Damien Night Ch. 05

Annabel retreated to the limited sanctuary of her apartment, tossing her purse on a table and flopping down onto the worn brown couch. The encounter with the creature at the shore still had her shaken, but she was counting on that. Gram said to never deal with these creatures, and you don't go finding out the amulet someone gave you has magical powers and then just discount the rest of what they said. Lash, or whatever the hell it was, gave her an edge against him. All she needed to do was concentrate on how incomprehensible it felt to be near Lash and remember that Damien was the same no matter how human he passed for.

But it felt so good to just talk. Not only talk, but not have to wonder. She knew what he wanted and really didn't give a shit what he thought. And he was fascinating. You would have to be dead not to think that. Annabel may act dead, but she wasn't. Then he said that. She could tell a liar, and he wasn't lying. He wasn't even bending the truth. He was honestly regretful that their little conversation stopped. Her lonely heart wanted to translate that into reciprocated feelings. Jesus she was stupid.

She looked around the little room. Other than the couch on the beige carpet there was a TV on a little stand, a bookshelf full of books and movies, and a table by the door. The white vertical blinds across the sliding glass door moved slowly in the breeze from the AC letting the sunlight play across the dimly lit room. The white walls were naked. Maybe this was what drew him to her. She certainly made herself an easy target. Something she would need to fix as soon as she figured out how to get rid of him. But then she'd been trying to figure out how to do that for the past three days. Nothing had worked, and in the end it wouldn't.

She wanted him to stay.

Pulling her knees to her chest Annabel looked at the blank television and tried to think of the last person that she had let into her life. If there was someone she could call, someone to stay with her, then maybe she could circumvent this very definite tragedy that her lonely heart was leading her headlong into.

There was no one.

It was a strange realization how fast time could slip by when you let yourself get swallowed up by a routine of doing nothing more than going through the motions of living. There had to be more. Resolve set in.

Tomorrow she opened with her annoying boss, the one with the short hair that she was kind of upset Damien didn't make a permanent meal of. In retrospect it was possible that it was for the good of humanity that she'd managed to become a hermit in the middle of one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country. She laughed at herself and continued planning. Hopefully he wouldn't show back up tonight, which didn't seem to be part of his modus operandi, and she would have time to get ready for him tomorrow.

The remainder of the evening passed uneventfully, just like the rest of her life had previous to Saturday night.

***

Damien did not venture out find her at the book store. He'd spent entirely too much time with her during the day honestly. While he did not necessarily need the night to accomplish his goals, it helped. There were errands to run. One of the drawbacks to living amongst the inhabitants of this world was that he had to do things like pay rent.

When night fell he chose the front door to her little abode. It just seemed the better route given how some of the events of yesterday had played out. He knocked gently and waited a few minutes. She had that shimmery black hair pulled back so it fell in a straight line to her ass. He knew he could touch it now, but every time he did one thing it only lead to wanting more and he didn't want to risk that. He'd gone as far as he was willing given the consequences he faced. The surprised frown on her face was interesting.

"Damien. Since when do you use the front door?" Annabel stepped aside and motioned for him to enter.

"I thought you might like a break from my kind's antics. Any more visits?" He asked looking around not really sure what he meant to do here. He didn't have a goal. It was hard to form one when you were so used to knowing someone's actions and desires before even they did. It was possible he didn't have one besides more of her company. He enjoyed her questions.

"No, thankfully." She answered with a smile. She seemed happy to see him actually. "I didn't see you at the store. Changing your routine?"

Damien shook his head wondering at her behavior. It definitely wasn't what he was used to.

"Errands. All these lovely things I can do in your world and I still have to pay the rent." He chuckled. "Besides, 3 days isn't a routine."

"Right." She said with a half-smile. "Wait, how do you get money?"

"I take it you haven't noticed walls really aren't an issue for me."

"Whatever. Do you eat...human food? I made nachos." Her voice was almost sing-song as she spoke to him on the way to the kitchen. He could smell it now, melted cheese and salsa and whatever else she put on them. It was perfectly heavenly.

