Roleplay City
Administration => Infusco Archives => Archives => Old Roleplays => Topic started by: Saiketsu on June 18, 2008, 01:20:03 PM
-
continued from Coming Undone (http://www.roleplaycity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5468)
The cab ride had been a tense one: the cabbie looked as though he were falling asleep at the wheel as he wound through alleyways and bumped over sewer grates, and the young woman at his side chose not to utter more than a few words strung together throughout the entire ride. Damien William Evans had concentrated on nothing more than flickering his steely eyes between the girl, the cabbie and the passing lights outside the window. And as he stepped out of the back door, the vampire decided to himself to get one of his cars up and running, so at least he wouldn\'t have to worry about a sleeping driver next time. Paying the cab driver his fare through the window, Damien finalized his decision as the cabbie\'s head nodded slowly in slumber.
Ace, on the other hand, was fully awake at nearly four thirty in the morning, his only worry being the approaching sun in the eastern sky. His eyes glanced in that direction before he noticed Storm onthe other side of the cab, standing on the curb already and staring around at the buildings. Damien found himself wondering when the last time she had been in the city was as the taxi drove off, leaving Damien standing in the near-middle of the street.
Few people were actually out and about at this time of the morning. The bars were already closed, most of the dance clubs across town locked up tight. Birds in distant trees and hiding in distant structures chirped with the anticipation of sunrise. Damien groaned as hiseyes flickered towards the east yet again.
The two of them stood out front of the Capital Building, it\'s lobby alight with yellow radiance. It wasn\'t exactly the Brazilian Quarter as he was telling her, as the front entrance faced a well-lit main street, but beyond it was the infamous Quarter he loved to dwell in; the back door lead straight into its heart. "Shall we?" And he led the way, pulling the door open for her curteiously, trying his best not to be anymore of a prick than he had to be.
Both Damien and Storm entered the lobby. Before even judging Storm\'s reaction or even giving an acknowledging glance at the deskhand, Damien headed straight for the elevator. After so many years of living there, the vampire\'s feet had memorized the familiar pattern of finding the elevator. Feeling her quiet presense close to him, Damien pressed the number two button and the doors closed around them. The elevator shifted and lifted, then stopped roughly at the second floor. The silver doors opened and a long, cheaply carpetted hallway appeared in view, the pattern of old make and worn to the cement in many places. Down three doors, Damien strolled, grabbing the keys from his pocket. He turned left and then right, stopping at the sixth door of the hallway -- one on the edge of the building. He twisted his key in the door wordlessly and entered the dark room.
"It\'s nothing spectacular." The vampire flicked on the light he barely used, igniting the deep green room in a flood of yellow.
-
Storm winced at the cabby\'s careless driving, feeling his slumber and mild irritation pulling at her mind. She didn\'t like the way his presence felt and made a point to stare out at the passing scenery the entire ride. The Akari wasn\'t used to cars, nor did she particularly enjoy riding in them. She preferred to have most if not all control over her traveling situations. And with every bump in the road that made her intake air quickly, the more she wanted to get out.
The girl hardly took in anything she was looking at. She\'d known the sight of the city from passing through once or twice for food, clothing, or trying to get a job. But she didn\'t enjoy the cluttered feeling of masses of stinking humans projecting their emotions everywhere without any thought to what they were doing. But thankfully, this early in the morning, there was barely anyone out and about.
She stepped gratefully out of the cab and onto the curb, taking a good look around for the first time. Unfortunately for her, lack of people didn\'t necessarily mean a complete lack of emotional pressure. She could feel last night\'s energy still drifting uncomfortably about, and she shifted her weight while throwing an unsure glance at the vampire.
Her feet followed the vampire through the door and the lobby, and she was too distracted to take in anything at all until she was in the elevator. Relax, she told herself, mostly because she wasn\'t all too comfortable being in a small room that moved by itself. And to tell the truth, she had only been in an elevator once before. She didn\'t like it then and she didn\'t like it now. When the cursed thing came to a stop she almost ran out into the hallway.
When she first took a look at Damien\'s apartment, she was compelled to start cleaning. Not that it was terribly filthy, just noticeably. To her anyway. But the only thing that kept her from commenting rudely about it was the thought of a shower.
"Can I borrow a shirt? and use your shower?" yes, it was uncharacteristically forward for her to ask, but her muscles were practically jumping for joy. She\'d been bathing in streams for god knows how long, and the aspect of taking a nice, hot shower made her extremely impatient. She moved through the apartment, skipping the pleasantries, to find a bathroom, not really waiting for Damien to answer.
-
Her forwardness took Damien completely by surprise. He eyed her suspiciously as she walked through his apartment without any form of grace or respect. It wasn\'t as if he had anything to hide --the only thing worth hiding was hanging around his neck--yet out of all the people he had ever brought home from wherever, he just assumed she would be the only one to actually wait to be showed around. Guess not.
The contents of his pockets had barely touched the coffee table in the living room, wedged between two massive couches, before he heard the bathroom door shut, with Storm inside. He didn\'t exactly know what to make of the situation at all. It had been a while since he brought a woman back here, and even longer since that woman was mortal. The vampire scratched at his hair, shifted it in his nervous manner.
He hated being uncomfortable in his home. But he also hated when people rumaged through his house. Damien sighed and manuevered his way past the living room couches and opened the door to his bedroom where the carpet floor turned to hard wood. Sighing as he pulled open a drawer of long, black tees, Damien sorted through them, finding at last one that wasn\'t as well-fitted as he typically wore.
-
The door clicked behind her and she didn\'t even bother to lock it. Storm exhaled deeply, taking in the sight of the small bathroom with something like vague distaste. She began to strip slowly, letting her pants fall to the floor as she pulled off her shirt and haphazardly threw it onto the sink. I\'ll fix it later, was her mental note, and she neatly placed her undergarments and pants on top of the closed toilet.
Glancing in the mirror briefly, she studied her reflection. As peculiar as it sounded, the girl hadn\'t seen a mirror since the last time she set foot in a building. Wandering around outside between the beach and the forests without sleeping for days didn\'t help her appearance much. Her eyes were sunken in and her expression was weary. Storm frowned, as if disappointed in herself, that she let herself go. Her skin looked more pale then usual (from what she was used to).
She pulled open the glass door and turned on the shower, her heart skipping a beat with the sound of water and the smell of steam. The Akari quickly stepped inside, sighing maybe a little too loudly, and closed the door behind her. Hot water plastered her hair to her back and coated her ivory skin with a steamy slickness. Soap, god when was the last time she had new soap! The girl could feel her skin tingling with delight as she worked at scrubbing tension away.
What started off as a soft humming grew into a quiet song. No way Damien would be listening, right? "I can\'t see your star," large inhale, short pause "I can\'t see your star," she smiled, wondering when the last time she actually sang was.
"Though I patiently waited, bedside, for the death of today. I can\'t see your star..." A brief flash of purple in her eyes and she levitated a shampoo bottle into her hand.
"And I\'m alone now, me and all I stood for, we\'re wandering now, all in parts in pieces, swim lonely, find your own way out." time seemed to blur to her as she let the water take her to a place where the city vanished, where nothing existed. No Isabella. No Damien. No Storm. Just heat and water.
"I can\'t see your star, I can\'t see your star, how can the darkness feel so wrong?" she didn\'t realize how loud her voice had grown, not that it grew unbearable, but it was louder then she had intended it to be.
"So far away, it\'s growing colder without your love, why can\'t you feel me calling your name? Can\'t break the silence, it\'s breaking me." And her singing lowered to humming and then ceased as the turned off the shower.
-
The awkwardness he felt melted slowly as her voice drifted from the shower. At first Damien had no idea what was going on: a low lulling voice echoing somewhere. Then hit got louder and louder until the vampire could actually make out the words of the song. Without meaning to Damien turned his head towards the bathroom door where steam was seen floating under the door. He didn\'t exactly know what to expect to see besides this and shrugged it off.
Closing the drawer with an easy shove that shook the mirror above it, Damien held the black shirt in his hand. He approached the bathroom door, noticing the towel hanging from the back of it, something she must have forgotten in her haste to rush through his home. He sighed under his breath with the faintest tinge of irritation, which was easily subdued by the melody of her words and the tone of her song.
Without thinking too much about it, Damien twisted the handle of the door silently and pushed the door in the slightest amount at a time until a wall of steam slapped him in the face and the sounds inside became much louder. But as the steam cleared, his breath caught in his lungs at what he briefly saw before he tore his eyes away in shame.
Through the warped glass door and steam, Damien could see the figure of the girl who so resembled Isabella moving about in his shower. His blood rushed faster in the veins for a number of reasons. She was facing away from him at an angle, giving Damien a moderately good glimpse of her profile and skin tone. Her words were much louder now and the steam was overwhelming his sensitive senses. Yet Damien couldn\'t move as fast as he wanted to.
Quickly, he shifted his eyes sideways to the sink and the fogged mirror. The vampire set the two objects down on the sink soundlessly, just in case she could hear anything over the sound of the water and her own singing. Damien withdrew from the occupied bathroom as swiftly as his body could, but not without glancing once more at the figure in the shower and the curves of her body.
Soundlessly Damien closed the door and let go of the handle. Pausing a moment longer, he carried his thoughts, memories and internal confrontations with him into the living room, angry with himself as a certain feeling built up inside of him.
-
Storm let the shower drip for a few seconds before she soundlessly stepped from the shroud of steam and glass. She inhaled deeply and took a few short steps to the sink. The girl froze as her eye caught a towel and T-shirt that she did not remember bringing with her into the bathroom. The thought occurred to her that Damien must have slipped in and may have, most definitely, seen her. Showering. Naked. Her face immediately flushed as she wiped the condensation from the mirror with the towel in a hurried manner.
Peering critically at her face, she decided that the shower helped her immensely. Even though she wasn\'t in for longer then fifteen minutes, her face already seemed flusher (nothing to do with the blushing) and her eyes more awake. Her smile didn\'t even bother her and she could almost say that she was pretty. Almost out of habit, she drew a heart in the fog that had already begun to reform. It meant nothing, a mere doodle that she used to do all the time. On the right side of the heart she traced the outline of a single wing before feeling guilty for marking up the vampire\'s mirror.
But before she began to wipe the design off, Damien\'s shirt caught her attention. After drying her hair and body with the fluffy towel, she folded it neatly and placed it on the edge of the sink. Looking cautiously about the room as if expecting to see someone catch her, she lifted the black shirt to her nose and inhaled softly. A musky scent, his scent, overwhelmed her; causing her to flush even more so before she pulled it over her head after donning a few other things. The black fabric hung down just enough to cover everything important.
After another quick glance in the mirror, briefly shaking out her hair and checking again, Storm hesitantly poked her head out of the bathroom. Her body soon followed; pants, shirt and towel hanging over one arm. Noticing that Damien wasn\'t in the bedroom, she ventured further into the apartment, into the living room. The girl worked to extinguish the red in her face as she saw him sitting on a couch, not succeeding much.
"What do you want me to do with this?" she asked, eyes flashing between red, silver, and blue. She held the damp towel out, and shifting her clothes to her other arm.
-
He heard her come out of the bathroom before he had seen her and the result was his breath caught in his lungs half-way through an intake of air. But Damien pushed the knot in his throat, chest, stomach, wherever, down, leaving his face with a completely unreadable expression.
She smelled like him. She was wearing his shirt. She wasn\'t wearing much with it, either. Still his face remained placid, focused on the moving images of the television in the center of the room. "There\'s a hamper in the corner of my room, next to the bureau." He didn\'t remark on the fact that he had even entered the bathroom, let alone saw her through the glass.
Thoughts of many nights next to a particular woman surfaced irritably. He wasn\'t exactly in the mood to remember the sensual adventures he ad taken part in once upon a time, and the young woman who looked so much like his "wife" wasn\'t helping the situation as she held out her dirty clothes, asking him what he wanted to do with them. Damien was experiencing a strange combination of feelings in his abdomen; one being the slightest tinge of arousal over the profile of a young woman and the other being disgust and shame for even thinking about feeling that way towards another woman who wasn\'t his deceased lover.
He mentally stabbed at himself, reminding himself of the differences between Storm and Isabella which should have been painfully obvious, justifying the reason of his faint enjoyment at seeing Storm naked for his pain contributed by the lack of Isabella.
-
Storm made no comment as she discarded everything into the hamper but her shirt, after emptying her pockets, assuming her things would be cleaned sooner or later. It felt strange to her, to be walking around in someone else\'s apartment as though she had always dwelt within it. But she tried to shrug it off, given that the shower had relaxed her nerves much like alcohol did to some people.
"I\'m sorry for barging in without waiting." she laughed nervously, taking a seat opposite the vampire in a couch across the room. Folding her legs under her, she went about threading a needle while trying to read Damien without him noticing (which wasn\'t difficult). The girl could feel several strong emotions, which only confused her more, and she forced herself to shut him out.
