London Loves Ch. 12

"Umm... I guess it's kind of embarrassing too," he said warily. "I... er... I don't turn into anything fancy or scary like Jabez does. It's not even particularly useful. Do you still want me to do it?"

Xav nodded thoughtfully. Part of him wanted to say no, simply because he didn't want Rayne to do anything that was going to hurt him, but in this case a little physical pain might be better than the wound to Rayne's pride if Xavier backed off now. "I'd like to see it, yeah."

Rayne gave him a practically unreadable look. It was not exactly hostile but there was a level of grace under pressure there that would have been funny under most circumstances.

"Open the window," Rayne said atonally, rolling to the edge of the bed and sliding off onto the floor.

Xavier hopped down and went to the window at once, putting it on the latch but Rayne gestured to him to open it wider.

"Does this smell bad?" his lover asked.

"No but I get jittery in enclosed spaces once I've shifted," Rayne explained. "It makes me feel better if there's an escape route."

He crouched down on the floor as Xavier pushed the window wide, and closed his eyes. For a moment or so nothing happened and the younger man was about to make a wisecrack when he felt it, like something pulling at his chest from the inside. His knees turned weak. At the same time Rayne went down on both knees and made a little huffing noise, a small, frightened noise. He shuddered and his hands moved out to either side as if he was balancing on a wire.

"God! No..." Rayne said softly, a word that began as a human voice and ended in a croak like a branch snapping.

He seemed to fall, his dark hair flying, then whipping around his face in a wild wind that only he could feel. His body thrashed on the floor then seemed to snap in on itself like a cellophane wrapper thrown onto a fire. It happened so fast that Xavier opened his mouth to yell then closed it again in amazement.

He felt slightly nauseous but that was probably nothing compared to what Rayne was feeling.

On the bedroom floor in front of him, a mid-sized bird-like creature flapped and shrieked, struggling to get its wings and legs sorted out and get to its feet. It was black and white, with a long, black beak and tail and bright, green-rimmed ebony eyes. As Xavier made a move toward it, its wings thrashed again and it found its orientation and took off, hurtling across the room, practically bouncing off the ceiling in its haste to get to the sky. It came to rest on top of the wardrobe where it chattered anxiously and settled its wings.

A fierce little magpie, with big green eyes.

Xavier stared up at it and slowly his initial shock turned to delighted wonder.

"Wow!" he breathed, keeping his tone soft and gentle so he didn't startled the bird.

The bright-eyed magpie looked down at him quizzically and turned its head nearly on one side. Xavier grinned, still feeling a bit tingly along his skin, though he wasn't sure if it was from the residual power that the change expended or from the novelty. He stayed still for a moment, and then lifted his hand slowly.

"Can you come closer, please?" he asked and the bird flipped his wings and turned his head again, as if debating. He ignored Xav's request, instead lifting a wing and preening his feathers. Xav couldn't help chuckling. "Contrary even in this form, huh? C'mon... I just want to see your pretty feathers closer," he cajoled.

The magpie looked at him again, fluffed up for a moment as if impatient and then spread his wings, gliding down to Xav's upraised hand. Sharp nails bit into his skin a little, but Xavier didn't care. He was utterly enchanted, and it showed in his expression as he examined the beautiful glossy black feathers, sharp little beak, and intensely bright eyes.

"You look amazing!" he said, again keeping his voice pitched soft despite his enthusiasm.

The little bird stared back at him with some impertinence then stretched out its neck and quick as a flash pecked his nose. It's wings flashed and it was off, darting across the bedroom towards the window ledge and chattering noisily as it went. The chatter amused Xav because it sounded remarkably like bitching. He followed over to the window, still moving slowly. Even though he knew it was Rayne in there somewhere the little creature still seemed... birdlike; kind of nervous and twitchy.

Only now did he think to wonder about his own reaction during the transformation. It had felt weird and his stomach was still a little queasy, and why was it that he'd felt anything at all? He hadn't expected that, but it must be something to do with the blood bond they shared.

