Mad Jyhad

I woke a couple of hours later still held between them loosely as they stroked my hair and body.

"You are awake, little one?" Sabastian smiled. "You may no longer be human but you have yet to learn control."

Both vampires laughed softly as I felt my face burn. Jones snickered as he leaned in for a kiss. "Your innocence pleases us, little brat. No embarrassment is necessary."

"Innocence or inexperience?" I smirked. If I was going to be teased I wanted it on my terms.

"Both." Sabastian murmured in my hair as he pulled me closer.

I sighed as they held me. It was nice. But all too soon they pulled away regretfully. "You need to return, little one. The sun will rise soon and the others wait for you."

I pulled on my clothes with distaste. I didn't want to go, but I knew that I had no choice.

Before I left they each gave me one last kiss. Each kiss held a promise for later and I returned it with fervor.

Outside, the cold chilled me, replacing the heat from the club much too quickly, erasing the pleasant memory of their touch. Leaving me with a crushing guilt. I felt like I had cheated on Dick despite the fact that he had not made a commitment to me.

Snow crunched under my feet as I made my way back toward the cave and the wind tossed my hair. Fresh flakes gently made their way from the sky. I slowly became aware of a presence just on the edge of my awareness.

I slowed my pace and looked into a storefront window...waiting. Behind me I heard him land lightly. I saw his reflection in front of me. It was as though I was not even there. I reached toward the window and he moved closer. "What are you doing here, Nightwing?"

"It's almost dawn."

I could see in the window that he was scowling at me. Squaring my shoulders I nodded. "Yes, I know. That is why I was on my way back. I'm smart enough to find shelter before dawn. I haven't burned to final death yet, have I?"

"No." His answer was a growl and I suddenly wondered how long he had been near the club. Looking to the side I was still in view of the front door.

"How long have you been here?"

"Does it matter?" Nightwing crossed his arms.

"I don't know anymore. Does it?" He didn't answer me and I put my hands into my pockets. "Did you bug me? Whe When he looked away I had my answer. I had figured that Bruce would try to. I had prepared for that and stopped it. I hadn't figured on Dick...

"Why?"

He turned away and began to walk. I growled and grabbed his arm throwing him against the building. "WHY?"

"Because I was stupid enough to worry about you!" Nightwing hissed.

"How much did you hear? How much did you...see?" I wasn't sure what kind of bug he used on me. I tried to listen and discover if I could hear the small whine of the electronic device. Where did he put it on me?

"ENOUGH...enough to know...!" He shoved me backwards and I stumbled as he pushed past me.

I grabbed his arm again and held tightly. He winced and I wondered how much my strength had increased tonight.

"To know what? To know that I'm not going to wait around for you to come to your senses? Because I'm not. I'm not going to wait for you to decide that you can accept me! Enough to know that I have no commitment to you so long as you have no commitment to me? Because that is true, too! So long as you don't want me I can fuck whoever the hell I want! Enough to know that just because YOU have a problem with the way I look doesn't mean that everyone else will? Because I LIKE being wanted, Nightwing! I like it a lot! And I LIKED how they made me feel in there! And if they want to do it again, you can bet your ass that so long as things are the way they are right now...I'll be right there, ready and waiting, and enjoying the hell out every second of it as they touch me..."

He tried to yank his arm out of my hand and I released him before he could dislocate something. Nightwing said nothing as he turned from me and took to the rooftops once more. I closed my eyes and tried to center myself. With a sigh I allowed myself to fly over the new snow, allowed the celerity to carry me to my new home before the sun could rise.

I didn't see Dick when I returned to the cave and Bruce only gave me a cursory glance. He smiled and I waved back. Alfred brought me a big breakfast as I settled into my room and I thanked him. After he left the room I threw the food out. I collapsed into the bed grateful for the oblivion.

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Alfred woke me before the sun had gone down. I bit my tongue in an effort not to lunge at him. I could smell him before I ever opened my eyes...a smell? A scent? A sense? I don't know how to convey what it is for me. Not any of them yet all of them. And it was almost overwhelming.