"Thanks for...the shirt," her voice was low, timid, almost anticipating some violent outburst. In order to avoid eye contact, she focused entirely on sewing the holes in her shirt. Where her eyes should have been purple, they flickered between red and brown in a familiarly nervous pattern.
-
Still battling with himself --which at this point was turning more into him severely scolding himself for feeling anything-- Damien didn\'t dare look up from the television, finding infomercials in Spanish safer to hold onto his attention. "It\'s fine. Pierre and his guests do it all the time. I just figured you were going to be different about it, that\'s all."
His voice was sounding worse than how he meant the statement. It was supposed to cause the slightest bit of humor in the atmosphere of this room, but he assumed it would be taken the wrong way, yet again, and the two of them would return to the silent game. He could hear her pressing the needle through the cloth and without looking, Damien found himself off the subject of Storm\'s body and onto the subject of where she had gotten that needle from.
The vampire ventured a glance up at Storm, but regretted it immediately as the cold blood inhabiting his veins pulsed around the image of her behind a warped glass door again. Damien looked back to the television and was silently thankful that the glass had texture and hadn\'t allowed him to see anymore than he already had.
-
Damien\'s tone caused her to swallow hard and she accidentally pricked her finger. Cursing, she stuck the wounded thing into her mouth before realizing that she didn\'t have to. Awkwardly, she pulled the blood into her mouth before closing the wound up with her energy. Finding the needle and thread shaking mildly in her hand, she resumed a steady rhythm and was finished in little time. The girl needed new clothes more then she needed repairs. She didn\'t even remember how old this particular shirt was. Without a second thought, she guided the shirt through the air into the hamper without moving a muscle.
"So," she barely whispered, voice seemingly caught in her throat, making her sound like a frightened animal, "When are you going to sleep?" The question was simply meant for pleasant conversation. Well. Conversation, nonetheless. Storm could already feel a sort of awkward silence growing between them yet again, and it was making her increasingly more uncomfortable.
And as much as it was killing her to know what he was thinking about, she refrained from asking. The girl realized that it was probably something to do with her. God, she already caused enough discomfort, why not cause some more? Her eyes moved to the floor, finding the television uninteresting.
-
"Honestly, I haven\'t decided yet. I typically go to bed when the sun pulls at me, but a better question is what are you going to do?" He swallowed the lump in his throat and looked up at her, ignoring the familiar pulse the scent of her blood gave him. At least that was something he was more accustomed to, something he could control better. "You\'d be in here all alone for a few hours. I can stay up as long as I need to, but eventually I\'ll have to go down for the day. What do you think you\'d do here?"
She looked odd to him in his shirt. Content, for whatever reason. He rather enjoyed it once he got past the naked part. It was a pleasant surprise to see her something other than completely frustrated, angry, cold, etc. He even managed to show a slight hint of the enjoyment he felt.
-
Storm glanced at him, trying to digest his tone of voice and finding it to be rather easy. She allowed herself to relax a bit, uncurling her legs and settling into the soft cushion of the couch. She thought for a moment before speaking, trying to decide what she could possibly do to pass the time since watching a glowing box really wasn\'t her thing.
The girl had half the mind to try and escape, but then remembered that she wasn\'t really wearing pants. So venturing out into the city was more or less out of the question. But she really didn\'t want to sit around and waste the day. She could try to clean the god-forsaken dump, but she wasn\'t feeling quite that inspired. Inspired... Suddenly a thought occurred to her.
"Do you have any paper? and a pencil or something?" she looked at him easily with blue slowly flowing into her eyes. The Akari hadn\'t drawn in the longest time either, but cooped up indoors would leave her no choice. And if he didn\'t have anything she didn\'t know what she would do with herself otherwise. Sleep? No. Anything but that.
-
The vampire was only vaguely distracted by the girl\'s shifting legs. And yes, he even had to force himself not to watch them as she adjusted herself, but that was nothing new: he had always loved girls\' legs. At least this portion of the night was something he was used to, something he knew exactly how to react to: just not watch.
Otherwise his countence shifted into a notion of defeat. "I\'m not exactly sure of what, but I\'m sure there\'s something around." He stood, as the dutiful host of the party, and searched thebureau in his bedroom for any form of paper. Typically all the paperwork was kept at a different location than in Damien\'s house, but anything he needed in the meantime between trips was kept in the third drawer of his bureau.
Sliding the drawer out, Damien retracted a blue notebook, the only form of clean paper he had. He\'d obviously have to get more, but hopefully it would do. The vampire closed the drawer with his foot as he stood up straight and walked out of the room again. "How\'s this? There are pens on the kitchen counter."
-
Storm significantly brightened when he returned with the paper. So she wouldn\'t have to formulate any escape plans for the upcoming day. The girl was only half disappointed.
"Thanks," and she did mean it, even though her eyes were glued on the notebook as she took it a little too eagerly from the vampire. Quickly standing, the Akari straightened out the shirt she was wearing and took a last glance at Damien.
"I\'ll be in the kitchen," she didn\'t expect him to need her, so the statement wasn\'t followed up with a \'holler if you need me\'. Storm briskly made her way to the kitchen and pulled out a chair for her to sit on. After adjusting the shirt beneath her and settling in as comfortably as she could manage, the girl found a black ink pen waiting for her.
Memories flooded back to her as dark ink soiled the virgin paper, and she began to draw a series of frantic lines. At first the picture resembled nothing but vague scribbles, but eventually it became something that looked like an intricate spider web. She leaned forward, closer to the paper, probably something she shouldn\'t have done considering how short the shirt was. But the Akari made no move to fix such things as clothing.
With a loud rip she set the paper down on the table, frowning at her work. New paper caught her attention as she discarded the recent \'artwork\' with a turn of her head. The next began as spider webs again, but formed into a stunningly dark portrait of a man. A fiercely detailed man. Frightening and mean. His eyes were soulless and as soon as she realized what she was drawing, Storm threw the paper to the floor and began anew once again.
Fervently the pen scratched the paper, and the Akari was unaware of all of her surroundings that excluded the white square in front of her. Spider webs became fire, then ice. And a face began to take shape, someone with a hard expression. The eyes, however, were soft, something sharply contrasting the dark tone she had already sketched out. And as the details of the mouth came in, with fangs barely pushing against his bottom lip, the paper fluttered gently to the floor.
-
Damien sort of just stared at her for a moment, dumbfounded; she was doing that well to him this night. He must have stood there for perhaps ten minutes before she flicked the first piece of paper down to the floor. His steely eyes never left her, but she didn\'t exactly seem to notice. Her aura reeked of concentration and withdrawal.
Slowly Damien pulled away from his spot, deciding to replace himself on the couch to watch the shitty documentaries which cluttered the airwaves after four o\'clock in the morning. He glanced at the clock of the cable box: 5:18 with the AM button lit up.
"You know most mortals or sane persons would be enjoying their last couple of hours of sleep at this point of the morning." It was a simple, off-handed comment from which he didn\'t expect an answer, but hoped for some sly comment from the girl. To be completely honest he rather enjoyed the exchange of sarcastic wit between them.
-
Storm was completely in another world. And it had gotten to the point where she was floating papers around her, taking them down to look at every so often to compare them to whatever she was currently sketching. Damien\'s eyes hadn\'t even registered as being on her at all. The girl was examining the wing of a bird that she had conjured up, comparing it to a wing she had \'stitched\' into the side of a disturbingly life like heart, when the vampire\'s words briefly broke her concentration.
Not that it made her angry, but the first thing that came to mind to shut him up was to smother him with a pillow. Before even thinking about what she was really doing, the Akari mentally \'took\' a pillow from the bed in the next room and guided it swiftly to the air. She snickered as the thing embedded itself into the front of his face, and quickly resumed her furious sketches as though the incident had never happened.
The little-black-pen-that-could began to run out of ink, drawing out a stream of curses from the Akari as she flung the useless object to the floor. Before the pen had time to clatter, she reached for another one with her mind. With pen to paper again, a self portrait sprung to life before her. Something she hadn\'t intended on happening, considering she hated drawing herself. But Storm found it to be a challenge without a mirror, and she was running out of things to draw.
-
He didn\'t exactly notice the pillow floating through the air until it reached his perifrial vision and by the time he turned his head, the pillow he slept on was jammed into his face. What the fuck!? It was a good thing he didn\'t have to breathe of Damien would have found himself in a bit of trouble. Being a vampire, a pillow to the face was only a mild irratation.
With his typical grace and speed, Damien tore the pillow from the air and from his face violently, his talons digging into the cloth and ripping it. Twisting his arm around, Damien\'s eyes lit up as he hummed the pillow over his shoulder, directly at Storm. It made direct contact with her face, ruining her concentration completely. The sight made Damien smile wider than he would have liked.
-
A sudden force drove her backwards, nearly toppling over the chair. Her hand angrily gripped the pillow and Storm frantically looked over her self portrait like a concerned mother. Not the eyes. Please not the eyes!
"Oh my god you ass hole." the girl hissed, devastated as the ink bled at the most detailed point in her drawing: the right eye. But despite this flare up in anger, her gaze was orange and not black. Pen clattering to the table, her mind found couch cushions and brought them into the air, sending them swiftly to the vampire from all directions.
"You fucked up my drawing!" there was more laughter in her voice then anger, but she was seriously peeved. She had half the mind to lunge at him, but threw the pillow she had in her hand at him instead. The Akari eyed him cautiously, prepared to dodge at the next possible moment.
-
"No, you fucked up your own drawing! You started it!" Damien found it a difficult task to grab ahold of the flying cushions all at once while simultaniously being smacked in the face by another one somewhere else. It was irksome and just as Damien grabbed ahold of one and set it down, Storm was finding it entertaining to recycle this trick, picking the cushions up and throwing them again.
Again he began throwing the objects being hurled at him, pouncing off of the couch and onto the coffee table with the greatest of ease. She was lucky that that was all that he was throwing at her. He had never actually been in a pillow fight during his immortal life. In fact, he hadn\'t been in a pillow fight since he was seven, with his older sister. What was her name? He found it something irrelevent to the current situation and a smile washed over his face, fangs showing clearly, poised in a crouched position, ready to attack.
-
Storm grinned, finding it easy to stop at least one of the cushions mid-air before getting hit in the face with another. But the few she did catch did not stay in her hands for long, and with her mind she guided them to his stomach, hopefully catching him off guard by switching targets.
As quickly as she could, and maybe with a little gravitational manipulation to help with her speed (something that took a bit more energy then she expected), the girl took a few short steps into the living room with a pillow in her hand.
"No, you and your smart-ass-mouth started it." and in addition to collecting pillows off the floor with her mind to hurtle and Damien, she tried whacking him in the head with one of the softer ones, hopefully to knock some sense into him. Her eyes danced between blue and orange, and she really wasn\'t paying any attention at all to how the shirt behaved when she raised her arms above her head.
-
The first few pillows were easy enough to dodge. He had been trying to avoid going overboard with his vampire abilities, but failed as she came closer to him, the force and speed coming more intense.
Biting his bottom lip in almost pure delight, Damien grabbed the pillows from mid-air and hucked them back towards her until he could no longer do so, what with her being so close. He was enjoying himself as he stepped backwards off the table to avoid being hit, until he caught a glimpse of something he didn\'t exactly want to.
Her upper thighs were lovely, curved beautifully and craftily, as if someone put quite a bit of effort into shaping her. But what caused Damien to look away faster was the black laced panties separating each thigh. And he froze at the sight, though he wasn\'t looking directly at them; it was rather hard to avoid when he was absorbing the situation and trying to prepare himself for any kind of attack. Trying. In fact his frozen nature gave her every opportunity to swing the pillow and collide directly with his face as if he were a sitting duck.
-
Judging from his facial expression and the fact that the vampire had suddenly left himself wide open, Storm guessed that maybe she should pay attention to her clothing a bit more. God, I\'m such an idiot, her eyes were red, flickering from Damien\'s face to various random parts of the room.
Mildly irritated she resumed the attack with her mind, controlling the pillow to follow him around the room and repeatedly smack him in the face. Nervously with her face flushed she pulled the shirt down, not really caring if she was stretching it or not.
"Give up yet?" she asked, trying to ignore exactly what Damien might have seen. To tell the truth, she was having as much fun as he was, but she didn\'t have the stamina to keep it up until the sunrise. She sighed in an exaggerated way, faking a bored facial expression.
-
Becoming rapidly aggravated with the situation, himself and even with her complete lack of... pants or whatever, Damien grabbed onto the pillow which followed him about the room as he walked behind the couch, completely avoiding her as she stood in the center of the living room. He tore it down faster than any human could see and through it roughly down on the couch near her. "Yeah. I give up." His comment was laced with double meaning.