"Yes." Now all she needed to do was cue up some Disney flick and he'd start thinking he'd suddenly found the ability to fall in love.

"I thought so, but I wasn't sure."

He watched her open the oven and carefully remove the tray of little delights wondering what the hell she was planning. If she meant to surprise him she was silly.

"Need any help?" He asked finally, deciding to let her play whatever game it was she was at.

"No." She turned to the counter opposite the oven, not even really having to step, in order to set the hot tray down on one of her little wine and grapes decorated pot holders. "I was thinking we'd watch the new Evil Dead."

The little smile she threw back at him had a hint of the sarcasm he was used to...and the movie. It was something about demons and 'the most terrifying film you will ever experience'. So she wasn't going to let the entire night slide without a little jab. So much for love conquering all.

"Not much into horror." He sank down into the couch and draped an arm over the back so he could watch her drop sour onto each little mounded snack. "It's lost on me I suppose. The nachos, however..."

"So, no to horror, but yes to junk food." Annabel laughed. "I have a few things in the bookshelf over there. Why don't you pick something out since you're the guest?"

Damien walked over to the dark cherry wood bookshelf curious if it would lend him any help tonight. Oddly he needed it. Glancing down he noted the row of DVD cases on the last row of the shelf, but something else drew his attention.

It was no surprise she was a reader. All humans find company wherever and however they can whether they want to admit it or not. There were a few romance novels that looked to have darker tones to them and some philosophers, both current and classical, but one book bound in leather that sorely needed tending to made him stop and stare. It was old, but he didn't need to look at the yellowed pages, cracking bindings or the block letters indicative of the printing presses of the time to know just how old. He didn't need to see the publication date or the fact it was a first -- and only -- edition to know just how rare and how strange it was to see such a thing here in this unassuming place with this girl who had never actually lived...at least not like the man that wrote that book.

He grabbed the edges of the binding between his finger tips and slowly started to slide it out of the space it occupied.

"Don't touch that!"

He turned a little startled at Annabel's demand.

"I'm sorry," She amended, shaking her head, "it's just that it's really old, I'm not sure the glue will hold."

"I know. Where did you get it?" He'd taken the book anyway and held it in front of him as he questioned her.

The writer sucked. Poor guy, but that was the honest truth. The 200 copies the man had spent his savings to publish in the early 1800's ended up wiping someone's ass most likely, except for a few. An ingenious idea about a gentleman writing an unbelievable story told to him by a supernatural being. Apparently someone used the same idea and hit it big in the middle part of the last century, but Jonathan Blythe had fallen out of the literary rat race without even a squeak. Even this dark haired siren hadn't read it, or there would have been a little more recognition in her eyes.

"My Grandmother's grandfather wrote it apparently. I tried to read it once but it was kind of...awful." She sighed sadly, obviously feeling bad for a man she'd never met. "I never threw it away because...well it's old. Even if it was not exactly readable it's still amazing it survived this long."

Annabel walked over to the couch and set the cookie sheet carrying the nachos on the center of the three cushions that lined the seat of the couch.

"Especially considering how bad it was." Damien couldn't help but laugh remembering the finished product of his little experiment.

"You've read it?" She asked. From the look on her face he guessed she knew the short and dirty history of the book.

"What are the odds?" He was only half speaking to her as he ran his thumb across the uneven amber edges of the paper, but he addressed her directly the next moment. "I'm the reason your ancestor wrote it."

He watched her eyes, oddly almond shaped with the hint of an ability to cut like a knife or make you melt and fall into them, move from him to the book and back.

"So...you...like men too?" She asked finally.

Damien laughed for a minute before answering. Of all the questions she could have asked, that was the first to come to mind. The fact that the odds were completely against him hanging out with her Great-Great-Great-Grandfather two hundred years ago and then running into her in a club in a completely differently country seemed so much more interesting, but...c'est la vie.

"I imagine you are intending on following that up with a nervous 'oh, that's okay' or something." He fixed her with his most unnerving stare which was probably a little unfair.

