Heath picked up another pebble and tossed it idly at his comatose comrade across the room. Well, she appeared comatose, at least. He had seen Karen twitch some time ago, impossible really to know how long, and since he was oblivious to the passage of time besides his own hormonal clock, some time was a perfect measurement.

The pebble sailed through the air, across the twenty feet separating the two, and bounced off her greying hair again. He could amuse himself for a few years doing this after the decades of torture he endured at her hands. After the physical and mental torture suffered at her hands, the scars he carried already at his young age, he would love to bury one of these into her head, but unfortunately, these chains restricted his movements to mere flicks of his wrist. It was not much satisfaction, but it was something. He stared at her, his steely eyes burning with anger as he let his hatred burn. Another pebble sailed and another satisfying hit. The knowledge she was awake, sitting there letting herself be humiliated in such a manner, without a word of rebuke for her former Novice, was a savory delicacy that fed his emotions better than any banquet would his physical body.

He grimaced, drawing his elbow back before driving it into the mortared wall behind him. His elbow cracked, his face contorting in pain and the stone wall gave a small shudder as mortar dust rained down on him. A small rock fell beside him, and he quickly ferreted it underneath him as the guard came to the cell door.

"Enough in there before I give you a nap," the female threatened. She produced a stun baton, pressing the button to make it give a sharp electrical crackle.

"Well, what else does a man have to do to get some company around here?" Heath sparred back.

"Man?" the woman scoffed, "Hardly a boy with a toy, hun. I think when my shift is over, I might go find a real one."

The woman walked back out of sight, and Heath fetched the stone out from its uncomfortable spot from underneath his backside. If she only knew what an accomplished bedmate he had become, that one would have him chained to a chair. He readied the stone to fly across the room, envisioning the knot this would leave on that bitches skull.

"Don't even think about it." Karen's voice rang out finally. Her head rose, those serious eyes locking onto his, " Just because I am choosing to ignore you at the moment does not mean I will idly allow myself to come to harm."

His arm still held at the ready, Heath sneered at her, "What the hell are you going to do about it?"

The rock sailed through the air as Karen smoothly dodged out of the way. She returned her icy glare to Heath as she settled back into a comfortable position.

"Oh, come now, you couldn't have cared for that pompous ass that much, Karen. That step-brother of ours made our life a living hell." Heath taunted her. He knew she had not cared much for Joshua, but she had obeyed her Master's son.

"He is not our brother. He was our future Master. That was always a problem with you, Heath. You could never understand that a Dhampir has no family, only service." Karen was trying to keep her temper the best she could. No matter what she had done to the young Dhampir as he grew, she never could knock the foolhardy notion out of his head of family.

"Then why am I being chased! Why come after someone who is not family? Why would Father do that!" Heath tried futilely to get up. His pale face burned with anger.

Her eyes cold as she spoke the next words, having come to terms with it almost a century before, but knowing full well how it affected the boy, "Because we are property and not people and the Master wants me to take care of the destructive property."

"I am no one's property!" the words came out, barely a hiss from Heath's lips. Small fangs had started to protrude from his canines as he clenched his jaw in rage.

"I told Gerald to put you down many times, so many times. That you had inherited too strong to the Shtriga side and you would not subdue as a Dhampir. He thought you would make a strong guardian for Joshua, and I thought you were dangerous. I was right. It is what you do with dangerous animals."

Heath took a few breaths to catch himself. Karen had worked inside his head, but he had caught a slip of the tongue. In the heat of his rage, he had almost missed it. In all his memory, he could never remember his Mentor ever referring to his father by anything other than Master. The familiarity finally dawned on him along with many of the other peculiarities, nights where Karen had been missing, the gifts, presents, exchanges of looks, and now the jealousy from her.

"Gerald and not Master? So how long has "Master" been bedding his property?" He watched his dart strike home, and he fired the final shot, "How long has Master been taking the cattle to bed and putting his property back to pasture when he was done?"

Karen shook with anger and started shouting in the forbidden tongue to him. He did not know what she was saying, he did not speak Romanian, but it was music to his ears. He leaned his head back and let it carry him to sleep, smiling.