He knew she was having fun, and honestly he was too, but he wasn\'t exactly \'in the mood\' to enjoy the sight of any little bit of her under-clothing --though he was glad she was wearing something under his shirt. The vampire found relief in her decision to pull the shirt down farther. While he could appreciate and admire her legs easily enough, he honestly didn\'t want to see anymore than that.
And now that the pillow fight which they were both quite enjoying was over, Damien Evans didn\'t exactly know what to do with himself, besides stand with his arm leaning on the back of the couch, eyeing her like a scolding father-figure while smoothing the brown-black hair from his eyes.
-
Storm scowled at him, biting her tongue to prevent it from letting loose some stupid insults. She almost picked up the pillow again, but decided it wasn\'t in her best interest to try and make Damien angry. Instead she walked to the kitchen, guiding the pillows back to their original places behind her without even looking.
"Sorry for trashing the place," she called. The girl decided to play it nice for the remainder of the morning. Besides, she had a picture to fix. And with her eyes glued to paper once again, she worked from the messed up portrait. Black ink spun a dark matter flowing from her eyes like some strange liquid. And after awhile of working on this picture, she became irritated with how it came out. It resembled her, but the aura she drew leaking from her eyes was too much.
The paper flew to the floor again, and she lifted her heart sketch again, plucking it from the air with her hand and examining the wings that she was working on before.
-
The vampire exhaled inaudibly as she passed, eyeing her suspiciously as the pillows floated to their correct spots on the couch and in his room. She seemed to lose herself again in her work, but he could feel her flustration over something related to the pillow fight -- it was obvious enough.
As for himself, Damien debated what he wanted to do. It was too early to sleep, too late to watch anything of interest, and too awkward to keep eyeing her over his shoulder after all that had just happened. So what to do now, he pondered. While seeing her lower half almost naked had done little to him, it definitely stirred his thoughts about her, and numerous other things, including the dream that Storm had \'allowed\' him to see. They were things that needed to be dealt with and understood better within his own sphere of problems.
Laurent. Storm. Isabella. It was all a swirling mess to him now and he needed to clear something up before he went to sleep, even if it were only in his own mind.
"Should you decide to get tired, obviously you can use one of the couches. I figured I\'d give you an invitation, that way it\'s not as awkward when your forwardness takes over and you zonk out on it anyway. If you decided to do so, I mean.
"As for me, I\'ll be in my room. I probably won\'t sleep for another three hours or so, so feel free to do whatever." There was barely a sound as he shuffled into his room, leaving the door open just in case.
-
"I don\'t sleep. You know that." she was only half listening to him, more concerned with the fact that she was running out of paper. She\'d already switched to pencil because every pen she seemed to pick up died in a short amount of time. Storm didn\'t even hear Damien leave, and she didn\'t think that he was watching her draw.
The papers that were swirling in the air in a peculiar orbit around the Akari drifted to the floor as she had taken to trying to draw on the cover of the notebook. Frustrated with her lack of success, she shifted to the wall, figuring that she\'d just wash it off later.
A dark mural came to shape beneath the tip of the pencil, grotesque trees becoming birds that bled in midair and fell to the ground, becoming a city that became a tree and an ocean and so on. But everything she drew on the walls possessed a darkness that was so signature of the girl. She drew her life, her thoughts. There were people taking shape through the darkness, a woman whose hair flowed behind her that morphed into the face of a man.
At that moment Storm realized just how much she\'d drawn, on the wall no less, and felt instantly guilty. It was one thing to draw on your own walls, but she didn\'t live here. She tried rubbing at a corner of the drawing and found that it easily came off.
-
Damien very much doubted she\'d bother him too much; after the entire apartment was hers for the use, and the thought of that scared him somewhat. Casting one more edgy look over at her from the doorway, Damien crossed the room to the blocked up window. Tearing apart the make-shift barrier of black towels, half a blanket and duct tape, Damien squinted against the dark blue sky outside.
Sunrise was probably the worst and most depressing part of the twenty-four hour day span. The black skies faded blue like washed-out jeans, and the stars died out slowly, one by one. Cars began racing faster around on the roads, like they all had somewhere to go, beeping and stopping more furiously; now there was a rush to get somewhere. Worst yet, there was the tinting of the eastern skies; navy blue faded to purple, to pink, to orange, then yellow, then the whole sky illuminated and the vampire had to go down. But as of right now, it was just turning purple. There was at most fifteen minutes left to watch the sun rise and paint the sky with the colors of the day.
He wanted to open the window and feel the breeze, but he knew it wasn\'t smart to do with everything that was stuck there. The vampire sighed instead, recognizing that he hadn\'t seen the sun in so many years.
Slowly Damien left the window, removing his shirt which reeked of salt and sand. He threw a glance towards the open door, making sure she wasn\'t standing there as he dropped his shirt in the hamper.
Playing all along the muscles and pale skin were tens of scars from his former life. Along his back were silvery slashes long since faded, made by a whip held by his father back when he was a boy. Five of them. For stealing. Still more were the deep gashes made by men\'s swords and maces in the years of his adolescence. Two of them which almost killed him. Still more scratches made by immortal talons during nights of passion and hatred, deeper then the whips, but nothing worth getting too upset about. Fifteen, twenty, he forgot how many, short and blunt. Bite marks, deep punctures in his shoulder blades, his wrists, the base of his neck. Everywhere. It wasn\'t something he exactly wanted anyone to see.
As he reached into a drawer for another shirt, he heard a faint scratching, tapping and rubbing at the outside wall, something he would have missed had he not been as old as he was. With the shirt in hand, he walked through the door to see the Akari pressing herself against an odd drawing obviously fabricated by her own hand. "Storm! What the hell are you doing!?"
-
Storm jumped and whirled around at the sound of Damien\'s voice, pressing her back against the evidence of her crime. Her face flushed fuchsia with a mixture of guilt (for vandalizing his kitchen) and catching sight of the vampire\'s pale, shirtless skin. She barely gave her red eyes enough time to glance over the countless scars that decorated his body before turning away, perhaps too quickly.
The girl was speechless for a moment, trying to figure out what exactly to say. Not for nothing, but she had intentionally drawn on the walls. A childish impulse that she should have grown out of by now. An apology seemed inadequate and her subconsciousness prepared itself for some form of physical punishment. With her eyes locked on a very interesting spot on the far corner of the kitchen ceiling, far away from Damien, she opened her mouth to speak.
"I...I\'m sorry. I ran out of paper," the Akari blurted helplessly, "I\'ll wash it! It comes off really easy. I know I shouldn\'t have but it\'s been so long since I\'ve drawn and it just...." she struggled for the words, "It just came pouring out after so much containment."
Storm still kept her eyes on the far wall, unwilling to give into the temptation of allowing her eyes to explore the artwork scarred into his cold skin. For whatever reason, she loved scars. But she recognized how personal they must be, after all, the girl had her own, not that she\'d show them.
-
He was wrought speechless as he crossed the room and pulled his shirt over his head -- something long-sleeved in nature. While typically he didn\'t allow anyone to know about his scars, he did feel the smallest amount of relief in his moment of anger and embarassment: she\'d ask no questions about them and no answers would be given. As the dark blue shirt slid over his neck and over the scarred flesh, Damien saw the picture again.
It was something dark, dreary and quite conceptual involving birds and only God knew what else. "You could have just asked for another one, Jesus!" The was more shock and confusion in his tone than anger, something which perplexed even Damien himself. He didn\'t exactly understand what her creative flow could do, and if he had he may never have given her the first notebook. Yeah right, he rethought, then my entire apartment would be plastered in pencil sketches.
His eyes fell on her in a scolding manner as he pointed quite humanly at the wall. "You know you\'re washing that off later!" Gray eyes fell again on the drawing. The vampire debated whether he should let her continue her artwork and keep her appeased; she already had this much up, so what was the problem in letting her play?
-
With the shirt now covering him, Storm found it easier to look into his face. She nodded enthusiastically at his words, feeling extremely stupid and forcing herself to look back to the floor without even meeting his eyes first.
"I\'m so sorry. I seriously didn\'t even realize I was doing it." Pathetic excuse, just shut up. The girl backed away from the wall timidly, still red eyes tracing her handiwork with the smallest amount of pride. It had come out quite interestingly, and if you knew the Akari well enough the mural would make sense. She could see faults in some parts of it, but the more she examined the details, the more her fingers itched to get to work again.
"I\'ll wash it off right now, if you want." she offered, half hoping that he\'d let her continue while at the same time realizing that she\'d done enough harm already to last through the day. It was only pencil though, and she had promised to wash it off, so maybe he wouldn\'t mind. Storm twirled the pencil between her fingers with expert control as she studied the edges of her work--where she stopped drawing. There was still so much inspiration to sort through, and it was a pity that she had to wash it all away.
-
He stared confoundly at the wall, addled over what to do next. Yes, he had caught her in the crime, and yes, it would need to come down eventually, but what was the harm if it kept her appeased even for part of the day?
But it\'s my fucking house! Something in him found her act extremely intrusive. As if she hadn\'t thrown herself into his life enough already, no now she had to color on his walls too, giving him a constant reminder of her presense. Damien caught control of the reins before he spiralled down into that path. It wasn\'t right of him to think about Storm that way and he knew it. He gave himself a mental slap on the wrists.
His eyes traced the lines of the drawing. It did add a bit of interest to the kitchen. And it\'s not like it wouldn\'t come off when he wanted it to. And she didn\'t have anything else to do. Damien sighed.
"No, you can keep it up," he sighed defeatedly, shifting his hair around awkwardly. "Just keep it limited to the kitchen if you can, ok? And don\'t draw in anything else but pencil, alright? The landlord will kill me and he already turns the blind-eye for the blackened windows. I\'d like to remain here if I could."
-
Storm was delighted, really, and the only thing that showed this was the bright blue in her eyes and the silly grin on her face. She almost laughed in her giddiness but controlled the impulse. The pencil shifted automatically to the \'drawing position\' as though readying itself for another endless episode of work.
"It won\'t leave this room, I promise." And with that she agreed to the terms of the compromise. Anything to draw freely. After admiring her sketch a little longer, she looked shyly at Damien before speaking again.
"Thanks," she barely whispered, turning back to her pride with newly kindled energy. The Akari could feel her heart dancing with excitement as she touched the pencil to the wall again, but not before throwing a cautious, backwards glance at the vampire.
"I won\'t bother you anymore, I swear." Storm smiled effortlessly and spoke with a carefree voice, her eyes never leaving the new lines she began tracing confidently onto the walls.
-
He watched her begin again before he left, finding the action absolutely absurd. The vampire shook his head before he turned it towards the television, realizing that he left it on.
6:31 AM now. The day was going to drag. Knowing his luck, he would have a nightmare too. His body felt suddenly weary, too accustomed to going to sleep at the sun\'s command and if he focused enough he\'d certainly notice the strength of the pulling of the sun. But he still wanted to do so much! He wanted to look outside, to feel the air of the morning, to get extremely annoyed at the birds that always chirped right outside his windows. But the sun was rising and Damien could feel the rays of light hit the building.
"You wouldn\'t bother me, Storm. But once I go down, whatever you need from me is going to have to wait. Are you ok with that? I mean, now that you\'re all enrapt in your work?" His shirt was beginning to annoy him, as if it felt strangely uncomfortable now that dawn was breaking.
-
The girl hardly heard him, and it took at least ten full seconds for it to register that he had actually spoken. But still she did not turn to him, and did little to acknowledge or even show understanding to what Damien had said.
"Mmhmm," was her only response, her attention acutely focused on getting the details of a flame in the eye of a crow. This could occupy her for hours, Storm didn\'t need anything else but the pencil. It had been too long, she was beginning to recognize that perhaps she should allow herself the luxury of letting things out of their cages from time to time.
The crow she was drawing became something else, as for what Storm wasn\'t quite sure. By now her hand was moving on its own accord and she hardly had control over what she was drawing. As if the thought suddenly occurred to her, the Akari spoke.
"Have a nice sleep." she did mean it, no matter how distracted she sounded. And really, she wasn\'t even sure if Damien was still standing there. But she knew that he\'d hear nonetheless. With that said, she fell silent to the quiet scrapings of the pencil on the white wall of the kitchen.
-
The door clicked shut before her last comment, but the pale-skinned young-looking man heard it nonetheless. He paused at the door handle, about to open it again to appologize until he heard the very faint pencil scratches on his kitchen walls. And she\'s off.
Damien\'s feet dragged tiredly across the room, up to the window. He didn\'t have the chance to blacken it up again once he was done looking at the eastern sky, so he stood there feeling the intense heat of sun leak through the cracks in the window. He pulled the shirt up over his hands and pressed the duct tape, blankets and towels back into their appropriate spots, the heat of death pressing against his hands all the while.
