Damien Night Ch. 06

"Because of that singsong bullshit you do. Be happy. He was a god once, though way more fun than you." Damien clicked open the glass door and stepped out. "You're looking a little transparent, Aaron."

The fair haired man shook his head at Damien with the same look a father gives an upstart son.

"Aaron." Damien said absently while wrapping an oversized white towel around his narrow waist. "So plain. We are anything but..."

"Complicated." Aaron finished for him though not as sharply as he would have liked. Words were not as easy for him as they were for the being in front of him. "We are simple creatures, Damien. Most of us anyway. What have you done?" That last question held his entire purpose for being here.

"Why can't I keep you out of my house?" Damien snapped on his way to the mirror without bothering to look at the intruder. There were words in that ancient language he was one of the few to be intimate with burned into every entrance of his abode; words that thwarted anything, including fucking spiders, from coming in. Still there was someone in this place that shouldn't be. He wasn't much older than Damien but, for whatever reason, he had a better grasp of time. He was actually present for most of his centuries.

"Secrets not meant for you." Aaron answered with a half-smile, patiently waiting for the answer to his question.

Damien stood quietly in front of the granite vanity that spanned the wall across from the shower. It was just one sink set in a dark and light mosaic of browns and creams, and the wall wasn't that big, but it was beautiful. The clear shower stall behind him sat adjacent to a whirl pool tub. There was a toilet at the other end, but it would have dust on it if not for the cleaning crew. He turned back from the vanity, and just stared at the other man for a while.

"Nothing. Hence the frustration." He said finally and stalked out.

"Really." Aaron never had to speak loud. His voice carried easily...even from the couch that he now occupied downstairs. "That girl just did something I haven't seen in a long time."

"Oh?" Damien called down in a curious tone, though inside he'd gone almost as cold as the last time he'd seen Annabel.

"You would have enjoyed it. She made out with some pretty girl."

"And that is something you haven't seen in a while? You really need to get out more." He commented as he descended his stairs wondering when the unwanted visit was going to end.

"In the middle of a very public place with a girl that, until that moment, wouldn't have looked at another female without several zeroes involved. Only you can seduce like that."

Damien smiled to himself at Aaron's mention of his particular talents. He finished his trip down the stairs while the other demon talked, choosing white pinstriped pajama bottoms to lounge around in after he got rid of this irritation. He found himself level with Aaron's chilly eyes at the end of the final revelation. Those eyes did not fit his demeanor or his tastes. Of course the thing that Aaron craved had a tendency to cause its own fair share of devastation.

"She might have a few sprinkles of what they call 'supernatural' in her, but trust me I didn't put them there." Damien grinned.

"And you didn't bother to tell her that using them makes every super...natural," Aaron stumbled over that word, "creature in the vicinity aware of her?"

Well he did tell her there was no coming back from what she could do.

'Fuck it. Not my problem,'he lied to himself.

"I couldn't get what I wanted. Simple creatures, right?" He moved past the living room straight to the kitchen to hunt for cheese puffs only to run smack into Aaron.

"Simple creatures, Damien."

The tone was a warning and then he disappeared. He didn't slip through to their plane. Damien would have seen that. He was just gone. What the hell did the Eros-want-to-be think he was going to do anyway?

In a way they were brothers: two very extreme sides of the same spectrum. That was the key: extreme. He and Aaron were anything but simple. The depth of the emotions they fed on - the bonds that were born of them - added complications. Complications made anyone capable of doing something stupid.

The answer to the question of what Damien was going to do was definitely not 'nothing'. He knew himself well enough to know he wasn't going to just sit back and let the problem sort itself out, just like he knew he wasn't going to follow better judgment and let that little conquest go. Aaron, meddlesome creature that he was, didn't bother cuing him in on what exactly he was warning him about. That was akin to putting up neon arrows and a sign that said 'we'll have the most fun fucking up here'. The being that walked past his incantations without so much as a tingle was definitely up to something though.

