commonality

Robe pulled tight around herself she’d sat on the wide sill of one of the windows that ran around the roofline of the warehouse. Most of the upper floor had been stripped out before she’d taken the place over and had that main floor partly divided up. The clouded glass bricks surrounding what she’d turned into her bedroom, the only iron staircase to the upper catwalk and those windows with their view over this corner of Mystic Falls. What had been an office of some kind retained in one corner, its thick brick walls what she needed to shut the light out for a dark room. A fortress within a fortress for her to retreat to in more ways than one, the smell of developer a sour background note the faint cinnamon scent of the candles she’d used to try and push it back earlier.

Alix curled her knees up to her chest, arms wrapping around them as she let her head fall back against the wall. Alone for the evening. A rarer occurrence now than it had once been. Maps were still scattered on the broad kitchen table downstairs, notes scrawled on those who were still going missing here in town but she wasn’t down there poring over them. No Rohan at her shoulder, the air between them still feeling stale and stifling in a way, even after the truth had come out. No Dante sprawled across her bed, long limbs eating up the space. No Brady, the lines truth had carved out between them still being adjusted as they tried to pick through what had actually happened to his family. Not even Christian. A neophyte burning to learn what he could to protect the people of this town.

Teeth dragging over her lower lip, Alix folded her forearms on her knees, green eyes rolling up to the sky. What screwed up part of her had honestly believed that she’d be able to teach anybody and keep them on the right path?

A huff of something that might’ve been bitter amusement and she was letting her gaze drift back down to the warehouse next to hers. Derek’s. Someone who even now probably wouldn’t agree that she was anywhere near that path.

Left restless by the thought Alix slipped off of the sill. Maybe she wasn’t but she was trying and the photos hanging up to dry in the dark room were going to give her one more ounce on the side of something good on those scales she’d thrown way out of balance under Ralphy’s hand. A little less red in her ledger if she could track the werewolf who seemed to have clawed a path between Breaux Bridge and Mystic Falls and put a stop to him before another defenceless bystander ended up at his feet this full moon, bloodied and broken.

Bare feet padded down the iron stairs, the treads cold against her feet, cutting through that pall brooding had brought down over her. She’d just reached the bottom when the knock came. Not the buzzer, a rap of knuckles against the thick steel of the door. Loud in the quiet space, immediately put her on watch. Alix approached slowly, green eyes wary as she reached the door and stretched out a hand to thumb the video feed on.

Christian.

Looking worse than she’d ever seen him, dirty. Blood smeared on skin paler than she thought he’d been when she’d last seen him. His voice rising as she stood there, limned with static and a raw edge that had that sick anticipation turning to worry. Frowning, she flipped the locks, white knuckled hands sliding the door back with ease. ”What’s happened?” No preamble, he didn’t look like he needed it. She stepped back, that frown remained carved deep as she reached out, sliding the door shut as he stepped through.

Cool fingers reaching out to touch his jaw, lifting his head a moment before she reached for a hand to inspect him. ”You look like shit,” Alix told him. Usually she didn’t pull punches but something in her tone softened this time. The Christian she’d roasted out in the woods the first time she’d met him had been pushed on by some sort of inner fire lit by what had happened to his wife, this Christian wasn’t the same man. ”You smell like burned hair too. Was this someone from the list?” The idea striking as those muddied green eyes looked up from those bloodied knuckles to the brown ones she thought she’d been able to read as clearly as her own. What she saw ran a claw through the pit of her stomach as sure as if that werewolf had found her and gutted her.

Tagged: CHRISTIAN CALLAWAY * Word Count: 789

Broken men had never been anything she’d been too familiar with. There had been victims over the years, people whose lives had been torn apart, bloody and violent, until there were only unrecognisable chunks of them left. Wracked by grief, non-functional people who had moved like wraiths through the nightmares that had come to enfold them in terrifying arms. She hadn’t seen them the way they had been before, people with lives, with families. Probably not always happy, but at least alive with that vitality just the tiniest scraps of joy could bring. They had come to her already destroyed and Alix knew she would never see them another way.

Angry. Frustrated. Questioning. Perhaps cracked or dented by what had happened to them but always on their feet and ready to fight again. Those were the men she was used to and knew how to handle but when those cracks ran deeper, an echo of the ones she’d thought would destroy her at times, Alix found herself adrift.

The water had already felt like it was lapping around her thighs earlier. The day hard to wade through as she’d busied herself in the dark room, gently guiding what she had shot through the current of processing and drying. A shower that had boiled the scent from her skin afterwards ridding her of that press against whatever made up the centre of her for a time. Now, just the sight of Christian, dishevelled and cracked deeper than she’d ever seen him be, it boiled up around her, making something in Alix’s chest feel tight. Something had happened to erase the man she’d known and leave this ghost of who had been behind.

She’d have made a crack about it but it might’ve been a kick to the nuts for a guy who was most certainly already down. Stepping back she asked what happened anyway, his gaze seeming to take time to track up to her mouth as she spoke, those hazel eyes finally meeting his. Still mute, he was tying her gut up in knots. Alix watched her words hit, one corner of his lips just twitching before he bent to drop the crossbow. Shifting slightly, she left it to lay there on the floor, focusing on the man, not the discarded weapon. ”You’re lucky it’s just the hair, burns hurt like hell.” She hoped it was at least. Green eyes narrowed, fingers applying just enough pressure to try and get him to turn his head so she could check he hadn’t been burned. When the world around you shifted that way you didn’t feel it, not at first.

The memory of her own haze of pain, that sudden heaviness to an arm that was barely attached, the stench of her blood and Rohan’s fear like a cloud around her had her breathing coming a little harder.

