headsick

His bags remained unpacked in the corner of his new room. The decision had been made. He was moving back to Detroit in a few days, without his brother. Everything was in motion. He purchased his plane ticket and quit his job at Campbell’s. He hadn’t really come up with a lie for his parents as to why he was moving back alone, but he was done with lying for Remzi. He’d tell them some of the truth, in that his brother had chosen a new life. A life that didn’t involve him, or even his parents. There was nothing more they could do for their youngest now. He was truly lost to the darkness.

No doubt he’d leave out the last bit knowing his mom would drive down to Mystic Falls and attempt to drag Remzi back by his ear.

Raik still didn’t understand exactly what had happened to his brother, but Dani said it sounded like he had shut down his emotions. Everything had got a bit too much for Remzi and he decided to feel no more. If only Raik could do the same. There was hole left in his heart by Katie’s death. Salt had been rubbed in that by the fact it was his brother that did the killing.

Maybe he just hadn’t been there enough for his younger brother. He thought he had, but perhaps it just wasn’t enough in the end. It felt like his brother had actually died now, leaving him to mourn the person his brother once was.

Enough was enough though. It was time to head back home. Get a job and find an apartment. Maybe even throw himself out into the dating world in the hopes of finding his future wife. His mom was desperate for grandchildren by now and Remzi wasn’t going to deliver them.

The place felt so empty without his brother trashing his area on the other side of the room. Everything was so tidy and in place, causing him to miss his brother’s messy lifestyle (a little bit). No t-shirts thrown on the floor in a pile, no empty shampoo bottles taking up space in the bathroom, no sweet wrappers around the trashcan instead of in it. It was quiet and peaceful.

The complimentary drinks in his room helped to take the edge off. He’d already had a few farewell drinks at Campbell’s bar with everyone, so there was a flush to his cheeks by the time he returned to the hotel. Remzi had told him the owner of the hotel was a see you next Tuesday. He didn’t exactly say why, but it didn’t take a lot for Remzi to think that of a person. Raik didn’t agree though. The man seemed pleasant enough whenever they crossed paths and he’d been kind enough to move Raik into another room with minimal questions. Grey had even been kind enough to give him the alcohol.

Perhaps he’d knocked back the free alcohol too quickly in an attempt to drown out his thoughts, but there was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as he lay on the bed. He took a deep breath. Must have been the tacos he had earlier. At soon as he thought about the tacos his stomach lurched causing him to sit up.

Okay, he wasn’t much of a drinker but he didn’t think his tolerance was this low. A few drinks and the room was spinning as he tried to push himself up off the bed. The bathroom seemed so far away and everything felt so blurry.

He thought he’d peeled himself away from the bed and towards the trash can that was closer than the toilet, but he hadn’t. Raik was still in bed and emptied the contents of his stomach onto the floor next to the bed. There wasn’t a lot going through his head in that moment though as he lay back down on the bed. He wasn’t even in the right state of mind to tell himself to roll over as he drifted off.

The beep of the card on the door, the sound of the window opening, the tug on his ankles. None of it stirred him.


DESTINY BACCARI & GREY MADDOX - i'm not ready for this

If he’d been here alone he wouldn’t have bothered moving the body. A curled lip at the spill of white berry studied vomit on the bed, tugging at that long snarl of hair to get the man just far enough out of the pool to make a cleaner job of it. The blow to the head, the drag of the knife, the snap of the wire around the scruff covered throat done fast. If you were too slow it gave them a chance to wake – like the wolf who had been in his room when Cat had finally made her way to Mystic Falls.

Grey saw the hesitation in Destiny, a dimming of that usually eye searing brightness that twinkled around her, that Tinkerbell spark that the man who’d almost cost her this chance of a child before hadn’t managed to snuff out. Maybe Tanner had dimmed it for a time, and now, in a need, desperate and sharp as wolves teeth in his gut, he was doing the same. He would’ve wrapped the wire around the man’s throat himself, pulled until it tore a roar out of him and flesh parted beneath its razor’s edge. The body tossed out in the street for Leah to find, her little boy toy broken the way she’d tried to do to Destiny. Only he would dirty his hands for this, drinking in the power that the sacrifice would have buzzing into his body – and that would’ve been the problem.