This was nothing new to the vampire. Though he knew how the sun would affect him, he occassionally pressed his covered skin against the windows of his apartment as a form of punishment. The slightest, indirect rays which penetrated the thick clothing were enough to keep him in his place, to keep him \'living\' for a while longer, while also giving him the experience he needed in order to understand what she and many of their \'children\' had gone through many years ago. He suffered her pain on his own time.
The more he thought about this action, the guiltier he felt. She\'d hate him if she knew what he were doing, toying with the sun like this, but he wasn\'t exactly caring. Despite what anyone thought, he did have a mind other than Isabella, an existence to figure out for himself. Guilt began to subside as he fixed the make-shift sun-block. His hands throbbed and his body felt wearier than ever.
He stripped his shirt and found his hands to be red --nothing he didn\'t expect. The rest of his clothing came off just as easily, first the shoes, the socks, jeans, and his boxers. The only thing he kept on was the small pendant around his neck --Isabella\'s crest. Damien slid into his covers and lay there, fingering the necklace absently, something he was so accustomed to doing. Even through a thick net of thoughts which floated between everything he had learned during the night, Damien couldn\'t stop himself from drifting. Many times he fell in and out of consciousness, getting angry at himself for doing so without sorting something out before his eyes closed and his jaw went rigid for the last time.
-
So much had happened throughout the course of the night, and the girl was relieved to have some time to herself. She could feel her body almost instantly relax when she felt Damien\'s consciousness drifting off and she was sure he wouldn\'t come out unexpectedly. Pausing in the middle of her sketch, she leaned back to stretch, rewarded with a frenzy of little cracks and snaps coming from her spine. Tilting her head from one side to the other resulted in the same noise coming from her neck. The stress of the evening had done quite a number on her body.
The Akari shifted her position on the floor, now about a quarter way around the kitchen, and looked behind her on the wall. She had drawn quite a lot for such a short period of time. Turning again to before her, she felt for the pencil and took it to the wall again. Storm had to remind herself not to sing so not to wake the sleeping vampire in the next room. She smiled softly, recognizing the fact that she felt safer then she had in quite a long time.
An extremely detailed tree sprouted from the white wall, the age evident with the massive width of the bark as well as the number of nots and scars the ancient thing had. Storm had to stand to continue the branches upward, and it got to the point where she needed to drag a chair over to the drawing to reach the ceiling, where the branches seemed to forever stretch on, unseen. She carefully climbed down from the chair in order to sketch out the roots of the tree, which effortlessly reached the floor.
Storm felt herself grow weary as she finished sketching almost half the kitchen. The day had passed rather quickly for her, and she felt quite productive. Almost subconsciously she reached out for a forest that was too far for her to obtain any form of energy from trees. Suddenly she became homesick for the comfort the trees provided, the seclusion of their thick foliage. The girl was terrifically out of her element.
I\'ll just rest my eyes, she thought, yawning as she lowered herself to the floor. Before she realized it, Storm had curled herself up into a ball and had drifted easily off to sleep.
-
As the world spun and the sun overhead passed in its routine fashion and the hours smudged into one another, Damien slept uneasily. As he lay under his blanket, his jaw clenched tight, his lips pulled back into a painful sneer every now and again and the brows furrowed together in pain. A cold sweat broke out over his skin and his body seemed paralyzed from the neck, down.
His eyelids opened from a deep, heavy and painful sleep. The first thing his tired eyes saw was the pitched ceiling of a large tent. The boy blinked a few times before daring to move --pain when he pushed himself up onto the pillows surrounding him. Gray eyes focused in a swirling world in order to allow the nineteen-year-old to see the room around him. What he saw ripped the breath right from his lungs, his blood turning to ice in his veins.
He was laying in a luxurious bed of imported silk, the colors of a sunset. The sheets beneath him were stained and damp beneath his naked flesh. As he looked down, the young man saw stains of blood and passion. His blood. Memories of the previous night flooded his mind as he sat in the dirty sheets, his breathing becoming rapid and laborious. God help me! A scream caught in his throat and he found himself unable to move from the stained sheets tainted with the natural scents of his body. It churned his stomach to realize what had occurred and with whom. A shaky hand covered his neck only to find it crusted with browning blood and an extreme tenderness. The air passing into his lungs stopped and the lad doubled over in a crunching, sickening pain which accompanied the knowledge of the night.
At the far end of the tent, perhaps twenty paces off, a thick flap moved and a figure entered. The young man couldn\'t bare to look up, knowing in his heart exactly who it was. Her astonished voice flowed like the silk he found himself embraced in as she spoke across the room to him with the same luscious voice as the night before. And again his blood stirred sickeningly near his groin. "I\'m surprised to see you awake, dear lad. I fully expected you to sleep through the morrow."
She was a woman as beautiful as her voice made her sound. His eyes couldn\'t help but land on her and remain there as anger set his face to stone. Over spotless, pale skin, the young looking woman wore a luxurious robe-like cloth, something he expected to see on Roman royalty during the height of its Empire. It was red, golden, and brown, luxurious silken and worn extremely low on her chest and even lower on her back. The cloth bunched up at the inner elbows and was just enough to cover the essential womanly features. It was enough to make any man\'s blood boil with primitive desire. She had a powerful vortex of energy around her, one he didn\'t have to have any notable other-worldly powers to see, which caused her to walk with the air of a queen in control of half the world who wanted more. There was no embarrassment about her and she was simply and utterly alluring.
But the young man felt the primitive reaction of his lower abdomen that which made him sick to recognize that such a demon had touched him, affected him so. After all, he was a child of God, was he not?
-
Storm could feel herself in the void again, something she ached to remain in but hardly found herself lingering for enough time. This was, perhaps, the only period of time where she actually rested without disturbance, but it was short-lived. The blackness of the nothing-world began to fade into a world of gray-scale, something unexpected.
She wasn\'t falling, but seemed to float down onto the ground on her side. Almost immediately she could smell the blood-soaked earth, but could do little to lift herself into a sitting position. The girl closed her eyes tight, hoping that maybe the gray would darken and she would slip into the void once again. But no matter how strong her psychic abilities became, she could never control her dreams. And that frustrated her.
There was another presence in the far corner of her mind, something familiar but no one she was in to mood to talk to. For now they remained far enough to leave the girl alone, and for that she was grateful. Very slowly and reluctantly she opened her eyes to the familiar battle-scarred ground before her. She\'d seen this place so often she was almost tempted to call it \'home\'. But lacking the attachment that most felt to their dwelling places. She sighed, wondering how long it would be before she had control over her body, but not exactly willing to rush it.
-
12:00 PM.
Her pearly fangs gleamed in the torchlight, like a beacon of her demonic nature. Everything about her screamed of rich sophistication. Her blonde tresses fell loosely about her face, rolling over her shoulders and spilling down to the bottom of her shoulder blades, which the lad could plainly view as she turned even the slightest bit. Her hazel eyes watched him with a sense of pride which the lad could not exactly read correctly as she took the first few steps towards him, neither fast-pace nor earthly.
Anger rocked the boy\'s frame as he looked at the demon woman from his spot on the bed, trying his hardest not to acknowledge the \'spell\' she seemed to set out for him. "You... You wench! How could you! How... Oh God help me!" His words became indiscernible and impassioned, but her gaze didn\'t alter to fit his needs. Instead she laughed.
"Your God shan\'t help you here. Here, you are in a den of lions." The vampire had something in her hands which she dangled between her first two fingers as if she were playing with him. Once his head lifted to see, the young man saw his wooden cross and rosary beds which he had previously worn about his neck --and never removed. "Here, I am your God."
"You are nothing but a demon!"
"That\'s not what I heard you call me last night, dear." Her laugh was brisk as the boy ducked his head behind his hands, gripping at the roots of his hair. Anguish and rage flowed freely through him.
"You\'re nothing but a liar!" His attention turned and he began to pray again, too afraid to move his hands from his face. "Oh Merciful He, who dwells in Heaven, grace me with your mercy and safe me from this sinful creature!"
Her graceful stride had never stopped, but carried her to his side of the bed, the bottom corner. She seated herself at that point and reached out with an almost comfort-looking hand to grasp the blanket. Her expression was unreadable. "You\'re not with your men anymore. You needn\'t fake your devotion for their sakes.” Yet before the hand could land, the young man jumped up to avoid her entirely, standing feet from her in his nakedness. This, in turn, seemed only to earn him a pitiful look from the creature-woman, as if he were the one being absurd. "Do you honestly regret what you have done?"
He fumed at her insinuation. "What I have done? What I have done?! You... you\'re nothing more than a monster! A demon sent by Lucifer himself! I\'ve done nothing wrong, you filth!"
Instantly her face hardened and shifted to ice. She stood now to challenge him much like a man would do. "If I recall correctly, you were begging for my touch and my body by the end. Begging, Lord Guillaume."
“No—”
“— Pulling my robes from my body with aching hands and a hardened self pressed needfully against my thighs.”
“No –“
“—A virgin with his first real erection, his first taste of glory.” A taunting laugh that curdled his stomach
His voice became bold and his chest puffed as he stood before her. "Silence, you slut! I hope I live long enough to see God reach down and smite you and all your demon spawn!" Before the boy was even done with his spew, he saw the woman\'s open hand raise and make contact with his jaw.
The contact sent a blinding flash of light up both sides of his face as the preternatural strength broke Guillaume\'s jaw easily. He screamed in pain, and spun to the ground with the sheer momentum. The room beneath his hands and knees spun and toppled over itself as blood trickled down his lips and stained the earth. He gagged on it and his senses couldn\'t focus. Throughout every battle, this was the most intense pain he had ever felt.
A snake spoke to him, no longer the silky voice of a young maiden, but now the voice of a queen condemning a prisoner to death at the gallows. "You will never address me as such again. Each night you live through to see the morrow, it\'s because I allow you to. You live now for nothing more than my enjoyment. You\'ll leave your godly views behind you because here I am God and you are my humble servant."
The impact was something completely unexpected and there was hate burning in his eyes as he looked up at her. If he had the muscles attached in his jaw, Guillaume would have spit in her face. "That\'s what I thought." The demon woman smiled stiffly before drifting by him on the ground, crossing the room without a lack of elegance.[/B]
-
Somewhere before the girl, feet materialized even though she didn\'t see anyone walk toward her. At least she could move now, that much was good. Very slowly, Storm rose herself up into a sitting position to address the one that looked down on her.
"I don\'t want to talk to you right now." the words came from her mouth without her consent, even though she felt ever syllable. It wasn\'t a command, more like a voiced desire that was a bit too timid in its nature. The cloaked figure scoffed, the Akari could feel hazel eyes examining her even as the other turned away.
"It is not your place to command me," the cloaked woman began to walk away, vanishing as though having somewhere better to be. Storm didn\'t dare admit that she was relieved as she stood. She began to look about her, examining the strangely washed-out environment. The surroundings seemed to be melting, and unusually she could not see any color. There was something dreadfully wrong, but the girl couldn\'t put her finger on what.
Before she had the chance to think about it, the scenery changed and she found herself instead in a grassy field. And it was too late before she recognized the battle field in it\'s former glory. One by one, familiar members of the Akari army appeared before her, tents growing from the ground and people appearing out of nowhere. Someone touched her right shoulder, a friendly hand, and the girl turned to him and smiled.
-
Guillaume Toulouse watched her cross the room towards the corner of the room through which she first appeared. She stopped at a chest on a table, where she opened the lid and threw the cross inside, to Guillaume\'s dismay. There was no emotion to her as she began to fiddle around with jewelry in the wooden box, placing different pieces of gold around her. The fabric of the robe drifted farther down her back, and she didn\'t seem to notice this happen at all, neither did she try to stop it.
He, on the other hand, steadied himself and crawled to the side of the bed, onto the edge, where his eyes rested upon her frame without meaning to. A feeling pulled at his lower abdomen and Guillaume realized that he was staring at her as she readied herself for the night. He glared then, turning his eyes away from her. "God help me! I was a man of God before I went into this war! I was a man of God before you! Before everything!" His jaw ached from the effort of talking and he spit out blood onto the floor during his sloppy speech.
The voice which struck his ears was cold, but still alluring. "Tell me something, Guillaume deToulouse. Do you truly believe in God?" She still faced away from him as she placed a golden headdress onto her hair.
"Of cou-"
"Do you believe in God\'s will?"
"Of cou-"
She turned to him then, her face riddled with anger, something which almost made him feel inferior to her. "Then why is it so difficult for you to understand that God has sent you into this den of lions because he does not want you? Why can\'t you see that he sent you to me? That this is God\'s will? This is what God thinks of you! You are one of His dejected children!"
"Lies!"
