listen.Turmoil in the waters; white lips peaking, spreading, dissolving at his feet with a hiss. Cold now, temperatures he barely noticed as the ocean pulled at him. He waited. ---
He had driven through the city at his normal pace holding onto only a small taste of anger. She was as headstrong as he was and it wasn't the first time She purposely didn't respond to his texts or calls. It usually made him smirk and covet Her, but tonight She had taken their game too far. Three days with no contact? That was a bit strange, even for Her. Probably stuck in Her studio painting furiously again, distracted from all other things around Her.
He pulled up sharply in front of Awelfor Manor ready to sweep Her away from Her paintings to give Her something more fun to do. She loved terrorizing humans, after all, and he needed to feed.
---
He didn't like feeling so in his own skin, so aware of the feeling of the water pulling him, the sky pregnant above him. He ached now, concrete-filled and pulling him down in the water. He sat with the feeling, his knees up and elbows resting on top of them, his feet tucked in the sand that flowed at the bottom of the tide.---
Without knocking, he pushed the front door open and instantly knew that something was amiss. He scanned the house for Her presence, that deeply attractive black void which lingered like perfume around her, and came up empty. Strange. He stepped through the house, ignoring the glaring man on Her living room wall, until he was in the kitchen. As he came into the kitchen, he noticed Her cell sitting on the counter top, abandoned next to Her clutch that She had put down the last time he had been here.
He remembered cornering Her against the cabinets and pulling Her up onto his hips as She wrapped Her legs around his waist. He carried Her up the stairs and into his usual room, dropping Her on the bed only long enough to climb on top of Her and quench Her thirst. He remembered being inside of Her only three nights ago, fucking Her with a devotion he wanted terribly to deny and downplay as simply getting his cock wet. Fulfilling Her was something that made his body hurt, his chest ache and his jaw tremble, and he always wanted more. He had done all that and had lain with Her, his fingers burrowed under Her skin as She casually bled on him, watching him. Contented. He could get Her to smile, to smirk at him, to laugh when he annoyed Her too well. He could crack that veneer and it was something he took great pride in and was fiercely protective of. When he had left the next morning, he had left Her naked and fulfilled, satiated for the moment with a hardening softness in Her eyes that they did not discuss. One that he pined for. Their spell was fading.
He didn't bother checking the rest of the house, but reached instead for Her cell on the counter before him. He unlocked it - knowing Her password for a very long time, but saying nothing about it to Her for use in a moment such as this - and checked Her recent calls. The battery was lingering on 3% life. The only missed calls were from his own number; nothing else. Her texts reflected the same - only his messages over the past few days since he had left were unread, no other conversations active. No one had tried to reach Her.
He lifted his eyes to the windows that looked out onto the beach. He hadn't felt Her outside when he entered - but he wasn't searching for Her then. Doubt crept in like a sinkhole opening in his abdomen. Perhaps he had just missed Her outside. He crossed to the slider and pulled it open, and found no hint of an Ancient out on the deck. Something in his head stirred and the voices inched louder. He could still ignore them for now.
---
The surge of the sea threatened to overtake him and he brooded about letting it happen. What would it be like to be lost out at sea as an immortal? To be drowned and not die? ---
He had picked up Her phone and dialed Her fledge, a freshly lit cigarette in his other hand. The line picked up and Her fledge said something in some language that he couldn't understand.
"Where is She?" He demanded, in no mood for any niceties.
A hesitation heavy with confusion. "Nikolai?"
"Where is She?" Impatient now, his finger tapping the counter of its own accord.
Another pause as the fledge thought about his very obvious question. "What are you talking about? Isn't she with you?"
"Why the fuck would I be calling you if She were?"
Another pause. "Maybe she went out...?" But he could hear the uncertainty in her voice, things rustling around on the other side.
"The Escalade is here and the driver hasn't seen Her in two days. Where the fuck is She, Nadia?" She took Her, she
knew something. He just had to get it out of her.
"I'll be there in ten minutes." The line clicked and the phone promptly died.
---
He saw Her at every wave's crest, Her hair clinging to Her face as She rose from the water like the dead. In his mind, She was always naked, Her body perfect, as if Her lack of blood was only a thought and not a reality. She would rise and stroll right past him and everything would go back to the way things were.
A pipedream, he was reminded as the water flowed away from him. The itchiness in his skin was returning on time, the cramps in his abdomen echoing dully. Nothing was the same. ---
Another old one, Her acquaintance, and the fledge walked through the same paths that he had. She does this, Nadia had said. She disappears like this. She's probably gone to ground. There's nothing we can do. They were hiding something from him, Nadia and Damien. Damien said nothing to him throughout his exploration, but looked at him with nothing but disapproval and contempt that the younger wanted to kick in. There was something mental being passed between the two of them, he knew that much, but they were too skilled and too old for him to find out what it was. Give her time, they had said to him. She will be back. No, they did not know how long it would be. No, they didn't know where she went. The ocean was as good a place as any. He hated that it mattered so much to him.
