Now you see inside
I no longer hide
Or fall between the cracks you left behind
Shattered, now you're out of time
You've come this far to be denied

SR-71; What a Mess

**************

It hurt.

Everything hurt.

He just lay there, fingers twitching. Trying to breathe. It was all he could do right now. Ezekiel's ghoul was laying on his stomach, eyes glassy as they stared unblinking into Mel's own. Fingers limp around the dagger he'd used to try and defend the two of them.

But there was no defending against three Kindred who Ezekiel had made enemies of. Or better...those who Ezekiel's patron had made enemies of. Ezekiel just read cards and memories and spoke to the ghosts that Mel and he both saw. Stored other memories in Mel for later retrieval, because the mind can only hold so much.

The memory that these Kindred needed?

Mel had it.

But they didn't know that. They hadn't asked. Ezekiel didn't have it anymore, and Mel could feel himself bleeding. Could feel his own heartbeat stuttering in his chest. His own voice keening, and the only word he could say was his 'patron's' name.

Fingers weakly grasped for the knife and failed. He could hear the ransacking of the other rooms. People he didn't know going through journals upon notebooks upon post-its. Little things that Ezekiel had written to remind himself.

For someone who so wrapped in the threads of fate and memory, Ezekiel could be incredibly forgetful.

And Mel knew that he was that way too.

Or...had been. Because there was no way he was surviving this. He wasn't a ghoul. He had tasted Ezekiel's blood and had those intense eyes take and give and store things within him, but he'd never been made a ghoul, and so couldn't heal himself as Matthew might have been able to...if the blow to his head hadn't killed him instantly.

It had something to do with his 'gift'. That he'd lose it, and Ezekiel needed it.

That didn't matter now.

The blackness was clawing at the edges of his vision, and a ghost he didn't recall was trying to get his attention. Trying to keep him awake, but he knew that Ezekiel wouldn't be coming back until those Kindred were gone.

Blackness and redness in his tunnel vision, and he realized that he was seeing blood on the edges. Blood and black and Matthew's dark green eyes....

They were still moving around the room, and Mel could hear one of them curse, though it sounded as though he were underwater.

They wanted a memory...

...and as even that green faded into black, and everything stopped existing, he could be happy. Now, they'd never have what they wanted. It would die with him. That perfect, perfect vengeance.

What they'd come for, they'd killed themselves.

[Will Be Continued Tomorrow]