One Drop

He’d done it to himself. Always did do. Caught in the black widow’s web of captivating eyes and a sway of lush hips again. Lured in and snared before he knew well enough to get himself out of it.

Lucian was gonna be pissed.

Stumbling into that trap he hadn’t just followed the woman through the guarded entrance to the ‘Blood Den’ … feeding trough more like. He’d bypassed the line, the ass kicking vampire Barbie at the door, using what his brother had done for him to merely stroll between point A at the bar and point B behind that blood red curtain. ’What’s wrong with you?’ His brother’s voice drifted through his head like that connection between what had been sitting pretty in his head and its big brother was still there. That, Damien thought, was what was wrong with him. After all of that – the vampire temptress tangling a teenaged boy up, the Horseman of the Freaking Apocalypse freed from its little prison to take up residence in his head, the shapeshifter they hadn’t been told about tearing him up so bad even Famine hadn’t been able to, or hadn’t wanted to fix him – who could really blame him for being a little impulsive.

Her maybe.

Not the vampire he’d followed in here, but the one who spun around in that little black dress, with lips still stained from whoever she’d fed from, the one who’d backed right into him. Damien’s mouth pursed as he held both hands up, the glass, half filled with bourbon lapping at the melted ice cubes. More bourbon dripped from his fingertips, spattering the ground at his feet as he glared at her from behind the shield of his glasses.

Forcing that stillness to settle over his expression, Damien switched the glass from hand to hand, swiping his damp hand down his suit jacket as he tilted his head. ”Something like that,” he admitted wryly, his voice low. She wouldn’t have any trouble picking that up in here though. That catch a pin dropping hearing a little blessing. ”Shoulda looked where I was going. My apologies too, I guess?” There was a hint of question to it. Did she expect the civilities of it back when her own apology had been just about as half-hearted as they came? Who knew with her kind but he was offering them anyway.

Blue eyes flicked down to the smear of blood still on her lip, then up to her eyes before it swept the space around them. The vampire he’d trailed in here to see if it was the same one who’d had her claws into him when he’d been far younger and far more naïve was gone. Melting away into the dark, into the crowd, probably burrowing fangs into the throat of another fool. Damien looked back to the diminutive vampire in front of him. ”How ‘bout I take responsibility and get you one instead?” Given what she’d just been drinking there was a chance the offer would be turned down but the longer he took to slink back out of here, the more time Elvira at the door had to forget his face from only moments ago. Without a waiver he was a lamb to the slaughter. ”Unless your taste’s for a different kind of red.” Damien lifted his damp hand, brushed his thumb under his lip in demonstration of where her scarlet stain of guilt had lain. He was familiar enough with being a walking juice box and puncturing those who drunk from them with a stake to know just what they used for cover.

Tagged: AURORA DE MARTEL * Word Count: 603

By now you woulda thought he’d learned his lesson on being cautious. Don’t give in to temptation of any sort – that included wine, women and random books. When you did you got yourself in over your head and found yourself possessed by ancient entity. Your brother ended up inhabited by Death himself and then you got yourself gutted by a freaking shapeshifter playing on that bond that’d always been there for you. Damien wanted to snort, wanted to tear those words out of his head that were echoing around like a pinball in his head.

Danger, Damien Fletcher! Don’t play nice with the vampire. When you did they were more likely to bite. This one obviously had no issue with doing that, despite the smile that beamed on her face as she accepted his apology. The crimson smear on her lip made it real clear what she was here to do tonight. Damien rolled his lower lip between his teeth, blue eyes fixed on hers as he nodded. The corners of his mouth twitched as he dragged his lip free, those eyes drifting past her to the rest of the room.

He hadn’t had much of a plan for tonight other than the drink at the bar, beyond his adjustment on the fly as he’d followed the first vampire. If he was anything it was flexible, a man who thought on the fly and made undoubtedly regrettable decisions on the spur of the moment. This was bound to bite him on the ass but at this point that part of him had been metaphorically nibbled so many times he was pretty sure he wouldn’t notice. Damien dipped his chin slightly, his eyes narrowing as he returned her smirk.

Lifting his hand, he indicated the blood on her lip with a brush of his thumb under his own. Damien inched it up, the edge of his nail brushing lightly over his lower lip before his tongue flicked out to catch the taste of his spilled bourbon on his skin. He’d been right about the red in a way. ”A white wine for the Queen of Hearts,” he drawled lightly, seeing just a hint of the kid’s book character in the woman who’d licked that smear of blood from her thumb in the same way he had done the bourbon. White in a glass, red on those smirking lips.

