Daymares and nightdreams

Titan’s Tower… 5 years ago…

“Did you know he had never even HEARD of you? He had awoken to this century unable to deny the existence of the Justice League, its heroes, paragons of Truth, Justice and Compassion… But he never heard of their pet project the ‘Teen Titans’, isn’t THAT an insult?”

Making her way through the top floor of the skyscraper that was the headquarters of the Titans, Talia Ghul, the bride of Dracula, the black blade of the legion of shadows smiled down at the would-be defenders she had invaded and defeated single-handedly in the span of just 3 seconds.

“Then again, I can see why. You are all a watered-down version of who THEY are. Super BOY, Aqua LAD, Wonder GIRL. You are all nothing more than carnival barkers to the real show.”

Her attack was so swift, the team never had a chance to properly react, how could they against a master vampire? It all started when they heard the chime of their front door alert them to a delivery woman wearing a pizzeria uniform with 5 boxes of pizza pies in her hands.

“Pizza Delivery!”

“Awe GREAT! Who ordered? Come right in!”

Of course, Beast Boy was the first to fall for the ploy, always thinking with his stomach. The instant the door was opened, she was like a blur of motion. Sword cuts danced across the young man’s shirt to expose his bare chest and stomach, just as criss-crossing marks of blood traced over his torso, and she kicked him across the hall. Just as the others sat up from where they were to see their wounded friend tumble towards the couch, Talia was already on them.

Aqua Lad barely had conjured weapons of solidified water in his hands when he felt a fist hit him in the sternum with enough force to knock the breath out of his lungs and cause his gills to swell up to catch his breath when he felt something metallic fill in those spaces, keeping him from breathing when a roundhouse kick sent him across the living room. A pair of stiletto knives stuck in his gills left him gasping for air while Raven tried to help him. The Wonder Girl, Cassy received a backhand to the face and a knife in her shoulder before she could even blink her eyes, careening across the room.

Time stood at a standstill with Cyborg’s arm transforming into a sonic vortex cannon, Starfire’s hands igniting into radiant plasma and Red Arrow bringing his bow up with an arrow from his quiver already taut on the bowstring.

Her smile was almost devilish.

With a blur of motion, she flung stiletto knives out to the light fixtures throughout the entire room, immediately drowning the living room and hallway into darkness save the light from the windows and Starfire’s flames, but it was enough. In the dark, Talia disappeared, only to appear behind cyborg through his own shadow and claim his legs from under him. The man just barely registering his legs severed at the thighs as gravity took root and pulled him down. A simple flourish of the hair-thin blade in her hand was enough to cut the drawstring from Roy Harper’s bow, snapping him across the face as his explosive tip arrow went loose and flew across the hall. The arrowhead exploded on impact with the opposite wall and took the entrance doorway with it, all while Red Arrow clutched at his face and cried out when a thin blade got stuck to his arm.

Again, she disappeared, diving into Roy’s shadow in the single second that passed between Roy clutching his face wound and Cyborg landing heavily on his back and firing his concussive blaster into the ceiling, causing an explosion that rained down debris and blew smoke in every direction. Turning around in shock, Starfire looked around blindly, seeing shadows move in the smoke and dust, she had no idea who was friend or foe. Gasping, she felt something sting under her arm, dropping her to the ground as she looked down and found what looked like a dart in her side.

“TITANS! GOoooough.” Nightwing had the wind knocked out of him when Talia exploded out of the smoke with a wake of turbulence, striking him in the stomach with the butt of her sword with enough force to make his feet lose contact with the floor, then spun into a triple lux and brought him face first into the tilework with the heel of her boot.

This was a game to her, child’s play. Faster than they could react, stronger than they could endure, she was a blur to them, leaving only pain and vertigo that left them paralyzed on the ground or lost in shock from their injuries.

“Azerath Metron… ACH!”

Grabbing the pale woman by her neck and lifting her off the ground with the same ease as lifting a disobedient cat, Talia smiled up at Raven with burning red eyes. Sheathing her sword at her side, Talia Ghul used her free hand to wag a finger at the cambion of a teenager and tutted in disapproval.

“Now, now, none of that, spellcasting is forbidden in this game little one. Time for a game penalty.” Pulling free a dart from a sleeve in the thigh of her pant-leg, Talia drove it into Raven’s arm and dropped her to the ground. Wincing and gasping, Raven’s hand shivered as she pulled at the dart and pried it off her arm. “Pull it out if you want but the deed is done, you should be feeling the effects right now.”

Whatever she was talking about, she was right. Almost instantly Raven’s eyes went wide as her entire nervous system felt like it was on fire and Raven spasmed into pure agony. But she was not the only one. Looking up and around, she could see her friends go through the same screaming anguish, clutching at darts stuck in their bodies or in a state of rigor screaming in intense pain.

