"Come on now, make it worth my time." Talamayas hissed steam that sank with dark magic and rolled along the ground near him. It singed Rodney's fingers and climbed into the opening of his dark shirt to scald the flesh there. If he didn't run, he'd be boiled alive.

It was pointless, but he did it.

Pushing off from the ground, Rodney darted to escape, but a hand grabbed his ankle and dragged him back across the asphalt. As much as he'd been trying to not give Talamayas what he wanted, Rodney screamed when the man's foot smashed through his calf to the bone. It snapped and splintered as Talamayas ground his heel into his leg, and Rodney trembled as the man removed it. Fear that he meant to step on him again dissipated to agony and dread as he knew the man wanted him to run again.

The best he could manage as his leg stitched itself back together was crawl.

That was enough for a beast though, he supposed. Just that futile movement excited the predator into stalking after him. Steam followed, nipping at Rodney's ankles if he was too slow, and he touched the ground to push off with his good leg and get some space. Rodney never made it. A hand snapped out, crashing into his skull, and the world spun as Talamayas brought him into his face. The muscles in Rodney's neck stretched painfully as he was suspended by nothing but Talamayas' hand wrapped around his skull, and it took Rodney a moment to orient himself from the blow to his head.

Nothing had broken, but everything sure was dizzying. As soon as the world was done tipping like a top, his eyes focused to Talamayas' face in his. Rodney's mouth twisted into a scowl and he spit right into Talamayas' face. The blow to the side of his head had him reeling as Talamayas let him go only so he could collide with the ground. From there, Rodney could make out the man wiping his face with a hand. The smile on Rodney's lips earned him a kick to the stomach so hard that ribs cracked at the bottom, and he wheezed as Talamayas grabbed his head again. This time Talamayas snarled when he lifted him, and Rodney was unsure if he should spit on him again.

The man would likely kill him if he did.

But he'd promised Horus he wouldn't give up.

So Rodney used his brain instead, the furiously, pissed off, jaded, and disgusted brain cells he had left. "You're a monster, Talamayas Sol." Rodney hissed between his teeth. "Whatever bottom of the barrel they scraped to make you, they should have burned the whole thing. You're as worthless as the thought was in making you."

Talamayas' lips lifted for a growl that pulled his lips so far back on his fangs that Rodney could see gums. There was truly no expression closer to a wolf before it ripped out its prey's throat, and Rodney had no options left. This had never been a fight that he could win. This had never been a fight at all. It was just amusement for a man swimming in rage and despair who had no other outlet than to brutally murder anyone who dared exist unprotected.

"You're nothing to no one, Echo Silver!" Talamayas snarled in his face, forcing him to hunch his head lower on his neck just to try and escape the heat sizzling the skin of his nose and cheek.

"I know that though!" Rodney found enough strength to yell it at Talamayas, the wound from those words too deep and fresh to ignore. "Why do you feel the need to beat it into me before I die?" Rodney screamed the words in Talamayas face.

The beast's lips lowered a fraction of an inch, but nothing else changed. There was nothing in this man, no understanding, no pity, no morality. Talamayas was empty. All that surged beneath his skin and eyes was malice, violence, and a need to destroy whatever lay in his path.

"Is this what brings you pleasure, Talamayas Sol? Kicking a man when he's down?" Rodney continued to yell, his inescapable end giving him enough strength to do so. "You're a genuine article of your house, ruthless, soulless, and cowardly. You can't find anyone more appropriate to match you, so you just beat to shit the first guy you stumble on? Well good fucking job! You broke down what little pride I'd managed to hold onto until I'm just as empty as you. Now you can sleep easier knowing what a colossal piece of shit you are!"

Rodney expected a blow, to spit blood as the man shut him up, but there was no rage left in Talamayas Sol's eyes when he met them again. All of the anger and desperation for violence had faded to its cause, and Talamayas' shoulders sank as he dropped Rodney onto the asphalt. There, Rodney hunched forward onto his elbows and wept, thick heavy tears with his claws digging into the ground as he awaited the sound of movement that would mean his death. Perhaps it was better if he didn't see it coming.

"For what little it matters," Talamayas hot breath whispered into his ear from behind, and Rodney couldn't turn before a hand grabbed him by the back of the neck and held him in place. "You are right. It was wrong of me to do this to you."

Heat sizzled the skin of his neck, and Rodney trembled as he waited for it to climb and melt all that was holding his head to his torso. It would be a painful death, torturous as Talamayas was, and Rodney had no way of stopping it.