Damien reached up to nudge his glasses up his nose in that absent gesture, freezing as the vampire stepped back towards the girl she’d been feeding on. He felt a fist lodge in his throat, knowing what was coming. With a quick, brutal movement she snapped the girl’s neck. In an instant the body slumped, now sightless eyes staring at him. Just as quickly the spirit of the woman who’d once inhabited it appeared behind the sofa, eyes just as wide, a scream of anguish tearing free of her bloodied throat that he was sure he was the only one in here who could hear. As the vampire turned back to him and dropped the offer back in his lap, like the business keeping him from it was done and dusted, Damien still. His eyes were still on the spirit. Forcing his lips back into a smile, he gestured the vampire towards the bar.

As soon as she was a few steps away, swaying through the heaving bodies in here with that sort of sinuous sway of hips he’d always associated with their kind he was holding up a finger towards the spirit. ”Someone’ll be along in a minute,” he promised. He sighed as she continued to panic, waving his hand towards the sofa. ”Just park it, I’ll be back if they’re not.” It would be the same offer he gave everybody else. Either they took a ride with him upstairs … or downstairs … depending on just how many strikes they’d managed to get against themselves in their lives … or they stayed here, went cuckoo and got a little vengeful on everybody else who still had a heartbeat.

He didn’t look back over his shoulder to check on the spirit as he followed in the vampire’s path. They’d wait there, or his brother would send somebody else in … or Lucian would turn up to smack him upside the head … metaphorically if he was lucky. Easing between the vampire and some thick necked muscle bound dinosaur sort, Damien set his glass on the bar and smiled. ”A glass of white wasn’t it?” he asked, even though she’d said it only moments before. His hand hovering at her elbow, he gestured the bartender over with the other. ”A large glass of your best white wine for …” He played coy, tilting his head and smiling sweetly as he waited for the vampire to fill in the gaping hole he’d left in the order with her name. ”And another bourbon, thanks.” His gaze only cut to the bartender for a moment before going back to the vampire. Queen of Hearts had been real appropriate for her, although the girl she’d fed from hadn’t lost her head. Extending his hand, Damien held it in the air to take hers. ”Damien,” he offered. As though this were the sort of place where names were usually exchanged before blood was let.

Tagged: AURORA DE MARTEL * Word Count: 886

Book smart rarely equated to wisdom. The most intelligent people couldn’t tie their shoe laces or remember to pay the rent but they invent electricity, get people into space or cure cancer. It was like the universe liked to balance it all out, something that the thing riding around in Lucian’s head would’ve found amusing while his brother was covering his face with his hands and lamenting the fact that he couldn’t leave his little brother on his own for more than five minutes. That lack of wisdom led to rash moves and those rash moves … they tended to end up bloody or deadly. Both of which he’d had enough of to last a lifetime, Damien thought, his blue eyes returning to the brunette before she stopped looking around.

He huffed out an amusement breath, both hands coming up now in that universal gesture of surrender. Chasing the other vampire in here had been rash but he wasn’t gonna be entirely stupid here. There’d been no intention to play walking blood bag again, even if it was possible for one of these things to take a taste and he wasn’t entirely sure it was. ”Consider me a choir boy,” he promised. ”One who’s pretty attached to his head.” And who maybe had finally learned how not to piss off the things that were powerful enough to decapitate him with a smile.

In the vampire’s defence, she hadn’t decapitated the girl. It had had been a clean snap, probably her vision of putting the girl out of her misery instead of letting her linger half dead until enough blood sluggishly rolled out of those holes in her throat for her heart to stop. Not the way he would’ve gone with it given he’d been like her one day, albeit with his brother rolling in to save his ass in the end, but better than some of the other things he’d seen since that shapeshifter had gotten its claws in him. Damien knew he should’ve dealt with the spirit first, rolling off the spiel Lucian had told him they all got offered, regardless of what happened after. Humans got given the choice and if they made it right you took ‘em up or you took ‘em down. No deviation, not if he was doing his job right.

And he was … he was just leaving it a little delayed.

Having got the spirit to stay put with her body for the moment Damien trailed the vampire through the crowd, his lips curling as she smiled up at him. Fingers worked through those waves of her hair, some tiny bag tucked on the bar next to her. He she slotted himself between her and the next stool along. The glass he’d been carrying thunked down lightly on it before he ordered, relying on that coy sweet little boy look as he left it wide open for her to introduce herself.

