Brood alone [open]

This was why she shouldn’t leave herself with any sort of gap in her day. Clea got out of her car just a couple of hundred yards away from the cemetery and scanned the flattened patch of grass that passed for a lot like she was gonna find someone else here in the middle of the day. Most people were at work, like she had been that morning, everybody else had wisely decided to avoid the creepy place.

Rolling her eyes at her own cowardice, Clea started towards the stones. The dead had never scared her. As a kid she’d attended dozens of funerals the world over with her parents. Her mom had always told her that the dead wouldn’t hurt you, it was living you had to worry about. At the age of 8 it was half believable, but when you lived in a town like Mystic Falls and dreamt about things with claws and fangs that loved the idea of using them on delicate human flesh, you started to call bullshit on that idea.

At least there hadn’t been any vampires in the dream she’d had the last four nights in a row. No jump scares either, a welcome reprieve from the dreams that were all about scaring the crap out of her, if you asked her. This had been more like one of those 50s B-movies – fog rolling in, something creeping around in it. Hey, maybe it was the Creature from the Black Lagoon, it would definitely make a change.

Not knowing if what she’d seen was from today, or a week from now, Clea had decided to take a chance and had hopped in the car when she’d walked out of the Grill. If she was lucky it would be a quick sneak and peek – just to make sure - and then she’d head home. If she was really lucky Damien would pick up when she called him after and she could talk him into spending a possible gap in his day with her. Now that was a win-win.

What she hadn’t anticipated was the guy in the trench coat bursting into view from behind some of the bushes with a blade in his hand. Clea scuttled back from him, her hands coming up in front of her. Oh yeah, she was definitely warding him off, but if that thing swung in her direction she’d be doing it with her power. It’d be the first time she’d tried it on an actual human being, but she imagined he’d fly the same way a vampire had. ”You wanna put that thing away?” she panted. ”I can definitely do without being stabbed, intentionally or otherwise. I’m not threat, alright?” Maybe that was a bit of a lie – she wasn’t much of a threat – but she was pretty powerless compared to some others in this town.

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He wasn’t the first armed person she’d faced down, he wasn’t even the hundredth. Clea supposed her unusual childhood should’ve prepared her for this sort of thing – warzones had been home for more than a decade after all. You learned early on how to speak to people who could quite possibly kill you. You learned not to get into attack range, or to trigger whatever they had going on that was driving them to threaten you. Voice low, movements slow and out in the open, there was a technique to it that she hadn’t forgotten, even after years of being settled here.

The man hadn’t made a move towards her, but he still held that sword up. There was probably a couple of yards between them now, maybe even enough if he was a vampire and could do that blurring thing towards her. In comparison to her dreams, she wasn’t that practiced with her telekinesis, but under pressure she’d proven herself pretty damn good at throwing the bad guys the hell away from her.

A laugh rolled out from her as he turned things around like she was really the threat here. Clea held her hands higher, shaking her head at the guy, as though she could prove her innocence to him by appearances alone. ”Honestly? Do I look like some sort of movie ninja to you? You’re twice my size and armed, if anybody’s a threat here, it’s definitely not me.” And that was why she should’ve been backing out of here, getting in her car and driving back into town at full speed. Damian would’ve been questioning her sanity right now – for good reason too. How the hell did she keep getting herself in these scrapes?

Siblings? What the … she stopped before she even thought the word hell, because he got there first. Demon! Clea started to shake her head vehemently, although her mind had leapt straight back to Damian at the word. Was this because she’d found out what he was? ”Not a demon, I don’t think I’m whatever you are either.” Her eyes narrowed at him like she could figure out what that was. She didn’t want to get any closer to try and work it out, between the dreams she’d been having about this place and the blade, it was definitely the worst possible idea.

Her eyes dropped as he started to lower the blade, watching it rather than him. Clea let out a long breath when it finally disappeared. Her hands lowered too, although she made sure to keep both of them in his sight. ”Trust me. I’m not planning on doing that,” she assured him. He was backing up, sitting on a tree stump, thankfully giving her a little more room. ”I’d have said you wouldn’t believe me if I told you, but give what you said, I don’t think it’s gonna come as a surprise.”

There was a threat again, spoken so plainly again that it put a shiver down her spine. Clea frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. ”I’m not as weak as I look – no threat though, still promise that. I’ve had dreams about this place and, well, my dreams usually end up coming true. Have you seen anything … weird … out here?” You know, other than some guy she didn’t know threatening her with crazy looking blade, talking about demons as though everybody knew they were real.

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”Definitely not one of those,” Clea confirmed with a nod. They might’ve recognised one another if she was and honestly, that didn’t sound like any sort of family she wanted a part of. She stood there, staring at the guy with narrowed eyes, trying to decide if he was just a human sort of cracked or something far more than what he seemed. The blade had seemed to suggest the opposite, but being supernatural didn’t mean you couldn’t be crazy with it.

