Joan breathed heavily as she and Rooney made love on the bed. Rooney’s fingers wrung themselves through Joan’s hair which was down, as Joan ground her hips into the girl. They stared into each other eyes breathing heavily as the bed rocked.

“Joan… I’m close.” Rooney breathed out.

Joan leaned down and kissed her before going faster.

“Emm Roo, I’m close too.” Joan moaned.

Just then they heard the front door bust in with a loud boom. They both flinched.

“Get your ass out here!” Lyssa shouted.

“Shit, it’s Lyssa.” Joan fell off the bed.

“Of all the bad timing,” Rooney complained as she quickly moved to put her clothes back on.

“Joan!” Lyssa shouted.

“Give me a second!” Joan shouted back as she rushed to get dressed.

“She must have found out about Rebecca,” Rooney said.

Then she and Joan shared looks of horror realizing they had forgotten about Rebecca.

“Shit.” They said in unison.

Joan pulled her hair up into a ponytail before rushing downstairs. She only made it halfway before Lyssa grabbed her by the throat and lifted her into the air.

“I should kill you for this.” Lyssa hissed.

“Put her down!” Rooney shouted.

“What the hell is wrong with you!? She’s your friend!” Lyssa shouted.

“Lyssa, what are you talking about?” Joan choked out.

“How could you hurt her like that!?” Lyssa squeezed harder.

“Put her down now!” Rooney pulled out a gun from its holster on her pants.

Lyssa dropped Joan and turned to Rooney.

“So it was you then, you did this!” Lyssa hissed.

“Lyssa what are you talking about!?” Joan stood up and coughed.

“That! Who did that!?” Lyssa pointed downstairs.

Joan and Rooney both look to a very unconscious Bex lying on the entry table where Lyssa had knocked down all the stuff to lay her.

“Bex!” Joan ran downstairs.

“Holy shit.” Rooney put the gun away and also ran after Joan.

Lyssa was by Bex side in a flash.

“Get away from her!” Lyssa shouted.

“We didn’t do this!” Joan held up her hands in surrender.

“Then what the hell is this?” Lyssa pulled out a silver bullet casing and dropped it on the floor in front of them.

“That’s not mine, I’ve been here the whole time.” Rooney defended herself.

“I don’t believe you!” Lyssa grabbed Rooney by the collar of her shirt.

“Lyssa, calm down,” Joan pulled her away.

“Don’t tell me to calm down. She ran two towns over injured like that. If I hadn’t have found her, they would have killed her! So don’t you tell me to calm down.”

“We’ll tell you everything but you have to believe we would never hurt her, I swear,” Joan said.

Lyssa took a shaky breath before picking Rebecca up and running up to the master bedroom. Joan and Rooney shared a look before running after her.

They found Lyssa starting a bath for Bex, leaving Bex on the bed.

“Start talking,” Lyssa demanded.

“Yesterday Rooney took me to investigate this rumor about a vampire in town. We didn’t think it was true, just some high kids making shit up. Anyway, long story short we found out it was Rebecca. So, I dug up her coffin and moved her here so she would be safer. But things happened and she ran off.”

“What kind of things?” Lyssa said through gritted teeth.

“She attacked Joan so I used faith to scare her away. She doesn’t remember anything. She’s not the Rebecca you know. The change didn’t take all the way.” Rooney quickly supplied.

“You scared her away but didn’t think to follow her!?”

“Sorry, things came up.” Rooney blushed.

“Things came up!? Well while you two were in here turning my house into a sex party, slayers got their hands on her. Look at what they did!? They nearly killed her!”

Joan looked down in shame.

“You’ll pay for this, both of you will.” Lyssa hissed.

“Don’t blame us, maybe if you hadn’t run off in the first place we would have been able to contact you for help a long time ago!” Rooney shouted.

Lyssa moved to punch Rooney, but Joan jumped in the way, blocking her.

“Don’t touch her,” Joan growled.

“I need to get Rebecca some blood, can I trust you to watch her while I’m gone or will you fuck that up too?” Lyssa got in Joan’s face.

“I’ll watch her.” Joan clenched her jaw.

“If I find one hair out of place, I’m killing you and your little slayer girlfriend here. Am I clear?” Lyssa growled.

“Crystal.”

Joan and Lyssa shared one last hostile look before Lyssa vanished in search of blood.

“What a bitch, it’s not our fault this happened.” Rooney huffed.

“Oh yeah, it kinda is.” Joan moved to look over Bex.

Rooney sighed and followed after her.

Bex was unconscious on the bed, a giant hole in her chest and bullet holes in her legs. She had rope burn on her neck and around her back. Not to mention the giant shoe print on her face and the big bruise on her side where she was hit with a car.

“Jesus, what did they do to her?” Rooney pushed some of Bex’s hair behind her ear.

“She must have been a fish in a barrel, no clue how to defend herself or what was happening. She was probably so scared.” Joan’s eyes watered.

“Come on, let’s get her in the tub.” Rooney rubbed Joan’s shoulder.

They dragged Bex’s body to the tub where Joan undressed her and they set her in the water. The water quickly turned a rusted color as it filled with blood. Joan took Bex’s hair out of a ponytail and began to rinse it with the showerhead.

“Get me a towel and another change of clothes for her,” Joan said to Rooney.