She only smiled at him slyly. "Believe what you want. Why do you think I have taken everything from you? Your body, Your blood. Because He\'s not there for you. You are in my hands." Without another word she turned away from him and closed the lid of the box.
"You\'re a liar-- a demon sent from hell to tempt me to sin. And I was weak!"
In his sulking moment, he never saw her turn around to face him. His eyes looked up to see her smiling as she approached him, her head-dress atop her head perfect and the air of the queen of the damned returned to her. The robe was slipping down her body, the fabric clinging barely to her full bust, right near the woman\'s nipples. He noticed his body react almost instantly, his muscles becoming warm and the primitive rush of lust hover right near his manhood. Yet his eyes captured the fear he truly felt, for he was no match for such sorcery as the creature dropped the robe from her shoulders completely. "And how well do you enjoy the temptation of sin, Lord Guillaume?"
He could do nothing but stare at her in fury, indignation, and, yes even lust. His body reacted appropriately, a pleasurable fire dominating his lower abdomen as Guillaume\'s eyes looked her up and down on their own accord. Struggling against himself to hold onto his anger, a pulling feeling laced Guillaume\'s mind, as if she were in his head. He saw himself take her roughly onto the bed and seduce her, heard her calling his name in her ecstasy. In the tent, the woman approached him, air around him drawing him in. "No," he whispered as she stood not two feet from him, pressing herself against him. The lad moved on impulse, sensing the danger before him, backing up to the edge of the bed where he stumbled backwards. Her hands landed on his shoulders faster than he could see, pressing him farther onto the bed and still applying enough pressure to keep him under her control. The images came faster towards him as the creature ceased the pressing and decided to climb smoothly on top of his body. Terror shook his body and chills broke out along his skin as he found her eyes void of any hint of lust. Memories of the previous night flooded his mind and Guillaume found himself with the urge to attack her, to push her off, yet her small hands pressed into him with accuracy and precision. His innards churned and writhed in a disgusting mixture of pain and pleasure as her body came down on top of his man hood, the flesh of her upper thigh barely touching his body. It drove him mad, and his groin began to ache with desire for her, hardening against her cool flesh.
-
"How long have you been awake, Storm?" the young man with friendly chocolate eyes asked as he sat by the girl\'s side. She shrugged, turning away to watch the men prepare for the oncoming opposing flanks. They were roughly a day off, and reinforcements were well on their way. But the Akari-girl doubted that they would arrive in time.
"You know I rarely sleep," she replied in a low voice, scanning the sparring matches and groups of men sitting around camp fires. To tell the truth, the anxiety of her first major battle had kept her up more then the unwillingness to sleep. She sighed heavily, half praying to the gods to give her a spirit form in time for the battle. The young man beside her leaned forward, trying to insert himself into her field of vision.
"Hey," he said softly, a smile tugging on his face. "You\'re worried about tomorrow, aren\'t you?" there was a chuckle coming from deep in his chest and Storm turned her head quickly to face him.
"I, unlike you, have no spirit form--"
"That you know of," he interrupted, pointer finger in the air to accentuate his comment.
"Yes, but that\'s hardly reassuring." she rolled her eyes and continued to study the men a little ways off.
"I\'ve seen you fight, Storm, and you\'re better then half the boys here." He grunted as he stood, and the girl\'s eye followed him, shaking her head.
"But what if it\'s not enough? We\'re outnumbered." she half whined in dismay and frustration. He held out a hand, becoming her to stand with him. She took it reluctantly, pulling herself to her feet.
"Don\'t worry so much. I\'ll look out for you, not that I think you\'ll need it." he grinned that silly grin she was so used to seeing lately. It had taken them quite a lot of effort to get this far, and the pain of loss had faded in him enough to make nights without his late fiancé remotely bearable. But what about her? She was bitter, that much was certain. But the girl didn\'t even know what she was fighting for anymore.
The sky darkened unnaturally fast, becoming night when it was just barely morning, as if the memory had switched to fast forward. The Storm that was dreaming the dream and the Storm that was living the dream had no connection to one another. And the dread that the dreaming-Storm felt for the next event could do nothing to impact what the living-Storm did. Either way, the girl found herself laying on the cold, hard ground beneath angry stars that glared down without mercy. Dreaming-Storm didn\'t want to see this, and did everything in her power to pull away, but it was to no avail.
-
"Wench! You\'re no temptation to me!" The cold-blooded beauty simply smiled at his quivering body.
"And exactly how strong do you think you are against me, boy?" Her smile never faded as she leaned down onto him, adjusting her hips in the process to make his manhood throb as it faintly touched the outer edge of her core. Her lips landed greedily on his, breaking through any defense he had, yet Guillaume refused to go down so easily, deciding to bite down on the cool tongue of the vampire woman. She withdrew for only a moment but her lips didn\'t leave his. A searing pain erupted in his mouth as she forced his mouth wider with hers and bite down ferociously, scoring warm blood which she drew out faster and faster until Guillaume could no longer feel any of the pain she inflicted on him. Something dug into his back causing him to yelp in pain. A similar pain erupted on his chest as he ventured a look down. Her talon-like nails dug into his flesh and red liquid was seeping out of the marks.
His yelps of pain became much more than that as more blood flowed from newly opened wounds. As his screams came, the woman hardly blinked in her path. Her cold, blood-stained lips left his, but trailed down to his jaw line, causing another wave of nausea and desire to rise in him once the pain settled. Without meaning to, his lips parted again and a moan escaped them which moved quickly through the sounds of rustling blankets and crickets of the night into the woman\'s ear. Her kisses and licks slow as they moved down his throat, trying for the same reaction. Again and again, Guillaume\'s lips parted and gave her what she wanted, each time her movements become slower and more torturous.
Forgetting his nausea to relieve his pain elsewhere, Guillaume gripped onto her hips slowly, fighting against himself again and groaning with the effort. He slid into her with aggravating success, her hips shifting down to allow him access. With his first thrust, the woman faltered in her smooth pattern, caught off guard. And if Guillaume heard correctly, she actually moaned softly too.
The woman leaned in to his ear again, her blonde tresses falling softly over her shoulders, skimming along his neckline. "Yes," she hissed sensuously and she licked at his skin and dried blood. Guillaume thrust into her harder, trying for the same reaction, a smaller wave of disgust rising, which was instantly wiped out by his next thrust, harder, and the next one. All that mattered was the desire overwhelming Guillaume\'s body for the succulent oyster that was her core. But the harder he pushed himself into her, the more heat washed over him, the less the woman reacted the way he wanted her to. "Yes," she breathed, the voice of a snake again, but this time it was alluring to him. All that mattered was the next thrust; he could feel himself beginning to peak, beginning to want her there, beginning to need her there. She laughed quietly in his ear, her voice barely faltering as he sweat below her in his effort to make her climax as well. "Virgins do it the best. They don\'t get caught up in themselves." Something pressed softly and wetly against his ear as she spoke, small licks and caresses. “The first erection is always the best one to taste.” With an evil laugh that drove him higher into him with a desperate grip and a sickened stomach, the woman’s body went rigid, and Guillaume couldn\'t make her move but he couldn\'t find it in himself to stop his own motion, not this close anyway. "They taste better than any experienced man I’ve had."
At her words, the boy felt a strong grip on his skin as he let loose inside, peaking up between her thighs. The woman opened her mouth to smile at a moaning Guillaume, displaying a mouth of sharpened teeth and two elongated canines in the gums which sloped to a sharp point. With a speed far faster than the lad\'s eyes could follow, the two fangs sank into the soft, vulnerable flesh of the base of his throat.
A scream broke free from his lungs faster than he could form it. His body fought her, but her talons kept him subdued. Pleasure mixed with anger and pain course through his body as his back arched and his hips worked more vigorously. He no longer felt himself inside of her, but rather invading him from everywhere: the air, the bed, his own blood as it was being drawn out. It made him nearly scream. He could feel his body growing cooler and acting without knowledge. His short nails clawed at her, but the familiar pressing of her body held him, even while she maneuvered her body to take full advantage of his climax. Her lips lapped at the blood flowing freely from his neck, and a white light began to numb him. The room spun again and his senses faded, but his heart beat wild. Blackness over took him and he found himself staring up at the same ceiling he had first seen this night, wondering: Is this death?
-
In her dream, Storm was sleeping. Dreaming, in fact, making the whole ordeal a hell of a lot more confusing. Fortunately for the one observing this memory, she was not seeing exactly what her dream-self was viewing. It was as though she was watching a movie, a horrifically accurate retelling of her past.
Wake up. She whispered to herself, watching helplessly as the dream-Storm tossed and turned, gritting her teeth in pain or extreme discomfort.
Wake up, come on, wake up. The girl didn\'t want to see this again and she was beginning to become a bit desperate. The dream-Storm cried out, suddenly, as if struck by a sword. The man near her stirred in his sleep, rubbing his eyes groggily and peering at the girl with confusion.
No, you idiot. Go back to sleep!
"Storm?" the young man whispered, gently rocking the shoulder of the girl next to him. She flinched away from him, still deeply in slumber, and snarled.
"Storm, it\'s me. You\'re dreaming. Wake up. Come on now, I\'m not going to hurt you." the worried voice cooed, trying to rouse and calm the girl at the same time. He reached out with both hands this time, now kneeling over her, and shook the body of the sleeping girl.
"Storm, wake up!" he spoke with mild agitation, but for her sake and not out of his own aggravation. In barely the blink of an eye, the half-sleeping Akari-girl had the other on the ground. Her hands were at her throat as she glared at him with sickly yellow eyes. The younger Akari sputtered, fighting for oxygen and struggling against the one who had pinned him to the ground.
"Storm! It\'s me, Gabe!" there was the slightest bit of fear in his voice as he broke into his spirit form--something with powerful white-feathered wings. In an instant he overcame her, spinning the girl around so that her hands were behind her back.
"I\'m not trying to hurt you, just wake up." he said through grit teeth. An inhuman screech erupted from her throat, something that surprised even Gabe. Involuntarily he released her, which was a mistake. Now free, the girl whirled around, teeth barred and strangely pointed. Her eyes shown yellow in the darkness and she looked upon the man as if he had offended her beyond forgiveness.
-
Before the darkness dominated Guillaume\'s senses for another night, he felt the strangest of sensations, like the prickling of the hair on the back of his neck. Her teeth released him and he groaned audibly, unable to move anymore. His body felt as though it was made of iron and it almost hurt him to have her leave. The room spun and he felt the woman\'s lips travel up his neck, felt the teeth nip at his ear lobe, and heard her feathery voice lull him to sleep: "Not even close, darling."
His body shut down for yet another night with this demon, but not before the eyes captured the beautiful lass regaining her composure, her hazel eyes bright with the warmth of life. She smiled and Guillaume faded into the blackness of unconsciousness.
The vampire didn\'t realize he was in the process of gasping for air as he sat up in the sheets, his body shaking with the anxiety of the day\'s dream. Damien covered his mouth with both hands and jammed his eyes shut, stifling the emotion connected to it as it came out in cool air from his dead lungs. As typical, once the urge to push his pain out through his throat faded, the vampire lowered his arms, bracing himself on the bed.
The old wound on his neck pulsed dully like a curse and a reminder, and as Damien instinctually turned his head to the left he was only half surprised to see Isabella not sleeping next to him. His gray eyes lingered on the spot where she could have slept had she been alive, remembering that he was Guillaume Toulouse nine hundred and nine years ago, a human laying in a demon\'s bed. Damien\'s hand moved slightly as he shifted his weight in order to touch her place in his bed solemnly. Nothing of her existed in this apartment, save for her poor fledgling and the crest he wore about his neck on a thin gold chain.
Damien shifted his legs out of the sheets and stood up warily. It wasn\'t a dream he particularly liked to relive; the first experience was enough to last him a lifetime, yet Damien still had it as a regular in his cycle of rotating dreams. But at least Isabella was there, and if that were the only way he could see her again, then so be it. He was perfectly able to grit his teeth and bare it now.
The more he thought about it, his modest virtues made him smile. He had been so devastated when Isabella had forced herself upon him, but how easily he had dominated her without her psychic help so shortly after his death. The thought of the righteous Guillaume who had almost completed his training for the church and chastity made Damien smile, as an old man would as he reflected upon his wild and outrageous childhood. The vampire dressed in clean clothes quickly enough in his thoughtfulness. Black jeans, a dark green shirt with some ridiculous logo, and the same pair of shoes. Before he opened the door to the living room, Damien remembered to tuck the crest into his shirt.