The word demons tightened her throat. There was still a tiny chance he was like schizophrenic or something, just describing the bad things he thought were out there in the world, but the more he spoke, the more certain she was that he knew just as much as she did about just who was in this town. Damien was the only demon she’d met, and he’d tried to tell her that how he was with her wasn’t how demons were supposed to behave but she couldn’t associate what she’d read about the evil of demons in mythology for years with a man who’d saved her from his sister multiple times.

Clea huffed out a breath as he told her that what he was wasn’t what she’d think, the sound turning into a chuckle that had her hitching her hands just in case he took that badly. ”I’d say the same. I’m definitely not what you think I am, but like you said, you’re not gonna take my word for that.” Maybe if her psychic powers had never developed she wouldn’t have believed a word of this. Spending your whole life losing yourself in the folklore and mythology of the world didn’t mean that you expected most of the fantastical things you were reading to be true.

”Oh I can,” Clea said lightly, sucking in a breath as he decided to push things and let his eyes light up. She’d seen shifters’ eyes change and other things too, but never like that. She threw her hand up until they vanished again. ”That’s not gonna help force it out of me,” she muttered, frowning as she finally lowered her hand. The weirder he grew, the less likely it was she was gonna sit here and exchange life stories with the guy. Shed been through enough to have some sense of self-preservation.

In the end she spelt some of it out, although not enough to really give anything much away to him. She’d been handling these situations her dreams threw her into for long enough to have a decent sense of self-preservation. That had her holding her ground now, her arms folding over her chest, the warning that she wasn’t as fragile as she looked spilling out before she mentioned the dreams. Considering he’d been the creep to start with, standing out here, threatening visitors to the cemetery with that blade in his hand, it was rich that he was calling her the weird thing now. ”Some of us have a vivid imagination,” Clea said dryly, casting another glance around. If there was nothing else out here, then maybe he’d been the threat she’d been dream of, which meant she shouldn’t be here now.

With her scowl deepening, she scoffed as he started talking about earth having nutjobs here. Yeah, this guy was definitely the one who was tapped, it didn’t matter what he was, even the supernatural could be weird. ”What war, what the hell are you talking about? You act like you’re not from here. It’s a bit hypocritical you calling anybody else a nutjob.” He took a step back as the guy started smoking, her nose wrinkling at it. Poking at the weird ass bear was probably a bad move, but she wasn’t about to stand there and get insulted.

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Despite their riches her parents had never been the sort to just sit on their money, preaching about helping poverty from the front pew of some church they’d been throwing money at for years like that alone would make it all better. They’d gone out to some of the roughest places on earth, using their wealth to make a difference on the ground instead. Sure, there’d been the occasional mention of religion and she’d snuck into some places of worship in the camps or in the villages they were trying to help, but Clea had never considered it a daily part of her life. It hadn’t been until Damian had revealed what he really was to her that she’d started really considering it a historical text rather than just a part of mythology she’d had no real interest in.

Wondering how this guy was gonna tie all of that into what he was talking about now had left her growing tense. He’d already dropped the word demon in, like he had one standing right in front of him. Did he know about her connection to one? Was this another attempt by his sister to pay him back for his supposed crimes? Clea’s eyes narrowed as she forced her shoulders to relax and shrugged. ”About as well as most people, I guess,” she muttered. ”I’ve watched Passion of the Christ at least.” The humour dried up in her throat as he twisted the question into a chance to talk about Lucifer.

Her gaze darted all over him, from the tip of that cigarette, to the long coat he wore and back up to his face again. She hadn’t been able to tell that Damian was a demon either, but she hadn’t got what she considered the vibe she’d felt since off of him. ”You think that’s a real war?” Clea asked, a faint scoff to her voice, even though a chill was running down her spine. Siblings, he’d said, like he was somehow part of both sides just like Lucifer. Demons weren’t all supposed to be fallen angels were they? That wasn’t how it had seemed to work with what Damian had done to save his sister. He was a demon, Hell had corrupted the soul he’d sold to try and keep her safe, not knowing that she’d later end up a blood sucking monster.

Stuffing her hands into her pockets, she resisted the urge to try and get in contact with him now, as though this supposed war would suddenly sweep through town and swallow him up without any warning. Blue eyes shot skywards as a storm came crashing in. The weather hadn’t been great when she’d set out, but this wasn’t predicted and it was sending that shiver down her spine again.

A breath puffed out of her as the flash of lightning seemed to change the air around him for a moment. It wasn’t black eyes that were revealed but wings. Forget Hell, this guy was on the other side of things, which made it worse. ”You mean your little party trick?” Clea scoffed. Grinning, even though she wasn’t feeling the smile down to her gut, she shook her head like she was dismissing it, rocking back on her heels to put a little more distance between the two of them. ”So you’re some sort of a magician? That would’ve been more impressive than all this dancing around the bible stuff. You should go to Vegas with that, you’d probably make enough money for a new closet, that look’s a little dated.” She gestured to his clothes, like that was the important thing here, instead of the seriousness of angels and demons clashing right here in Mystic Falls.

