be my queen

Earlier in the night the streets had been filled. Kids in costumes, hovering parents, teenagers dressing up just enough to get away with getting in on the candy action before they took the trick part seriously with anybody who tried shooing them along. Damien had strolled among them, smile slanting, imaginary hat tipping as some of those kids had scurried past. A tow headed little kid in a Zorro costume, sword flashing in the air reminded him of Sonny. The two of them tearing around town with Connie scurrying after them, her hair all curled up kewpie doll like for the night.

A handful of years later they’d have done it again, him and Sonny too old for it but indulging anyway – like there would’ve been anywhere else to go in town for the celebrations – but the nightmare out in the woods had changed it all.

Another town, not so unlike this one. Fog thin on the ground and the car idling at the curb. Masks pulled down over their faces again, the guns in their hands real that time around.

’Hands up folks. This is gonna be the treat portion of our night … trick to you … play along and we might just leave you some candy when we’re done.’ They’d whooped their way out anyway, breathless with laughter as they’d slammed behind the wheel. Breaks screeching in the fog, red lights flashing for just a moment as Sonny floored it onto the highway.

No fog tonight but the streets of Mystic Falls were still busy as the thing walked among them. He could’ve had them all falling to the ground dead now with a single brush of his fingers – a true Halloween nightmare – but Damien let them be. There was still plenty of fun to be had. Fingers light at his waist, brushing over the butt of a very real weapon, winking at a yawning kid being carried home by his pa. Staring back over his shoulder at him, going open mouthed as Damien pulled the six shooter from his holster and spun it on a fingertip. A little flare for old time’s sake. A reveal.

The clock struck one and those languid steps rang out a little faster. Time for his rendezvous. A request for old time’s sake to light up those green eyes. They looked up at you like you held all the secrets in the world and were happy to reveal them. This was the curtain being pulled aside, the real Wiz stepping out from behind it.

Here comes the man, dressed smart as you like, about to take every penny in your pocket. Aurora had seen another side of him first, one beyond the demon brother and FBI’s most wanted poster. Had seen and accepted, even if her brother wouldn’t have done.

Damien clucked his tongue as he approached the clock where he’d told her to meet him. Tristan’s loss. His iron grip on his sister was loosening and it seemed like it was about time.

Another flick of his hand and he had the gun out in an instant, a sharpshooter’s tricks sending it spinning back and forth round his index finger until he had it aimed at Aurora – the gleam of the lights making her hair a flaming mane against all that unrelenting black that’d turned her into your stereotypical burglar once the masks were on. ”Hands up,” he crooned. ”This is a robbery.” That grin curled bright as he slipped the gun back into the holster and approached. Fingers curling into that black without hesitation, drawing her in, up, to pressed his lips to hers. ”Happy Halloween. You ready to celebrate Beck style?” In the sort of style that had once threatened to have him behind bars. Damien dipped a hand behind his back, retrieved one of the two masks tucked into his waistband to tug carefully over the upper part of Aurora’s face.

Tagged: AURORA DE MARTEL * Word Count: 654

’Hey, don’t go looking for trouble!’

The warning had dripped from Sonny’s lips a week ago when his brother had finally come scuttling out from under whatever rock Crowley had them all hiding under. He hadn’t mentioned Aurora’s name but Sonny had been the sly one out of the two of them, even before that thing had gotten into him and finished what the bank teller had started. The ’says you’ he’d shot back had just left him with Sonny’s laugh slowly echoing away like the Cheshire Cat’s – nothing but the grin remaining.

His brother hadn’t been wrong. Damien had admitted that to himself with a sigh as he’d disappeared then. Women were a downfall if you let yourself getting involved with the wrong one. What had happened the last time he’d met Aurora – over a body, thankfully not something that was repeating itself tonight – should’ve been proof of that. His fellow reaper had been disapproving enough. Standing there all tall and blond and holier than though. Asshole.

This wasn’t a problem, Aurora wasn’t a problem. She was a breath of fresh air in a world that always carried that stink of death with it now. A distraction from this town’s constant rain of bodies and weirdly, a chance to feel human again.

