We of the Undeserving

See Part One for Disclaimers and Warnings if u so desire to be warned.

"Touch her so I can kill you," invited the fiery stranger, nodding towards the cowering vampyre. Jazmyn couldn't believe her ears. Her mouth opened. Her mouth closed. Her fangs worried at her bottom lip. Her blood roared it's confusion in her ears. She wondered if she might faint, if she was even capable of it.

"You're either very brave or very stupid," Xena murmured and her voice was the very creation of Hades, a poignant promise of tortures to come. "Do you know who I am?"

"Do I look like I care?" returned the red-head, spreading her hands wide in a deliberate mimicry of Xena's earlier actions. The dark warrior's eyebrow arched and she actually snorted. The world whirled around Jazmyn in technicolour circles as she decided that her last meal must have been a junkie. It was the only explanation...suddenly her long buried curiosity took the opportunity to ressurect itself.

"Who are you?" she blurted out, uncomfortably aware that she was throwing the red-head's question back in her face.

"I'm Ashleigh. Ashleigh Pain." The Other's scarlet orbs were fixated on Xena's sublimely rounded breasts. "Are you involved with anyone?" she asked Xena.

The dark warrior smirked at her. "Wait till Gabrielle meets you with the business end of her staff."

"Who's Gabrielle?" queried Ashleigh eagerly.

Jazmyn watched in growing amazement as Xena actually smiled at the girl in an almost friendly way. The warrior's blue eyes were hazy and a wave of her memories unexpectedly rushed upon the vampyre. She saw shifting clouds revealing the sun, a new beginning, a village girl pleading to come, with such unasked for trust shining in her warm aqua eyes...and then she was ripped away from her sudden and novel contentment as a powerful hand closed snugly around her windpipe. This hurts, thought Jazmyn with real surprise. She looked down to see her feet dangling off the floor. She looked up into twin pale antarctic wastelands.

"Time for you to die..." hissed the warrior, her lips drawn back against her gleaming teeth in carnal bloodlust. Finally, thought Jazmyn, closing her eyes and almost enjoying the shiver of fear.

Then she was landing on her butt, hard. Her eyes snapped open and she saw what the warrior was staring at.

For the second time that night, the second time in centuries, her mouth dropped open in surprise. Ashleigh was changing. Strangely riveting red eyes were beginning to glow with all the impotent fury of chained Cerberus'. Muscles twitched into existance at her shoulders and ripped their way down her biceps and triceps, twisting in a clearly excruciating process into being. Bent and twisted claws tore their freedom through her fingertips, blood trickling in their wake. A mouth stretching open in a howl of unadulterated agony revealed wicked canines, growing, growing, growing. Ashleigh sported fangs that were remniscent of a sabretooth tiger and curved their way down just past her stubbornly jutting chin.

"Oh gods," whimpered Jazmyn, this spectacle tearing at her unbeating heart in a way she could not possibly hope to understand. "Oh gods," she whispered again. "Ash, are you alright?" She had no idea that she had spoken until the words were plucked from her soul entirely against her will. Glowing scarlet eyes met hers. They were frightened. "Oh Gods," whimpered the vampyre again, having no idea why her gut was churning the way it was.

Xena's voice was calm and dispassionate. "I wish I had my sword," she commented caustically, eyeing Ashleigh with just a hint of apprehension. "I thought you had killed all the Vampae." This last was spat out at Jazmyn, who sat with her knees hunched up against her chest, her heart twisting restlessly inside her for some reason she could not fathom.

"Vampae?" gasped Jazmyn absolutely aghast. "You mean, they're not a myth? They exist? Oh gods..." It seemed to be all she could say anymore. Blue eyes as harsh as an endless winter bit into her mercilessly.

"You killed them."

"I didn't," she gasped weakly, pressing clenched but trembling fists into her cheeks.

"You killed them all."

"No..."

"You killed them all, Rose."

"I'm not Rose!" As soon as the admission had escaped her throat she wanted to gather it in and stuff it back deep inside her. Xena was staring at her with narrowed eyes. Ashleigh, newly transformed Vampae, stood a little apart, simply watching and waiting. For what, Jazmyn did not know and didn't dare guess.

"You look like Rose." Xena's voice was bitterly accusing and reminded the vampyre of an old scar in its rasp and intensity.

"I look like Hope." A short lithe figure stepped through the doorway and stood ensconed in shadows.

"How could you?" begged Xena, not looking at the newcomer, her voice raw, her whole stance rigid.

"I'm sorry she did that to you," whispered the shadowy figure, her voice the gentle raindrop that begins a sun shower.

"I'm still waiting for her to come back, Gabrielle," whispered the shaking warrior, speaking only to her bard as though the vampyre and vampae were not present and had never been.

"I know," admitted the bard, stepping into the room's shoddy light and into the warrior's needy embrace. Jazmyn stared in childish wonder at this creature of legend. Gabrielle, daughter of a dead god, mother of the Bacchae, the one the Kin feared the most. She who had a demon at her beck and call...the dark demon god of the Bacchae, Xena. But they don't seem like demons taunted Jazmyn's mind. No, I am the demon, not they.

She huddled on the floor, cold on the inside and unbearably lonely, until soft arms wrapped around her from behind and a warm body snuggled up behind her in a mute appeal for comfort. The vampyre slid her white porcelain hand into the knarled and clawed one grasping for hers and thought that perhaps demons did not need to be always alone afterall.