Odessa\'s greeting hadn\'t been exactly what he was expecting. Most certainly, there was her familiar accented use of his natural language in her greeting. There was the traditional queenly strength in her voice that over the centuries he had become accustomed to. But he could plainly hear the roughness of her voice, something he knew to be a sign of her Thirst. She hadn\'t been feeding as often as he knew she usually did and this alone made him frown, knowing that the news he carried would only propell her into another bad mood.
Purposefully Damien had kept the conversation short and vague, maintaining his sense of urgency to visit her that very night. This was something that he needed to explain to her himself, in person, because she deserved it so. He mentioned nothing about his purpose for driving over to her house, only that he had something that she should know. Damien needed to be the first one to tell her about the shift in power if he expected to get any plans moving.
Odessa was his oldest friend outside of his bloodline. They had met in Paris while they were both at their weakest points in life, and despite all of her shortcomings and odd behaviors, they had created an Old-World bond which time hadn\'t touched. While Damien had never agreed with many of the ways in which she ran her life and governed herself, she was a connection to the old way of things even as the centuries progressed and that wasn\'t something he was willing to give up, despite all his discomforts with her behaviors. She was a valuable friend, one of the only ones who understood his plight, his true emotional state of being -- for she had been in the same exact state when they had met. They had both lost a lover, lost the old world where things were simple.
The gates of Awelfor Manor opened readily as he pulled the car in up the long driveway that was Odessa\'s property. The lawns were tended, the gardens stunning and not a crack in any of the cement landings, walkways or stones around. The place was immaculately taken care of on the outside, except for the long grass which seemed not to have been mowed in a few weeks. It was a strange thought, but Damien thought nothing of it and parked the car near the garage. By the time he was at the front step, the front door had been opened seemingly by itself. It was something that Damien was completely used to after all this time of visiting Odessa at her own home.
Allowing himself in with the grace of a gentleman in a lady\'s house, Damien could feel her deep aura echoing off of the walls of the building, almost causing him a mental headache. Something was wrong, he knew. The house smelled of dust, rain, and ocean water. She could feel her pressing mind from the foyer, nearly suffocating him until she felt him walk in. He knew full well where she was and carefully and unobtrusively made his way to her piano room.
She stood at the side of the piano as he walked in, staring at him with eyes that reminded him too much of a person he once knew. Damien didn\'t back down from her stare, knowing her enough to tell that it wasn\'t because of him that she looked at him in that manner. He studied her expression, her stance, her aura before he made any attempt to move forward towards her. She was nearly naked, no surprise for Damien -- he nearly expected it now -- wearing a black transluscent robe which framed her perfect body beautifully. Her hair was messy and she smelled of salt and dirt from the bottom of the ocean. Her skin was as pale as he had ever seen it, her eyes almost glassy in appearance as if she were thinking something while staring straight at him. Politely he smiled and made his way over to her unobtrusively as possible. The younger vampire took her hand in his and place a respectful kiss upon the back of it, the common polite greeting of his time and raising.
"Good evening, Odessa," he said curteously in a Latin, a mutual language between the two of them. "Perhaps I should have brought blood with me for you?"