Basement? The girl froze at the word, visibly pale and throat clenched tightly for no more than three seconds. There was a memory flitting through her already exhausted mind, causing the tension in her body to multiply tenfold in preparation for something awful. Of course, with a house as big as this, there would be a basement. She should have seen that coming, at least enough to prepare herself mentally for hearing about it. Prepare herself for knowing that it sat two floors beneath her room. That it\'s cement floors, musty drafts, and darkness lurked beneath her. Waiting for footsteps...
No, it wasn\'t something she had necessarily wanted to show to anyone. Especially not two strangers. Especially not Damien. Not even for the three excruciating seconds before he offered her an escape that she took hungrily, nodding curtly and exiting the area before Finny could ask the questions that were quite obviously on the tip of his tongue. No, that was supposed to be a secret, locked away with all of the other unspeakable things that both her and Damien danced around in any given conversation. Her own footsteps as she walked away from the group seemed horribly loud, almost embarrassingly so, and Storm wished for a moment that she could calm down enough to walk as quietly as they did.
Her heart was still pounding wildly, body prepared to flee or fight at a moments notice. And as the akari ascended the still-unfamiliar stairs, the absurdity of her fear worked on melting the tension of her shoulders. What harm could possibly come to her here, in this house? In Damien\'s house? Especially under the protection of two other vampires (for the time being)? It was nearly as foolish of being afraid of monsters in the closet or under her bed, knowing that they aren\'t there and irrationally wanting to make sure nonetheless. There was a monster. It just wasn\'t under her bed or in her closet.
The door opened almost silently, causing a flood of comfort to pull her into the warm-violet room--her room--melting away any anxiety that her memories brought her not moments before. A weary smile passed over her features and faded almost instantly without reason aside from the fact that she was exhausted. No-longer-anxious footsteps were cushioned by the milky carpet beneath her, immaculately clean, as she moved further into the room.
Her curious eyes fell first on the bookshelves and she felt herself drawn to the unfamiliar titles, mind eager for distraction. The books weren\'t as old as she expected them to be, but they were old enough to have gathered dust and that \'library smell\' that reminded her of high school. The girl\'s fingers ran passively over the bindings of the row at her eye level; over Jane Austin\'s Pride and Prejudice, C.S. Lewis\' The Chronicles of Narnia, J.R.R. Tolkien, Steven King\'s Salem\'s Lot, The Holy Bible, and finally stopping on Anne Rice\'s Interview with a Vampire. Smirking, she took this book from the shelf, switching on a lamp and gently sitting in the armchair in the corner of the room beneath the provided light.
As much as she hated her high school English class and whatever books the teacher decided to inflict on her students, Storm was a fast reader. At least, when it came to a book that she liked. So well before either Finny or Jenella left the house, the girl was already engrossed in the words of the vampire, Louis. She was entranced by the time Damien had even begun to walk toward the stairs that led to their rooms. Spellbound and locked in the very moment where Louis was describing how he was claimed, almost listening with his ears to the words that Lestat whispered so close to his throat, lips feathering against the jugular;
[INDENT]"Be still. I am going to drain you now to the very threshold of death, and I want you to be quiet, so quiet that you can almost hear the flow of blood through your veins, so quiet that you can hear the flow of that same blood through mind. It is your consciousness, your will, which must keep you alive."[/INDENT]
Storm held her breath, eyes scanning each line and listening hard to the beat of her own heart, just as Lestat had instructed Louis, though she did so subconsciously. Even if Damien were as loud as a human, she couldn\'t have possibly heard him coming.
[INDENT]I wanted to struggle, but he pressed so hard with his fingers that he held my entire prone body in check; and as soon as I stopped my abortive attempt at rebellion, he sank his teeth into my neck.[/INDENT]
Her eyes widened with wonder, almost with desire, and she would have never admitted to wanting to feel what Louis was feeling. Wanting Lestat at her throat. She wouldn\'t have ever admitted that. Not to Damien, anyway. She didn\'t realize that he had closed his own door, or that he was even anywhere in the house at the moment. Not while Louis was about to become a vampire, not while Lestat was...
[INDENT]"Listen, keep your eyes wide," Lestat whispered to me, lips moving against my neck. I remember that the movement of his lips raised the hair all over my body, sent a shock of sensation through my body that was not unlike the pleasure of passion..."[/INDENT]
The abrupt knock at the door caused Storm to bolt upright, closing the book in the process, face flushed with emotion, desire and embarrassment. Her gaze finally brought Damien into focus and she scarcely could absorb his question, still lost in the romance of...
"Yeah," she answered a little quickly after an awkward moment of hesitation while she hurried to figure out what the words he spoke meant, "it\'s nice." Storm offered him a shy smile, face still hot with embarrassment. And for a short moment, her mind subconsciously attempted to put Lestat and Damien on the same level, only because they were both vampires. That image was almost an accident, something she hadn\'t intended to conjure but it was done innocently, and it made her flush deeper.
Damien was nothing like Lestat.