"Uh...no...I mean..." He watched her gaze dart towards a few random objects as she shifted nervously. It was generally entertaining what made someone uncomfortable.

"No, Annabel, even though the answer to that isn't exactly correct. I don't care one way or the other, but men offer no satisfaction to me. The...energy is different." He stumbled there, not quite sure how to put things like this into the limitations of the human world. "It would be like you trying to live off of hay."

Damien turned around to put the book back.

"Why did he write it about you then?"

The question halted his action as he'd already dismissed the little reminiscing there was to be had there. It was just one thing in a list of thousands. He existed. He did not collect memories or moments the way the creatures he preyed on did. Still, it always came back to him unlike most of the cobble stone points in his reality. Now he was strangely eager to relate it to her.

"He saw me leaning against a light post. I always liked the way the oil smelled when it burned."

Annabel sat down on the couch with a confused frown, pulling the length of jet black hair over her shoulder and letting it fall between her slightly parted thighs. Of course it wouldn't seem odd to her that some random stranger saw him. Damien pulled an arbitrary movie from the bottom shelf and moved towards her with the thin case in hand. He could make things turn on and off with his mind, but damned if he could actually physically operate anything. First he had a story to tell.

"I wasn't exactly looking to be seen. I suppose the sensitivity you possess runs in your family." He half smiled thinking of him now. He was like her; young with jet black hair cut shorter to match the style of the day. And the sideburns, which fit the slender man well, would not have done her quite the same justice. They had the same dark eyes. Thinking about it now he wondered why he hadn't made the connection sooner. "It was raining and the streets were muddy and rutted with carriage tracks. I let him look twice just to be sure he'd indeed seen me, and then I left."

Damien stopped there, sitting down on the remaining cushion adjacent to the tray of nachos and handing her the movie. He was going over the rest of the details, trying to shorten it. The two had ended up spending years together before John died of the White Plague in Edinburg. He was an accountant with the heart of a scientist and it was the one and only time Damien had ever done anything without a deal. Blame it on a change of pace or the insatiable curiosity that went with being who he was; whatever it was it happened. He told John nearly everything, and it was all there in that little book.

"And that's it? He wrote an entire book because he thought he saw you." Annabel's sarcasm broke into his silent revelry.

"No. It was barely the beginning." John never flinched, not once. There was no fear when he'd shown up in his bedroom that following night. His was the only curiosity that had ever matched Damien's. "We met face to face remarkably the same way you and I met, though my intentions were...different."

"You mean you don't know why you sought him out."

"No." Damien watched her for a moment. Her intuition was better than her ancestors, but then John was consumed with a desire for knowledge. Annabel was...just...lost. "No, I don't know, but we became companions for nearly ten years after that. I often entertained his wife, or she entertained me, when John was otherwise engrossed." Damien smiled then, ignoring Annabel's momentary look of distaste. He debated telling her that John was perfectly complacent in the arrangement for her benefit. The man cared little for marriage. He was a ball of logic and reason. It was amazing he'd even managed to get the poor girl pregnant.

"There's not a chance that..." Her eyes widened suddenly and he took a moment to decide on their color while simultaneously completely entertained by her train of thought.

"No, girl." His amusement was evident as he answered her. "We don't procreate; one of the many benefits of a night, or two, with me. The thought doesn't intrigue you a little, though?"

"No."

"Good to know then." There wasn't even a hint of interest in that answer, though it didn't surprise him. She'd already given up her kinkiest secrets it seemed, but it didn't hurt to double check. She was mostly plain.

"So you two gallivanted where ever and you defiled my great-great-great-great grandmother. This doesn't explain the reason he wrote a book."

Her eyebrows had come together in an irritated frown while she fixed him with those dark eyes. They were nearly black to the point you could not see her pupils. It was interesting. Humans didn't normally have such coloring. He suddenly thought of the hunter that tried to kill him. His were dark too. Maybe it was something that went with their calling.

"He wrote a book because I answered every question he asked."

