isolt griffin

I'm more alive than I've ever been

He would not have the better of them. Not tonight and not ever again.

It could not be denied that immortality had bolstered the man before her; it had sown steel into the corded sinew of his muscles and poison into his veins. It had salted the proverbial field within which his humanity (what little of it had still existed in his human form) had grown and had instead proffered its fertility to the loam of his maniacal hatred and devilish intent. A vampire's venom had changed him in a grand and irrevocable way.

But so, too, had it changed her.

Isolt had long held fast to the essence of her humanity, determined that Risque's blood should not overtake her own, that her Maker's abhorrent nature should not lay its creeping, toxic roots into the tranquil purity of her soul in the manner that the elder vampire surely wished that it would. The cruel wretch's blood had given the redheaded woman something, though, beyond the promise of endless years and bountiful youth. She had been made strong.

So very, very strong.

Isolt seeks to remind herself of this axiomatic truth, whether consciously or otherwise, as she lies against the debris-strewn floor of what had previously been Harley's sleeping quarters. He would not have the better of her, he could not lest Isolt's forfeiture condemn her and Harley both to whatever sordid fate had been concocted in the vile, grime-laden corners of Ryker's admittedly-horrific imagination. It is this prolific assertion, and Harley's voice bounding from the ether, that serves to beckon Isolt back from the relative daydream bred of her jolted mind. Say the word. Isolt's brow pinches into a furrow at the command, her mind reeling, delving into memories that had been repressed for many years now, buried beneath the sod of denial because to live them would have been to tear out her own heart and relive this greatest loss anew. This particular memory was an old one, a silly little word they had forged as some secretive code between themselves as two young girls. But what was that goddamn word? Isolt moves to speak, though the blood pooling within her throat allows little more than a grotesque gurgling for a moment before the redheaded vampire manages to choke out the syllables. "Peach," she gurgles.

What transpires next is swift, fleeting, and intense, a festival of blurred movements and slurred speech culminating in... stillness. Stillness and but the barest moment of quietude as Isolt surveys their shared predicament and the fresh horror quite literally at Harley's throat. Ryker's eyes bore into the crystalline azure of hers, the truth of his threat set aglow against the spiral of every twisting helix of his irises. Deaf to Harley's inebriated ramblings for the moment at hand, Isolt strikes in the only manner left to her, utilizing this last implement in a deceptively-vast arsenal. Bracing for what is shortly to come, Isolt grasps her own wrist and wrenches it harshly to the side, forcing the juncture of bone and tendon to part with a sickening and meaty snap. Her opponent hardly has the luxury of a moment in which to pitch a skeptic's brow before the injury is echoed in the very hand that clasps about Harley's gullet, the appendage growing lax. It is in the moment of anticipated confusion that follows that Isolt acts, the digits of her uninjured hand coiling into the fabric of Harley's shirt and pulling the woman none-too-gently towards and behind her before releasing her friend to grasp at one of many formidable wooden shards from what had previously been Harley's bedframe. With hardly the suggestion of a waiver does Isolt raise the jagged point of the makeshift stake towards her assailant, ready and willing to end it all.