That small body, carrying that fragile life within, wouldn’t have gotten a drop of it. Grey tasted bile at the back of his own throat as he explained to Destiny, his voice a rasp. His lips pressed together at her reassurance. They had to be fine after this, but there would be more scars incised, the sort that you couldn’t see, even with their glamours dropped. His knuckles brushed hers for just a heartbeat before he reached for the man. A twitch of his mouth, looking for some sort of reassurance to give her.

The man was a dead weight, dragging those stained sheets with him as his body slithered off of the bed to thump on the floor at its base. Grey crouched in front of him, one elbow braced on his knees, the other hand tipping the limp chin up. Just Leah’s type, pretty beneath all that dark scruff. A head empty enough that he didn’t know or didn’t care he was getting into bed with a viper. A muscle leap in Grey’s jaw at the soft question from Destiny. He looked up at her, lips twitching as she prepared to swing the sap. ”For you and for Petyr,” he promised roughly. ”You’ll both be safer for it. Two more sacrifices and the power of the healers would rush into her.” He’d seen the photo in their hotel room, the red cross on the white band on this man’s arm. It didn’t take a genius to see that Leah had pictured himself one who’d worn a uniform before, maybe on purpose.

Small stirring motions had the sap brought down with a crack on that tumble of dark hair. Grey had met the man’s eyes, had seen something conscious there for a moment before the light went out again. Not dead but out with Destiny’s hissed words the last thing he’d hear. Grey’s lip curled in disgust, fingers lightly finding the man’s forehead to tip his head back into the cradle of Destiny’s body as she settled herself around the man.

Grey rose slowly, looking at the man with that same cold look until he looked up at Destiny and it warmed. The sun coming out over ice as he held the blade out to her. ”You’ve gotta go deep, baby,” he told her hoarsely. Blood spilled immediately, a thin sheet of it spilling down his front. Not the gushing firehose of an artery severed but enough that he’d have died from it within minutes if the wire he held out to Destiny coiled in his palm didn’t finish the job. Shifting his feet out of the thick drips of it, Grey began to circle to the side. He wanted to close his hand over hers, to offer up that last measure of strength that would’ve stopped her straining. He couldn’t though, could only watch as muscles strained and eventually, with a cry, went lax.

Not looking at Remzi, Grey felt that wash of power, like a wave coming up a beach, rolling over Destiny, offering up what he’d taken into himself years ago from others sent to find him. ”Hey,” Grey whispered. His hand reached out to her but didn’t manage to stop her as she smeared blood across her face, her hair. ”It’s done. He can’t hurt you or Petyr anymore. What you took from him, it’s … it’s in you now, it’s gonna keep you safe.” But it wouldn’t stop another from coming for them both. Wouldn’t stop Leah. She wasn’t capable of feeling anything, let along anything deep enough to get upset for the sack of flesh sprawled on the floor.

Toeing the sheet to shift it up around the body like he could bundle him up into a sack to drag it out, Grey missed the shift in Destiny’s expression. The whimper had his eyes bolting up, his shoulders going stiff as she barrelled off the bed and into him. He caught her, an arm going around her as he pushed the hair back from her cheek with the other, not caring about the blood that transferred to his own skin. ”You’re OK,” he told her. ”We’ll go upstairs. Get you cleaned up, I’ll … I’ll take care of him later, don’t worry about it anymore…” But she wasn’t.

Brows furrowing, Grey looked up from where she pressed his hand against the lower curve of her belly into those big blue eyes. Pressed, cooling blood smearing, burying her face into his chest before …. Was that? God. The laugh bubbled out of him at that tiny flutter against his palm, almost like a rumbling stomach, that ripple. A shift against his palm that wasn’t his imagination. ”That’s Petyr?” Not just the baby anymore. They might not have known what they were having but the name had ended up fixed.

It should’ve been weird but he was dropping to his knees right there on the carpet that was slowly wicking up the blood still leaking from the dead man, pressing his face to the curve of her stomach as his fingers chased those tiny movements. ”We’re here,” he promised that little life, his voice thick with awe. ”Keeping you safe like we’re always going to. Your mum and dad are right here.” Like there wasn’t a body inches from them. Their family all that existed, the world beyond invisible. Just the three of them.

Tagged: RAIK DURMAZ & DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 1146