Closer

[Saiketsu]

"So tell me," he said breaking up the emty silence aftera few minutes, "how can we stop this bastard? Any ideas?" He smirked and lifted the gun, cocking it towards the ceiling. It had confused his children why he had ever carrieed a gun. A vampire was invincible and the idea that an average human weapon could stop an immortal (for vampires never needed weapons aganst mortals) was simply preposterous. A bullet, plain and simple and without spells or added metals, could harm no immortal terribly. So why would Damien have one?

He had it for this very reason. In all his long years he had come across tens of different human-esque creatures. Never had he crossed paths with either an Akari or a Zalmric, who had the ability to manipulate air and turn it ablaze. With a weapon purposely designed to strike quickly from farther away, Damien felt better about this entire situation. He could stand a bullet. Even three he could stand, but not fire. That was like trying to stand up to the sun.

"Even if it just slows him down, I need to know. I need to know what he\'d do ifwe have to retaliate against him."

[The Cedar Witch]

She looked at him skeptically. "Guns won\'t work. He can take a few--" her voice caught abruptly in her throat. The girl\'s eyes widened suddenly, as if in pain, flooding a sickly yellow. She didn\'t breathe for a period of time that could have made her dizzy if it were under normal circumstances. But her gaze remained fixed ahead toward Damien, yet not seeing him at all. She could feel anger, hatred, and rage all at once, burning a hole in her chest and threatening to eat away at everything that was keeping her together before.

And as quickly as the spell began, it faded, leaving her with a pained and fearful look on her face, as if something was about to go terribly wrong. The last thing she wanted to do now, after working so hard to calm down, was unravel. The Akari thought she was safe, assumed that she was safe. Granted, she was fooling herself to believe that such a simple thing as switching cars would deter an expert, practiced tracker for more then a few hours. But she was so willing to believe that she was safe for the moment. If only for the moment.

"He knows we tricked him," she choked, unable to unfreeze her body to move. "Pierre\'s..." Storm trailed off, as if searching for exactly what was about to transpire between the two. Really she didn\'t know, and she wouldn\'t know what his condition was. The only \'message\' that she received was through any damage he took. Not Pierre.

For now it was a waiting game.

[Saiketsu]

OOC: IN TIME WITH FASTING BLACK LUNGS

Before she murmured that name, before the panic for his first son\'s life established itself in his torso, before he froze himself over with fright, his irration and aggravation at being discovered by the Zalmric was the worst thing that Damien could have hoped for.

But once she said that name.

"What. What\'s going on? What do you see?" Every millisecond that passed was maddening to the vampire. Time was being wasted and his forst born could be bleeding as he waited for Storm\'s lips to move.

It was an uncomfortable feeling for the vampire, being mildly frightened at the situational confrontation. Pierre was nowhere near as fast as a vampire his age should have been. He had no ability to theive into another person\'s mind like most of his children did. He had no way of knowing exactly what he would be up against, exactly what he\'d be dealing with. Laurent could turn himself into fire and Pierre could have been incinerated even during the night. And what if Pierre was stupid for only a split second, overestimating his immortality or the other\'s mortality, getting cocky like he could every now and then... what if Laurent did somehow manage to injure him to the point of exhuastion? What if the sun found a wounded Pierre, alone...

No. It couldn\'t happen. Pierre wasn\'t stupid, wasn\'t as slow as any mortal could ever have possibly been. Damien refused to accept it, and for a moment or so, the blood thawed the chunks of ice and he could almost return back to normal, back to being irratated at being found. Laurent couldn\'t kill a vampire. Not one as old as Pierre. No. Pierre would step on Laurent\'s head and crush it under his perfectly clean shoes long before he would be severely injured by a mortal. Jean-Luc was almost as strong as Damien was with more power than anyone had ever witnessed.

Still the blood remained colder than usual as he sat on the edge of his seat. Damien was finding it extremely difficult to sit where he was and not pick up his phone and call Pierre himself and ask just what the fuck was going on.

