Damien Night Ch. 04

Something changed in the wind, then. Somehow the world darkened even though the sun still shown very bright in a light blue sky graced with an occasional stroke of puffy white. The seagull's cries were muffled and the dissonance she had nearly forgotten as she chatted with Damien double itself. She looked around not sure what to expect and caught the ever present creature watching her.

"What the fuck is that, Damien." She hissed, unnerved that this new source of discomfort had not yet presented itself.

"Well. We may not care to congregate, but we do get...curious." He answered, watching intently as he stepped away from her.

While the rest of the world continued around them, they stopped in their own little island of space and time. A man, or the semblance of one, materialized standing eye to eye with her now with his black robed head cocked to one side. That black hair hung haphazardly down thickly corded back and shoulders of blue skin. His face was long with dark brows that pointed over blue holes where his eyes should have been. That was not the most disconcerting part of the creature before her. The blue skin was marred with wounds that had not healed but did not bleed, and he moved in a stuttered manner as though the camera that captured him had only caught a few frames at a time. It was clear he did not fucking belong here. Annabel wanted to scream at him to go back where he came from, but she could not find the voice to do so as it stared at her with those soulless openings that posed as eyes.

Then it spoke in that language only Damien's kind could claim: emotion tinged with pain. Curiosity and questioning barraged Damien as the being continued to watch her; all laced with pain that she, thankfully, could not feel. Dear God she did not want a damn thing to do with it. What the fuck was it?

"Annabel meet Lash." Damien seemed very amused with himself as he spoke. She did not want to meet anything he knew, least of all this thing, but what one wants and what one gets often are two very different things.

"You know I was almost starting to forget that there was something wrong with you at the fundamental level." She leveled the words at Damien, barely finding her voice as she edged away from the oddly moving Lash. The question of taste aimed at Damien spurred an increase in that distance.

"Consider it a favor that I don't let you forget?" His latent amusement turned to soft laughter as he continued.

Lash was suddenly right next to her, looking at her in a way that was neither human nor animal. Obviously Damien was a different breed altogether. Annabel closed her eyes and fought back tears knowing it meant to touch her; to feed off of her in a way that she would never forget no matter how hard she tried and there was no way to escape it. In the silence that pressed against her until she could not breathe nothing happened until a strange strangled cry shook her so bad that she started to sob uncontrollably.

"What the fuck?!" The razor thin words cut through the air making her skin crawl. The words seemed alien to the voice that conjured them, but it wanted her to hear them.

"She has a bit of a bite doesn't she?" Damien laughed.

A wave of anger flowed from the prone blue-skinned man as he struggled to right himself. The wounds in his skin bled now, an ethereal green slipping down the pale blue skin. The words had been for her benefit. Just like Damien two nights ago, he thought she'd done it on purpose, but she had little idea what she'd done. It reinforced her drive to make sure she never took that damn amulet off.

"I apologize, my friend, I had no clue she would hurt you."
Doubt exploded through the air and it was more than just a word in their bizarre langue; Annabel could actually feel it this time. "Here, accept this as a token of my sincerity."

Damien tossed an obsidian ink vial at his 'friend' who now looked somewhat recovered, the strange green blood drifting off in a haze that dissipated inches from its form. He fumbled with it for a few moments, finally opening the cork, and smiled strangely. His face split like a knife sliced open untouched skin. He had lips and smiled but the effect was unnerving to Annabel, who was still recovering herself. When the blue form shimmered and disappeared she could not have been happier.

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" She screamed when she found her voice.

"There is nothing to be done now. My kind knows of your existence. They will find you regardless of whether I am here or not." Damien answered solemnly.

"But you did nothing to stop him." She answered in a low threatening voice even though she posed no threat she could think of to him.

"I just wanted to know."

"WHAT?!"

"If I was the only one you could hurt."

Annabel took a deep breath. Even though she was terrified he just proved something amazing to her: he wasn't the only one that couldn't touch her. She was immune to all of their seedy disturbing desires.

"And now you know."

Damien nodded giving nothing away as to what he thought about the interlude.

"What was the vial?" Annabel asked after she'd given herself a few moments to breathe though her voice remained shaky and small.

"I'm a collector. I gave him a piece of my collection." He answered, thinking it best to be straight forward with her right now.

"And what do you collect?"

"Emotions." Damien thought backwards to the moment he collected the vial he'd tossed at Lash to appease him. Most of the time he sold the collections, but he didn't want a fight on his hands. It was rare he found one he could take so completely so the vial represented a large sacrifice for him. "I gave him pain; something he feeds off of."