I sucked at the small wound. A tiny trickle that did nothing to sate the pain in my chest, the raw need, the Hunger.

He fussed around me bringing me clean clothes and a tray of food. He remarked on how pale and thin I was. The steaming food smelled wonderful...I'm sure. It did nothing for my appetite.

What I wanted was not on a plate.

I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate, to overcome the urge to reach out and grab him. To rend his throat with my teeth and drain him dry.

As the door shut behind him I collapsed back onto the bed in relief.

Minutes later I was knocking on Dick's door wondering if he was going to let me in or not. After several minutes of waiting, knowing that he was in fact just on the other side of the door he opened it.

He thrust the mug into my hands and slammed the door in my face.

With a sigh I drained my cup and took it back to my room to rinse it out. The night was off to a wonderful start.

Bruce waved me over as I walked into the cave. "They have already called once. I think they are anxious. This is good."

I nodded. Good, right. That indicates that the girls at least are going to be hanging on me all night. That was not good in my book. It was going to be a long night and I knew it.

Nightwing came down the staircase slowly refusing to meet my eye. He came to stand beside me without ever having said a word and when Bruce asked him to take me to the Young Justice meeting he merely nodded and turned away. I followed him, just as silently.

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I was right. The moment I walked in I was swarmed, shouts of 'Happy Birthday' ringing in my ears. Even Superboy came over to pat me on the back. Secret hovered near the ceiling watching me carefully as I tried to back away from them without looking like I was about to run away.

Their scent was intense, strong, powerful, and all consuming. Anita's aura vibrated with repressed power that spiced the blood scent and I turned away to try and regain control. I stumbled away as Cassie tried to pull me in for a hug.

Superboy turned concerned eyes toward me as he held up a hand. "Wait, guys, I think he's sick or something."

Nightwing, who had until then been silent and standing in the background, came up to my side and pulled me away from the crowd. "He's just been a little under the weather."

I faced Nightwing as I tried to will my features to return to normal. I could feel the telltale cramp between my eyes and the sharp fangs pricked my lips. Nightwing grasped my shoulder squeezing it as slowly I relaxed. Small mugs of blood did nothing to relieve the Hunger I felt. I needed live blood. I needed to hunt in the forest. I missed the days of pigs and cows being home delivered.

Scenes of their broken bodies lying on the floor played in front of my eyes. Destroyed and drained. Blood covering my hands and body as I bathed...

"Are you okay?" Cissie asked.

It was hard for me to think.

"I'm fine. Just under the weather." I answered.

When I turned back I smiled at them but still remained near Nightwing. He was still angry with me but he hadn't abandoned me.

"Aw, that's terrible being sick on your birthday!" Cassie said. It was odd seeing her out of her Wonder Girl costume. They had been eager to give me a 'normal' birthday.

Kon clapped me on the shoulder with a smile. "How's it feel to be seventeen?"

I managed another smile. "The same as being sixteen, I suppose."

Above us Secret sobbed softly, startling us all. I looked up at her and she looked back seconds before covering her face. I groaned. Somehow, she knew.

"Secret? What's wrong?" Bart asked.

She didn't answer as she silently floated out of the room. Behind me Nightwing reached out and touched me on the shoulder. I nodded. "She knows. I need to talk to her."

"Knows what?" Kon asked as I gently pushed past him. As I passed I heard a low seductive hiss, calling me, tempting me. The sun in human form...

"What is going on?" several voices asked as the door shut behind me.

"Secret?" I called out.

I made my way through the house and up the stairs, every few seconds I called out her name. I had already discovered that I could not 'sense' her as I could humans.

Finally, as I neared the attic, she called back to me. "Robin?"

"Secret, where are you?" I finally found her in the last room. "Please don't run from me, I can't hurt you."

Ghostly tears slid down her face as she looked at me sadly. "I know. You can't hurt me. But you can hurt the others."

I nodded. "Yes, but I don't want to. I didn't come here to."