His magpie lover hopped across the window ledge, stopping to peck at a little jewelled horse icon that sat on the sill. It hopped onto the horse's crest and tapped at a shiny stone in one of its eye sockets, prising at it with its beak, then, as Xavier drew closer, it flapped its wings and hopped across to the hanging latch of the window. Unsteadily it perched there, wings still spread, its crest feathers silvered by the moonlight outside.

Its head tilted again and it looked up at the moon and made a little "Yak!" noise, clicking its beak excitedly. Then its piebald wings spread wide and it jumped and was gone, fluttering into the darkness and chattering noisily as it went.

Xav's heart just about stopped and he leaned out the window quickly.

"Rayne!" he called out, but the magpie was already out of sight. "Shit!" he swore heatedly, worried now. Not that Rayne couldn't take care of himself, but still... it was hard for him not to be protective.

As he called out again into the gathering gloom there was a little tap at the door. Dominic put his head in without waiting for a response. He was wrapped in the dressing gown he had lent Rayne earlier and looked paler than normal, though perhaps that was unsurprising.

"Is everything okay?" he asked, quickly noting Xavier and the open window and the lack of recalcitrant vampire and putting the figures together with some alacrity.

"He flew out the window!" Xavier said, clearly alarmed. He bit his bottom lip, looking for all the world like an anxious child that had just let the family pet escape to parts unknown. "I goaded him into shifting and he did and then he took off and what if he gets stuck like that? It'd be all my fault!"

Dominic's lips framed the words in silence as if he was testing their veracity for himself.

"He flew out the window?" he repeated at last, aloud and then the final part of what Xav had been trying to tell him seemed to sink in. "He took a bird form for you? What on earth did you promise him to make him do that?"

Lord Warren had come over to the open window now and peered out with a grimace into the darkness. He murmured; "Well... vampires can see in the dark so I suppose he should be okay."

Xavier didn't seem any less anxious and hovered by the open window. "He's a bird, Dom... What if a cat gets him? What if he forgets who he is and doesn't come back?"

"Darling, he's not a bird, he's a vampire," Dominic said in a very calm tone that was at complete odds with the look in his eyes as he scanned the darkening emptiness beyond the window. "If something hurts him his body will try to change back. They have a kind of default setting, its what stops them ageing or changing. He'd have to be completely cut in two for something to kill him."

He seemed to sense that this logic was not helping. The flaws in it were a little bit too glaring. Small birds being quite easy to damage, for a start. There were a lot of reasons why most birds didn't fly at night, all of them good, practical ones. Xavier visibly paled, not at all reassured.

"Shit... I should have never asked him to shift," he said miserably. There was nothing he could do about it now though. He sunk down on the low padded bench under the window, determined to wait there for Rayne until he decided to come back.

Dominic sat across from him and patted his hand.

"That's the one low point of being with a Shifter," he sighed. "There's this whole other side of them that you just can't share. A life they live that you can't influence no matter how much you might want to try. When Gabriel shifts he is a wolf. And I can't make him sit, or stay, or do anything really. Just worry that he'll get himself into a fight, or get shot or a myriad other things. Think yourself lucky, at least Rayne would rather not do it, and he doesn't have to."

Xavier couldn't think of himself as lucky at that moment no matter what Dominic said, but he wasn't rude enough to say so when it was obvious that Dominic did have more to worry about. They sat together for several long minutes in silence and finally Dominic sighed. "He might be gone for a while Xavier, there is no point sitting up waiting."

He said it reasonably and reached to close the window.

"No, leave it open, Dom. Please?"

"The temperature has already dropped with the sun, Darling. It won't do you any good to sit here freezing."

Xav got up and pulled the duvet off the bed, pulling it around his shoulders before he stubbornly sat back down by the window. Dominic just shook his head and sighed, recognising that stubborn streak because he had seen it all too often in Rayne. He stood up and kissed the top of Xavier's head.

"Alright. If it makes you feel better go ahead and shiver," he said mildly, and left Xav to his vigil.

Xavier pulled his feet up beside him and got as comfortable as he could. He knew he was being ridiculous. Rayne would probably shift back somewhere and stroll through the door in a few hours. Knowing it was ridiculous didn't make any difference though, he sat there and waited faithfully, all the while torturing himself with guilt and worry.