"So you just, what, skim the surface of someone in pain and put it into some super-secret squirrel bottle?"

He chuckled lightly at her odd comparison. "It's a bit more complicated than that. I suppose you would refer to it as magic. And there is no 'skimming the surface', I have to take it all."

"All of it? As in they can't feel that anymore?"

"Precisely." He watched her process the information, her nose wrinkling, still trembling. Lash had been a real mood killer. Insatiable curiosity could be a bitch sometimes.

"So you took someone's pain?" Annabel asked in confusion. No more pain; would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

"Yes. A woman watching her child die of brain cancer. I've rarely seen a greater pain." He said quietly.

She had nothing to say. There was nothing she could even imagine like that. Annabel had never been close to a child, but she did not doubt that there were few greater pains.

"So you help people."

"No. True she held her child with a strength she had not known, but the pain was of use to me. Normally I would have traded it. Something like that could feed one of us for years."

Annabel shook her head in confusion.

"Traded it for what?"

"Oh, whatever I want." He smiled at her, a dark smile. She would compare it to the wolf smiling at the rabbit, but that's not quite right. The rabbit would never want anything the wolf had to offer; rending flesh and pain before a final scream. This wolf, however, offered something most women only read about. She shook her head silently commanding her heart to calm while convincing herself it was the residual fear of this newest horrifying experience with her twisted tour guide. That was it. Horror was all he had to offer.

"Then why just give it him?" She asked, looking at a horizon that seemed to grow brighter the way it did when the sun rose even though the sun had been up for several hours already.

"Good customer service policy." He shrugged. "A few years are nothing, and now he knows where to get it from."

The world returned to normal. There was the shrill heartbeat of the seagull's shriek overhead and the sound of beach goers above the gentle rush and ebb of the waves now. The sun was as bright as it should be and the world was as close as it was before.

"How do you get that? How do you take an emotion from someone?" She asked while trying to process this new upheaval.

"Everything speaks a language. All you have to do is know how to ask." He answered nonchalantly as if it was the most normal thing in thing in the world.

She wanted to tell him he couldn't do that, that you couldn't fuck with people like that or that it went against the laws of science, but he kind of blew science out the window a few days ago.

"Sounds like some Native American stuff I read about or something." She nearly mumbled.

Damien grinned, thinking better of saying that with all their technological advancements they didn't know shit about anything...else. Oh humans had gone a long way to figure out this world, which narrow-mindedness is always good for, but their ancestors had the blessing and curse of seeing a bit farther than they could. Everything has its good and bad side.

"Like I said; every story has been told." He shrugged; then frowned. Maybe he relied on being able to read minds too much. The flow kept breaking which he found a bit frustrating. She still looked shaken too, but that was a given. Lash would make any human a little sideways and she was handling it better than most. There was no plan here though. Without a roadmap of all the shit she'd never tell anyone he was at a loss. Still, she was a first for him. Even if he didn't get that stupid little trinket off her, though there was no doubt he would, she was definitely entertaining.

"Take me home, Damien." Annabel spoke with a bit of force. She'd obviously had enough, and they'd been having such a nice conversation before that little blue demon showed up. He wasn't really upset though. He still wasn't exactly sure whether he wanted to fuck her or if he was having enough fun just fucking with her.

"Your wish is my command." He bowed and pointed to the black Ferrari down the beach behind them with a flourish.

"No it's not, or you would leave." She nearly growled before turning to walking quickly towards the car.

"Now, let's not get crazy. Lash isn't the most palatable creature, but we were having an easy enough time of it before he showed up." His voice drifted off as he slipped through places she could not see or follow to wait at the car.

"Then I should thank him." She bit out when she reached him.

"Really? I can call him back I'm sure. We hear gratitude so little. I'm sure it would do his heart good." He opened the door for her.

"What heart." She muttered, taking a seat on the soft leather.

The ride back was tense silence and he found himself suddenly missing the somewhat easy conversation they'd had on the beach. It was strange; something he never dreamed would be an issue. Of course, he'd been inside of enough humans it was inevitable that some of them might get inside him. He frowned realizing that thought was starting to get a bit recurring.

"I'm sorry about Lash." He said suddenly before she could get the door open in front of her apartment. "I'm curious. It's one of the things that keeps me going, but I'm also sad our little interlude ended so completely."

Annabel stared at him with one of those looks that suggested he'd just grown a third eye. Then she paled somewhat and exited the car without saying a word. It wasn't meant to throw her. He was being sincere, but he knew that look; some of the resolve that she'd managed to keep safely from him just wavered. Damien smiled as he put the car in drive.