Which had led to tonight’s distraction. A taste of what had been, in plastic masks and all too real weapons. Bags of money that maybe he’d donate to the needy since most of the folks in the towns around Mystic Falls definitely didn’t need everything in their accounts. Once upon a time it had all gone to Connie’s care, keeping her alive a lot longer than their parents would’ve done after they’d been told there was no hope. By the time it had all broken down there’d been enough to keep Connie going for decades if they’d needed to but Connie hadn’t had that long. They’d developed a taste for it, one he’d set aside when Death had gathered him under a wing so to speak. Tonight Damien just planned to shrug the wing aside.

Damien grinned as Aurora’s hands went up. The gun practically danced on his fingertip until he had it slipping back into his holster. It’d be out again before the night was done, hopefully leaving anybody still in the bank with their hands in the air too. Amusement had his brows rising over the rims of his glasses as he looked her up and down. ”You definitely look it,” he observed. The chuckle that followed was light, his touch gentle as he tugged the mask into place over Aurora’s face. ”You’ve never worn a mask for Halloween before? It’s practically a tradition for me and Sonny.” Not just for Halloween either. Now his brother’s face was the mask for something else, all the better to appear human to everything else.

He tugged the second mask out of his waistband and slipped it on over his own face. Damien adjusted it until he could look back down at her. Dead presidents had been their go to, but this time he’d gone with humanised animals, a fox for his own, a cat for Aurora. Behind the cover of it he grinned. ”Another little stroll back to the past. You good with telling other people to get their hands up?” Teeth raking over his lower lip Damien slipped a hand into the holster on his left hip to retrieve a second weapon. He handed it to her butt first and then reached for Aurora’s other hand.

No warning, just a zip of that weird power around them and then the square disappeared. Lights glimmered off of marble around them, always a sign of a town with a lot of old money and fat coffers. The doors at the front of the bank were shut but there was a security guard leaning against the counter and a couple of tellers behind the glass counting money from their drawers into neat little bundles. ”I wouldn’t go pressing buttons if I was you,” he warned, pulling his own gun. He glanced over at Aurora next to him, grinned beneath his mask. There was still a thrill to it buzzing away in the pit of his stomach.

Tagged: AURORA DE MARTEL * Word Count: 707

They might have robbed banks from Trenton to Chicago but the Beck brothers’ lives were filled with what was very much a human excitement. Running on adrenalin and that high that had started to kick in when they’d started to shift away from it being a matter of desperation. There was no denial that there had been a thrill to it, right up until Sonny’s eyes had flashed back in that bank. Like Sonny had snapped his fingers, the world had changed. A curtain had dropped, the world had grown huge – Death his damn self suddenly before him. Damien could still feel the pressure of it in his chest when he started to push the boundaries. It hadn’t stopped him, of course, the only goal when he’d been trusted out there on his own to reap souls had been to find that thing and tear it out of Sonny. Demon or not, it didn’t matter, the Beck brothers being back together again had been the only thing that mattered. Like they could’ve gotten back on the road.

It almost had Damien laughing now as he let his knuckle graze lightly down Aurora’s throat. Eternal thieves, as though getting Sonny back would leave him in that perpetual state of relative youth. Damien was pretty sure it didn’t work that way, the demon was the thing keeping his brother alive but clinging white knuckled to that hope was better than picturing Sonny getting old and wasting away the same way that Connie had. Maybe circling back around to his old ways with Aurora would reinforce that image. The Beck boys weren’t dead and gone as the newspapers in Lake Success had touted them to be.

The fresh growth of excitement began to seed itself in his gut as Aurora looked up at him through the eye cut outs in the mask. She’d put it back there, regeneration of emotional ground left to go desert dry in the years he’d been at Death’s beck and call. ”Let’s change that then. New traditions to turn it around for you.” Old habits for him, dragged back out, held on to tight as he would the gun in a few minutes. Brand spanking new for Aurora, although she might’ve held a few up in her centuries of life, just with different weapons. ”You’re goonna be a natural at this then. Just get them all to keep their hands in sight. Don’t trust any of them, OK?” Damien frowned for just a heartbeat. People were both ballsier and stupider these days. Trying to film the guy with the gun, the bystander putting themselves right in the crosshairs. Foolish.

Cool gaze sweeping the bank the minute they were in, Damien squared up the people in the tomb quiet bank. The guard was practically asleep while the tellers cashed up. With the doors probably locked to stop any more customers coming in there really wasn’t anything to worry about, was there? ”Thanks, honey,” Damien crooned back as Aurora’s compliment slipped out with the emphasis on his order. ”Touch anything and my stunning accomplice here will make sure there’s nothing alive being carried out of this bank today.” Damien tipped his head towards Aurora, encouraging her up to the counter. ”I think if we ask real nice, this lady and gentleman might start packing those bags up for us.” A man appeared from the rear hallway, yelping as Damien turned the gun on him. The manager. The man with the keys and the access.