An hour passed, and then another, and even cold and cramped Xavier's head began to nod a bit. Sleep tugged at him and he put his head down on the sill, intending just to rest his eyes for a moment.

The shift always disoriented Rayne at first. It was as if his brain capacity was somehow condensed along with his body and it took him a little while to start thinking coherently again once his body had remembered how to be a bird. The first time he attempted it Jabez had laughed for days. And his Sire never laughed out loud.

Rayne had been so confused and enervated by that first shift that he could not even stand up and just lay on the ground fluttering in a rather pathetic fashion until his Sire took pity on him and entered him to force a shift back to his own form.

Now he was at least able to manage the transformations on his own, but it was horrible and he hated doing it. He felt too uncomfortable out of his own skin, and terribly vulnerable as well. In view of which he was currently perched on the branch of a tree, wondering what in hell had persuaded him that it was a sound idea to jump out of the window. Once he was airborne however, a new set of instincts took over.

The one good thing about the shift was flying. It amazed him every time that he was even able to do it without making a complete idiot of himself. And the feel of the air currents sliding through his flight feathers was such a rush. Of course his current viewpoint was much simpler than all that; his impulses restricted to the very basics of thought; Up, Down, Food, Predators. not even the words, just a sense of what these things were. It was all so very primitive that when he shifted back he found it hard to talk. But the images in his mind were astounding in their clarity and the weight of emotion they left him with. It was like being on drugs, but so very much better.

Which was another good reason not to do it really.

Rayne knew he was an addict, there was no getting away from it. Even though he could not ingest narcotics any more he still felt the craving from time to time. But it did not stop with drugs. He was addicted to cigarettes and rough sex, and the sensation of taking to the air. Even though he hated transformation he loved the feeling of flying, it just felt so good. One day, he sometimes thought, he would just take to the air and keep on flying and flying, higher and higher and further out until his heart burst and he could not physically go on.

He had no idea what would happen then. Jabez believed that, like the weres, if he was fatally injured, his body would shift back to human form instinctively. Rayne was not so sure. The shift back was hard and it took a lot of life force. Oddly enough, it was easier for a larger creature to shift back to human form because the animal's life energies were bigger than the human energies. He had not yet mustered the strength to shift to any form larger than a medium sized crow though and could not imagine how much blood he would need to drink to become an eagle.

His wings carried him out over the woods, circling in the darkness, unafraid of the night. Bats dodged deftly around him and once he flinched as a larger darker shadow swooped over him, a mature barn owl, curious but not hungry enough to attack him.

The house was mostly in darkness beneath him when he came back in towards it at last, with no idea of how long he had been on the wing. His small body longed for rest though and he fluttered down onto the cross beam of a section of garden trellis, hung with climbing roses and wisteria. As he sat there, tilting his head, listening to the night sounds of bugs and rodents and the things that eat them, a sound echoed through the woods that made him shiver, even in bird form.

The long, low, ululating howl of a hunting wolf.

There was a sickening feeling in the pit of Xavier's stomach as he dropped through the air in free fall...and then he was suddenly jerked to a stop, his arms tied above his head as he hung in a dark room that smelled slightly oily, and over the top of that the sweetish smell of heroin being cooked. He blinked rapidly, trying to see into the darkness. A soft sound drew his attention, and a low red glow caught his eye as someone drew on the end of a cigarette and made it flare brighter for a moment. He could not see the face behind that red glow but he was instantly afraid.

"Let me go..." he demanded, only his voice came out a hoarse broken whisper.

The hot end of the cigarette came a little closer and the man smoking it took it from between his lips and blew a streamer of smoke into his face. He lifted his hand toward Xav, black shadow on black shadow, and Xavier was so frightened of his touch that there was an immediate and insistent urge to release his bladder. He struggled against the rope holding him and small whimpers came from his throat like a scared animal. After a moment the man withdrew his hand and Xavier stilled. Somewhere in the dark he heard muffled sobs and somehow knew they belonged to Clint. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of a zipper, and rough hands were tugging at his own pants.

"No... no, don't... please... stop..."

