Side Jobs

The smirk on the midshipman’s face when it was announced he’d be enlisting in her majesty’s navy had been more of a rearranging of pulped features, but it had still been enough to send him darting in to try and deal out one more punch. Nobody had ever gotten to sneer down at him like that before. Mal had seen plenty of distaste on the madame’s faces when he asked about his mother for the thousandth time, but there was something particular about that sort of sneer. The other midshipmen had tried to deal it out too once they were under sale. Green faced, still shaking and sweating, Mal had peeled himself away from the rail. Their expressions had soon changed. One fight was all it took to prove what happened to people who wronged him. Six months later the snot nosed brat he’d taught that lesson had been back, practically jumping out of his skin when Blackthorne (as the captain had snapped at him when he’d been caught playing on the effect) had gotten too close. The power in it had been the first real taste of it he’d had.

Sitting in the car outside the casino, Mal felt that odd creeping sense of impotence again – not in that way, even with the borrowed blood levels a little low he’d never that sorta trouble. Forced into a deal with the sullen remnants of his old team to save Krista had left him powerless. All cause he’d unintentionally scooped up that boy of theirs. Wasn’t like he’d been the one actually tinkering about with him. Like he had been on the Argonaut, he was just one cog in that twisted machine, the muscle who’d hold the poor buggers down when the surgeon hacked at their shattered limb with a saw, the one who pushed dishes of cold greasy burgers through the bars of their cell. Like all their humanity had been burned out of them in that warehouse in San Francisco, they’d gone for the one person who was really innocent in all of this.

Mal slumped down slightly in his seat, considering pulling out his phone. Calling Krista to see where she was would probably be like that Pavlov’s dog thing, ringing a dinner bell for her (if she wasn’t pissed off at him about something again). It’d summon her up just in time to see Lena finally emerging from the casino with that sour look on her face. At that Christmas bash (the one he wished he’d never sodding gone to), he’d told her his arm had been bent into this, but it wouldn’t stop her from getting fizzy over the whole thing.

His smile broadened as she got into the passenger seat – fighting anger with saccharine sweetness. Mal pointedly glanced past her, like he’d see the happy hubby standing on the doorstep, a warning look on his face. ”Aaah, so he’s lookin’ to ‘ave us kiss and make it up then, eh?” Clucking his tongue, Mal cranked the engine. ”Sorry to break it to ya, I ain’t the cheatin’ sort.” If looks couldn’t kill, a kiss, or a fist through the chest might. Cackling lightly, Mal elbowed Lena. ”Buckle up, safety first. Wouldn’t wanna have to explain to Pierre ‘ow you went through the screen cause you didn’t put your seatbelt on.” He wouldn’t survive that either. Any wrong move here put Krista’s neck right back on the line.

The thought twisted his stomach as he pulled out onto the street finally. He’d played this game with Pierre at the lab, but heading out with the wifey to pick out another test subject felt like it was a couple of steps up the misery ladder. ”You put any thought into this? What sorta person d’ya wanna pick up? You wanna turn a granny into a wolf … oh what big teeth she’s gonna end up with? How ‘bout some young, rich arsehole, there’s plenty of them around too.” In a town like this you could probably spit and hit one. The thought of changing one of the Founding Family brats was appealing enough that he was grinning again. That was the great thing about Mystic Falls, there was plenty of choice among people who deserved it.

Tagged: LENA BAUDELAIRE * Word Count: 709

Apparently one of the little side effects of joining the supernatural community, so to speak, was the ability to hold a sodding grudge for literally an eternity. It’d been a hundred and fifty years – twice most people’s lifetimes – since he’d walked out of that warehouse and left Pierre and Lena to get their own arses out of there and still they were blaming him for the turn their lives had taken. Had he personally invited the hunters down there? Nope. Had he ever promised that he’d save them all if something went wrong? Not a bloody chance. They’d gone into business with him of their own free will and then spent the next century and a half pointing the finger at him for everything that’d gone wrong.

Alright, alright, there was the matter of the boy too. Baxter had played on his mind enough after the pair of them had snatched Krista in retribution that he’d gone poking back through their files, what was of them anyway. He hadn’t gone targeting the boy cause of who his parents were. Unlike them, he hadn’t spent all decade after decade figuring out how to pay his former partners back. The boy’s transformation had an unfortunate coincidence. One more Whitmore student who’d been gifted with new abilities. It wasn’t as though he turned him into a sodding werefrog, or anything else ridiculous. You wouldn’t have known that from all their clucking though.

Any thought of being benevolent and telling them there was a chance they could change their boy back dried up the instant Lena got into the car and turned on the charm. The feeling was mutual, he’d rather have stuck his tongue in an animal trap than kissed the vicious shrew. ”I can make it happen if you really wanted to. One of the joys of workin’ in a hospital.” He might’ve spent the last two hundred years merrily dropping bodies across the world, but he still felt that shuddering revulsion deep down inside that was a carry over from his human life. Perhaps if she’d seen bodies torn apart by grape shot and cannon fire, cutlass injuries that could cleave a bloke’s skull down to his brain, maybe Lena woulda been a little less happy to follow through on that promise.

