Nadya/Nadia Ch. 04

As Nadya slept Nadia pondered everything she'd learned watching her with Elijah. It would be so easy to take over now. As if Elijah could sense her, his body tensed up. She didn't want to play with him right now and retreated slightly. Elijah relaxed. Curious, she pushed forward again, a little further this time, and he went rigid. So, he could sense her. She retreated ever so slowly until he relaxed, though not as much as he had before. He was wary of her and what she could do. Good. He should be. She carefully marked how close to the surface she could be and still leave him unaware of her.

Like Nadya, she'd been able to sense Elijah's thoughts and understood he wanted to help, actually thought he was helping. That was fine, but she had not forgiven him for threatening to cage her, or trying to use compulsions on her. Granted, his compulsions hadn't worked, but that was hardly the point. He deserved a little payback for those violations against her. Maybe more than a little. She'd stop her revenge before she hurt him too badly. Probably. Well, maybe. But for now, she was content to let him wonder when she was coming for him. She had other things to think about.

She'd been furious with Nadya for letting Elijah control her again. The Weak One hadn't even been able to do something so simple as to keep her eyes open while he'd moved them from one prison to another, costing her the chance to see how he locked them in. Nadia had screamed at Nadya to do what she said, not him, but it hadn't done any good. She hadn't been able to get Nadya to do anything until Elijah had left the room, but by then it was too late and they'd been trapped again.

She'd listened to everything Elijah had said about Mordecai. She'd heard the truth in his words and in Nadya's denials. That was confusing, how could both of them be telling the truth? She'd known of Mordecai since he came into Nadya's life a few years ago, but he didn't interest her. She'd never liked him and hadn't understood why Nadya did, so she hadn't paid him much attention, and she'd never tried to interact with him. She'd searched Nadya's memories, focusing specifically on Mordecai.

As she'd searched, she'd watched as Elijah had manipulated the magic he stole from Nadya to heal the wounds on his back. She learned how he used it to heal and how he stole the magic he used to do it.

She'd found memories of Mordecai, but they hadn't felt right. She'd spent a lot of time watching Nadya's memories, and these were too shallow. She'd delved deeper, and something dark had lashed out at her, trying to chase her away from the memories she wanted to see. She'd felt a jolt as she realized that Mordecai, at least these memories of him, wasn't real, they were just a trick, an elaborate illusion he'd set up in Nadya's mind. She lashed out at the darkness surrounding the fake memories, but there were a lot of them, and the darkness was relentless in its attack on her. The dark tendrils had morphed into Mordecai's snarling face when she'd heard Nadya finally give in to Elijah, and then Mordecai had disappeared.

She'd watched as Elijah had compelled Nadya to heal herself, and learned how his compulsions worked. But it wasn't so much learning, she'd come to realize, as it was remembering. These were things she already knew how to do and had forgotten.

That realization had just reminded her of how powerless she was. She'd wanted to scream with frustration. If she could just get that damned door open she knew she would never feel this helpless again. She beat against the door as hard as she could, but couldn't remove so much as a splinter. She turned her back to the door and slid to the floor, hopelessness washing over her.

She'd been distracted from her despondency when she'd felt the first stirrings of fury from Nadya. The Weak One didn't feel emotions like that. She was always so submissive, never having an opinion of her own, always bending to what others thought she should do and feel, never thinking for herself.

Elijah's compulsion for Nadya to heal herself had been very general, and the magic had not only healed her body, but recognized what Mordecai had done as an injury and gone on to heal her mind, too. Nadya felt fury and had formed a small whirlwind that was trying to attack the false memories, but she wasn't used to fighting and it was causing her pain.

Nadia could get behind fury. She sent her own whirlwind to join Nadya's, and once they had joined together they'd found a deeper betrayal. A deep, dark place full of compulsions Mordecai had placed on Nadya — what she could eat, what she could wear, who she could talk to, where she could go, how she would respond when he gave her orders or did things to her, how she would like it and obey, how she would forget what he did to her and think she loved him.

