She was a lot more manageable to grapple with when she wasn't flying against him in rage. Pierre watched as Damien's eyes closed and the silent electricity flow between the two elders in a mental battle of stamina. Damien grunted with the effort, his jaw tight. Odessa thrashed madly in his arms, tearing Pierre's hands off for the briefest of moments. With Sonya's frail shoulder, now not as fleshy as it should be, stabbing painfully into his chest, Pierre resteadied his grip on his other wrist and squeezed tighter. She was losing the battle, he knew as he half dragged her, half lifted her up the stairs to the house.
"Come on, Odessa," he grunted with the effort of transporting the hissing Ancient - why did Damien have so many front stairs? Every unwilling step and hoist accented the pain in Pierre's abdomen as Sonya's weight swung back into him as inertia pressed her close. He would have ordinarily felt guilty half-dragging the ancient - or anyone for that matter - up the stairs against her will, but tonight was very different from ordinary.
His irritation was still hot in his chest, bubbling in his throat. She was lucky that he wasn't dragging her by the roots of her hair after everything that she had done to him. The rage that filled him was rage that had been building for centuries, frothing just beneath his even temper during every interaction with the bitch. Why was he helping? Why did he care? Odessa was the reason Nadia wasn't with him after all, the reason he had to leave Nadia in Paris, the reason he couldn't be with her now. She was a loose canon whom Damien had trusted once upon a time. Now she was volatile, bursting at the seams of her own sanity. Why the fuck was he bothering getting himself involved when he should have been making a drunken attempt at seducing a very angry Lisa-Joe Hampton? They should just snap her neck and hand her to Nadia and be done with the whole mess of them.
Sonya stopped writhing then, falling limp in his arms. Finally.
--
Blackness overtook him almost immediately and he felt like he was diving deep into a pit of tar. Thick, viscous, and hard to move. Sharp too, like needles stabbing him for traction. Desperation, fear, hatred, laughing. The pain in his head kept him grounded, leaning against one of the columns of the porch. Damien could barely remember that he had a body at all, if not for that blinding headache. He felt himself being shaken savagely, like an animal backed into a corner.
Calm, relax, return.
Blinding darkness that pulled on every bit of him, taking him deeper and deeper still. He needed to breath but he darkness was too thick. The pressure of an ocean on top of him. They were at the bottom. He could see the seabed, feel hands - her hands - digging, digging, throwing up sand that floated ominously in front of him.
Calm, relax, return.
Rage pulled him down into the ground. More pressure. His chest was collapsing, his nostrils filling with salt and sand, stinging sea water. Too deep. Blackness. He tried to kick off the sand, to rise through the blackness, to return. The sand shifted. No traction here. Lost, lost, lost.
Odessa.
Crushing now, more than ever before. Air he didn't need or knew he had exploded from his mouth. Bones cracking, muscles pinching, eyes bulging. Choking, choking. He kicked off hard and found his breath again. Air filled the places were water was and Damien opened his eyes, gasing like a fish, coughing.
"I couldn't pull her back," Damien gasped, saliva filling his mouth as if vomit was coming next. He spat on the brick under his palms and realized he was kneeling on his own front steps. Pierre had scooped the Ancient up like a lover, holding her against his chest now, grunting with the effort but watching Damien. The older vampire caught his breath before murmuring. "Get her downstairs. Fast."
-----
The basement was brightly lit, just as he left it before he ran to bring Rachel over to Malakai's house. Now that she was calm, Pierre had no trouble taking an unconscious Sonya down the stairs, through the ivory-painted hallways, deeper into the prepared medical space known as the Blood Room. He could feel Nadia's hesitance as she watched first Pierre with Sonya, then Damien descend into this private suite. Had he anymore ability to use his mind, Damien would have reached out to Nadia in comfort. With Odessa now quiet and small in Pierre's arms, the stress of night was catching up to all of them. Nadia's pretty face now seemed edged in worry and cognitive exhaustion.
"Put her on the table," he said pointlessly to Pierre, who was already doing just that, laying Odessa down with the gentleness of a lover. "We're going to need a lot of blood for her." Damien rolled out his shoulders and set to work.
The Blood Room - as Pierre and Jenella were fond of calling it - was a stainless steel room not very unlike a morgue. The room was roughly a third of the size of the bottom floor of the house, easily enough room for the three of them to stand and move about comfortably. The floor was a high polished concrete, smooth and without crack, a drain centered in the floor. Two pedestal dissection tables sat side-by-side, plain and clean albeit covered in a thin layer of dust after many months of not being used. Damien hadn't had the time to clean off these benches before having to find Pierre at the pool hall. In one of the mini refrigerators on the stainless steel counter blood bags stolen from a blood bank had been stacked regardless of blood type. Fluorescent light from overhead filled the space providing a cold, medical feeling that made even Damien feel uncomfortable.
Digging in one of the drawers, he brought out supplies for two IVs - two poles, a catheter, and enough tubing, gauze, and tape - and set to work setting everything up quickly. Damien eyed the blood as he worked, not having set up such apparatus in a very long time. There was no telling when Sonya would wake up, either.
"Nadia, go in that cabinet there," he nodded over at a base cabinet near a deep sink, his voice sounding rough in his own ears, scratchy "and get the restraints and strap her down to the table."