[The Cedar Witch]

Storm could not see anything, had she the voice to express that she would have. But before she had even the opportunity to do such a thing, there was a sudden snap of blinding pain behind her eyes and the world became white for a fraction of a second. The girl blinked once, twice, and the hotel room slowly faded into focus leaving her with a nasty headache. Her right hand flew to her forehead and she wasn\'t aware of the bruise blossoming beneath the trembling fingers. All that passed from her lips was a groan, she could offer no immediate explanation.

For a few, painfully silent moments, Storm\'s frightened eyes flickered around the room, as though searching inside of her own mind for the details of the fight. And even if it appeared as though she were watching something, she wasn\'t really. Her eyes remained in the hotel room, waiting for another spark of rage or echo of pain that was alien from her own.

It frustrated her that she could not really \'see\' what was going on. That this was another waiting game and she could do nothing. Absolutely nothing. She couldn\'t tell who was winning or if the fight had already ended. All that she knew was that he wasn\'t dead. Not yet at least.

[Saiketsu]

He watched the bruise bud and stain her forehead. The vampire hissed her name sternly, rising quickly from his seat in concern. With no possible way of knowing that Storm\'s vision was limited to simple flashes, Damien had no other way to react to the entranced girl than to demand to know what was happening. As much as he tried not to let the cold bath of worry consume him, the nagging anxiety for his first born, his blood and kin, overrode his collected composure. Even with the fresh blood mixed in his veins, Damien\'s countence was turning more demonic than he had ever hoped.

"What can you see, damn it!" His voice seethed out as a command rather than a question. He had had enough patience for the time being. He took a step closer to her, towering over her as she sat small, on the bed, in his shadow.

[The Cedar Witch]

Damien\'s voice was barely an echo in the back of her mind, the edges of his figure before her were blurred and faded. Storm could feel the worry pulsing from him clear enough, the anger and frustration with the situation. But she could do nothing and say nothing to explain much of anything. The girl opened her mouth mutely, as though making an honest effort to try to speak, but no words came.

There was a sharp, sudden blinding pain in her back causing her to gasp aloud in agony. The room went white again and for another sacred moment, the Akari could not breathe. All she could feel was pain, and that enough was reassurance that Pierre was still alive for the time being. If Damien even tried to touch her mind, he would experience the same pain as she from this fight and see nothing that would provide an answer for him.

It actually took her a moment to realize that she had the wind knocked out of her. The familiar form of panic that she had felt that night where she almost drown set in. And after a few frenzied gasps for breath, she inhaled short and raspy, gripping the arms of the chair.

[Saiketsu]

He was trying his best not to lose patience, not to lose control. He knew that he wasn\'t seeing the entire situation, knew enough to know that she wasn\'t giving him the entire story for a reason. He just needed to know what that reason was.

Sickness battled with the welling anger in the pit of his stomach as he tried to keep his temper. Her expression had changed, but not into an expression of recoginization; she was feeling or seeing something right now, something that he wasn\'t. Her name came from between grit teeth, a hiss.

Damien never liked feeling left out of things. Never. His mind was racing with possibilities and his feet began to move, carrying him in a pattern across the hotel floor. But after the third lap he had made up his mind, letting everything else fly free. He was going to see what she saw.

With measured care -- for he had learned from the last experience with her mind that it was not something to be rushed into -- he calmed himself, forcing a blank slate up to cover the anxiety rumbling low in his abdomen. His invisible fingers, like webs, reached over the distance, brushing against her mind.

Instantly he saw the flash of white. Fire lit his cheekbone, catching him by surprise as his son (as Damien assumed) was struck. The force, so unexpected, threw Damien\'s head off to a severe angle and made him drop the connection to Storm\'s mind. With the connection severed, Damien wobbled on his feet. His son, his best friend had nearly had his head kicked off in one strike. The claws were sticking into his throat as well, his flesh set afire. It wasn\'t death, but it was a hindering pain that he feared Pierre wouldn\'t be able to keep up with. Pierre didn\'t have an extreme tolerance to pain.

Worst yet, there was nothing Damien could do for him. There were guards at his door, nowhere to stash Storm for a while now that Pierre was occupied. He was stuck there to wait, to watch his son struggle with Damien\'s enemy, the one man that Damien wanted to personally see the end to. And the fact that Pierre didn\'t have the upper hand made Damien extremely anxious as he sat staring at the girl.

