Night 53: Main Hallway 2-West

[neuepolitik]

[From here.]Well... here he was. Ludwig's flashlight played along the empty hallway, and for the first time, he truly felt like he was alone in this place. Up on the second floor, he couldn't even hear the constant hum of activity and movement on the lower floor. In a way, it made sense, given how much distance he'd put between them. But on the

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[saviored]

When she leaned over him, her balance just that little bit off center, that was when he struck: fast, not a single stuttered pause. His fingers snaked around her wrist in a bruising grip; he yanked, not even waiting for her to finish hitting the ground before he rolled on top of her with a low snarl, pinning her down with his full weight. He ignored the jagged burning in his leg, the way his own blood dripped down his thigh.

He latched onto the nearest open wound, just inches below her inner wrist. His other arm was against her throat, enough to cut off some air while holding her down. His teeth pierced her skin with the quick ease of over a century of practice-vein, not artery. Nobody wanted blood spurting everywhere. Too messy. Fuck, it'd been too long since he'd done this. Purely selfish, of course; the Council was a real bitch to keep off the vampire trail. But at the moment, the Council was about as relevant as Lindsey Lohan.

He didn't know why he hadn't just done this sooner, days earlier, why he'd hesitated-

Whatever. Bygones. As if it mattered now when her blood was sliding down his throat, its flow careful and controlled, the taste of it satisfyingly smooth. Mm. "It'd been too long" was the understatement of eternity.

And sure, he knew what someone else might be thinking, all those judgey people out there; it didn't take a psychic: she had technically saved his life. For...whatever reason. Maybe because he looked like her dead friend, maybe for the sake of baby kangaroos. But so what? That wasn't his problem. It meant nothing to him. He felt more himself than he had in the past few days. He wasn't meant to care, to feel like saving people; he wasn't Stefan or Elena or like any of them, and he wasn't a nice person. How many times had he reminded Stefan of that?

Obviously not as much as he should've been reminding himself.

[savagesolitude]

She had never imagined anything like this.

The attack wasn't entirely a shock. Claire had fast learned that almost anything and anyone could try to gut you at the drop of a hat, no matter how benign a face was on it. It was a fact of life. That wasn't to say she was prepared for him to yank her under and roll on top. All it meant was that Claire spent less time stunned like an animal in headlights and more time trying to shove him off.

What threw her off, however, was when he turned all his attention to the scratch. Claire choked as the arm pressed against her throat, pushing futilely at the anchor-like weight there until she felt the grip tighten on her other arm. And then teeth.

Teeth.

Wide and bulging, her eyes rolled down to face what Damon was doing to her there. His face had changed. It was hard to see with the flashlight angled oddly on the floor, but the shadows looked wrong. And their was something in his eyes as his lips connected with her skin. Sucking on her.

No. Sucking on the wound. He was swallowing her blood.

A helpless gasp crept out of Claire. She couldn't describe it. She could feel him sucking the blood out of her like a straw in a smoothie. Her head seemed to fill with air. It was like standing too suddenly and feeling the colour wash from your face, but that didn't quite cover it. Draining out from the arm.

The word came to her with all the suddenness of a bomb from the sky. Vampire.

She hadn't spent her teenage years in dark makeup for nothing. While so many other things had drifted out of her mind after the years on the island, vampire lore had stayed. You didn't dedicate your life to something for ages just to forget it later. She had drowned herself in the books. Anne Rice, the original Dracula, cheap teen horror romances from the library down the street. She had been fascinated with the supernatural and the mystic, and that knowledge stayed with her even when the plane crash turned it obsolete.

But that did nothing to prepare her for the reality.

This had to be something else. It just was not possible. Not with Boone's face and having it feeding on her right in front of her eyes. He was - he was some sort of freak, there was no possible way.

It was getting so hard to...Claire was trying to focus but she was getting so tired...

Claire gasped again and stopped trying to move the arm on her throat. That wasn't working. Instead her fingers slithered into the bag at her side, creeping into the pocket on the side and feeling for the smooth handle.

She struck quickly. The knife flashed in the light as it descended towards the arm on her neck. If she got it into the bicep then he would lose use of it, and from there she could get at the face. She had to stop him before the dizziness spread. Before he sucked her dry.

[saviored]

You know how as a vampire, there was this switch and sometimes it'd flip? Yeah. It'd flipped. Nothing like starving for three days and a warm body to accomplish that.

He drew harder on her blood, not giving a damn about anyone who might walk by. It was dark and if any idiots took it upon themselves to investigate closer, he'd kill them, too. Each ticking second registered with slow, steady clarity. Seconds were all it took to drain someone dry; he could probably have timed it down to the millisecond from experience alone if he'd ever been bothered to do something like that.

He bet his brother had.

Her heart was just beginning to slow-slight, barely noticeable; she'd be dizzy. He could feel her struggling beneath him, trying to pry him off. Points for giving it her all, but really now. He paid no attention-until her useless hold on him disappeared. His body tensed. Should've been enough warning for him to snap her wrist before she even blinked, but that was then, this was now: he only avoided getting a blade buried in his arm to the hilt. Cleaner cut than the claws. Just as deep.

He reached to grab her wrist with the knife. If he could pin her back down, he was going for her neck. Finish her off because this needed to end now. If he'd had any patience in the first place, he'd have been long out of it by this point, and while the new blood was giving him his strength back, he was still bleeding, still decidedly not healing at all. If the girl somehow managed to run he wouldn't be able to catch her. He didn't have to check to know that his leg was shredded to hell.

[savagesolitude]

There was a furious wail when the knife failed to sink in to the hilt. A cut wasn't going to dislodge him. A cut was nothing. What she had wanted to do was put him in so much pain that he would forget to guard his face. Instead, he was grabbing for her wrist.

"Get off me you bastard!!" Claire snarled, bucking and kicking with all the savagery of a wounded animal. Which wasn't too far off the mark. She knew that if she didn't get him off now, either he would keep drinking her dry or she would pass out from the blood loss. Her head was already swimming through a mist, but she wasn't going to give up. Claire pushed through the dizziness and fought tooth and nail against the monster on top of her.

Yes. He was a monster. Whether he really was a vampire or not she had yet to decide, but between that face and sucking on her wound there wasn't much room for humanity left. No human was that crazy.

A wayward kick struck the axe perched against the wall, toppling the handle over their legs. Claire cried out as it hit, but not from pain. Damon's fingers had locked around her knife. She was defenseless.

But now both of his hands were occupied. He had nothing to cover his face.

Claire had to be quick. Less than a second after he had both her arms pinned, she launched her head forward and opened wide, lips peeled back. She sunk her teeth into whatever part of him she hit first.