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Clea’s eyes dropped to the lighter in the man’s hands for a moment, but almost immediately skittered back up to his face. She’d spent years working in bars, learning to tell between those who were just drunk and those with malice behind their eyes. Back then she hadn’t developed the power to psychically deal with them herself, but she’d learned how to talk them down. You cut them off before they started to twist things too far and you sure as hell trusted your gut when it came to kicking them out. A little lost business wasn’t worth someone ultimately getting hurt. At first, this guy had just seemed like your common garden kinda whacko, but the more he’d talked, the weirder he’d seemed.

All the talk about demons had put a different edge on it all. Maybe he was telling the truth. He could’ve been an angel, and it wouldn’t have been the first time she’d heard about Heavenly wars – the Bible had its fair share of that sort of thing. She wasn’t about to start talking seriously with him about the whole thing though, not when he was leaving her feeling that uneasy. Clea chuckled faintly as he made it clear he didn’t care if she believed him. As long as he believed in it, right? ”I’m familiar with the human type,” Clea said, her smile sharp for a moment. "I've lived in plenty of war zones.” They’d just never had a supernatural component that she was aware of. Maybe she should look at them all differently now.

He didn’t have to warn her that there were monsters around either. She hadn’t told him what she was, but he obviously thought that in a town like this she must have been aware of it all. For the last two decades she’d read as much folklore and mythology as possible, had based her whole academic life on it. Lilith was a name she recognised, although not quite in the way he was mentioning in it. ”I don’t know what version of the Bible you’ve been reading, but whatever it is, I don’t think I’ve read the same one,” she said dryly. There were multiple versions of Lilith’s story though, some she thought she might have to discuss with Damian now, if Lilith really was involved in what was happening in town.

”Lucky you,” Clea drawled. She shifted her weight again, that smile remaining fixed in place. ”Most people can’t say the same. They need money to live, to eat, to put a roof other their head.” All the things angels probably didn’t mean and she was in no doubt that was what he was now. Laughter cracked out of her, a brief brittle sound. ”I’ll take that as a compliment. I’ve always liked being unique. You’re pretty strange yourself there, pal. So, if money isn’t your thing and you don’t care about humanity, what are you doing here?” It was a pretty remote spot, one that now felt a lot creepier.

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Some would have argued that religion was just another form of folklore, but Clea had never found it half as interesting as the other forms of it she’d come across. Maybe it was that it’s rules were more obvious, the sort that always left her feeling itchy. She had never really listened to her own parents telling her what to do, let alone the son of God. It hadn’t been until she’d found out the truth about Damian that she’d started to pore over it again. Like with almost every other mythology she’d ever studied, there were nuggets of what she’d thought might be the truth in it, and she definitely knew enough of it to know that hypocrisy was pouring off of the man in front of him if he really was what he was making out that he was.

Scoffing at what he was saying was probably a mistake – out of a psychic and an angel, one of them was definitely going to lose out to the other every time – but Clea snorted all the same. ”If you’ve got wars going on too, then it would seem like we’re not the only ones using our free will to go killing each other. Unless it’s pillow fights you’re indulging in?” Definitely not. Hugely powerful celestial beings weren’t going to take it easy on one another. Her brows rose as he switched to their reasons for going to war. ”I don’t know what wars you’ve been hearing about, but I’ve never heard anybody blame it on the devil. Hunger, hatred, persecution, sure, but most people who are out there fighting aren’t talking about the devil.” Maybe back in the middle ages when religion was the basis for everything, but the world had definitely moved on since then.

The smartest thing to do would’ve been to head home the minute she’d seen the weird guy hanging around, but like usual, she hadn’t done that. Clea watched the lighter he played with, eyes flicking from it to the man holding it. Demons were supposed to be the wicked ones, taunting humanity, pushing them to fall from grace too, but from her experience so far, it seemed like it was the opposite. She’d found herself the black sheep of the angels, the one rebellious enough to turn against his siblings and end up down here. ”So you decided to be rebellious and run away from your family for a while. I’m pretty sure almost every teenager around here has wanted to do that a time or two.” Only their father wasn’t God. Her arms tightened around herself faintly as he carried on about what he was doing down here. He wasn’t wrong, pain and suffering were everywhere, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know how he was helping with it.

”I guess I’m lucky I’m not in pain right now,” Clea said lightly. She was just being an idiot and dragging the weird situation out for too long. She dragged her teeth over her lower lip, if he really was an angel concerned with relieving suffering then there’d be plenty going around for him, especially in a town where people were constantly dying in new and violent ways – although perhaps he was behind some of those deaths. ”You could say I’m just naturally curious. If you really are a wanderer, then there are plenty of places you could put down roots. Plenty of other towns like this one. Is this the only place you’ve visited?” She could recommend a hundred more, most halfway across the world and well away from her.

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