Pain seared into Xavier and he jerked in his sleep, a terrified and pain filled scream on his lips. His waking was so violent he fell off the window seat onto the floor, frantically clawing off the duvet he was tangled in.

"Xavier? Are you alright?"

Dominic was suddenly above him but Xavier was still half in and half out of the nightmare and he couldn't speak, the only thing coming out of him were little whimpers of fear.

"Shhh..." Lord Warren whispered. "It's just a dream, Xavier. Come on, let's get you into bed, it's late. I'll leave the window open so he can fly back in if he wants to but you need to get some proper sleep."

He hesitated slightly as he steered the still semi-coherent young man back towards the bed and got him lying down. "Do you want me to stay with you until he gets back? Sometimes it's more... comfortable. I know, I hate sleeping alone."

Xavier knew then that Gabriel was probably on the prowl somewhere out in the woods and was not sure if that was more or less comforting a thought. He just nodded his head though to let Dominic know it was okay for him to stay. He was not sure anything that came out of his mouth at the moment would make any sense. Dom arranged the covers on the bed and slid in next to him.

"Bright Lady, you're ice cold!" Dominic said, pulling the duvet up more firmly around his young friend.

Xavier still hadn't spoken. He felt exhausted, but he didn't think sleep was going to come to him again anytime soon. He lay there in the darkened room staring up at the ceiling for a long time, thinking.

He'd had nightmares before, some really horrible ones, but none had ever been like these. His night terrors had always felt... dreamlike. Almost as if he knew he was dreaming while he was having them. These felt so real, like he was actually there. That was another thing. Usually if he had a dream, especially a bad one, it was something from his past, something he remembered. These were mixed up bits of things that had happened, and things that hadn't happened. More than that, there was a common thread that linked them and that bothered him the most; the faceless man that scared the shit out of him, the drugs, and Clinton.

"Dom?" he whispered, barely audible just in case Dominic was sleeping.

"Mm?" came a sleepy reply.

"I keep having these nightmares... ever since we got to London. They're all a little different, but the same guy is in them. I don't know who he is, but..." Xav trailed off. Now that he'd said it out loud it sounded stupid, like he was just being a scared kid. "Never mind," he muttered softly.

Dominic's arms came around him, but gently now; a quiet, fraternal cuddling that was meant to reassure.

"It could just be insecurity manifesting itself through your dreams," he murmured softly. "You don't see his face, this man?"

Xavier shook his head miserably.

"Well, it's fairly safe to assume that you're not dreaming about someone from your past," Lord Warren said thoughtfully. "Am I to take it that you feel that you're in danger from him? Or does he actually harm you?"

Xavier licked his lips, feeling nervous for some reason. Then he seemed to come to some kind of internal decision and started to tell Dom about the vague dreams he'd been having and the clearer ones he remembered. The one where Clint had warned him someone was coming for him and he'd been afraid even though he couldn't see the man's face, and he'd given Xav a vial. And then running down the same alley he'd been attacked in, only he was running from this man, who grabbed him and slammed him down on the pavement. He'd woken up then but not before he'd seen the syringe in the man's hand. And then there was the one where he'd seen Gabriel shift and how the setting had morphed into the movie theatre where Clinton and his friends hung out, and the man were there too and again there was a needle and syringe on the table waiting. And now finally this last one with the cigarette in the darkness... and the smell of heroin in the air.

All of the dreams had this man whom he was very afraid of in them, and all of them had involved heroin. Even in this last one, he'd smelled it even if he hadn't seen it.

"I don't know why I'm dreaming about this shit," Xavier said unhappily.

Dominic was a long, warm presence against his back, peaceful and slightly comforting as he murmured; "Are you afraid of being tempted back into that lifestyle?"

Tellingly, he did not ask about any of Xavier's previous habits, or ask the usual hysterical questions such as 'are you clean?' Dominic took the confession in his stride, like any priest worth his salt.

"Always, Dom." Xavier said so softly it was almost a whisper.. "Always. I've been afraid of backsliding since I stopped. I don't know why I'd be dreaming about it now though. I haven't been thinking about it... I haven't been tempted to go looking." He sighed and rubbed a tired hand over his face. "It's probably nothing, Dom. It's just dreams, it don't mean anything."