Aurora, it suited her with those green eyes and that hint of auburn in her hair. Damien shook her hand lightly, fingers maybe lingering a moment longer than normal before he eased back. He propped his elbow against the bar again, ankles crossed as he leaned into it. ”A pleasure to make yours too, Aurora,” he drawled lightly. English, he thought, the accent unmistakable, although, with vampires you never could quite tell. It always seemed that they got over a certain age and suddenly they were all Oscar winners, worthy of trophies for the acts they could put on. The acts that could lure you into all the things you technically knew you shouldn’t be near but couldn’t avoid anyway.

Damien reached for his bourbon as the bartender set it down, his head inclined in thanks to them as he picked it up. He sipped, his lips peeling back slightly with an almost inaudible hiss. Before he set it down, he was tipping his glass towards hers. ”You’re welcome,” he murmured. A faint grimace tugged at his expression as he set the glass down and glanced over his shoulder. ”Seems like most who come in here are walking into it.” The girl certainly had, although she probably hadn’t signed up to get her neck snap with it. Some were foolish but most weren’t suicidal, they just stupidly thought there was something hot about being fed on by a deadly creature thanks to that Twilight crap. Damien looked back, dipping his head slightly to look over his glasses at her as he shook his head. ”No vervain,” he promised lightly, maybe signing what would’ve been his own death warrant if he wasn’t something else.

His tongue ran lightly over his lower lip, considering how pissed Lucian was gonna be about him blowing the lid off of the truth here. He shifted, reaching up to take his glasses off. Damien held them in the curl of his palm, his vision still perfect even without the, on now. ”They’re not fake,” he promised in a low gravelly tone. ”Not a human either.” Thanks to that damn book he hadn’t been in a while. Straightening up, turning, Damien settled a hand on her hip to turn her back towards the body of the girl she’d killed. ”You don’t see anybody else there…” There was no real question to it, just a blunt observation. As far as he knew none of the vampires could see the spirits of those they killed. ”I do. She’s pretty pissed too. You ever heard of a reaper?” Most had the Grim Reaper but that was all Hollywood bull too. The Grim Reaper was a pizza loving OCD weirdo of a primordial being. The actual reapers were his little pack of minions, scurrying around, scooping up the souls of every human who kicked the bucket.

Tagged: AURORA DE MARTEL * Word Count: 963

The first time hadn’t been so different to this. Dancers working their way sinuously around poles, vampires working the crowd with impunity and him right in the middle of it. Wide eyed and blind to the danger it all posed. He’d slipped deep that time before Lucian had dragged him out, his brother always the voice of reason, watching out for his rash little brother. Pulling his ass out of the fire, making sure he didn’t end up like the girl back behind them … again. Lucian hadn’t managed it with the shapeshifter and now he was off leash again, so to speak, Damien thought, there was a good chance his brother and that thing that was still in him wouldn’t be able to do a thing this time.

Not that he wanted him to. He was a grown man, able to make his own decisions, and face down his own fanged demons. Not that Aurora was doing that as she smiled at him.

Whatever hunger had been in her as she’d drained the woman to the point where a snapped neck was preferable to a lingering death seemed to have faded away, leaving a woman with those auburn waves and those clear jade green eyes who would’ve slipped under anybody’s radar … anywhere else. Damien’s throat worked, his chin dipping in a gesture that screamed grim understanding. ”Cause, she chose to come here,” he drawled lightly. The minute the woman had signed that thing at the door her life had been pretty much forfeit.

He hadn’t done it, choosing to slink past the drill sergeant at the door to the blood den instead. Maybe saving his neck, maybe just leaving the door open for worse as he admitted to Aurora that he wasn’t on vervain. Risky, but not quite as much as laying hands on her or getting Aurora to face up to her ‘crime’ again. Damien set a hand on her hip, turning her towards the sofa. He could’ve pulled her back in against him, really steered her but he knew what taking liberties usually got you in a place like this. Brows rising he looked down at her, then back at the body again and the woman sitting next to it. ”She’s definitely there,” he promised. Until he went back to her or Death got another reaper to do what he hadn’t.

Making a sound low in his throat, Damien let his hand slip from her hip. The other came up again, the glasses he’d folded into his palm shook open again, slipped back on. His lips curled faintly as she hit the nail on the head with what he did. ”Just their kind,” he explained, tipping his head towards the woman’s body. Her kind, his too maybe, they were dealt with by other things. Damien’s smile grew, his hand reaching for his glass to take a sip. ”They’ve probably been around you all along,” he promised, scooping up the souls of those she cast aside. ”It’s a choice. You can be…” He peeled a finger off the glass, swirling it in the air as he rolled eyes up. Invisible, ethereal, zipping around this hellmouth of a town unseen. ”Or we can choose to be seen.” He still didn’t know if those who didn’t have a family interest in the whole thing got to pick their form or if they were just as they were when they’d died and been recruited.