[The Cedar Witch]

Words were caught in her throat, words that could explain to him that she could only feel whatever blows were dished out to the Captain who was connected to her mind by sticky, invasive shadows, words that could offer some sort of hope because she knew that he was suffering damage as well as Pierre. But they remained stuck along with whatever air she was struggling so desperately to take into her lungs, and never reached the anxious vampire\'s ears. Storm was too distracted by pain to hear anything that Damien was saying to her.

She was unaware of the bruises forming at her throat and across her abdomen. The girl could heal them, if she had the energy, but it wasn\'t exactly the first thing on her mind at the moment. The searing pain in her throat was the worst, and her right hand crept slowly toward the blackening flesh while her expression remained far-away. If it wasn\'t for the fact that the Captain would sense her watching, she would have reached through the shadows to look through his eyes, at least to see how things had progressed. The anxiety that she felt leaking from Damien was enough to increase her own, tenfold.

There was a shocking pain in her head, as though it were a second after she had either fallen on her face or had it kicked in. The only noise the Akari made was a muted, surprised cry. A bruise had begun to form under her eye, but did not swell. Later, looking back on the situation, the girl would have been silently thankful that she had attempted to remove the number of shadows that she had prior to this fight. If she kept them all, more then bruises would have been appearing on her skin.

For a few, haunting moments, she was granted peace, as though the two had stopped for a moment to catch their breath. It caused Storm to gasp, eyes wide in confusion. She opened her mouth to speak, and nearly forced the words that had been caught out into the air, but found that she could not. The fact that she could still feel his will to fight meant that Pierre had not gone down yet, and she ached to tell Damien this if anything at all.

It wasn\'t even a few seconds after the period of silence before a sudden shockwave of pain ripped through her left forearm as though the bone inside had been shattered. Even though nothing was broken, the flesh swelled hotly and her skin blackened with a new bruise to mark a fight she had never participated in. She cried out again, in surprised pain, her right hand flying to the tender, damaged flesh and touching it gingerly. Still, her eyes remained straight ahead as though she were stuck watching something she had no desire to watch--though in reality she could see nothing.

Almost instantly after the crippling pain in her arm, the muscled of her throat tightened and closed off her access to oxygen. The fingerprint-like bruises dotting her reddening throat deepened, as though invisible fingers were pressing against her. Liquid panic rushed through her as she fought for every breath, sickly-yellowed eyes wide and afraid. It wasn\'t until her legs felt as though they had gone alight in flames that the pressure on her windpipe had vanished. Underneath her pants, her skin had been scorched red hot as though she had gotten terrible sunburn after a day of lying out under its heat.

Sputtering for every breath, Storm looked directly at Damien for the first time that entire night, eyes flashing and consumed in pain. With dread, she knew that he had become fire, even if it was for a short period of time. And while the girl knew that the fight had ended, she had no way of knowing if Pierre had been incinerated or not.

"D--," she swallowed, stuttering through a frantic sentence, "Damien, Pierre\'s--" Storm was still trying to catch her breath, nearly hyperventilating because of the pain racing through nearly every inch of her body. It took her a moment to recover to the point where she could speak clearly, and she spoke as quickly as her tongue allowed.

"The fight\'s over. I don\'t know what\'s happened to Pierre."

[Saiketsu]

He had never expected Laurent to find out about what had happened so quickly. He had never expected Pierre to be discovered so early in the night, and never alone. Damien anger had flared back to its former glory, but no longer directed at the young woman close by. A nasty, nagging pain lingered on in his face where he had assumbly been struck in Storm\'s mind. Panic was beginning to overwhelm him, an organized, fluttering panic that made him look around the room and formulate a plan of action. If Laurent were riding their asses that closely, there was no way they could stay in the city tonight.

Honestly, Damien had no clue as to what was happening with his son, his closest friend for hundreds of years. Storm was offering no answers and a headache would undoubvtedly form if he continued his invaision of her mind. Tonight was not the night to let that happen, no matter how Pierre was doing.