Damien walked back into the pristine white living room, the black jeans and t-shirt he now wore standing out like an ink stain on lineless paper. She was like him: recklessly curious. This time was going to end her most likely, and the thought of that made his continued existence a little less interesting. Well...at the moment.

He opted for the elevator down from the high-rise apartment into the night. There was no reason to hurry considering he wasn't even sure exactly where he was going at the moment. Hunters had a tendency, especially newly curious ones, to prowl the places most familiar to them making the bookstore a good place to start.

Annabel meandered down Wertheimer, the initial high of discovering her little personal superpower wearing off. Now she was just embarrassed. What the hell was she doing kissing a girl anyway? Cars passed on the busy street beside her while she walked by businesses mostly shut down for the evening. There was an ample amount of light from strangers and streetlights, but the silent buildings painted a clearer picture: it was late. Her nerves pricked up; a different alarm worming its way under her skin. The air, warm and humid for a November night even in Houston, took on a chill in the random bursts sending dead leaves rattling against the stained concrete walkways.

Her wary eyes scanned the alleys between dimly lit buildings and back out to the populated areas irrationally sure that any second now she would be completely alone. It wasn't the first time she'd been strangely afraid, but even 10 minutes later, her pace quickening until she was dragging oxygen into her lungs, the feeling hadn't faded. In fact it was getting worse. It wasn't really something she was equipped to handle.

Annabel stopped and put her hands behind her head forcing herself to breath normally. A glance at a nearby street sign made her heart sink. In her haste she'd taken a wrong turn or something and was nowhere near her bus stop...or people. She suddenly wished more than anything that Damien would step out of the shadows, but he wasn't here.

The air had thickened, muffling sounds around her, and chilled to the point of making her shiver. Even the noise of the never ending flow of traffic had bailed on her. The only break in the silence was the buzz of florescent street lights above her that began to flicker. Annabel covered her mouth and nose to keep from screaming when the light at the far end of the block burst with a loud pop.

She backed away from the curb looking for an all-night tattoo joint or a bar. How the hell did she manage to end up on a street without a single fucking open business? Then something dark caught her eye.

It had the shape of a man, all 7 plus feet of it, with the back of his incredibly broad shoulders facing her. He was wrong, cut out of an old black and white movie and placed in a colored nighttime cityscape. It stood out against the deep hues of her world the way nails on a chalkboard stood out in dead silence; moving out of sync with everything around it. She looked for a place to hide hoping it didn't know she was there. Adrenaline shot through her veins leaving a caustic pain in its wake.

Her back connected with the brick wall behind her, and there was nothing but empty sidewalk to her left and right. The thing began to turn, the outline of his form blurring into the night as it moved. Annabel grabbed the pendent at her breast and closed her eyes, praying that whatever power it had was going to save her this time. When she opened her eyes it was to find out that some god was listening and decided to not only say 'no' but 'fuck you'.

There weren't cold eyes or glowing eyes or black eyes...there were no eyes...no face. Inside the bald head perched upon the creature's ample neck was the event horizon of a black hole whirling into a depthless oblivion. Annabel was sure things could not get worse and then the thing advanced on her. Her mind could not comprehend the picture before her and her body froze. She could not even scream.

Damien verified Annabel was not at the book store and then began wandering the streets, moving between the passages his world formed within hers. He knew her schedule and the places she should be. It was only a matter of time before he found her. The trouble was he wasn't sure if he was the only one looking for her now.

He made it to the Metro stop she should have been at given the time frame Aaron had left him with. This would all be so much easier if she wasn't wearing that damn necklace...most likely. It was possible he wouldn't be able to read her without the protection it formed around her, but he doubted it. At the moment she should be good. She was protected from anything but a random series of events. In other words she would have to do something off the wall in front of someone that would take notice. It wasn't likely given the sparseness of his kind. One other thing he'd failed to mention, or even consider for a while now, was that his wasn't the only kind that wandered around the mortal plane when it fancied. His wasn't the only world that butted up against this plane, and there were scarier things than that godforsaken piece of black glasslike material sitting in his apartment.