Annabel's eyes cut back to the book with a renewed interest. He knew what she was thinking, but that wasn't there. Hunters were much, much older. They were relics of long forgotten wars that had never crossed the pages of history. There were retellings with a tribal spin if you knew where to look, but that didn't exactly say what had happened.

"And you weren't worried about being discovered or something?"

"Annabel, what exactly would someone do to me if I was discovered? Honestly, this isn't some wild flight of fancy. Real things are real, and easily ignored. People have indisputable evidence of everything, but unless you can capture, dissect it, and, above all, sell it...it doesn't exist. I cannot be captured by any means you are aware of, and there is nothing to dissect, technically, so there is nothing to sell. Basically I can do whatever I want."

"Really? You don't think it would make some crazy waves or something?"

"Do you think we are bound by some pact to stick to the shadows? People would respond to me saying I was an entity from a different plain of existence the same way they would respond to you."

"But I believe you. If enough..."

"No one cares what one person...or even a few people believe. It's what the masses believe. For everyone else its 'here have another Prozac.' Trust me. I've done this a little while."

He watched her laugh realizing he was right.

"And the masses are easily led."

"Indeed." Damien grabbed a nacho.

"So why not try and take over the world or something?" She followed his lead on the nachos and started looking at the movie he'd picked.

Damien shrugged as he chewed thoughtfully. "My needs do not require world domination. We never stretch beyond needs. That is a purely human trait." He sought another chip, but stopped just before taking a bite. "Well, rarely do we stretch beyond our needs."

"So it's happened?" Her body tilted forward in interest and suddenly he didn't want to answer any more questions.

"The best and the worst of everything has happened before. What movie are we watching?"

"Leaving it to fate?" The way her lips curved just shy of a smile and those dark eyes flashed. Why the hell was she flirting with him?

"I suppose."

"You picked Star Trek, the new one, which happens to be a favorite of mine. Kind of have a thing for Chris Pine." She grinned.

Damien eyed the movie jacket and shifted his form, just to see what she would do. She started to stand to tend to the movie, caught a glimpse of him out of corner of her eye, and visibly jumped.

"Really?" She stammered a little breathless.

"Well you said you had a thing for him." He flashed that grin that seemed to catch her off guard.

"First. He has blue eyes, and second you just seem desperate now."

Damien nodded defeat and changed back to the blond haired, green eyed Calvin Klein model he preferred, stroking the goatee as he shook his head.

"You have officially wounded me. I think I'll just retreat to the corner of the couch and enjoy the movie." He was chuckling obviously unfazed by her unfortunate response.

She stood, moving the tray of nachos to the floor before heading to the little TV stand. When she returned it wasn't to her seat, but directly in front of him. The movie started behind her, but she was completely focused on him.

"What is it you want?" she asked, her chest rising and falling faster than she wanted he was sure.

Damien draped each arm across the back of the couch like wings, and sat there watching her with his head cocked to the side.

"I think I've been perfectly plain on that note." He answered slowly.

She moved forward, her knees parting to either of his and he forced himself not to flinch. As long as he did not touch her skin he was fine, but it did not matter. The kind of pain she inflicted as she was now went deeper than any he'd ever known; to his soul if he'd had one he guessed.

"No, you haven't been." She retorted in a soft breath, dropping down so her thighs rested on either side of his leaving her on her knees in front of him.

She was trembling and that first breath so close to him only made that more pronounced. The flush across her chest above the black top with the satin that tightened below her breasts added to just how delicious she looked at that moment. Stark naked need hit him almost as hard as that first punishing jolt he'd experienced the night he met her. He felt thin and too light, like he might disappear at any moment, and his cock hardened instantly beneath her.

Shit!

He was starving; his version of it anyway. If he couldn't get this girl to cave he would have to find another source of nourishment. That didn't mean he had to end their little tryst, but it wouldn't be nearly as sweet. He managed to continue to watch her with detached curiosity; the stiffness between her thighs the only indication she'd had any effect on him.