Time had ceased to exist for her, living in a perpetual cloud of abuse and pain as she worked to keep herself from producing any lifeform for him. He knew she was doing it, but he couldn't figure out how she was doing it.
"You're getting skinny," he said at one stage, stroking her hair back and kissing her gently.
She was starving. The food he provided her not enough to combat the amount of damage she was repeatedly causing to herself and he had left to get more food for her.
As soon as he had left, she had set to work on destroying the life that was developing inside her and she sobbed as she felt the disconnect inside her.
A low growl started up behind her and she froze, her eyes wide as she realised he hadn't actually left. Closing her eyes slowly, she knew she was in trouble as he crossed the room and gripped her wrists, forcing her hands up between them, covered in blood.
"You fucking little bitch…" he whispered, and she opened her eyes to look up at him, the evidence of why she continued to miscarry every few days clear between them.
She saw his fist coming, and she turned away, taking the brunt of it to her cheek rather than her nose, and she hit the bed, screaming in pain.
Curling his hands around her throat, he crushed her airways, and she gasped, tugging at his wrists with her bloody fingers. Her fingers were slick, unable to get a grip on him as he stared down at her, his eyes wide and empty. Was this how so many others had died? Looking up into his empty eyes as he strangled the life out of them? He was in for a rude awakening.
He grinned as her eyelids fluttered shut, her world going black as she finally found the relief she was looking for. Peace in death.
***
He hadn't known she was immortal, as it turned out, for as her eyes snapped open, she found herself on the floor, simply discarded in a corner and the priest was whimpering on his knees before Neah, the furious Hunter squeezing the life out of him as he had done to her.
She wasn't going to stick around to find out what he did with the corpses he was finished with, and she rolled, throwing herself onto her feet and sprinting for the open door.
"Fuck!" Neah yelled and threw down the priest, running after her as she realised his room was different to the one Vincent lived in. Vincent had a single room that opened out into a hallway and the rest of the compound. Neah had a suite, and she spun, finding the door and racing for it.
Gripping the handle, she yanked it open and then her body was slammed into it, the door crashing shut again.
"How the fuck are you not dead?" he snarled, gripping her hair and dragging her backwards.
"I'm immortal, you arsehole!" she cried, turning on him and then whimpering as the knife slid between her ribs.
"Is that right?" he purred as she looked up at him, collapsing into a heap on the floor as the world faded once more to black.
***
Waking up for a second time in a matter of hours, she whimpered as she found herself bound once more, this time her hands had been fully bound together so she couldn't use her fingers and she was unable to move her arms from above her head.
"You know… I've lost so many to my rage, but I've never had one come back to life," Neah said from across the room.
Looking around, she found the priest was hanging by his wrists from the wall.
"He tried to save you, sweet little thing."
The priest looked half dead, with a large tear in his shoulder from Neah's teeth.
"Let me go, Neah…" she whispered, but he only smiled, approaching her, and sitting down on the bed beside her.
"No, Etani, you're staying here with me. I regretted killing you and the loss of your unique abilities, but here you are, alive and well."
"I can't have children, Neah," she said, staring at the ceiling.
"And yet you kept killing the life inside you…"
"It's not a child."
"I don't believe you," he murmured, dragging his fingers through her hair.
"The Gods made sure I can't have children again," she said.
"Why?"
"It was accidental on the most part. They wanted to bind my magic, and it went down. It made me unable to have actual children."
"What does it make?"
"Worlds."
He frowned at her, not understanding. "Worlds?"
"We are currently in the human world, Faerie is another. Figure it out."
His face was blank, and then he frowned, looking down at her hips and then back up at her face. "You can create worlds?"
"That's why it's called being a Creator," she said dryly.
"I don't want a world; I want a child."
"File a complaint with the Gods."
"Or I can just remove the binding…"
Blinking once at the ceiling, her eyes turned to him, and he met her stare, smirking.
"You can't."
"Do you know what happens when a Hunter and a banshee reproduce?"
"You end up with a sociopath?"
"Cute… but no, you get a magic breaker," he said.
"A what?" she asked, having no idea what he was talking about.
"A Hunter who can do more than fling blood around. My blood can break magic. We are uncommon, usually able to be noticed by the fact that we don't have red eyes. We also get treated better than the common Hunter. As you might have noticed by my rooms. Plus, they tend to ignore our… unusual tendencies."
"That's why no one came at the noise?"
"They're used to screaming coming from in here."
She was silent, staring up at him and trying to wrap her mind around the information.
