glowered when Cerasus hit her hand away, and returned it to her side. She opened her mouth to give a retort, but Riley’s familiar voice gained her attention She returned the his wave by raising her eyebrows. Of course he would have been observing all this.
"I'm beginning to wonder if you have anything better to do than stalk us," she called as Riley jumped from the remaining portion of rooftop.
She watched the exchange between him and Trevor. When he suggested anything she had said was gossip, she crossed her arms and looked at him incredulously. She gave Trevor a grateful smile at his defense.
When Cerasus spoke, Izzy turned to look at him. “Your agreement?” she asked, her words blending with the first of Riley’s. She snorted softly and shook her head. That explained a couple things.
“Hey!” she scolded as Trevor said “Excuse me?” Her eyes narrowed and she scowled when Riley “corrected” himself.
“So you keep telling me,” she growled at Riley’s comment about Trevor to her. With no answer of her own to give his question, she glanced to Trevor, the same question echoed in her eyes, before returning her attention to Riley. She raised her chin slightly, her arms still over her chest. “My request is another way out of this mess. Because I will not,” she shot Cerasus a quick glare as she continued, “be an instrument in his suicide. If you don’t know of another way, I have the feeling you’ll at least know where to find one.”

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Izzy nodded at Riley’s reminder of not working for free. She had expected nothing less. She sighed and frowned when he gave her his price, but nodded again. It was a small price to pay if it would bring an end to this madness without anyone having to die.
Her eyes narrowed slightly as Riley began, a look of cautious suspicion on her face as he continued. She bent her head and glanced to Trevor, wondering if he was a part of “no one person.” She took a deep breath, taking a moment to decide how to answer Riley.
“We all seem pretty miserable as it is," she said with a snort. "But I can’t make that decision for everyone.” She glanced to Cerasus, then looked back to Riley. “Especially without knowing what that entails. So, let’s hear it, first. What is it you’re proposing, exactly?”