"Are you evil now?" she asked innocently. "I...I...I know that we are all supposed to be a little evil but good, too...but...I never wanted you to be. Are you evil now...all the way..."

I shook my head. "Oh, Secret. I wish it was that simple."

"You are, aren't you?" She started crying in earnest as I came closer.

"Yes, and no...Monsters we are lest monsters we become." The riddle that we all lived by was the only answer I could come up with.

"Will you hurt them? I can't let you hurt them!" she swore.

I shook my head. "No! No, I have no intention of hurting any of them. I think that is why Nightwing is here; he's going to help me stay in control. I have more control around him."

She huddled on the window ledge looking over the enormous yard. "I used to think that I had it worse than all of us. I mean, Superboy would never grow old but at least he had a body."

I sat down next to her and nodded. "True, this is true."

"I wondered... if I was evil. I was afraid that I was evil and the Spectre came to talk to me. He told me that everyone had a little evil in them..." she got a distant look in her eye as she trailed off. When she spoke again it was in a soft faraway voice. "But at least I knew that I had good in me too. Do you have any good left in you?"

"I want to think so." I wonder even now if I really do. I really want to think I do. "I haven't killed..."

In the air around us we could hear the word 'yet'.

The stars tittered and mocked me. {Yet...there's a first time for everything though...}

"I don't WANT to hurt people." But even as I said it I knew I was lying. I had wanted to hurt people. I wanted to drain Alfred. I wanted to shake Nightwing until he listened to me. I wanted to take Cassie in my arms and enchant her with sweet words and soft caresses before taking her life for my own.

I looked down not wanting to see Secret's eyes. "I don't want to act upon the impulses."

"But they are there? Those impulses?" she asked. Her voice was so tiny. So hurt. I wanted to take that all away. I was half tempted to try...but I knew almost by instinct that my powers would have no effect on her. Just as her powers had instinctively known what I was.

"Yes, they are there. But I can choose to feed on animals or from bags. I don't have to give in to the bloodlust." I reached out and let it hover near her chin.

She blinked up at me and nodded. "I think I understand."

I smiled. "Hey, at least you and Kon aren't alone in the whole...Peter Pan thing anymore. I joined the club!"

Secret grimaced. "Sorry to hear that. It isn't the most fun club in the world to belong to."

Shrugging, I laughed. "Yeah, tell me about it. Add in the fact that I'm no longer even human but people are trying to hold me to human standards..."

"Nightwing...does he...?"

"Yeah he knows, and yeah, he tends to want me to be human. It doesn't work that way though. He logically knows I'm not human but his heart..." I sadly placed my hand over my dead heart. Though it did not beat I still had a sense of pain above it just like I would have if I were still alive.

"It is hard for them to let us go. They either want us to be what we were before or they want us to be complete and total monsters that just happen to be mimicking their loved ones. Something to be rejected and turned away without guilt." She leaned back and if I had not looked closer I would have thought she was against the wall instead of pillowed on air inches from the surface. "It is difficult being something...no one understands."

The moon shone through the window and seemed to halo her as she spoke. She was ethereal, supernatural, beautiful, and I found myself entranced willingly as she continued to speak softly.

"I was in love with you. You were good and pure and wonderful. And I knew I could never have you. I didn't know who you were, you didn't know who I was. It was the perfect fantasy." Her voice trembled as she leaned forward again reaching for my mask.

I raised my hands and removed it for her. "I was never good or pure or wonderful but it is nice that you thought so." I tried to ignore the bitterness in my voice.

"I knew that you would never return my affection. I knew that you were in love with Spoiler..."

I shook my head. "I'm not sure if that was love or not. And now, I don't think I'll ever know. Love for my kind is not the same as love of a human."

"Nor is love of my kind." She agreed. "It almost isn't...the same...I think. It is almost like something new. An obsession with affection, there is no real describing it. We are...forever. Humans are gone so quickly..."

"Yes, yes, that is it. That is it! That is what it is like." I nodded excitedly.