Rooney nodded and did the task without complaining.

Lyssa came back with a box full of blood bags.

“Do I even want to know where you got that?” Joan asked.

“No. move.” Lyssa grabbed one and moved next to Bex, crouching down and ripping a hole in the bag with her teeth before moving to Bex’s lips and squeezing it so blood would come out.

Bex’s eyes shot open and she bit down on the bag.

“Shh, I got you, you’re okay. I’m here now my love. I’m here.” Lyssa helped her drink, moving the bag closer to her lips and squeezing.

Joan quickly handed Lyssa another. They repeated this process until Bex had drained every bag dry. Her wounds quickly healing up.

“Look at you,” Lyssa giggled as she pushed Bex’s hair behind her ears.

Bex just eyed Lyssa cautiously.

“You’re so beautiful. Look at you. I missed you, my love, I missed you oh so terribly.” Lyssa rested her forehead against Bex’s.

Bex jerked away.

“She doesn’t know you.” Rooney said.

“It’s me, my love, do you know me?” Lyssa asked.

Bex shook her head no.

Lyssa’s face twisted up in pain.

“We don’t know what to do, have you heard of this before?” Joan asked Lyssa.

“I have, but usually it’s not like this. When the change doesn’t take they are like monsters, animals. She’s not like that, she understands us, she can talk. It shouldn’t be like this.” Lyssa rubbed her thumb softly across Bex’s cheek while Bex stared at her quizzically.

“Maybe there is a way we can bring her back, fully,” Joan said.

“Maybe, I’ll have to do some research.”

As Bex stared at Lyssa she felt this strong sense of familiarity. Like the hole inside of her was full once more. Her red eyes turned back to hazel for the first time since she was reborn. Bex couldn’t understand it but she somehow felt safer with Lyssa around. Felt complete again. She didn’t know where these feelings came from or why she felt them, just that she did.

Still, she wasn’t about to let her guard down again, not after what had happened with Joan. She didn’t know Lyssa and until she did, she was going to stay away. She curled up on herself, her eyes cautiously watching Lyssa’s every move.

“There has to be a way to fix this. She knows us, deep down she does. We just have to make her remember.” Joan said.

“Let me get her washed up and then I’ll look into this,” Lyssa said.

Joan nodded and then she and Rooney walked out of the bathroom to give Lyssa a moment alone with Bex.

When Lyssa reached out to wash Bex, Bex flinched away.

“It’s okay, I won’t hurt you,” Lyssa said.

“Lies, they said that, and they hurt me.”

“I’m not Joan or Rooney, trust me. And I will make them pay for hurting you, but for now, you must trust me.”

“What is happening to me? I’m scared.”

“I’m so sorry my love, I should have been here, I should have stayed in town. I didn’t know, I thought I lost you forever.”

“Lost me? Where did I go?”

“You died. Rebecca, you are a vampire now. Do you know what that is?”

Bex shook her head no.

“Joan is a human,”

“She smells good, her blood tastes good.”

“Exactly, humans are what vampires eat. We drink their blood. Vampires are not like humans; they don’t have blood to drink and don’t age. They can run really fast and lots of other things. You are a vampire.”

“But I was a human?”

Lyssa nodded.

Bex frowned and stared off into space as she tried to put some pieces together in her head. Lyssa smirked; she’d know that look anywhere. Bex always got that look when was thinking really hard about something.

Lyssa couldn’t help herself, she grabbed Bex by the chin and forced the girl to look at her. Bex eyed her in confusion before Lyssa pressed her lips softly into Bex’s.

Both girls felt a giant charge of electricity run through them. Lyssa felt like her soul was being ripped from her body and by Rebecca’s sudden scream she knew she was feeling the same. Bex leaped out of the tub and ran to the corner, tucking in on herself and holding her now pounding head.

She was quickly overwhelmed with Lyssa’s thoughts and emotions and many other things. Their bond somehow coming back full force.

Lyssa felt woozy and had to sit down herself to get a handle on things.

“We heard screaming, everything okay in there?” Joan called through the door.

Lyssa grabbed her head in pain, suddenly bombarded with Bex’s fear and confusion. Bex’s thoughts were all jumbled up, like several people talking all at once about different topics. It was hard to focus on anything at all.

“Lyssa?” Joan called.

The last thing Bex needed was to add to the mass confusion in her head. It was too much. She screamed in pain and her eyes turned back to red.

“What’s going on in there?” Joan called.

“Rebecca, calm down,” Lyssa moved over to her.

“It hurts! Liar, you lied!” Bex cried out.

“Shh, it’s okay, just calm down. clear your head.”

“Make it stop!” Bex cried out.

“Shh, come on, I’ll help you. Let’s count sheep together, remember?”

“No!” Bex cried out.

“Shh, come on, I’ll start. One.”

Bex could hear Lyssa’s words echo in her head as well as see an image of a sheep jumping over a fence.

“Two.”

Another sheep jumped over.

“Three.”

And another.

Soon it was easy for her to count along and watch the sheep, her mind blocking out everything else. She quickly fell into a relaxed trance. Lyssa sighed in relief.

Joan cracked the door and poked her head in.

“What happened?” She asked.

Lyssa turned to her and said, “we have a problem.”