"Please don't kill me," Rodney flat out begged, out of energy to fight anymore, demoralized of any pride or conviction he'd had, but he didn't want to leave Horus alone to suffer his loss.

"Forest truly does not want to, but he knows as I do, that we cannot let you go."

Talamayas reached his remaining hand in front of his throat, and Rodney jerked his chin up from the searing heat as magic-laden claws ran across his throat. Rodney's skin split like an overripe fruit, and blood poured out onto the ground in a heavy stream that hissed steam into the air. It wasn't the worst way to die, he supposed as he watched his life pool on the ground, draining continually because Talamayas kept his finger jammed into his artery.

It was how one slaughtered an animal, staying out of sight to avoid frightening them and slicing their throat cleanly so that they died in a manner of minutes if not less. Tears dripped from his face into his blood, and Rodney let it all happen. This was his end. All of the fighting, struggling, and pleading had ultimately proved useless, and it was time he joined his sire in the void. The hold on the back of his neck loosened, and he didn't fight Talamayas as he turned him around. Most of it was exhaustion from struggling to stay alive for so many years, and his eyes wandered to his executioner.

No pleasure shone in Talamayas crimson eyes nor promise of pain as he near cradled him in his arms and lifted him to rest against his shoulder. Talamayas' unbloodied hand slipped into Rodney's hair as he brought his face down and pressed his check flush to his own. Talamayas was so warm, like Horus, and Rodney closed his eyes to remember the amber eyes of the man he loved, the one he'd fought for until the end.

"Rodney," Talamayas whispered his true name, and he cringed on the harsh sound even though it was said with nothing but calm. "For wronging you at your time's end, I will give a single chance to live."

The words meant little when Rodney couldn't run if the man gave him a three day's head start. The most he could manage was crawling a few feet until he passed out in this state, so whatever Talamayas meant to offer would be fool's gold—pretty, shiny, useless, and worthless like himself.

Talamayas' hand grazed his face, and Rodney followed it more out of the inability to do anything else than interest. It was so dark compared to Rodney's near white skin, and then it was red. Rodney still had enough in him to jump as Talamayas claws dug a gash into his own neck before the man used the hand in Rodney's hair to push his mouth onto the flow.

"Your choice, Rodney." Talamayas' voice vibrated against Rodney's lips as the first drops of Sol blood touched his tongue. Vampire blood was like licking hot tar, and if he swallowed it, it would burn going down, but it would also change him.

Talamayas was offering to take him in. If Rodney drank Talamayas' blood, empty of the Silver blood that kept him alive, it would fill him with Sol magic and try to change him in the same way it would a human. If he forsook his master's power and accepted Talamayas' blood, then he would wake as a Sol. It would mean leaving Illiam behind and serving the man who'd wiped his house from existence, but it would also give him a second chance at life.

Being a Sol meant the death decree didn't apply to him, that he could travel within society or the battlegrounds free from threat of constant death even if he did so without hiding his face. What Talamayas was offering him was a place to live, a family to be a part of again, and protection from anyone who might hurt him lest they suffer Talamayas' wrath.

But it was only his if he could survive the change, if his body would cast off Illiam like an old robe before he donned the armor of Talamayas Sol's volatile blood. The odds of him surviving were piss poor at best, and Talamayas Sol knew that. Perhaps that was why he was offering, because he thought it wouldn't work.

Rodney was dead either way, so he pressed trembling hands to Talamayas' bare abdomen to steady himself and sank his fangs into his neck. Warm blood flowed down his tongue, thick and coated with magic that his body immediately rejected. He tried to pull back and heave the liquid onto the ground, but Talamayas held his head firm to his body.

Tar pushed down his throat, thick, slow, and saturated with a magic contrary to his sire's, and his body fought as more of it kept flowing. Wave after wave assaulted him until his body could no longer pretend he wasn't drinking it. It settled into his stomach, the muscle tightened, lurched, and Rodney tore back from Talamayas and screamed. A hand clamped over his mouth to stifle him as every inch of his insides lit on fire. Rodney tried to rip his insides out with his claws, but an arm got in his way and he tore into flesh as it secured his hands.

Stop, stop, stop, please just let this end.

Talamayas power was shredding him from theinside, and he screamed into fingers that dug into his face and turned him onhis stomach to pin him to the ground. This was killing him, so why wouldn't whoever was over him let him open hisveins and pour it all out. Pain shot up his spine, exploded in his heart, andRodney's head fell to the ground with a thump as the world around him faded.Consciousness was slipping away, but the pain did not ease, splintering up anddown his every limb as he sank into the dark abyss.

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