There was a hint of pride in Damien’s bearing as he swallowed the liquor and set the glass back down. He turned, leaning an elbow back against the bar to look at the woman still sitting there mournful, the one Aurora now seemed quite concerned about. ”Yep,” he drawled. ”She’s sitting right next to her body. I don’t know if she gets that you were doing her a favour. I don’t think she thought it through at all before she let you bite her.” When that strange pleasure rolled through you, aided by compulsion, you didn’t think of anything but the rush of heat through your veins and that shiver of sensation along your nerves.

Blue eyes narrowing behind his glasses, Damien tried to scrutinise the woman. Heaven or hell, that was always the question they wanted answered before they’d go with him. Like any of them would be willing to go if there was a chance they would spend an eternity being tortured. ”Heaven,” he finally crooned, the answer coming to him in an instant as it always did. Heaven for her, hell for just as many others. The other side for this one if she went. He looked back at her, his tongue tracing the inside of his lower lip as she drew her glass away, stained with the scarlet from her lips. ”Not all,” Damien admitted, easing closer to her, dropping her voice. ”There are others that deal with supernaturals. Hellhounds. Don’t let the name fool you though. Worried you’re gonna end up needing my services?” One dark brow rose above his glasses. She’d said she was over a thousand years old but he guessed everybody’s clock ran out eventually.

Tagged: AURORA DE MARTEL * Word Count: 857

Come sign your life away. For the princely sum of a quick read and your signature you could slip behind that red curtain and open yourself up to a world of hurt … or an afterlife of roasting your nuts in a different kind of fire.

Damien’s eyes ticked – the dead woman and her spirit to the blonde at the door who likely would’ve tried to toss him back out if he’d attempted to stroll in here the traditional way without signing his death warrant, to the vampire who’d turned that indemnity into a necessity for the woman she’d killed. Settling on her, the vampire, as he shook his head, just a hint of sympathy in the gesture. No paper on him, no giveaway crinkle to prove that he hadn’t done this the wise way.

Like he was the sage one. Settling hands onto Aurora, guiding her around to study the body she’d just dropped, as though she’d been able to see the spirit sitting there forlornly, waiting to be carted off to wherever she was going to spend her eternity. Damien’s lips curled as the vampire turned back to him, studying the spirit just a moment longer before he turned away too. She hadn’t called bullshit or what he was or what he did, that made her sharper than most. Even those steeped in this supernatural world had a tendency not to believe in some things, not until they stared them in the face.

The soft smile curled those blood painted lips, her eyes up on his, meeting through the screen of his glasses. Small sips taken from the glass of wine as he’d explained the job, small sips taken from his own glass before Damien snorted. ”Were you expecting the guy with the black robes and the scythe?” The Grim Reaper. Death himself. Tooling around in Lucian’s head and dragging his big brother into who knew what now. ”This is all me. No cadaverous skull hiding behind a pretty face.” Lucian had made sure of that. His brother back, mostly whole, that was the deal.

Better than the one the woman had gotten in the end. He didn’t like looking at her too long, felt like he was giving her some sort of hope she shouldn’t have. Shifting, he looked away. Damien shook his head lightly. ”Which ain’t fun for anybody. I guess you came through on what you promised your brother.” Lucian would’ve said he wasn’t doing the same. Damien didn’t cringe as he toyed with his glass though. His blue eyes slid sideways instead, from the world class legs revealed by that dress, up the curves it hugged, to those pretty eyes and that smile again. ”It’s a hell of a dress,” he admitted. ”And blood’s a bitch to get out.” He knew that all too well, his former endeavours leaving stains of all sorts behind.

Blood on a collar, staining lips and knuckles. Damien didn’t glance down at them as he studied the dead woman again. Didn’t want to drag back to what had been instead of what was, what was gonna be tonight, at the bottom of a couple more glasses of bourbon … and wine. Damien hummed in agreement, his eyes pulled back to the lip clamped between Aurora’s teeth, lingering. ”A little at least. Most of them don’t fuss much once they’re up there.” It’d become rapidly apparently that if you got to go on that journey things were as peaceful and happy as people made them out to be, if they were really lucky they got to share a heaven. Good little sheep going where they were told.