He found the Akari on the floor of the kitchen which was covered in her work. Damien sighed as he stepped carefully around to inspect his walls, not exactly knowing what to think. He saw Storm sleeping and his blood ran cold and his mind raced. "Storm!" he breathed quietly. The vampire was tempted to shake her awake, to free her from her prison of sleep, but thought twice. If she had decided to wake up violently, there was no way for him to maneuver in the kitchen\'s space. He backed away slowly and said her name louder, remembering the corpses in the field of blood and the tickle of Laurent in his brain from the blood she had given him days ago, and Damien wasn\'t exactly eager to witness the results of her dreaming state again.
-
There was an echo in the back of her mind, the sound of her name called softly. But this gentle noise did nothing but cause her to turn over to her other side, now facing the one who had spoken. Her face was the portrait of peace, as though she were enrapt in a deep and satisfying sleep. But what lay behind her serene expression was far from it.
Gabe faced her now, realizing that being gentle with her was pointless. His mighty white wings moved back as he maneuvered himself around the demon-girl. Before she realized his speed, he had her in a tight embrace, one where she could not damage him with teeth or claws that had mysteriously elongated.
"Storm, calm down. You\'re dreaming, you need to wake up." his voice was surprisingly calm as he spoke near her ear. The girl struggled violently, teeth thrashing at the empty air in front of her. The younger man tightened his hold on her, to prevent her from moving around so much. His pleading voice became louder in volume and he no longer seemed to care if the whole camp was awakened.
Something inhuman came from her mouth again and the man couldn\'t help but scream desperately at her. In response, dark wings erupted from her back--something that caused the boy to stumble back in shock and fear. The demon turned on him now, burying her claws into his stomach. And before she realized what she had done, the young man was dead.
Storm was watching through her own eyes in that instant, She examined the blood on her hands with a numb detachment as the scene before her, save the mangled corpse, began to distort. Everything melted together, like paint dripping down a canvas.
There was a sudden pressure at the back of her head, like a hand, forcing her down. She cried out, violently fighting against the hand on the back of her head. There was laughter as her face was pushed into the bloody innards of the man who she once called \'brother\'. Before she had the opportunity to choke, her hair was roughly pulled back and she was able to see the face of the one standing behind her.
-
Calling to her clearly wasn\'t going to work and there was no way he was going to go near her. Damien stood gazing down at her, completely at a loss of what to do. While she didn\'t seem discontent in her slumber, Damien knew enough about her to know some of the demons which hunted in her subconscience. The vampire stepped away with a weary eye on her, choosing to sit on one of the couches instead.
The news reporter proclaimed it to be 7:00 PM as the electricity flowed into the television set. Somewhere in the nameless city someone got shot and two people were found murdered under special circumstances. Nothing exactly new to him or anyone else in the city. Cars rode by outside, some beeped moronically. Humans spoke to each other in the hallway. The sun would be below the horizon within the next half-hour, Damien knew from experience. Just watch TV until she wakes up, then. And build up your walls to keep her and her dreams out. A shiver ran down the vampire\'s cold spine as he thought about her last dream.
Thirst began to pull at him, reminding him that a victim would have to be found soon, within the next two nights. His senses dulled slightly and his body felt weary. The vampire sighed, thinking of a way to explain this to Storm when she woke up without scaring her out of her mind. Not that she needed his help.
-
"Hello, Princess." he purred, looking at her blood-covered face with a sense of longing that disgusted her so much she wanted to vomit. Before she had the chance to take a breath, her face was forced down again.
Storm awoke with a loud gasp, scrambling to a sitting position and skittering over to the wall as quickly as her body could allow. She pressed herself against the wall as much as she could, as if trying to become a part of it. The girl could feel the familiar thundering of her heart as she looked around wildly, unsure of her location. Her breathing was too quick for her to gain anything from it, but she managed to remember where she was.
Gradually the Akari regained control of herself, her breathing becoming normal and the flashing of her eyes slowing. Though she could not stop her body from trembling, she could hear the television murmuring in the background and wondered numbly how long she had slept. Shakily she stood, gripping the back of a chair as she looked around at the artwork she had scrawled on the walls. It took a minute for her to realize that Damien was awake, but she did nothing to try to catch his attention.
-
"Based on your pulse, I don\'t have to wonder how you are, do I?" He didn\'t look away from the television. "Come sit down in here, Storm." It was a light command, not a suggestion, and he expected it to be followed.
The vampire sat almost reclined, with his feet on the coffee table and the remote in his hand on the back of the couch. He had been sitting there for a half-hour or so, his thoughts never on the program on the television at all. Damien hated wasting the night and the aggitation he felt with wasting time did not help the desire to feed in any way. The sooner he fed, the sooner he\'d feel productive.
-
His tone of voice made her jump, and although she hated being bossed around, she forced herself to comply. Her footfalls were quiet and careful, as though she were walking on glass. Storm refused to look at him, thoughts of her dream still swirling around in her mind.
"Sorry I slept so long. I didn\'t even realize I fell asleep..." she sat hesitantly, as far away from him as she could manage. Eyes locked on the floor, she tried to make herself as small as possible. A sigh escaped her lips almost unwillingly, as if she were forbidden to make any noise at all.
Where her thoughts normally would be on the night ahead of her, they were on the morning behind her. He had a slight thread connected to her mind, something she had every intention of purging herself of the second she had the chance to. The girl cursed herself for reawakening the shadows, something that she should have known would make the way to her mind easier. At least she had her exact location walled of from the Zalmric, and thankfully his hold was rather weak. He could only influence the smallest portion of her dream. But it was enough.
-
The way she sat perturbed him, yet he dared not to question it further. He didn\'t understand why she had fell asleep in the first place, this girl who seemed to embody insomnia itself. Guess she needed more than an hour after all. Damned if you do, damned if you don\'t I suppose.
Damien looked over at her with an abrupt thought. "If you could do anything tonight, what would it be?" He had no real plans for the night, besides Feeding and having a quick chat with Pierre, and she looked like she needed a break from doing business with him and his regime. That he was willing to do for her, even if she wanted to go off \'alone\' for a little while. "And I mean anything."
-
Slowly she met his eyes, thoughts of her dream briefly dissipating. The girl was caught off guard by his sudden inquiry, and she was at a loss for words. There wasn\'t anything in particular that she felt like doing. Not with him anyway. And Storm wasn\'t sure if he would allow her to remain here on her own. She needed to purge herself of the shadows, or at least she had the intention to try.
"I\'m not exactly sure..." Storm hadn\'t ever really done anything special. She was aware that there were plenty of things to do in town, but she wasn\'t about to jump at the idea of going anywhere with Damien. But it would be awkward for her to go somewhere in public, to have \'fun\', on her own. Besides, she didn\'t have the slightest idea as to where Laurent was, and being anywhere in the open without protection was a stupid idea.
"I need some time to myself," she confessed, eyes returning to the floor. The girl wasn\'t in the mood for explaining what she needed to do, because she was almost positive that the vampire would object. Then again, maybe he wouldn\'t, considering his apparent lack of concern.
-
Damien looked at her still, his impatience hidden beneath a calm exterior. It wasn\'t as though she was doing anything wrong; it was more a combination of the dream during the day and the Thirst drying his throat out than anything else. The vampire nodded, understanding nonetheless, thoughts forming rapidly in his mind.
"I have to go out regardless of what you decide." His voice wasn\'t exactly cold, but rather stiff, as if he were trying to hold his composure together. He stood and looked down to her and continued. "If you\'d like, you can stay here to do what you need to do. I\'d prefer if you don\'t leave if that\'s the case, but I won\'t nessecerily stop you. I realize that you need some sort of escape from all this and I\'m not your father, so I\'m not going to keep you here or strapped to my wrist.
"Anywhere. Anything, no matter what, understood? What will it be?"
-
"I\'d like to stay here, if you don\'t mind. I need to..." she paused, unsure of exactly how to continue or make light of what she needed to do. She shifted her gaze to the floor and her eyes flickered between gray, red, and orange.
"I just need to take care of something." Storm explained in a low voice. The statement was vague but he didn\'t need to know details. She was almost positive that it wouldn\'t take horrifically long. That is, if things went smoothly and without much interruption.
"I won\'t leave. I can promise you that. So don\'t feel like you need to be worried about me." Not that I expect you to be, she reflected to herself. Not that the girl would admit it, but she was aching for him to leave. There was an extreme discomfort that she felt coming from him and it was making her anxious.
-
Damien half-smiled at the girl, roughing up his hair. "Well then. I should be out of your hair in a moment or so." With that, he bowed his head the slightest degree to her in an almost gentlemanly manner and left the living room, closing his door behind him.
Yeah right, he\'d let her stay here alone. If that had been the case, he would have just let her stay anywhere. Damien picked his phone up off the bedside table and held down the number four key. After three rings, someone picked up and the vampire spoke fluently in old language resembling French. A few brief words which no one understood anymore and a polite end to the conversation ending with a click of the line. Good man.
Shoving his phone, the little currency he had loose, and the pack of cigarettes into his sweatshirt pockets, Damien looked himself in the mirror. He took out the gun from his sweatshirt. He didn\'t exactly need the gun, but it was always nice to have in this day and age. Bullets could get to places where Damien couldn\'t, scare people who were otherwise unafraid and aid him in the right situation. The vampire replaced it and tried to make the sweatshirt seem to hang naturally around his frame. He grabbed his key and the spare he kept in the top drawer before he left the room.
"Ok," he said as he entered the room, speaking rather quickly as the desire built up. "I\'ll assume you\'ll be alright? My only request is that you keep any and all artwork to the kitchen. No excuses." I\'ll bring you a god-damn notebook, Jesus. "My cell phone number\'s on my bureau if you need me, not that I\'m expecting you to." God, I sound like a fucking parent. "No boys, no drinking, no drugs, and no wild parties, understood young lady?" He smiled more easily now, reaching for the door handle. "Oh, and don\'t do anything too costly."
-
The girl actually managed to smile at his last words, despite how weak it was. She couldn\'t read him, not that she was trying. It sure confused the hell out of her, the way he could switch from cold to warm at the drop of a hat. But who was she to complain? She wasn\'t supposed to care.
Don\'t do anything too costly... For a moment Storm wondered exactly what he meant by that. Costly as in destroying property? She wasn\'t about to go and draw all over everything. She\'d already gotten all of that out of her system. The girl stood and watched him at the door, eyes settling on a gray, for a moment almost wanting him to stay.
"I\'ll behave, I promise." she said softly, knowing that he could hear her even if she whispered. And with that said, she turned from him, unwilling to actually watch him leave. Her eye settled on the bathroom door as she began to plan exactly how to go about doing what she needed to.
-
He cast one look back at her before he left her in his appartment, locking the door behind him. Damien\'s face was serious, as if he were doing something dangerous. He didn\'t really like leaving somebody else in charge of his affairs, but he wanted to get this out of the way for both of their sakes.
The vampire strolled down the hallway, turning appropriately when need be. He passed no one in the halls, until he approached the elevator. Pierre was standing right at the open doorway. Damien smiled and Pierre nodded respectfully to him. Both vampires entered the elevator, closing the door behind them.
Damien spoke fast. "She\'s sitting on the couch right now. I\'m not expecting her to leave, but just keep in mind that she does a lot of things I don\'t expect. Whatever you do, don\'t underestimate her, alright?"
"Yes, sir."
The elder vampire smiled at his fledgling again, proud of Pierre\'s manners and sense of respect. "Good. Don\'t let anyone near that door and don\'t let her out. Don\'t even let me near it if I don\'t call you first, understood?"
"Yes, sir, but why?"
"She\'s being followed, stalked, hunted down by someone named Laurent Craiton. Know of him?"
Pierre shook his head.
"Good. Let\'s keep it that way. I\'m not going to be gone long, but I can\'t take a chance with either her or this guy." He looked at Pierre as the doors opened. "This guy is good, Pierre. Real good."
"Everything\'s under control, Damien. Go off and feed."
"One more thing. She\'s manically aware of presenses around her, so make sure you go unknown unless need be. Do not approach her if you think something happens, understood? Call me."
Pierre nodded and Damien stepped off the elevator into the lobby. "Of course, my lord." A sly smile slid to his face.
Damien flipped him the bird as the doors closed. The elder vampire smiled.
-
Storm exhaled loudly as the door clicked shut. She was finally alone, blissfully unaware of the fact that Damien was, indirectly, keeping an eye on her. The girl peered about the apartment, taking an extra-long look at the kitchen. A smirk appeared on her face with the memories of last night\'s escapades, but soon died as she returned her focus on the task at hand. Her face was solemn as she faced the bathroom door.
The Akari had never tried to purge herself of this dark matter before, at least not in a serious manner. Days of meditation and lack of use rid her of most of it before, but she didn\'t have the patience for that. She needed something quicker and more direct. Something to rid herself of Laurent forever, once and for all.