Half of him was absolutely positive that Pierre would survive. What mortal had ever killed a vampire in the dead of night? Pierre was the strongest and oldest vampire he had fledged and to think that he could be taken down by a mortal like Laurent, regardless of the mind powers he may have possessed was rediculous. Pierre had killed many a mortal with his bare hands alone, nevermind the fangs and immortality Damien had given.

And yet half of Damien still worried like the anxious parent he was. Pierre was the one of the last ones he had who had survived the great Purge. He had carried Pierre underground to safety the day that they burned Damien\'s bride. It was Pierre that had kept Damien sane throughout the years of searching and tormenting. So the thought of losing Pierre, his favorite and his first-born, was too great.

Damien\'s blue eyes landed on the girl again and his anxiety rose. Her magical tell-tale eyes had run a dissgusting yellow and her pain was flooding the room. She was gasping for air and Damien naturally shifted his focus to her. Panic again flooded him as the idea of losing Storm to an invisible assault tore at everything that he had set up. "Storm!" He instinctually got down onto his knees and grasped her face to make her look at him. But her eyes were blank and yellow, mouth gasping for air. What the fuck is happening?

But his focus lasted on her for only moments before another feeling overwhelmed every cranny of his mind. Death by fire. It was a feeling he could never forget -- like having one\'s own arm or leg incinerated and the inability to stop it. Pierre was burning somewhere, he was sure of it.

A crippling feeling flashed over his abdomen, and Damien could almost feel the flesh there burn. It was Pierre\'s pain. The feeling was sickening and instinctual fear welled and burst inside of Damien. He was on the floor before he knew what was happening, thoughts of Pierre following Lucretia to the grave filling his mind. Panic. Agony. Like having a limb sawed off. It was a feeling he knew he would never forget. And if Storm had said anything at all, he never heard it.

Ignoring the girl for a few moments, Damien found his way to his feet again, his cell phone in his hand and against his ear. When a hurried, desperate voice of Pierre\'s fledgling answered Jean-Luc\'s phone it was to inform him of the happenings of the night with hurried, accented words.

[The Cedar Witch]

Storm, meanwhile, was still struggling to catch her breath. While the vampire was on the floor, she was assaulted anew. A sharp force embedded itself into her shoulder, and she could only assume that he had been shot at, and taken a bullet from behind. The girl could only groan mutely, as if extremely low on the precious energy that she still needed to recover, naturally or otherwise. The pain wasn\'t as great as it would have been if she had physically experienced it, but it made her hunch over and grip at her limb tenderly. The Akari waited a few seconds before looking up to the vampire, meeting the back of his head instead of his eyes, pacing the floor in a way that she had become used to by now.

No, she wasn\'t looking for sympathy or attention, and she fully expected Damien to easily be a thousand times more worried about Pierre then her. She knew that they were old friends, nearly brothers, and had gone through a great deal in their centuries together. It most certainly wasn\'t as though she wasn\'t concerned with Pierre\'s well being; that couldn\'t be farther from the truth. But something inside of her stung a little, and was ignored in favor of trying to asses the situation as well as she could on her end.

The enflamed arm and swelling shoulder were top priority, she could deal with ugly bruises and searing, burned skin. She had no way of knowing what shape she was in until she stripped down and looked thoroughly in a mirror. To anyone outside of the situation, it would have appeared that she was beaten by some angry lover, father, or otherwise. And due to the bags constantly under her eyes from lack of sleep, it could have looked like a common occurrence. But appearance wasn\'t the top priority, she could go on looking ugly and was used to such a term when it came to the way she looked. Besides, her arm and shoulder were a hell of a lot more painful then bruises.

The girl watched the vampire for a moment, feeling his frantic aura pulsing outward full force as he dialed into the cell phone. It wasn\'t French this time, which meant that he wasn\'t talking with Pierre. A surge of empathy flooded her to a nearly panicking level, and she could do nothing but helplessly watch with weary eyes as Damien spoke. By the way he was acting, Storm was positive that Pierre was still alive--or whatever it is that vampires are--and not a pile of ashes on the side of the street. But that did not eliminate the worry that was beginning to exhaust her, along with Damien\'s anxiety, anger, and whatever else he was feeling.