They had left without much ado, leaving him in the house alone with no more answers than when he had first arrived at Awelfor Manor. They went back to their separate lives and never checked in again.
---
He had forgotten how deafening the ocean was as it met land. It consumed him, that sound, provided him with a hypnotic sense of unwilling peace as it beat him back and forth, pulled and pushed on him, stuck him further into the mud as he sat in the surf watching, waiting. ---
He didn't have moments of peace anymore, just gaps of painful sobriety between bouts of insanity. His peace was spent sitting on the beach - Her beach - watching the surf pound nearby rocks and spray the area with salted mist. He preferred to spend them here on the beach for some reason - he couldn't figure out why. Perhaps it was the one place where he could actually feel like he had a handle on himself. Perhaps it was because his own condo just reminded him of how badly he wanted to feed and get high. Perhaps it was because he was waiting for her...
---
A tic pulled his head to the side painfully. Judas was stirring in him again, threatening quietly under all the other noise. Perhaps the real reason he found himself on the beach was just to pretend that there was no Judas, no voices, no nothing; just him and his peace of mind. ---
He sank his teeth deep in the middle-aged party scene and lost himself. Judas partied and felt numb, content with the high as long as the lights kept flashing and the music kept playing, content with the high-spirited humans who wanted the badge of being fucked by a vampire before they died, content with shredding throats and breaking bones. He lost money as he dipped into his own supply of cocaine, spreading nose candy around as if it was free. He indulged only moderately within the first few months, finding himself on the beach at Awelfor Manor by the time the sun rose. Two months passed. He indulged in more, enjoying the occasional overdosing human as the coke made him crazy. Violent. Pleasantly numb. Judas would purr as the blood flowed and his cock was buried in a new hole every night, his mouth occupied by whatever he could fit. His body became the prize of the night for anyone looking for a bump. What did it matter? Sex was sex. He wanted that high and would chase it to the ends of the earth.
Soon the coke wasn't enough to make Judas purr, to make Judas come, to make Judas happy. The pursuit of such happiness was the long, dark road into his own personal hell. He got more tattoos, one of Judas eyes as they appear from a hole in his chest, an homage sure to appease the angry demon; it did not. He turned back to old habits that had been pushed aside for many years and he found a junkie looking for a needle in his arm. Judas liked the needle - he always had - but it didn't work the same anymore. Now he had to get some addict to shoot up and let him feed. He latched onto the homeless and broke their necks for the euphoria that would flow through him and calm Judas. The first night had made him feel like he was floating, happy. Judas held his dying human companion close despite the smell of piss and decay and fell asleep in bliss, his hard-on unanswered. It was the sun rising that woke him and scared him into the closest abandoned building.
The cramping didn't start until month five. Every morning he woke up to terrible pains in his body, wringing feelings that he had forgotten about in his years of being clean. He was no longer clean. He would retch, but nothing would come up. There was nothing inside of him anymore to come up. He would shake, trembling a little at first - he noticed it first during a business transaction between the Disciples and another organization fifty miles from the immortal city. He ignored it until the tremble turned into shaking, muscle weakness, slowness of limbs. Then the itching came. Terrible itchiness that raked through his skin, just under the skin. No amount of scratching could sedate it. He would shower and find that it had no effect. Blood by itself had no effect. Only tainted blood, heroin in the bloodstream. He began using regularly, every night, just to keep up with himself.
---
Another tic. He put his head down on his arms and waited for it all to pass - the pain, the noise, the growling, the need, the itch. ---
It was Judas who demanded more of him every day. Long days and nights were missing from his head now, nights he undoubtedly spent as Judas. He was insatiable in his demand for pleasure, for happiness. When he remembered Her, he'd receive a mental slap in the face. When She stumbled through his dreams, he woke in pissy, violent moods. He could only spend time at the beach infrequently, when Judas slept soundly and he was at his worst.
Poison, Judas would whisper when he was caught on the beach or remembering Her wrapped in his arms. He would drift to sleep missing Her and awaken from dreams of killing Her.
Six months. Seven. Eight. They trickled into nine, ten, eleven, a year. Judas stayed with him longer every day and he could only give in to him too easily; there barely was Nikolai anymore. There were parties, business, dancing, sucking, fucking, hands in hair and cocks in throats. Trails of saliva from chins and track marks on arms. Lights everywhere. Everywhere pain, twitching, numbness. Blood and sex. Laughter and voices.
The ocean remained far away.
---
Don't fret, precious, I am here. A wave crashed into his chest and Nikolai fell into the grey hole that he was so accustomed to, his awareness fading to make room for another's. He missed the ocean already.
Judas pushed himself up from his seated position in the water, dripping into the surf that now pulled at his ankles. He sneered at the other, regretting the decision to sit in good clothing down in the muck. All for
a woman. Judas rolled his eyes and moved inland, slogging through the tide. His hands were twitching again and anxiety was building behind his sternum.
It was time to start the night.