Anger flared up inside of her chest at the thought of the man. He had dared to walk in her dreams once again, as if the dreams weren\'t horrific enough for her to endure. Typically, Storm\'s mind was extremely well protected, her walls impassable and complete. The shadows were a bridge for him, considering hers came from him. Yet another reason to hate and love the man. Love, she scoffed, unsure of what else to call the contrasting feeling.
Quick footsteps brought her into the bathroom, and she pulled the door behind her, leaving about a two inch gap still open. She needed to hear, just in case Damien came back before she expected him to. Glancing around the tiny bathroom, Storm settled for a corner on the floor. She stared at her reflection in the mirror; sleep had given her dark circles, and she scowled at herself. Running her fingers through her hair at an attempt to tame it without a brush, she turned away from the mirror and sat down on the floor.
Exhale, wind passed from her lungs through her nose as the girl worked to relax her mind. Thoughts that once busily ran through her mind uncontrolled now began to slow and drift through like a passing cloud. With each thought of Inhale and Exhale, Storm\'s eyes faded into a greener hue. Each stray thought she found flickering into her attention, she allowed to gently slip away until she was left with simply the task of breathing.
After a certain amount of time, the Akari shifted her focus now to drawing her aura and the shadows out. One by one, the tendrils extended from her closely-knit aura pattern, swaying gently and awaiting her command. She didn\'t bother counting them, there really was no point in doing so. Focusing slightly, eyes tinting purple, her claws shifted out. With the claw of her pointer finger and thumb, she moved to grasp one of the shadows that had embedded itself into her left palm. The strange thing squirmed at her touch, and melted into her actual shadow to become almost impossible to extract.
Storm frowned, momentarily losing her calm disposition. Suddenly struck with a thought, she lit the oxygen at the end of her claws to the slightest degree, and went at the shadow quicker this time with flames. The shadow buried itself farther into her skin, away from the flame and her claws. She sighed irritably, flames dying in her hand.
"What now," she said aloud, head falling back against the wall in a defeated manner. The girl watched the other shadows hover suspiciously, drawing into her skin instead of simply her aura. She groaned, feeling the uncomfortable way they slipped into her. Storm closed her eyes to think, trying to take a different approach. I have enough energy to heal, she decided I could always take from the water... Without much of a second thought, she turned the handle of the sink until the water flowed at a small steady stream.
Calling again to the shadows, she targeted the one in the palm of her hand. They responded warily, but had little choice in the matter. She buried her elongated claws into her palm, crying out in unexpected pain as she grasped the shadow with new fervor. And as quickly as her claws entered her, they came out with their prize. Before she gave it the chance to squirm around, she set the wretched thing alight and watched it burn with unnatural fire on the floor of the bathroom. The fire died as the entire shadow dissipated.
There was a frenzy of activity in her body as the other shadows attempted to bury themselves into her skin, fearful of the same fate. And she almost felt pity for them. The dripping of blood from her hand was a nuisance, and she winced as she sealed up the wound with her own energy. One down, she brooded darkly.
-
Pierre sighed as he sat on the old carpet in the hallway around the corner from Damien\'s apartment. Plenty enough people had passed him by, but none of them too interesting as no one went near the door, inside or out. He kept his subconscious eyes on that door and the young woman inside, watching her aura move about the apartment until she entered what he believed to be the bathroom. He then retracted his mental watch of her; what could she possibly do in a bathroom that was worth watching over?
Moments passed, changing into minutes. Into hours. Pierre grew tired of the spy game, but what else could he do? His close friend and Sire had told him to stand post outside. Besides, it was only nearing the two hour mark, so it wasn\'t as if Damien wouldn\'t be returning back soon.
Pierre\'s senses pricked up at the faint smell of the girl\'s fresh blood. While he had been around women enough times to know why they would possibly smell of blood, this scent was completely different. Then fire, and the ordor of something burning. His hand was in his pocket and dialing his cell phone faster than any mortal could see.
He heard the jingle of Damien\'s ringtone around the corner of the hallway to his left. Pierre flipped the phone shut as soon as he saw Damien rounding the corner with an air of urgency. His skin was glowing pink with life and as he met up with Pierre. Damien also smelled of blood, cigarettes and cheap booze, a common scent of Risk, or Stakes and Sticks. "Blood and fire. But no one\'s been near that door."
Damien nodded once as they neared the apartment, jabbing the key in the lock, twisting it and pushing the door inward. Hard. "La toilette." Again, Damien nodded as Pierre informed him of Storm\'s location.
"Storm?" Damien called, walking through the bedroom. Pierre followed, noticing how the bathroom door stood ajar.
-
Storm hadn\'t given herself the opportunity or time to heal throughout the procedure, and there will still a few tendrils to extract. But the sound of the front door opening and footsteps, as well as the familiar presence of Damien accompanied by another vampire, she had to stop. Ripping the shadow she had already a hold of from her arm, she set the thing aflame in a hurry. The girl heard her name being called and was not anxious to answer.
"Fuck," she whispered, singeing her hand in her carelessness as she hurried to close the bathroom door. It slammed harder then she intended it to. Her heart pounded furiously, sending more blood oozing from countless puncture wounds scattered along her body.
No time to clean up! Fuck! her mind was in a frenzy and the shadows that had remained inside of her seemed to snicker. Throwing a desperate look at the mirror, she almost prayed that she didn\'t look as bad as she thought she did. But there was plenty enough blood streaking down her pale skin to stain not only Damien\'s shirt, but the floor she was standing on.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, She turned on the water, frantically rubbing at her arms while making wild attempts to heal without concentration. The light-bulb above her head flickered and threatened to go out with the power she hadn\'t controlled. Calm down, just calm down, and the Akari found it increasingly hard to listen to herself.
-
The door slammed in his face as he gripped the handle from the outside. Damien was caught slightly off guard by this and looked at the door with a confused look. Pierre half laughed at him until the elder threw him a weary glance which seemed to say "You should have been here last night."
"Storm? Are you alright?" He didn\'t mention anything about the blood he smelled quiet plainly with his newly sharpened senses, even without Pierre\'s call. Damien knew the smell, the flavor of it well enough. Mild concern washed over him as he grit his teeth. Sure it wasn\'t a significant amount of blood, and yeah, she could heal herself without any help from Damien or Pierre, and there was no other aura in that bathroom besides hers, but that still didn\'t make him feel any better about what was going on with her. It\'s not like there were obvious sharp objects in the bathroom with which she could have impaled herself with,. She must have been inflicting it upon herself, and that is what confused Damien the most.
When he twisted the handle, it was obviously locked. "Figures," he murmured. "You don\'t feel anyone else, right?" and Pierre shook his head, a concerned look plagueing his features. Damien stepped away from the door. "Neither do I." With a deep exhale Damien turned away to leave the room. "Let\'s give her the time she needs to finish. Just keep an eye on the amount of blood and fire, I suppose. Nothing that she does surprises me much anymore." The comment was meant for Pierre, but it sounded like he meant it for himself as well. The elder vampire addressed the bathroom and it\'s occupant. "I\'m in the living room. Do what you have to do." With that, Damien shook his head and left the room with his fledgling, leading him to the couches where they both sat in near silence.
-
Storm paled at the sound of Damien\'s voice, recognizing Pierre\'s aura as he came closer to where she had hidden herself. She did not answer the inquiry, she wasn\'t really sure how to answer. Was she okay? No. But things were relatively under control, at least until the two vampires showed up so suddenly. For whatever reason, the things he said to Pierre stung. Half of her wanted him to care, or at least sound like he did. But the other half scolded this childish desire, reminding her of her place.
The Akari sighed in relief as she felt Damien leave the immediate area. Not that she was about to continue with what she had set out to do. She couldn\'t concentrate enough for that now that she was no longer alone. She turned to the mirror again, trying to calm herself further. Relax, he\'s not barging in here. A heavy sigh.
Turning her arms over, the girl examined the oozing wounds along her skin. With a trained hand, she stitched the skin together with her green sparks of energy. The wounds that she had closed began to bruise noticeably, but she didn\'t want to spend the time healing something her body could naturally take care of. She reached down to touch the ones on her legs, and in a short amount of time she had stopped the bleeding throughout her body.
Straightening, Storm looked at herself in the mirror again, dipping her hands into the water and scrubbing the drying blood from her skin. Nothing to do about the shirt, she sighed in dismay, realizing that Damien probably wouldn\'t be too pleased about his shirt. Careless, she scolded herself. With her skin mostly cleared, the girl took a look at the floor. There wasn\'t that much blood, easy enough to clean with toilet paper. Taking a large handful from the roll and dampening it slightly, she scrubbed out the bright red and disposed of it in the wastebasket near the toilet.
Storm sighed, scrutinizing her appearance in the mirror. Dissatisfied, she splashed her face with some cold water and patted it dry with a towel. There, she mused, good enough. With a slightly trembling hand she opened the door as quietly as she could manage, taking a hesitant peer into Damien\'s bedroom. Satisfied that no one was watching her, she forced on a half-smile and walked out of the room.
"Hey," she called softly, hoping desperately that she wouldn\'t be questioned about the bruises or why she had locked herself in the bathroom.
-
Both vampires looked over at her. Damien spoke first. "You wanna explain what the hell just happened, or are we going to make wild assumptions?" His voice was quiet and contained only a slight edge even though his Thirst had decreased and his dreams were relatively far from his mind.
-
Storm flinched but held eye-contact with Damien, as if in a challenge. Lie, something inside of her whispered. But she knew he would see through her, she was a terrible liar. Her smile fell and she looked to the floor with anger dancing across her eyes.
"I just had to take care of something." she replied through grit teeth. Why should he care? She was alive, right? Relatively unharmed, it wasn\'t like she was going to die or anything. And Laurent obviously hadn\'t been alerted to their location due to her carelessness. So everything was completely fine. Under control.
The Akari didn\'t expect him to understand the shadows at all. But she didn\'t want to invoke his anger with her vague explanations. She especially wasn\'t feeling up for giving a thorough explanation considering there was company. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and looked up at Damien, her face an unreadable stone.
-
"Alrite," Damien said attempting to give her the space she seemed to be asking for so diligently. "But you should know that any vampire would come running at the scent of fresh blood." Damien knew that she already knew that much, but felt it nessecary to reiterate nonetheless. Apparently she had forgotten that fact.
He looked her body over, noticing the bruises and marks playing along her legs and arms. Damien wasn\'t exactly sure about what she had done in the bathroom, but it looked like she had beat herself with a hammer. But, of course that didn\'t explain the blood that he and Pierre smelled so strongly through the thick walls of the apartment.
Something else was wrong with her in Damien\'s eyes. She was not dressed correctly to be out in the living room while Pierre was here. While he loved Pierre like a brother and a son, the elder vampire could feel a slight hunger well up inside his fledgling as the younger one saw Storm without much clothing on and that made Damien\'s mood sour. It was neither one of their faults, as he figured out how each one of them were, but the iratation Damien felt was solely directed towards himself. It was something he should have thought about before Pierre came in the apartment.
Pierre was too in control to let himself react outwardly towards the sight of Storm\'s half-naked body, but the thought that he had allowed Pierre to see her like that. "Storm, can you come with me to the bedroom, please?" Damien stood up, addressing Pierre. "Wait here, alright?"
-
Storm relaxed significantly when it appeared that he would not be asking her about the wounds further. But she felt instantly stupid upon realizing the truth in what he had said next. Obviously, if Damien had been nearby (which seemed to her to be the most likely case) he would\'ve smelled her blood. She sighed, defeated, crossing her arms over her chest awkwardly.
The girl winced as the vampire stood, beckoning her into his room. Surely for pressing the matter more, but in private. She was filled with dread as he crossed the living room, and frantically began to form out some sort of an explanation. Tripped on the way into the bathroom? That would never work. Hesitantly, she threw a sideways glance at Pierre before following Damien.
Fuck, the only word she could make her mind think. Storm eyed him cautiously, waiting for him to scold her or at least punish her in some way. She prepared herself for the worst.
-
Touching her shoulder faintly, he guided her to the bedroom and closed the door behind him. He turned to look at her without a word. Damien was unafraid of what Pierre might think of seeing his sire taking a woman into his room; Pierre knew his nature all too well to know that Damien would never touch her.
He crossed to the dresser and pulled out one of the draws, removing a pair of black sweatpants and a dark blue tee-shirt. The vampire handed these to her wordlessly and pointed back to the bathroom. There was no anger on his face, as he was more lost in thoughts of self-punishment than anything else. His words would have no doubt carried out to Pierre\'s ears, so he decided that he\'d make this transition as unembarassing as possible. She probably didn\'t realize what she had just done, that\'s all, and Damien had raised enough fledglings to know that the young did that.
The vampire managed a half-smile at her and even shook his head faintly. He didn\'t need Pierre getting anymore excited about her clood than he already was. Damien opened the door and closed it behind him, returning to his spot on the couch. "Ok."