And so she remained silent, slowly filling with guilt over how things had played out. If she hadn\'t had him on her tail, Pierre wouldn\'t have ever gotten hurt. If she hadn\'t panicked when he had found her initially and tried to keep it to herself because she knew how much he liked to play games, maybe she could have prevented this from happening so soon. They wouldn\'t have ever switched cars, making him follow someone who shouldn\'t have been caught up in her personal situation in the first place. If anything, it should be her fighting him, getting hurt. Not Pierre.

The girl was growing more exhausted, debating weather or not it would be worth it to even try to heal herself while she was in such a condition. Would they be staying in the hotel? Still inside of the city? It didn\'t seem very likely, not with how quickly the Captain had caught on to the switching of cars. But Storm knew that he wouldn\'t be in any condition to hunt her down. Not for at least a week. And as much as she wanted to communicate this to Damien, she was too intimidated to even attempt addressing him while he was in such a state of mind. Intimidated, but not afraid.

[Saiketsu]

A nearly crippling pain flared continuously in his stomach as Jenella spoke. There were shrieks and groans in the background that Damien could easily recognize after some six-hundred odd years, even over the rumble ofan engine and the words of a quick-tongued fledgling. Words spewed forth in modern English slang that the elder had no patience to sort through.

But Pierre was with them. His condition was unknown, but not likely fatal. He had been burned badly, but how and by what was unknown to Jenella. Laurent had been shot at and wounded by Finny, but never captured. He was unsure whether he knew where Storm was or in wat condition Laurent was.

"Can he speak? Let me speak to him."
"Sir, he\'s in too much pain --"
"I said let me speak to him!"

But the earpiece of the cell phone Damien held to his ear was already filling with Pierre\'s cursing and snarls of pain much closer than before. In a way, it was a sort of relief to hear him still alive, cursing up a storm too violent for most humans to understand. He had not lost Pierre after all, though with every wheezing snarl the pain in Damien\'s abdomen surged more vehemently. It brought brotherly concern to his expression as he gazed out the window and paced the floor.

They spoke rapidly in their natural language, forgetting the others around them. What happened? He came from out of nowhere. He must have followed me. How badly are you injured? It fucking kills, Damien! My entire stomach! How badly was Laurent injured? He\'s gotta be near death. No one can survive that long. I had him, Damien. I fucking had him by the throat and he fucking turned into fire! How much blood have you consumed? Not enough. Is there anything that would have led him here? I\'m not sure. He\'s a slippery fuck. Are you going to be alright, Pierre? I\'m not going to go down that easily. Just get the fuck out of there now! We\'ll talk later. Get yourself somewhere safe to recover.

And he flipped the phone shut, turning back to Storm. Her expression was far away as if she were lost in her own thoughts. He hadn\'t noticed it before, but she looked a mess. Bruises everywhere he looked on her flesh, a limp-looking hand, and that purple mist that still gave him chills to see that tole him she was damaged inside as well as out. He nearly flew over to the bed and knelt next to her again, putting his hands sternly on her shoulders. When she groaned at his touch, Damien pulled it away but didn\'t move otherwise. He sat starng up into her eyes as if they had some secret behind them.

"How are you doing? Are you alright?" Damien was glancing her over for damages from the fight. He never asked how they got there -- that would be for later. All that mattered now is that everyone who had been involved in this foolish situation -- save Laurent -- was alright. Including Storm. "What happened?"

[The Cedar Witch]

The French spoken quickly into the phone failed to bring the usual flush to her face, as though her blood were running more sluggishly then usual. And instead of glancing shyly up at Damien\'s face to watch his mouth move as he spoke, her eyes were glued to the floor in front of her. Those words meant that Pierre was well enough to talk, and that filled her with some small sense of relief and nothing more. As long as none were killed for her sake, she didn\'t care what happened to her.

It wasn\'t their war, Damien had his own demons to battle, an entire kingdom to organize. This entire situation was putting everything on hold for him. The inconvenience of her past shouldn\'t have ever risen above anything but minor, and because of all of the trouble that he was causing, Storm was left to deal with a sickeningly guilty feeling. She fought him before, didn\'t she? And it wasn\'t like he had an army to back him this time. What was she so afraid of? She knew how to kill him, or at least she knew how to make him bleed. If anyone should be fighting her past it should be her.