“Lovely, isn’t it? Pure poneratoxin from bullet ant venom, the effects last for 24 hours which means I can be entertained ALL day with your pained screams.” Casually looking around at her handywork, the vampire tilted her hip and rested a hand at her side. “Three seconds, that’s how long it took to bring you all to heel.”

“W-why… A-a-are y-y-ou… D-d-o-oing this?” Muttered Dick with clenched teeth, blood escaping his lip, either because he had bitten his cheek in pain, or something more important.

Smiling and narrowing her eyes, she sashayed over to the convulsing former Robin and lifted him up easily by the front of his chest to bring him to his feet. Seeing him eye to eye, her smile threatened to split her face, revealing nothing but fangs to compliment the murderous red glare from her eyes.

“He found her, my master and love found his TRUE love, and you know what that leaves me as?” She asked, seeing him roll her eyes back as the pain only grew, wiping her thumb over the blood escaping his mouth, she sampled how he tasted. “It means his ‘brides’ are obsolete, I was a means to an end to deal with the wolves, and NOW that war is over, my master no longer having the appetite to wipe them from the face of the earth, what is a blade to do now that it cannot cut?”

Her smile then faded, becoming a storm of emotion as her expressions turned to anguish, fury, despair and back again, Talia calmed herself and regained her haughty stoicism.

“I am not a blade to be rested on a wall like a trophy when the war is over, no. Weapons of war, weapons of murder are made to kill… So, I shall kill, kill for him, kill for my love, until he sees me worthy again, to wield me in a battle so grand your precious Justice League will see your oceans turn red from their precious watchtower. Then… Then I shall be worthy of him again. And what better spark to ignite that war than to see the Justice League’s pets killed in their own home.”

“Don’t…”

Looking down at her feet, Talia’s smile returned, seeing Koriand’r reach out with her hand despite the pain she was suffering, pleading for the woman to stop.

“Please don’t…”

“Ah… So, the fire haired WHORE has something to say.”

Reaching down, she grabbed the woman by the throat and hoisted her up to stand with Dick, the two paralysed by the venom coursing through them. With a mocking, pouting look, Talia could see the two shift their gaze to each other despite her threatening presence. Which only made her smirk.

“So… You two are together, of course you are.” Her smile returning, Talia placed her thumbs at their throats. “For that reason, perhaps YOUR suffering should be the greatest before I end…”

Someone grabbed her ankle. Some… THING had the audacity to touch her! Looking down with barely restrained contempt, Talia found Raven grasp at her leg with her free hand, the young woman’s mind reeling from the poison’s effects as the rest of her body betrayed her. “Oh… The little half-breed still has some fight in her, I do wonder child, if I were to sample your demonic blood would Trigon see me more worthy as a herald of destruction? Or would I be just as disappointed as he… Is…”

Raven glared back up at Talia, her four glowing red eyes burning into the vampire’s own as the air around them began to swirl and billow. What smoke still lingered had dissipated as Raven quickly got up from the ground, her arms outstretched as she floated above the ground, but their eyes never blinked or broke eye contact, transfixed with each other’s gaze as Raven started to speak. Her voice echoing in the ears and minds of everyone present, as if she was not the one speaking at all. But something else.

“VACUUS ANIMO, VAS SPIRITIBUS NOCTE AC DIE. CORAM IGNE STELLATO ET ALA NOCTIS ITERUM IMPLEBERIS!”

Finally blinking her eyes, Talia’s face contorted as she was overwhelmed by a storm of emotions. Dropping Nightwing and Starfire, the vampiric assassin stepped back and looked around, staring down at her hands as her eyes twitched. Her mind was in chaos, memories not her own flooded into her mind and forced her see two different lives. One a boy from a loving family travelling together in a circus, the pain of losing his family, and being taken in by the Batman. The other, the joy and jubilation of a tamaranian princess, carefree, blissful, before being betrayed by a sister, and left to rot and fight in gladiatorial fights. Finding the chance to scape, flee, hide, and be saved by the Titans. Clutching at her head it was all too much, falling to her knees all she could see, think and feel were the two writhing in pain in front of her. She could… FEEL them! Feel their pain, their joy, their sorrow, their dreams.

At that moment, with bloody tears streaking down her pale cheeks, the vampire woman screamed.

*

Gasping and sitting up with a start, Talia looked around the hotel room to find she was never at the Titan’s tower, but instead safe in bed where she could see the mid-day sunbeams cut through the closed blinds of the windows of her shared hotel room. Sitting up and bringing her knees up to her chin, the pale woman breathed in sharply. Hugging herself and slowly exhaling, she closed her eyes.

“Friend Talia, are you alright?”