"You can remove the binding…" she whispered, and he nodded. What was stopping him from simply removing the binding on her and…
His growing grin made it very clear that he had followed her line of thinking and she immediately looked up, pulling at the chain and straining violently to get herself free.
He moved away from the bed and she thrashed against the chains, her struggles stirring the priest.
"You were dead…" he said groggily.
"I'm immortal. I can't stay dead. Can you get free?"
Her chains were refusing to budge, and with her legs bound down, she could only move so far.
"No, it looks like he drove a spike through the links," the priest said. "What's happening?"
She didn't get time to answer as Neah moved back into the room and he was naked aside from the cage around his arm, his eyes on it as he arranged the cages how he needed them.
Smiling, down at her as he approached the bed, he crawled up onto the bed and straddled her, laughing softly as she tried to dislodge him, but she couldn't get him off her.
"Keep fighting, Etani, you're just turning me on. I like it when you struggle," he purred.
He wasn't kidding.
Looking away from his growing erection, she flushed and went still, panting softly as she tried to figure out what to do.
Lifting his arm up above her, she looked up at it and then turned her face away as his arm twisted and his blood almost exploded out of him, dousing her in a shower of crimson.
Forcing her face back upwards, he smiled as he held her in place, and she screamed as he forced her eyelids open, her eyes burning as his blood turned her vision crimson.
Leaning down, his long tongue left his mouth, and he dragged his tongue up from the nape of her neck to the point of her chin. Using two fingers, he turned her face away to the right, and biting down into her neck. She writhed under him, her throat on fire as he drew away and licked over the bites to remove her blood and then allowed the slowing drips of his blood to cover the wound.
"You have two bindings on you, huh?" he asked curiously, licking her blood from his lips and chin. "Don't worry, my darling, I'll only remove the one."
She whimpered, blinking hard to try to clean the blood from her eyes, but it seemed to be mixing with her tears and refusing to be expelled.
She could feel the blood on her body moving, pulling into her body, and she shuddered as it left her skin clean but tingling. Her body began to heat up as more of his blood was drawn into her.
Her cheeks turned pink, and a sheen of sweat broke out over her body, her writhing turning into one of pain and discomfort rather than trying to get him off her.
"Don't fight it," he purred, nuzzling her jaw and then biting her ear so he could suck on it, tasting her blood.
She was sweating fully, panting, and making soft sounds of protest, though it wasn't making anything feel any better.
It was starting to form in her heart, and she groaned, the abused, overheated muscle picking up the pace until it was racing in her chest. He growled happily at the sound, and his head returned to her shoulder, sinking his teeth back into her. She could feel him, a tiny sharp spike of him that was reaching down through her like she did with humans. She hated the invasion of her body and she turned inward, trying to catch it, but he was fast, and he dodged her easily. Diving down through her, he paused at her wrist, only to pull back up her arm and fall down through her to her abdomen.
Swiping at him, he dodged her attempts to beat him back while he reached for the netting that covered her magic, and to her horror, he was able to pick it apart like it was ribbons on a present.
'Stop!' she cried, but he either couldn't hear her, or ignored her, and she shuddered as the magical binding began to unwind under his clever, skilled fingers.
Lashing out at him, he ducked away from it and to her horror, she saw that her swipe had torn open more of the knots. His sadistic laugh echoed around her head, and grabbing onto the netting, and yanked it open.
Her magic ripped free with the feeling like an explosion going through her, and she shuddered, sucking in a breath as the knowledge and awareness of the worlds slammed into her mind and she trembled at the power, the sheer ability she possessed.
He withdrew from her like she had never felt before and it was somehow worse than his simply abusing her. He was exploring her as he retreated, delving into the secret places, and discovering things about her that she had always kept hidden.
The netting dissolved even as she tried to hold on to it and she sat silently, staring down at her empty, no longer glowing womb. Well, if nothing else, at least the Gods should come for her now…
He was looking down at her with a huge, malicious grin as she focused on him, her fear very real as she realised what he planned to do with her. She strained against her bindings even as he shifted up onto his hands and knees above her and then settled down between her legs.
He watched her face with an almost innocent look as he pushed himself into her and she shuddered, tears swelling in her eyes as she realised with a terrible pain and relief that he had removed the bindings that had made so many of the Gods come after her, but that the magic to create was still bound inside her with Winter. Even with the knowledge, she couldn't use it.
Finding the spot on the ceiling that kept her focus so many times before, she half prayed for someone to come for her. His head turned so that his moans were loud in her ear, he wanted her to hear every sound he made.