While Nadya typical emotions were always subdued, Nadia was her complete opposite and she only felt extreme emotions. She'd exalted in the chaos created by the inferno and ripping out entire swaths of memories and compulsions, but while Nadya just wanted all the compulsions and the memories of the man, no, the vampire, who had placed them on her to go away and tossed everything into the inferno they had created together to burn them, Nadia did not think that such a wise thing to forget. It was better to know what the monsters were capable of, so she had let Nadya purge them from her own mind, but kept them for herself.

She'd felt Nadya's elation that her mind was her own, and the power of the freedom that came with it. Nadia had drawn back then, not wanting to share in Nadya's new happiness, suddenly sure that freeing Nadya's mind from Mordecai had made her less of the Weak One and would only result in a more secure prison for herself. Fury and chaos were fun, but perhaps not the best plans.

Nadia faced the door that vexed her. Just as she was giving into despair once more, she'd felt the moment when Nadya was forced to accept that magic was real, that she was real, and the door that separated her from her magic had splintered a little more, but not from her side this time. This time, something had shattered part of the door from the other side.

*****

Elijah watched Nadya sleep. She hadn't so much as twitched since she'd fallen asleep instantly and so deeply it was more like a coma. He wasn't worried though. Her silvery aura spun in the air around them, tendrils of it reaching out to touch him as if she was reassuring herself he hadn't left her. With her so far under he was bracing himself for Nadia to make an appearance. He thought he felt her near, and he'd seen a darker silver tendril mix with Nadya's a few times, but Nadia had never appeared.

While Nadya was ready to start trusting him now, he did not at all trust that Nadia wouldn't slit his throat while he slept.

He'd handled her clumsily, and he was at a loss for what to do about it now. He'd never had to deal with the consequences of his actions before. He was with a woman for an hour or two, usually, a single night at most. They wrote him off as a dream that slowly faded, in the rare cases they remembered him at all after they'd gone their separate ways. Sometimes he'd even taken the dream away by compelling them to forget him completely. But his compulsions didn't work on Nadia, so it wasn't going to be as easy as compelling her to forget what he'd done to start over, and she seemed the type to hold a grudge.

Although she had practically no control over her magic, she was already easily the strongest witch he'd ever met in terms of sheer power. He could taste it when he fed on her, and knowing she was plotting against him made him nervous.

It had only been a few hours since she'd laughed at his attempt to use compulsion her, told him to fuck himself and left. He had absolutely no doubts she'd already begun planning her revenge and was simply biding her time. He'd thought she would be too exhausted from using all the energy she'd summoned when she'd destroyed his bedroom to do anything this soon, but she'd been a presence in whatever had happened in the bathroom, and wielded a huge amount of energy then.

Her darker silvery aura had combined with Nadya's lighter one while they had done... something. That had been powerful enough, but at one point Nadia's aura had grown, not so much in size as it had in intensity, until it became almost solid instead of something ethereal. If she could recover that much energy that fast once, there was no reason to suspect she couldn't do it again.

He still had no idea what had happened in the bathroom when he'd compelled Nadya to heal herself. She had done it, her skin left without a single discoloration or imperfection on it. His cock stirred as he thought about the things he wanted to do to her, and the ways he wanted to do them, to mark up all that pristine skin again. Except for her neck. He knew what her response to bites on her neck meant, even if she didn't fully understand it yet. She might have an idea, she'd flinched when he'd started to say Mordecai's name, but now that she was beginning to trust him he wouldn't use anything Mordecai had done to her against her again.

With an effort he forced his thoughts back to what had happened in the bathroom. After healing her body, the magic had done something else. What that was, he didn't know. Nadya and Nadia had shifted back and forth so rapidly in his arms, and so many times he'd lost count of the number of times they'd changed.

Both of their auras had surrounded their body while some sort of battle was waged in their mind. At first he'd thought they were fighting each other, that only one of them would be coming back to him in the end, and he realized he did want them to come back to him - both of them.