”Hi,” Damien chirped, raising the other hand in a wave. ”I’ve got a question for you. Where’s the entrance to your vault?” As he clamped his mouth shut and slowly turned his back on a door six feet from him Damien chuckled. ”Looks like we’re not just walking out with cash. You wanna bust some boxes too?” Dark brows raised, he tossed his question at Aurora. This was gonna be her decision, although he and Sonny had never walked out without at least a couple of boxes if they could help it.

Tagged: AURORA DE MARTEL * Word Count: 763

’Hands up. If you don’t move you might just get to ask her out pal…. Sonny had gestured towards the young guy who’d been flirting with the teller when they’d walked in, the gun in his hand making the girl squeal. The laughter had rolled out through the place, followed by the whoop as the guy he’d been talking to had sunk down on the floor and the girl had instantly started emptying the drawers with him. Sonny had been the wild one, the talker, always keeping up the patter as they’d robbed the places. Damien had happily taken the role of the planner. The two of them had worked well together until it had all come to that shuddering, sulphur scented halt.

His brother would’ve laughed at this, dark brows rising as he asked if they were inviting a ‘girl’ into the gang now. Damien hadn’t broached the subject with Sonny, or the thing in him, yet. He started admitting that there was another tie to this town and Aurora would suddenly be under the sort of spotlight that could get her in real trouble. Not just from a reaper with a stick so far up his ass it had to be tickling his tonsils. Sonny had warned him about the things in this town, as though he hadn’t seen what they were capable of with his own two eyes. Undoubtedly Aurora’s brother had done the same to her, before he’d disappeared.

Damien almost winced at that as they arrived at the bank. Aurora was obviously capable of finding her own trouble here, the biker who’d come after her and been killed for his troubles was proof of that, but this was something different. They’d have nothing more than their fun tonight, that little thrill that would layer on top of the spark that Aurora had brought back after years of tailing Sonny and playing good little reaper for Death. The spark would grow, like he’d stacked tinder around it but he was still gonna have to keep his hands cupped around it all to avoid those who liked to knock such things down from blowing it out.

Death’s arrogant hall monitor wasn’t around to do it tonight at least.

Blue eyes narrowed as Damien glanced at the teller Aurora had been speaking to. Literally two seconds after the warning and she’d still been scrabbling for the alarm? He clucked his tongue out loud, eyes narrowing. ”I think that’s a record. What did I tell you about listening to my partner here?” When he and Sonny had started out half the banks weren’t wired into a damn thing. You pulled out the phone cables, you took care of anybody armed and the whole place was yours. These days everything seemed to be tied in to everything else – unless you had a vampire with mind control powers or a reaper who could have them dropping to the floor in a heartbeat – albeit dead.

The vault, at least, was still pretty old school in a town like this. No electronic lock, just that heavy looking ring of keys hanging on the guy’s belt. Damien chuckled. There probably wasn’t a fortune in it but the manager was protecting lit like it was Fort Knox, wobbly chin held high in defiance. ”The vault can’t be opened, it’s … it’s on a timer,” he blustered.

Damien looked over his shoulder as Aurora approached, grin broad. She seemed to be having the fun he’d hoped she would at least. ”Like stealing candy from a baby. This guy seems to think his non-existent locks are gonna keep us out. News flash buddy, we can walk in wherever we want. You blink and poof…” Damien spread his free hand and swooped it through the air – magic.

He reached down, gripping the guy’s wrist to lift it level for Aurora to take the keys off of him. Damien smiled at the guy, something a little cold in it. ”He’s happy enough to turn the keys over. Wanna open up for us and we’ll get ourselves a few goodies on top of the cash? You can bet a town like this has got dozens of old rich guys hoarding stuff here.” Jewellery had always been harder to deal with than cash, you needed someone to fence it for you, somewhere to hide it. Times had changed though and none of this was a desperate grab for cash now. If they happened to disappear out of here tonight dripping in diamonds he wasn’t gonna care about who to pass them off to afterwards.