It was evident, especially in her face, that the girl was exhausted. She didn\'t meet the vampire\'s eyes, even after the conversation ended abruptly, and she didn\'t even notice that he was looking at her until he was standing before her. When he placed his hands on her shoulders, a wave of fiery pain shot through her entire left arm and up through her neck and she flinched sharply away from him. The Akari still did not look directly at him when he addressed her directly, and allowed a length of silence to pass before she spoke quietly.

"I\'m...alive," a small smile made its way across her features, as though she were trying to administer some small amount of humor to the grim situation to lighten the mood. "Nothing is broken, just bruised and swollen. I\'ll be fine." Storm lifted her eyes slowly to his, as though testing him for turbulence that she would have to shield herself from.

"He is probably hurt really bad. But he\'s going to survive. It might take him a week or so to recover at least. He won\'t show his face until he\'s healed--for the most part anyway." her voice was strained and expression equally as drained, but she was breathing at a regular pace and trying her best to put on a brave expression. Besides, it wasn\'t like all of that had killed her, right? Even if she did look a mess.

[Saiketsu]

"You\'re still connected to him." It was a statement of mild confusion that had only just dawned on him. "But I thought you took those... things... out of your skin? Were you just receiving every single hit taken by him?" Anxious blue eyes looked her over and he had to control himself from touching her skin in his examination. "God, your entire body looks injured. Are you going to be alright?"

By this time he had hooked a finger under Storm\'s chin and lifted her chin slowly to allow her eyes to gaze at the ceiling while he surveyed the damage to her neck and face. Compassion overwhelmed him. Pierre would survive, even if the pain in his abdomen would persist for some years. But now he needed to worry about Storm, the one most vulnerable to any kind of attack Laurent could come out with. He suddenly began wishing that he could help her, to at least give her an ice pack or something.

[The Cedar Witch]

The girl nodded slowly when he asked whether she had received every hit he had taken. She flushed, quite obviously, with guilt for her lack of explanation and the fact that she wasn\'t as thorough as she would have liked in removing the tendrils that were still connecting her to him, and partially because she was so susceptible to injury in the first place. The girl scolded herself internally for being so fragile, for allowing herself to get so beaten up even if she probably couldn\'t have done anything about it. But she didn\'t want to slow him down. After all, he had entire army to organize still and her situation couldn\'t have been helping. Especially not while she was getting injured without even fighting.

"I was trying to get rid of them, but I couldn\'t get all of them I guess..." she didn\'t want to explain that they most likely had burrowed deeper into the most vital parts of her body, far from the reach of her prodding fangs and unnatural fire. And she had said earlier that night that she wasn\'t even sure if it would be a permanent fix, right?

"I\'ll be fine," she added quickly. Storm winced in pain with the slight movement of her neck, but she refused to make a sound--groan or otherwise--to indicate that she was uncomfortable. She should be able to tough it out, she had much worse than this before and didn\'t complain at all. Instead of a groan of pain, she held her breath and waited for him to finish examining the bruises that dotted her neck.

"They\'ll heal. It isn\'t a big deal. I can still move my arm and shoulder, but it kinda hurts a little sometimes." It wasn\'t completely a lie, and as much as she knew that she should have iced her shoulder and her arm, she didn\'t want to appear so weak. She should have been used to shrugging off injuries this minor, it happened so often during battle.

[Saiketsu]

"I\'ll assume you can still walk." It came out a little more stern than he would have liked, and for that he felt a slight wave of guilt pass over him. But there was no time to waste with polite manners and etiquette here. They had to leave now. "Get ready, because we\'re leaving here."

In a flurry, faster than any mortal could have possibly seen, Damien had gathered the few belongings they had, replacing them in a bag -- including the empty packet of blood so as not to frighten the maids and attract anymore attention. His thoughts were on auto-pilot, nothing disrupting him but his own motions through the hotel room. He had picked things up, fixed as many things as he could from his fits of anger, tried to return the room back to the state that they had arrived in. After about thirty seconds or so, He looked back to her with the same anxious eyes, concerned about how they were going to make it out of the city tonight, where they would go, how far away would be safest and whatever else made him so on-edge involving their master get-away scheme. "You ready?"