"We have to try to find human words for things that no human will ever understand! And then when they don't understand it is our fault and we are the ones that are wrong..." bitterness was creeping into her own voice.

"You are right I would never have understood before." I smiled edging nearer. "But I do now."

"Are you going to tell the others?" she asked me.

"About me? What I am?"

"Yes! Are you going to tell them?" She nodded.

"I don't know. I'm not supposed to tell anyone. The Masquerade is supposed to be maintained by all of us. We aren't supposed to tell humans ever. On the other hand, it isn't as though anyone here is actually a normal 'human being'. But I think it would end up hurting them more. Then again maybe they would understand." I hadn't made up my mind yet. I didn't know what to do. Silently, I asked the stars but they became silent.

She moved closer till she was nearly hovering over my lap. "I think Superboy should be told. He doesn't let the others know, but he really gets depressed about never aging."

Her eyes sparkled as she leaned nearer and I found myself falling into them. "You should tell him."

"I will." I promised. I could not look away. I needed to look away. Jones had warned me about looking away often. I felt her solidify as she lowered herself onto my lap.

Her weight was slight. She had been tiny in life and she was still tiny, even in death. Her arms encircled my neck and she laid her head on my shoulder with a sigh. I held her tightly to my chest. Her lips were soft, tentative, and gentle. Her hand wound in my hair as she pulled me closer kissing me deeply. Her touch was like a wisp of smoke across my skin, against my mouth.

There was no taste.

It was odd.

She sighed as I kissed her and stroked along her spine. With my free hand I pulled her short hair back.

Many minutes passed before she pulled away with a smile. "There are benefits to neither of us having to breathe."

I laughed. "True. But do you get anything out of the kisses?"

She shook her head. "Not really but your kind tend to be orally fixated from what I understand. It pleases me to please you."

"What do you know...of my kind...?" I asked.

"I've been researching lately. Not only into my own...kind...but other...supernatural...creatures." She smiled. "You would be surprised how much you can discover if you have the right contacts, which I've been exploring. I've met many interesting people lately."

I smiled as she stroked a finger across my mouth and I allowed my fangs to drop into place. She lightly pulled her fingertip across one of the sharp points inducing me to shudder. I moaned as she teased each sharp canine.

"What big teeth you have?" she teased.

I chuckled as she leaned back in for another kiss allowing her tongue to pass harmlessly over the needle sharp fangs. She was in no danger and it felt good to allow myself to let go...and just be what I was. To be what I was with someone that not only cared about me... for me...but someone I happened to trust...completely. I could see where I could have easily have fallen in love with her had I only let myself as a human. I could see where I could fall in love with her even now. But we both knew that we couldn't. It was not the way of my kind to stay with those of her kind for too long. Tonight was about acceptance and companionship. And it was enough.

As she pulled back a second time to allow me to get my bearings I whispered, "What would please you? How can I please you?"

She grinned at me as she turned to straddle my lap. "I've been...exploring...my powers. Learning different things that I'm capable of. Doing research like I said. Especially since talking to Spectre."

I settled my hand upon her thin hips and waited. "Yeah?"

"Yeah!" Her hands came to rest upon my shoulders as she gently began to massage them. "Do you trust me?"

"With my life." I smirked.

After a few seconds she caught the very thin joke as she smacked me on the head. "Do you trust me?"

"Yes, I trust you." I nodded, rubbing her back gently. "Completely."

"I want to try something," she whispered, "but you have to trust me."

I nodded again as she once more became like smoke, rising above me and hovering like the spirit she truly was. Her aura sparkled and she smiled gently as she held her arms up and beckoned to me. "Come to me."

"What?"

"Come to me, trust me. I won't let you come to harm." Her voice was barely above a whisper.

I stood up slowly and walked toward her, preparing to enter the abyss that she protected. Prepared for the disorientation, prepared for the disassociation, for the fear, for...

Warmth?

She was all around me, apart of me, holding me. Touching me inside and out. Completing me, soothing me, making me ache in good ways. Lifting me, pulling me up, embracing me. Every nerve was alive, humming with sensation, with pleasure.