The other direction was the problematic one. Every story folks told about down there burning with truth. Fires, torment, creatures ready to drag them off when it was their time. A twist on the truth there that had Aurora’s brows drawing together. Looking away from her lips Damien gestured to the bartender for another shot, another glass of wine if the lady wanted it. His glass was just being whisked away when Aurora chuckled, those jade like eyes rising up to his. ”One would hope,” he echoed. ”Who knows what’ll happen.” Another echo of her words. If things went sideways who knew if that hellhound would be coming to get both of them. ”You wanna go somewhere with me? I think I could probably come up with a dozen places better than the other side to go. Even at this time of night. One thought, that’s all it takes.” A blink to take him away from Mystic Falls. A blink to go from the club to the Hollywood sign, to some beach in Tahiti that he’d grown up never thinking he’d get anywhere near. It’d been a postcard misdelivered, greetings meant for someone else on the back, a paradise to some kid who’d never been out of their crappy neighbourhood on the front.

Tagged: AURORA DE MARTEL * Word Count: 820

CEverything looked pretty damn different on the other side of all of this. Had he thought he’d known what the hell he was doing when he’d started reading out the incantation during that last theft? You bet. Words whispered aloud in a language nobody actually spoke this days. A damn fool move that had torn down a veil beyond the one he’d actually thought he’d shredded years before. The thought of how blind he’d actually been was enough to have him laughing in echo to Aurora’s. Lips curling as he met those green eyes again and shook his head. ”It’s where Hollywood always gets it wrong. Unless people wanna play, this is it. Normal. So we don’t go scaring ‘em off before we get them where they’re meant to go. Forgiven.” The last word was spoken with a wave of his glass, cutting off the need for apology. Being blind was nothing to go apologising for, tearing those layers down maybe yeah, but not not seeing in the first place.

Maybe she’d thought that’s what the ‘pretty’ face was. A mask for one of those things that hid behind those things. Like the things that’d been rolling around in him and Lucian maybe. Something older than dirt and a thousand times as monstrous lurking under the surface. Damien shrugged his shoulders, like something the wrong size and shape was still under there like it was with Lucian. His lips twitched at the corners, blue eyes meeting hers for a second. ”I’d say mine would be the same. Looks like we’re both disappointing our brothers tonight.” But, Damien thought as he let his gaze drift down that dress she’d pointed out, the body wrapped up in it, they weren’t here to make their disappointment known. To stop him from letting himself drift into the hard to escape orbit of a vampire again.

Damien’s chuckle rolled again as he watched the flick of auburn hair reveal another sweep of that creamy skin, warm, low in his throat as his brows flicked upwards. ”You’re welcome. Preaching to the choir.” Never much of anybody else’s. His, Lucian’s, spots and streaks of it buried deep in white and black cotton, striping skin that was patched back together by their own hands. Bad decisions laid out in road maps of small scars. He’d have said they’d come through it whole but the fact that he was standing here staring at the spirit of the girl this vampire had killed in mercy stamped liar all over it. If it hadn’t been for Lucian wanting him back he could’ve been one of those not putting up a fuss upstairs … or down. Probably roasting his ass for the next couple of centuries, waiting for Death to cast his brother off like an old coat.

It was getting maudlin, the focus on things he’d been avoiding when he’d offered the vampire a replacement drink in the first place. Instead of sinking down into it, he’d dropped an offer on her instead. Damien dipped his chin, looking at her over the top of his glasses as he propped his elbow back against the bar. ”Mm hmm,” he confirmed, nodding from the door to the place that he hadn’t come through to here. A thought was all it took, all it ever took. ”It’s the only way to get there where they need to go. Those stories about tunnels and ladders to get there? Trash. You gather them up with you and you…” He whistled through his teeth. Easy enough, a thousand times quicker than getting anywhere on his own two feet. ”Okay?” he echoed, his smile growing. Well, Ok then. Damien was half smirking as he twisted to reach for his glass as it was set down. ”There’s a whole bunch of tricks in the box. Here’s to impressing a lady with them.” He clinked his glass against hers, kept his eyes on hers as he sipped from his. The blur of motion he caught out of the corner of them could’ve had him cursing. Another reaper here, picking up the girl. Damien stiffened, glancing aside at the woman standing with the spirit. ”That’s one problem solved,” he crooned. Maybe another instigated. One word about the boss man’s brother in his ear and this whole thing could come to a grinding halt pretty fast.

Tagged: AURORA DE MARTEL * Word Count: 724