Opening her red eyes, the vampire looked up to find Starfire in a pair of short shorts and sleeveless blouse, poking her head out of the door frame of the restroom with a towel around her hair, the orange skinned woman quickly making her way to the bed and sit to comfort the undead woman. The instant she was within reach, Talia snaked her arms around the woman like she was a lifeline. Smiling warmly, Kori patted Talia on the shoulders gently.

“Did friend Talia have a bad dream?”

“A bad memory…” Talia sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose, and pulling the blankets off her to turn and sit up, her bare feet contacting the carpeted flooring. “The undead don’t dream.”

Pulling the towel off her head and letting her flowing, vibrant red hair cascade down her shoulder and back, it always made Talia wonder if it was truly hair or something more akin to flame as it trailed off like the wick of a candle, exuding steam from the shower she had recently.

“Well, bad memories are for the past, the present is full of GOOD memories, because we can make them.” Chirped Starfire, clapping her hands together, just as the door to the hotel opened with Dick stepping inside with a Styrofoam cooler in his hands. “See? Already good memories to be had, welcome back Dick.”

“I got your supply of blood Talia, at the very least you won’t starve while in the city.” Nightwing smiled back at the two women, finding Talia more sullen than usual. “What happened?”

Getting up from the bed, the pale woman made her way towards Dick and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, burying her face between his shoulder and neck. The man never making a cautious act against her, so trusting of her actions.

“I need to see him.” She whispered in his hear.

“Okay, I think we can pull the car around and see Damie…”

“No.” Talia cut him off, a pained look in her eyes. “I need to see Bruce. I need to ask him forgiveness.”

Taking the container from his hands, Talia brought it with her to the kitchen counter and quickly pulled the lid off. There in plastic bags and tagged with dates and the location they were jarred were pig and beef blood from a local butcher’s shop. Just a glance at the red fluid was enough for the woman to pull a jar out of the container, crack open the lid and down its contents in one go. The moment she emptied the jar, Talia panted, wiping her lip with the back of her hand. Looking down at the empty, blood-stained jar, Talia couldn’t help but feel guilt. An emotion she rarely felt even when she was alive. Her father always said that guilt was a luxury in the face of saving the world from itself, that some deeds would need to be done, no matter how heinous. The greater good should absolve all guilt.

But that was a lifetime ago.

Ever since that faithful night, she had become something… New. Not quite Talia Ghul, she was a cold woman, one who abandoned such concepts of empathy or compassion. And yet she wasn’t the bride of Dracula anymore… She was even worse. No, she was something, someone new, an ember of the heart kept red and burning thanks to her compatriots still blowing air into those embers to keep them hot. Because of them she now had a new perspective. But there was something she had to do.

Feeling a warm hand drape over her shoulder, Talia smiled when she found Dick looking back at her, Kori still sitting on the bed but watching her to gauge her actions.

“Please Dick, I need this.”

Nodding, Nightwing smirked and looked over to Starfire, who smiled back at the two.

“Alright then, should we go when the sun goes down or…”

“Soon… Right now, I want to feel the warmth of your skin against mine.” Separating from Nightwing so that she could look him in the eye, Talia’s features softened, tracing a thumb over his cheek before leaning in for a passionate kiss, one he did not resist as she pressed more fervently against him until they were both against the wall behind him. Cooing and moaning into the kiss, Talia traced her fingers down his shoulders and arms, finding the hem to his shirt and pulling it off to leave his chest bare.

Resuming the kiss, Talia could feel the warmth of his skin against her cold body, feeling him warm her core the longer she pressed up against him. That warmth intensified when she felt a second pair of hands gently grip around her and Dick’s waist, gently pulling the woman’s chin to the side so her lips could be captured by Kori’s. While making out with the woman, Talia sighed into her lips as she felt Dick kiss his way up her neck, making her eyes flutter. She could feel it, his affection, his love, his warmth. It was like a blanket she could wrap around herself, after so many years of feeling cold, she wanted to feel more. Taking Dick and Kori’s hands in hers, she brought them back to the bed.

Playfully she shoved Nightwing onto his back on the mattress, climbing over top of him to continue kissing the man while Starfire sat nearby and pulled off her top. Taking her own top off, Talia lolled her neck and hummed to herself, feeling Dick grope at her perfect breasts and kiss at her cleavage. Kori snaked her arms around the woman’s shoulders and pulled her into a kiss of her own, their eyes closed as they felt each other’s lips and let their tongues duel with one another. Sitting up to peel off her shorts and help Dick kick his pants off, Talia did the same with the rest of her clothes and straddled his waist again. He was already hard by the time she was on top of him again, guiding his length to her moist folds and sinking down on him to enter her.

In that instant she could feel the warmth of their bodies fill her own with warmth, making her feel alive. Even if it were brief, even if it were artificial, she clung to that sensation as she rocked her hips against his and smothered her breasts into his face, eager to feel him make her feel alive again, even for a fleeting moment.