Tagged: AURORA DE MARTEL * Word Count: 763

The moment they’d started talking things like records he and Sonny should’ve called it a day. It would’ve meant none of this – a quiet life out in the sticks, his future wife, their kids, coming to the facility with him every weekend to see Aunt Connie instead – but he wouldn’t have ended up playing delivery boy for dead souls and Sonny, Sonny would’ve still been Sonny. The signs had been there, the growing glee at what they were doing instead of that faint churn of nausea in the pit of his stomach as they’d slip out of their vehicle outside the bank, masks already in place. By then it wasn’t necessity, it had become a game. A challenge. Damien had felt the thrill himself, as they’d sat in some cheap motel room, counting out the bundles of worn notes, but it had dulled, died, that last time. Some of it was back now, a silver lining to a dark cloud that had stretched horizon to horizon for the last couple of decades.

This hadn’t been entirely about sharing his past with Aurora, although like with the bunker, there was an element of it to this. There was a ghost of that former thrill here, a cleaner, purer version of it. Damien’s head ticked side to side as the teller looked at Aurora, face glazed, her head bobbing like one of those nodding dogs. ”Let’s not break anymore huh?” A sweet toned questioned that was more statement. There was no intention to turn tonight into a work night with bodies dropping, especially not with the puckered up reaper, Elias, hanging around town just waiting for another opportunity to take the clenching up a notch.

Maybe the manager hadn’t gotten the message. While Aurora watched the rest of the people in the bank, Damien had focused on the blubbering man. Lies tripped out of his tongue. In the old days this technology hadn’t been an issue. If there had been security cameras their run would’ve ended far earlier. The Beck boys not lauded in the local papers years after they started their spree, but almost immediately. Vaults sealed to them, their scrabble for money coming down to a few cashiers’ drawers emptied. Connie would’ve died years earlier.

Damien felt that pang in his gut as Aurora came to join him but managed to tip his head towards his partner for the night, grinning faintly. ”Anybody ever tell you that you should do as the lady asks?” Blue eyes cut to Aurora, his lips curling. ”It’s alright, baby, he already gave that secret away.” And carried on spilling them, words tumbling like water from his mouth. The manager looked mutinous but it was too late, the guy had revealed everything and those keys were coming out. Dangled in the air from the wrist he held. Damien leaned in as Aurora gave him inescapable orders, lips curving behind his mask. ”Good puppy, maybe we’ll even throw you a bone on the way out.” A pat on the head and an empty mind, just enough left behind for it to chap the guy’s ass when he had to reveal to the cops how he’d helped.

He’d have tangled fingers in her black outfit, drawn her in to press his mouth against his Bond girl’s but the mask was staying put, regardless of their supernatural ability to get themselves out of this. ”Does that make me Bond?” Damien asked, winging his brow. ”I guess I’m suave enough and we’re about to pull off something very Hollywood.” With less special effects. They weren’t going to need them, or keys, one they got into the vault.

It looked like they weren’t going to have to remove the masks after all. Aurora rose on her toes, taking advantage of that sliver of bare face to press her lips to his. He saw the curve of hers as she broke away and grinned. ”Happy Halloween.” The trick or treat offer was falling squarely onto treat, the contents of the cashier’s drawer heavy in a bag and those ranks of smaller drawers lining the vault once Aurora had swung the outer door open and snapped the lock from the inside one. ”It’s fancier than the ones we used to rob,” Damien admitted as he stepped in after Aurora. He let out a low whistle, glancing around the room. ”They were all key controlled. The manager had one set, the owners the other. I guess they still didn’t anticipate things like us.” Things with the strength to grab the small handle on the front of the drawer and break it right out of the wall.

The first few were light on treasures. Paperwork, photos – who the hell kept those in a vault? – the occasionally little velvet bag. Folks around Mystic Falls were meant to be rich, old blue bloods who hoarded wealth like legendary dragons. Damien frowned, hitting oil on the fifth attempt. The big black velvet bag was plucked up as he let the rest of the box fall to the ground. Letting out a low whistle, Damien fished out a diamond necklace. It was ornate, old, practically dripping with the stones. A tear drop shaped emerald dangled at the bottom, almost the same colour as Aurora’s eyes. ”A gift for the lady?” Damien crooned softly. He held it up, fingers lightly draping it around Aurora’s neck. A little reminder of their night.

Tagged: AURORA DE MARTEL * Word Count: 902