His growing attachment to them was worrisome. He shouldn't have kept them here. He should have taken them to someone else like he was supposed to, and just visited them nightly so they thought he was a dream until the block was gone. But he'd been drawn to them, intrigued by two witches in one body, and let himself indulge. Truthfully, he hadn't thought draining a magical block would take so long, and now that he'd seen what Nadia could do, he didn't think anyone else was set up to handle someone with her power.

His desire to be with them would not end well for him, and not just because Nadia might kill him. He attributed it to the fact that no other woman he'd met had ever remembered him for as long as Nadya and Nadia had so far. Granted, it was because they were stuck in this house with him until they figured out how to leave, but it was a novel experience to be remembered — to have a conversation days ago and have her remember what he said, to see recognition in her eyes when he approached her, even if her eyes were also often full of mistrust and wariness, to know she knew the name of his favorite book, or to have her tease him because she knew he found eating eggs disgusting and had never had a cupcake.

Eventually, though, Nadya and Nadia would leave this place, and he would not. They would forget him, and even if he met them again someday they wouldn't remember him in spite of all the time and intimacies they'd shared. Or, more accurately, that he'd taken. He would be a stranger to them, always just another person they were meeting for the first time, and as soon as he was gone, they'd forget him again.

All the same, as nervous as she made him, he'd been relieved when Nadya had turned to look at him when it was over, and he saw Nadia in her eyes too. It was just for a moment, but long enough for him to know she was still in there.

As his thoughts came back to Nadia he again wondered what he should do. What he could do. And that was the question — what could he do? He was barely able to drain away enough of her magic to stop her from seriously injuring them in his bedroom, and that was only because she wasn't in control. If she got control and focused her rage on him, he doubted he could do anything to stop her, but did not doubt she could kill him.

What was she?

He'd known witches before, powerful ones, but none that had silver eyes. He'd have to hope Nadia didn't kill him before the woman on the phone arrived. That's how he thought of her. They'd worked together many times before, but he'd never seen her in person, and she'd never told him her name. She called him, told him what to do, and he did it. He couldn't even call her, she always called him. He thought she must be a witch, some sort of seer. She always seemed to know when to contact him, and she always, until Nadya and Nadia, knew exactly what needed to be done. The fact that for the first time in their long partnership she was actually coming to him because of Nadia's silver eyes made him more than a little nervous.

He decided he wasn't going to wait until the woman on the phone arrived. He had no idea where she was coming from or how long it would take her to get to him. He, Nadya, and Nadia needed answers sooner rather than later. Tomorrow he would start looking for them.

*****

Elijah watched in amazement as Nadya finished devouring her second full plate of food, got up to put her dishes in the sink, and went to the freezer. She jerked the door open and rummaged through the contents, letting out a whoop of triumph as she pulled out a pint of ice cream. She opened drawers until she found a spoon and re-seated herself at the table across from him. She removed the lid and dug into the ice cream, her eyes covetous as she brought a spoonful of the treat to her mouth. When the ice cream touched her tongue her eyes fluttered shut and she let out a moan that made Elijah shift in his chair and feel utterly inferior. None of the moans he'd evoked from her, even at the height of her pleasure, had sounded like that — the sound she made was one of a long time yearning need finally fulfilled.

When he'd gone through her apartment there had been hardly any food in it, and she'd eaten sparingly in her time with him. No matter what he'd offered her she'd limited herself to picking at salads and fruit, and when he had badgered her into eating something more, limited herself to only a few carefully portioned bites. He still didn't know what had happened last night, but he'd felt the massive surges of magic she'd used last night. He wasn't surprised that she needed to eat, especially since she wasn't used to using magic, but he was surprised at how much she actually could eat.

He'd tried to speak with her a few times since he'd brought her to the kitchen. When she'd awoke, he'd offered her what she normally had for breakfast — sliced fruit and a glass of skim milk. She'd snorted in derision and demanded he take her to the food. He had, and once she'd started eating she'd either totally ignored him, or held up a hand flat in the air, clearly not wanting to be interrupted while she feasted on everything she could find.