Mal smirked as she did as he suggested, buckling herself in, avoiding the good girl that probably would’ve had Lena attempting to punch her way clear through his skull. Drifting down the street, he swept his gaze over the sidewalks the way he always did. He’d have called it a predator’s eye, but it was more than that. It was the actions of a man used to watching his back since he decided to help play God under the noses of dozens of arseholes who happily would’ve seen him lying dead with a stake through his chest. Hunters had always been thick as fleas on a dog’s back, but Mystic Falls took that to another level too.

Just like her husband, Lena threw the offer to pick her own victim right back at him. Cowards, the pair of them. Probably wanted nothing more than to blame him for it all when it went wrong, or when it went right and it shocked their tender little hearts that they could’ve been involved in something so monstrous. Bunch of bullshit if you asked him. ”No, no,” he snorted. ”This ain’t my operation anymore. This is about teachin’ you and your hubby how to do all of this yourself. You pick.” Following the suggestion of someone young, he started in the direction of the high school all the same. Halfway there he spotted a teenaged boy walking towards them. Dark haired, tall, not all that much unlike their boy. ”How ‘bout him?” Mal glanced at her, unsure whether Lena would back out, her bleeding heart aching too much for her boy to take the leap.

Tagged: LENA BAUDELAIRE * Word Count: 653

Oh yeah, she was definitely still holding a grudge. He could’ve shoved a lemon down Lena’s throat and her face would’ve puckered up less than it did now. Her old man was still grumbling about what had happened, and was definitely pissed about what had happened to their boy, but he would’ve laid down a whole sodding chest of coin on Lena being the driving force behind the hatred they still had for him. Mal imagined the cogs had been spinning in her pretty little head when they’d realised he wasn’t sleeping alone in Mystic Falls, smoke pouring off of them as she gave in to the need for revenge, like a warning from Vesuvius before it wiped out Pompeii, or should that have been Mount Fuji.

Mal’s lips twitched at his unspoken snark. If he dug too deep, Lena wouldn’t only be disgusted at the idea of snuggling up to one of the bodies they had stacked up in the morgue – honestly, it was shocking how many turned up here, ‘specially those that went unindentified or unclaimed. Anybody would think the place drew in drifters like a magnet, or supernaturals like there was a nemeton here (lucky for them there had been). Lena’s hatred and bitterness had sunk too deep into her for her to see any real appeal in his charm, and it wasn’t just a modern thing either. She’d seen through at least half his bullshit back then too. It had just never been like that between them. Lena probably shoulda thanked her lucky stars for that, Krista’s track record with his past conquests bordered on the criminal.

This alone was bad enough. Her boyfriend in a car with the woman who’d helped kidnap and torture her. This explosion would be worse than the one at Christmas had been. Lena would lay hands on her in return and then he’d, well, it wouldn’t be a happy ending to what was gonna be a miserable afternoon anyway. Taking Lena back to her hubby bloodied and maybe still a little broken would put an end to a fragile peace that was only gonna last for as long as it took for him to get the pair of them making their own twisted army of hybrids.

Lena stayed silent as he drove, the quiet only serving to bug him to the point where he almost had to fill the silence. If she’d have given him more of a reaction he’d have done just that to irritate her. He’d spent entire weeks at sea talking the ears off of anybody who’d listen, needing something more than just watch after watch. There always been some action on the docks, the atmosphere growing electric every time the ships would anchor off shore, once you were on one of them and were out in the middle of the ocean without a scrap of land in sight, you were lucky to keep your sanity.

Letting out a low snort when he pushed Lena to make her pick, to bring the sodding action on finally and she threw it right back at him. He leaned towards her a few inches, the smile playing tightly around the corners of his mouth, hazel eyes narrowed. ”And if it fucks up when I pick ‘em, that’s just proof that I was bullshittin’ you about it bein’ foolproof. Don’t think I want my head on the block with you two.” As though it wasn’t already there. Any time he fucked up with he pair of them they were gonna haul Krista back into things and that meant he was stuck.

Puffing out a breath, Mal gestured to the teenager, making the pick she refused to. He coasted towards the curb, offering a faint smile to the kid through the window. ”You get ‘em young and their bodies can take more damage. Old folks’d probably have a heart attack or a stroke if you started shooting ‘em up with the formula. Pick up someone who’s already somethin’ makes the whole thing easier.” Thumbing down the window, Mal gestured the kid over to the car. ”Oi son, can we have a word?” Charm radiated from his smile. Having a woman in the car was gonna help here, people trusted women in a way they didn’t some big bruiser approaching them all on his own. ”You headin’ off somewhere?” He’d never seen the teenaged boy before, but if someone was gonna end up looking for him ten minutes after they scraped him up off the street it’d get sticky fast. You wanted someone nobody was expecting, someone who could vanish for a bit without raising red flags – like a college kid whose parents were halfway across the country.

Tagged: LENA BAUDELAIRE * Word Count: 785