She was inside my head, inside my thoughts. She knew me inside and out. And I in turn knew her, every second of her life, from her birth to her death and beyond. I was with her when she learned to ride her bicycle. I was with her the first time she put nail polish on. I was with her when she got an A on a difficult science project. And I was with her when she died in the bathtub at the hands of her adopted brother. She She saw my loneliness as a small child left to babysitters and staff. She was with me when I first went to the circus and met Dick and his parents. She was with me as I followed and admired Batman and Robin's exploits and she was with me when I pieced together their identity. She was with me the first time I wore the suit. She was with me when I first met Superboy and Impulse...and she was with me when I died at the hands of a vampire.

We shared the confusion of our new existences. Her confusion over what she was, mine as to where I was. I was with her as she escaped her imprisonment and she was with me as I escaped my coffin.

I felt her joy at friendship. She felt my joy of being with Jolly and Sabastian. I felt her fear for my soul and she felt my fear of my insanity.

We rejoiced in our similarities and rejoiced in our strengthened friendship and we even rejoiced in our differences.

We were one. And it felt good.

The room was nonexistent. We were everywhere and nowhere. Somewhere where light was bright but no light existed.

I was blinded by the intensity as wave after wave of pleasure crashed over me. The entire time she murmured to me words of endearment and caring, words of her own unique brand of love. I felt adored, worshiped, cared for. I felt her friendship in a physical way as she spoke within my mind, spoke within my flesh, and spoke within my heart. I could feel her respect as she showed me a reverence no one had ever shown me. There was little in the way of lust as she found her way into every fiber of my being. Only of love. I felt her pulse through my body and was reminded of my dead heart, a heart that she brought back to life, if only temporarily.

This was not the abyss I had expected, an abyss to emptiness preceding hell itself. This was the abyss of her emotions...for me...for all of us. And if I had never been turned I would never have realized the strength of her feelings. I would never have understood. I would have been frightened to find myself the focus of her emotions. Frightened because these feelings that washed over me were not human in origin. There are no human counterparts for them.

Obsession plays only a small role, but a large part in its expression. Domination and possession also, but there is...escape?

I don't know how to describe it. We love and we love completely and when we are with someone they are the focus of our universe.

But... out of sight out of mind. We can let go and move on and if, years later, they come back into our life we can pick the emotion back up as though it was there all along. But we don't...brood...about it. We don't wallow in absence. We can miss someone and wish they were here. We could long for their company. But it isn't in our nature to...despair. We have adapted to the idea of moving on.

You cannot face eternity without that ability.

It is not heartless.

It is survival.

It is a human trait to despair over another. And neither Secret nor I are human any longer.

We knew that we could and would take our pleasure with each other. We could love each other completely in those stolen moments. But we also knew that it was not a declaration of never ending commitment.

Neither of us, a vampire and a wraith, could survive nor deal with that kind of relationship.

Surrounded by her I could scarce make out the room we had started in. For me there were no noises beyond my own moans and her sweet mutterings. I was completely enraptured by her presence. My senses were completely filled with her.

We could have been that way for hours or minutes, I could not tell, but it was with a boneless and sated abandon that she laid me back down upon a nearby chair. My eyes were closed and my body hummed as she withdrew slowly. Faintly I heard a door close behind me and I only vaguely wondered who had been in the room.

I smiled as Secret floated down beside me and solidified her hand to stroke my hair out of my eyes. She smiled sadly and sighed. "I think you need to go talk to Nightwing. He didn't look too happy. He doesn't understand and I think..."

"Shit!" I whispered. "And the night had just started to look up, too..."

I forced my body to move and stood up. "I'll see if I can find him."

She shrugged. "Humans, you just never know what they are thinking sometimes..."

"No doubt! They run hot and cold. I wonder why I'm bothering..." I grumped as I headed toward the door.

"Because he has a nice ass even a wraith can appreciate?" She grinned.

"Oh, yeah! I knew there was a reason!" I smirked as I opened the door.

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