The wind was stirring strangely; kicking up a chill that didn't seem natural. Damien looked slowly around noting random strangers coming and going and the ghostly storefronts lit but unoccupied. He moved further up the dimly illuminated block to the intersection and stared down each road for a moment. The left and right yielded average looking evening city streets with the normal planar breaks Damien was used to, but staring directly ahead disoriented him. The space several yards beyond was void of any blurred realities or planebreaks. He shook his head and looked away, unaccustomed to such a singular way of looking at things.

Sucks to be you,he thought to himself as he turned in the opposite direction. Aaron might have tried to save whatever unlucky creature was caught in the trap beyond, but he was capable and meddlesome. For your average demon, Voids, named for the empty space between planes their presence left, meant certain oblivion.

He took a few steps away, his boots making muffled thumps on the sidewalk in the intermittent swoosh of traffic, when it occurred to him there was no trace of another like him in the area. Demons had their own signature, a dissonance unique to each felt through the spirit, but he felt nothing. Shaking his shaggy blond head he took another step forward convincing himself that the void must have already devoured his unknown brother.

The void would have moved on by now.

Damien turned back, that nagging sense of self-preservation making his current direction unthinkable. Voids had no care for the mortal plane, but Annabel wasn't exactly mortal. The moment she focused her thoughts on the abilities that made her something more than human she alerted every creature within miles to that fact. Somehow, it seemed, she'd managed to alert a Void.

"Jesus Christ." he said the word with no conviction the same way humans did these days. There was no one for him to pray to, and soon there would be no one for the beautiful Annabel. Damien was a simple creature and simple creatures simply didn't feel enough pull towards anything to risk their simple existence. Apparently even in his world not everything was what it seemed.

He was through the closestplanebreakin a flash, standing at the line where the world pushed back. He closed his eyes and stepped over.

"Annabel!"

She barely heard it above the erratic thumping of her heart. She saw nothing but approaching oblivion, visions of her body pulled apart into nothing filling her mind. There was no God or angels, there were no fairy tales, and there was no good or evil, only this soul shattering end...or worse. No sound came from her lips but something screamed, or some things. The sound came from the encroaching faceless nightmare in front of her, specifically from the swirling mass of empty black terror that sat where its face should have been. Above the roar that threatened to drown what little sanity she had left she heard the impossible.

"Fuck! Annabel, take that goddamn thing off before we are both ended!"

Damien.

He was here? It was not possible. She was already dead she was just waiting for reality to catch up to that fact in unimaginable ways.

"Annabel! Listen to me!"

Damien?

Oblivion edged closer.

She turned away, her vision lighting on a familiar form; eyes glowing green in the chaotic darkness.

The pendant.If she took it off maybe he could save her.

The screams grew louder.

"Annabel! Please!"

Lost, she reached up and ripped off the necklace in adrenaline fueled desperation. Some part of her wondered if she just sealed her fate. This thing might have been deterred by the sculpted piece of pewter, and now there was no stopping it.

Damien could barely see here; his eyes unable to adjust without layers of worlds making up his vision. He had no trouble making out the void bearing down on them and, coupled with that god awful sound, that bastard was no less disconcerting than the stories that circulated. That wasn't his focus though it should have been. He watched Annabel as well as he could, urging her to do as he said. He could just make out her pale hand reaching for the trinket, but there was no way to tell if she'd managed to remove it. Reaching before that occurred would be disastrous, not that this entire situation wasn't completely disastrous.

There was no need to wonder; however, the moment the circle round her neck broke the unexpected influx of fear and chaos, and something else, from her mind stunned him for a second. He shook it off and stooped to slide an arm behind her knees. He shoved hard, causing her to lose her balance, and quickly gathered her trembling body into his arms while carefully keeping his shoulder against the rough brick wall.