-
Storm flinched away from his touch, nerves very on edge. Fuck...what am I going to say... She paused and watched him curiously as he went to the dresser. Paling, thoughts of conventional medieval methods of punishment flashing across her mind. But to her relief there wasn\'t anything violent in his hands. Just clothing.
"Oh," was all she managed to utter, thoroughly embarrassed as her face reddened immensely. She nodded as he pointed to the bathroom, taking the clothing quickly as she dashed into the room and closed the door behind her.
Jesus Christ, she cursed darkly, changing into more of his clothing as quickly as she could. To be honest, she was less concerned with what Pierre thought about seeing her like that and more concerned with how angry Damien probably was with her for letting him see her like that. God knows he could hide it if he wanted to.
With the bloodied shirt in a ball in her hand, the girl turned her gaze to the mirror to check her hair before turning the door-nob silently. Sending the dirty shirt into the air, with her mind, and to the hamper, she stepped perhaps more gracefully into the living room.
"Sorry," she couldn\'t help but send to Damien\'s mind, and she smiled sheepishly hoping that nothing would be said about her minor slip-up. The Akari felt extraordinarily awkward standing there without saying anything, and she wasn\'t about to strike up a conversation with Pierre, much less Damien.
-
He couldn\'t help but smile slightly now that she was clothed. "It\'s fine, Storm. Just remember something like that next time, especially in front of the male vampires."
"So. What are the plans for tonight?" He asked of Pierre.
Pierre simply shrugged. "I was hoping you\'d tell me."
Damien scoffed. "You don\'t want to do anything business-like any more than I do, and you know it."
Pierre smiled. "Actually, I was supposed to meet Nikolai."
"What for?"
Pierre laughed. "What are you getting so nosey for?" It was meant in good humor and Damien understood this well. "I dunno, really. We were jus going to go out and cause a whole bunch of chaos, kill some innocent bystanders, maybe inform the Oligarchy about all the fledglings you\'ve made illegally, how\'s that sound?"
"Psh. What fledglings? I haven\'t made any since we moved here. That\'s all your doing!" The elder smiled. "Just no attention, alright? From what I expect from you and him, I can see the entire town talking for the next month about something you two have done in public."
"Yeah, yeah." Pierre stood up and adjusted his leather jacket. "Au revoir."
"Ciao." Damien watched as Pierre smiled one of his charming smiles at Storm, winking an eye at her as well. "Pierre!" Damien said warningly.
Pierre was already out the door, flipping the bird to Damien as it closed.
"What an ass," Damien huffed with a slight tinge of humor.
-
Storm\'s gaze flickered between the two men as they spoke, flinching slightly as Nikolai\'s name was mentioned. She became more anxious as Pierre made a move to leave, unwilling to be alone with Damien. She flushed at Pierre\'s flirtatious behavior and timidly watched him go. She almost giggled at Damien\'s closing remark, but restrained herself.
The girl exhaled. "So. What did Pierre come over for?" it was an innocent question only meant for filling empty air and hopefully taking his mind off of what she didn\'t want to discuss at all.
((sorry it\'s so short. X3 ))
-
"I met up with him down in the alley around the corner. We decided to go off... Feeding together," Damien lied without breaking a sweat. "How are you?"
Life sloshed around in his veins, making the world a lot friendlier to him. The edges of her face and the background were much clearer and the sounds of her nervous heart were much louder to him. His body felt more normal. It was just a shame that that young woman with the brown hair and the painted eyes wouldn\'t wake up for the next couple of days. Damien hoped that she didn\'t need to be lively for a date or something within the next few hours. He sighed to himself, remembering how the girl struggled against her unseen predator.
"Are you all... under control now? You seem.. different."
-
Storm forced a smile, a painfully evidently fake smile. Her eyes were a watery gray color, and they weren\'t content to rest on one particular thing.
"I\'m fine." her voice was hoarse, and she cleared her throat. The girl realized that she didn\'t seem reassuring in the slightest bit. But honestly, why would he care? It was her emotional well-being, not his, and as long as nothing interfered with the regime, it should be nothing of his concern.
Crossing over to the kitchen as if losing interest in whatever occupied the living room, Storm paused in front of her art. The strange, twisted trees were the last things she scrawled onto the wall. She reflected back on the earlier parts of her mural, keeping the meanings to her visual metaphors silent.
"Should I wash this off now?" she called softly, without looking back to the vampire. With ease the levitated the scattered papers into a neat pile and onto the tabletop.
-
The girl\'s cool nature did not slip by the vampire unnoticed, as his eyes followed her towards the kicthen. "You\'re a bad liar," Damien half-thought, resulting, no doubt as a soft echo in the back of Storm\'s mind. He recovered quickly enough, though, speaking before she got the chance think about what he had announced in her mind. "Considering it\'s doing no harm to the wall and there\'s time for that later, you can leave it there I suppose. Unless you feel better taking it down."
He\'d been considering the possibility of leaving her work up and then quietly examining it once she was away somewhere all morning. While he knew about her life through the blood she had given him, the blood had not granted him exact understanding of the ins and outs of Storm\'s life. He had seen how she felt about her purpose to him, how she felt in the moment and a summarized version of her life over the past few years, but lacked the ability to break her hardest bottles in the farthest reaches of her mind; he simply could not understand fully how she worked. To Damien, it were as if he were reading a book with all the verbs missing and no clue as to what they were. And he was rather hoping that she\'d leave it up in order to allow him to get a better understanding of her.
"Right now, I\'d prefer to get out of this apartment and go do something... ith you. What do you say?"
-
Storm couldn\'t help but flinch as she felt Damien\'s comment brush her mind, even if it was barely an echo. Her eyes remained locked on the wall, studying her pencil sketches that she doubted anyone would undertand. Exhaling heavily through her nose, her gaze flickered to the pile of paper on the table.
It surprised the girl that he didn\'t mind her artwork remaining up for a little longer. She assumed that he\'d want it down as soon as possible considering the way he\'d reacted to it earlier. Without a second thought she raised the pile of papers into the air and mentally placed them into the trash can in a neat pile.
"I haven\'t the slightest idea what\'s around her," she shrugged indifferently, wondering in the back of her mind why he\'d want to take her anywhere.
"But I\'d feel kind of... awkward going anywhere like this." She turned to him to indicate his over-sized clothing. She hated sweatpants.
-
"Well that\'s kinda what I was referring to," he said looking her up and down as if she were something amusing. "I can understand how you\'d be uncomfortable, trust me. I hate sweatpants." A smile graced his lips as well as the amusement he felt. The vampire almost felt relieved that she looked so funny in his clothes.
"I figured we could go out somewhere, get something to eat... maybe get you a new outfit..." he coughed and murmured to himself, "or two." His tune turned to her again. "Don\'t take this the wrong way, but it doesn\'t exactly look like you have money to spend, or another outfit to wear while the other one is... well... unwearable.
"Besides I have some things to pick up myself and I\'d..." he inhaled, warm blood rushing to his face in slight uneasiness at what he was about to say, "I\'d like to buy you something... some clothes of your own." Damien stood now, but his eyes weren\'t looking at her, instead finding a spot on the couch much less judgmental than her. He ventured a woman and held his breath when he caught her eyes.
-
Storm fidgeted uncomfortably as he spoke, not finding the courage to meet his eyes. The awkwardness surrounding the room made her eyes rest on red as she furiously began to examine the walls. Not that she was taking in anything that she was looking at. She blushed as he commented on her financial situation, but didn\'t take offense to it at all. It was obvious that she didn\'t have a job, and she was too clumsy to try stealing.
"I\'d hate for you to have to spend anything on me..." she trailed off, not really finding the correct words to say. While she was grateful that the vampire had offered to take her shopping, she knew that she wouldn\'t be able to repay him--not soon anyway. And he had already gone out of his way for her by letting her draw on the walls and monopolize use of the shower. But she couldn\'t deny the fact that she was in dire need of more clothing.
The girl shyly looked up, coincidentally the same time that Damien did. She flushed, blinking slowly. "But I guess if you insist, I can\'t refuse." her words were quiet and she smiled softly.
-
Finally an actual smile, he thought to himself quickly before replacing his gaze elsewhere inconspicuously. The thought made the air around them seem slightly less oppressing, but didn\'t touch the awkwardness of the situation. "No, you can\'t. Besides, I figured you\'d like to go out and do something besides sit in her and wonder what..." he paused, remembering his polite behavior and the affects that forgetting would have on her, "what\'s going on outside this apartment, even if it\'s just back to the lighthouse or whatever. I just figured that you wouldn\'t want to stay in here all night again."
He smirked at her and went to the bedroom, to the closet near the bathroom. He yanked the door open and pushed aside some coats to the safe in the back. He opened it and sorted through the assorted things he kept there: a few switch-blades, part of the old chain that was used to hold him to the wall so many years ago, another gun and ammunition, plastic cards, etc. Damien grabbed two of the plastic cards and closed the safe and the closet, calling out, "You\'re going to have to stay dressed like that until we get you something, though." He smirked and then added, "Unless you want to grab a pair of my jeans..." The thought made him smile wider as he left the room, closing the door behind him.
-
Storm allowed her eyes to follow Damien into the bedroom. She could hear him sorting through things but didn\'t wonder really. Pulling her arms around her, she turned again to the wall, as if unable to recognize the meanings in her own sketches. She almost didn\'t catch what the vampire said, and turned her head at the sound of his voice.
"Would you mind?" her smile was a little less then awkward. The girl honestly didn\'t want to go anywhere in sweatpants. To tell the truth, she was starting to feel less awkward about wearing his clothing as time passed. She\'d changed into how many different things already? Storm would feel massive relief as soon as she got some of her own clothing. She hadn\'t had more then one outfit since she lived back home, and she was taking careful care of what she currently owned.
The thought of shopping both excited and repulsed her. She hated looking around for anything, with a male no less, but she hadn\'t owned anything new in the longest time. Her eyes couldn\'t decide between red, orange and teal.
-
He paused at her words, simple as they were. Would he mind if she wore his pants? "Sure, why not. You\'ve worn everything else of mine. If you can fit into them, then by all means. But after you get your own clothes, I\'m getting mine back." Sure the thought was funny, but the situation didn\'t make him smile on the inside. On the inside he was cringing, trying not to think about who she was and what was actually happening. For whatever reason he couldn\'t look at her as if she were just another girl.
Once again he dug through his drawers and threw her a pair of jeans. He fully expected them to be too big for her, though she surprised him many times before. "You\'re going to have the wear the same shirt though. All my others are dirty." He smirked, the corner of his lips twisting up into a slight jeer.
-
Storm caught the clothing without much trouble, and looked up at him greatfully with a quick "thanks". She didn\'t take her time scurring to the bathroom and slamming the door. The girl didn\'t think about anything while silently changing into the jeans--oversized again, but she didn\'t mind all that much. Besides, it wasn\'t like she was going to be wearing them for very long. She took a moment to study herself in the mirror, fixing her hair a bit and adjusting the clothing. When she was satisfied, she left the bathroom and placed the sweatpants into the hamper.
"Ok," she breathed, walking past him quickly to the door, eager to get out of the apartment. She looked back at the vampire expectantly as if to say \'You lead the way because I have no idea where we\'re going.\'
-
He waited for her in the living room, having gathered his keys and what-nots. His weight shifted twice from one leg to the other and gray eyes peered at the drawing on the wall as he leaned over the island separating the kitchen from the living room. Each time the vampire\'s ears picked up movement that was close to the door Damien\'s eyes flickered back to the door and leaned just enough away to make it look like he was legitimately waiting for her.
Once the door opened, Damien stood up and adjusted himself and the clothing. The sight of Storm in his jeans, which slipped down her hips without the help of the belt, made Damien laugh and cringe at the same time. Multiple comments ran through his mind, from the most bitter to the most sarcastic, but he decidedly spared her of his \'wrath\' and allowed only a funny smirk to twist his features. "Ready?" he asked, grabbing onto his keys firmly. He eyed her for one last moment before strolling over to the light switch he had originally used for her sake and switching it down. In the dark of the apartment, the door to the hallway and the vampire held the door out for her with his out stretched arm.
-
Storm shifted uncomfortably on her feet, suddenly feeling unnecessarily self-conscious. Sure, she must\'ve looked ridiculous but it wasn\'t as if she could help that. The sooner she was wearing something else, the better. She forced her eyes to meet his, unwilling to show how awkward she was feeling.
Ready? Of course she was ready. The girl nodded slowly, her red eyes following him as he flicked off the light. Squinting into the dark, it took her a moment for her vision to adjust. With a few quick steps, Storm left the apartment through the front door. Once out in the hallway, she turned back slightly to wait for Damien to lead.
Continued here (http://www.roleplaycity.com/forums/showthread.php?p=65441#post65441)