Christian was drawing himself in though, anchoring his hands on her. One on the hand that still cradled his jaw, the other gripping at the waist of her robe. Red brows drew together, that concern cutting deeper until the fear she usually held at bay through sheer will alone began to bubble dark in her gut. ”The one working with the siren? You took care of him didn’t you?” A kill from the list Christian had worked alone. She supposed she’d seen it as some sort of test of how well he was handling these hunts now but the ripples from that hunt were obviously spreading out, threatening to overwhelm. ”How did you find out? The girlfriend wasn’t on the list. She wasn’t …” It was no use finishing the sentence. The list was ever changing, Ralphy had proven that. Nothing in the research had implicated the girlfriend but the proof on Theo himself had been right there, helpfully provided.

Now that little voice in her head that had whispered about Ralphy manipulating things before started up again, rising to a shriek as Christian seemed to cave in on himself. His taller form curving in to her, his face in her neck, his arms going around her, seeking some sort of comfort. ”Hey,” Alix breathed softly. The hand that had been on his jaw slid up against his neck, cool fingers curling over the nape, brushing the crisped ends of dark hair to stir that scent up again. The other arm went around him, fingers patting his back lightly. ”You can’t go into these hunts thinking there might’ve been one good thing they did in their lives, a hole they might leave behind. You do this because of what they’d done, to protect others from that same loss. You did the right thing, Christian.” She hadn’t believed she was at times. Ralphy had lied, manipulated, turned her to make sure his twisted agenda was met but it didn’t erase the fact that some things, some people needed to die.

Tagged: CHRISTIAN CALLAWAY * Word Count: 815

Blood still smeared on her fingers, the wolfsbane liquor still swimming in her system she hadn’t fought when Derek had pulled her in and held her the way she was holding Christian now. For that night at least the fact that she’d spent years slaughtering people like him on her family’s orders and had almost killed him when Ralphy had pushed her to had faded away. It had all come rushing back with the dawn the next morning, him sitting across the room, the bed beside her cold when she’d woken, but for those few minutes there’d been a comfort she didn’t think she’d ever known. He was married, Alix had seen the ring on Christian’s finger, but she didn’t know how much of all of this his wife knew or why he’d chosen to come to her now. She knew what an arm around you could do though, that light stroke of fingers over the back of your neck. Small comforts for the biggest wounds.

This one was already leaving her hollow, presumably the same way it had done his. She shifted her head, shifted his with the press of her fingers to check he hadn’t been hurt in the hunt before she’d let him settle back in against her neck and had asked quietly about the hunt before, the banshee he’d killed out in the woods. Alix felt something inside of her shifting, a fist slowly closing around her gut. Her fingers flexed for a moment, bile starting to pool somewhere in her chest, burning like it would tear a hole right through her. ”Untraceable …” No real question there, just the single hoarse word. A Ralphy special, just enough to get under your skin and let you believe that you were doing right. If he’d found out about Christian, got his claws in him… No.

Alix’s hand slid down to his back as Christian shuddered against her. Smoothing down the line of it, rubbing at the tense muscle as though it would ease whatever had torn wounds deep into him. ”It takes something special to be able to communicate with a ghost. What was she? Psychic?” Her frown deepening, Alix turned her head until her mouth was pressed to the side of his head, her breath stirring dark strands of her hair, his warm against her throat, puffing out after a momentary pause. ”If she was they can be. That fire can be turned on you in an instant.” Fingers sliding to the back of his neck again, Alix brushed the tips against the short strands of burned hair, stirring them enough that she caught the acrid scent in the air again.

Thought she would be. She should’ve listened harder, taken hold of the thought the same way Christian had her robe and pulled it apart until she could see the truth in his words.

Instead there was that snap, a sudden tension in his body that was echoed in her own. A moment later he was pulling away and Alix stared at him with her heart in her throat. Breathless as all that had been radiating through him seemed to fix on her. Dark eyes seeming to glimmer like flint as he stepped away from her. Lifting her hands she tugged at the belt of her robe but it wasn’t enough. Something had shifted too far sideways in her gut before those words found an edge. No. Her hands came up, smoothed over her face before she pushed her hair back from her face with something pained in the lines of it. ”I didn’t mean her. Him. You did the right thing with him. You had proof, we all had the proof.” But they could be faked. Whoever had tried for the girlfriend had done just that, turning one man’s fears against him with that video. Now they were gripping him, leaving him to tear himself to pieces when the truth came out.

Alix went to take a step towards him as he started to lecture her but Christian’s voice was already a weapon, thrown at her with violence. She flinched slightly before she started forward, something determined in her expression now. ”You did the right thing this time too. You’re right, she didn’t deserve it. That baby didn’t deserve but the person who tried to make you do this does.” Ralphy. The name stuck in her throat even though the certainty was there, an unshakable grip on the thought.

Catching at Christian’s flailing hand with her own throat burning, Alix tried to pull him back in. ”They preyed on you, Christian, like they’ve preyed on me. Maybe they knew about Sofia, about the baby, maybe they didn’t, either way they pushed and you stood your ground. Do you hear me? What you did for her was the only thing you can do to make up for what happened … I’m sorry.” Agony laced the word, scalding the tears that started to build in her own eyes. Not giving him the room to pull away she pulled him back in. A hand in his hair, the other arm around him as she whispered into his shoulder. ”I’m sorry for all they made you do. I’m sorry for Sofia, the baby…” Sorry that she hadn’t been able to do what she’d always tried to and had protected the innocent.

Tagged: CHRISTIAN CALLAWAY * Word Count: 891