Damien turned one hundred and eighty degrees, pressing his other shoulder against the wall as a guide, and bolted in the direction he'd come from. The boundary of the bubble the juggernaut behind him created moved away from him. The speed at which it did this suddenly increased; something Damien was expecting. The big dumb creatures could actually move, but their primordial brains derived a twisted pleasure from playing with their food.

With Annabel's added weight he was swiftly losing ground, and the wall he used as a guide. He focused on the water trapped in the concrete beneath his feet. A dangerous prospect but, really, there was nothing left to lose. Speaking the name in that soundless tongue, he asked it to move. Damien's request was granted as the ground beneath them and trailing in all directions in a ten foot circle erupted. He managed to avoid the worst of it but the lumbering hulk behind him must have stumbled as, abruptly, the moving point the pair desperately needed to get too stopped only a few yards away. He hoped.

The creature's bizarre scream, like a thousand voices crying out in pain, reached a higher pitch in its frustration as he crossed the boundary of the void. Damien jumped through the firstplanebreakhe saw, and wound up back in his lair an unbelievable moment later.

They made it. The city was going to have a hell of a time figuring out why a section of Westheimer looked like someone had taken a jackhammer to it, but they made it. He looked down at the girl still in his arms.

"You've certainly got a way of making things around you remarkable."

Annabel's eyes were more white than black as he gently set her on her feet.

"What...wha...what the fuck was that?" she asked in a small shaky voice, her gaze darting around the room erratically.

"You're safe here, Annabel." He moved to take her hands. In response she jumped away from him, more instinctive than cognizant.

"Where...how...dear God." Her breath came to fast and she was going to pass out if she didn't get a hold of herself.

Damien moved faster this time, taking her hands forcibly to still her.

"Breathe girl. You're safe." His voice took on a commanding tone.

Safe? How the hell could she be safe and why the fuck wasn't he freaking out? The change of venue started to sink in. Things were brighter and her hands were warming, but she couldn't shake this and had no clue how to handle this.

"Safe?! How can we be safe with something like that out here? How do we not know about this? I don't care if humans don't notice you or whatever that thing tried to I don't know." Annabel was rambling, the words stringing together until they were almost indistinguishable. Suddenly she focused on Damien, black eyes flashing, trying to be angry, needing another feeling besides this helplessness and the way her heart raced in a vain attempt to get away from her. "Humans aren't stupid. Something like that couldn't hurt them without us figuring it out."

Damien's mouth opened and closed, thinking better of his first response.

"Voids don't eat humans."

"Eat?! So that's what it was going to do? Just like you. Fuck you! Fuck you all!" She tried to pull away, but he held fast.

"I'm not a void, Annabel. They are not a member of my kind. They are our great white sharks and this is dry land." He caught her eyes and held them, his voice even to her high pitched erratic tone.

Annabel stopped fighting, logic starting to creep back into her addled thought processes. That intoxicating scent of his had a little something to do with it too. She looked away, concentrating on her slowing breath and heartbeat. If she never had to feel that again it would be too soon.

Damien's words finally started settling in. A Void was what he called it. How could something that horrendous exist? But it didn't eat humans. She looked back to his eyes, stunning fiery emeralds watching her closely. As beautiful as the thing they'd barely escaped from was horrifying.

"Voids...don't eat humans?" She parroted his earlier statement back to him in a slow question.

The same thing she was thinking had crossed his mind as well when she managed to rip that necklace off her neck. Well, slightly after they accomplished getting away from vortex of death bastard back there. The other hunter must have worn a similar trinket shielding him completely. Mixed in with the chaos that was her mind at the moment her personal protection dropped was the same type of un-harmonic feeling he felt any time he happened to run into one of his own. It was muted, but there was no mistaking it. Someone managed to do something very interesting a very long time ago.

"No, they don't. It seems you are not completely human."

Annabel swallowed hard. It wasn't a dramatic discovery. It made sense, like your parents telling you you're adopted when they are not even the same race as you. Yeah. This was fine.