She hadn't limited herself to breakfast foods. She'd started with a waffle drowned in syrup, bacon, eggs, potatoes, and then while she waited for the water to boil so she could cook ravioli she'd snacked on muffins, cinnamon rolls, chips, and cookies. She washed everything down with sips of orange juice, apple juice, iced tea, a beer, hot tea, lemonade, coffee, and a soda.

When she finished the pint of ice cream she pushed her chair back from the table and slumped in it, finally deigning to look at him. "I have missed food, but I think I'm going into a food coma now."

"That chair is no place for a food coma," Elijah said, scooping her out of it. He carried her into a cozy room next to the kitchen and lowered her onto a couch, taking a seat next to her. Nadya sprawled against the pillows, cradling her very full stomach.

"Why haven't you been eating?"

"I couldn't."

"Why —"

"No," Nadya interrupted him, wanting to direct their conversation herself. She wasn't ready to talk about what the whirlwinds had done last night, or her embarrassing plea for him not to leave her, ever. She remembered saying those words to him last night. She'd felt scared, confused and set adrift alone in a world she had no understanding of. After having years of her life revealed as a hoax, and now with gaping holes in her memories, she had wanted to hang on to the only person in her world that felt real and safe to her.

But after a restful, dreamless sleep, and in the light of a new day, she came to realize she had just rid herself of someone that had been manipulating her for years, and while Elijah seemed nice, Mordecai had seemed nice too, and Elijah had proven he was capable of doing the same sorts of things to her that Mordecai had. She'd already fallen into that trap once and barely escaped. She didn't know if she could have escaped at all if that second whirlwind hadn't appeared and helped her.

Plus, there was the whole kidnapping and keeping her prisoner thing. And forcing pleasure on her. She had no way to be sure of how much of her not wanting Elijah's attentions before was actually her not wanting him and how much was the result of a compulsion placed on her. She'd kissed him last night, of her own volition. She'd just wanted to see if she could do it, if she was able to consciously make the choice to kiss him and act on it. She had — and not only had she liked it, a lot, she'd wanted more. But enjoying one kiss with him was a far cry from actually wanting him to stay with her forever. Why had she said that out loud?

She hoped maybe he hadn't heard her. She'd heard him murmur something to her after she'd said the words she wished she could take back now, but hadn't heard his words. Maybe he hadn't heard her mumbled plea either. He hadn't said anything about it this morning. If he had heard her, maybe he wanted to pretend she hadn't said those words just as much as she did. Other than touching her to move her around the house he'd been keeping his distance Maybe he had heard her and was avoiding her as much as he could now? That would work, too.

"I don't want to talk about that right now," Nadya said. "But I will admit there are things in the world that I can't explain and don't know about. You say I can't leave here because it's not safe for me out there. So tell me about the monsters. What are they?"

"The monsters are not food coma conversation."

"Is this a ploy to keep me here? Tell me I'm not safe anywhere but here because of the big, bad monsters and then you refuse to tell me about them?"

"No, it's just that the monsters conversation is one you need to be alert and aware for, not one that should happen when you're drowsy or right before you go to sleep. But there is something else you can work on that will help keep you safe after you leave here."

After she leaves here? That sounded like he expected her to go and wasn't planning on coming with her. Maybe he hadn't heard what she'd said after all. She felt relieved they weren't going to have to have an awkward conversation about that.

"What can I work on?"

"Can you still see your aura?" He would be surprised if she couldn't. It had been shining brightly ever since last night.

Nadya smiled and ran her hand through the silvery glow that surrounded her. Tendrils wrapped themselves around her fingertips and made shiny designs in the air as they followed her hand. "Yes. How could I have never seen this before? It's ..."

"Magical?"

"Yes."

"You have to make that go away."

"What?" Nadya sat up abruptly. "Why?"

"Because it's magical. If you let your aura spill out all over the place like that you may as well ring a dinner bell. You will be a beacon for every kind of predator."

"But —"

"No buts. It's a sign that says the all you can eat buffet is open. You have to learn to keep it under control any time you are in a place that's not protected or not with someone that can shield you. Try to contain it by pulling it back into yourself. The magic will still be there, just not visible to everyone."