Night 59: M11-M20 Hallway
What in the name of all that was holy and good was going onTolten couldn't begin to imagine what a 'red alert' in this place consisted of, but his instincts kicked in and he leapt to his feet with a frightened expression. He was suddenly very glad he'd eaten his weak dinner, and the greyness that swam behind his eyes didn't drag him back down to
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But it wasn't just some guy. It was Damon. And although he didn't really know anything about him and (truth be told) couldn't say he trusted him, Damon had had plenty of opportunities to show foul intent or attempt assaulting him but never had. And it was in that respect that he questioned his feelings of doubt and wondered if he was just being incredibly paranoid. So when Damon apologized and honestly said he hadn't meant to scare him, it was hard to doubt that. Nothing about Damon had ever made him seem like some kind of psychotic who liked pulling stunts like that for kicks, after all.
Klavier didn't move from his stance, but the "stay the hell away from me" expression faded away and he just frowned in wary confusion. Okay, even if his distrust was baseless, his reaction to the situation was most certainly reasonable. He didn't understand what it was Damon had been "testing," per say. The way he'd said that made it seem like... "Have you... always been able to do that?"
...Wasn't it kind of sad that he wasn't as absolutely thrown off by it as he might have been a few weeks ago? Goddammit, he hated this. But anyway. Now he had to wonder. ...Were there a lot of people here who could do that sort of thing? It seemed ridiculous to consider, but really. What were the chances that of everyone in the building, Klavier would happen to run into the only two capable of it? It was too much of a coincidence.
He'd also opened his mouth to ask what precisely Damon meant by "set a bunch of us loose" and maybe bluntly ask what he was (a "bioweapon," too, perhaps?), but then he noticed. The apology had been enough so Klavier didn't freak out or care when Damon stood from the bed, but now he was not only approaching but getting way too close given the situation. Way too close being closer than full arm length. Not that Klavier could claim he wasn't guilty of invading personal space himself, but right now, he was still defensive and wary. Any other time, he might have taken the invasion as a challenge and wouldn't have moved at all. But as things stood, Klavier took a step back as soon as Damon reached about arm length away.
He felt a little bad about it in a way. If Damon was a bioweapon or something, Klavier didn't want to leave the impression that he was scared of him or thought ill of him for it. But at the same time... again, he didn't know. He couldn't explain it. Nothing about Damon's body language seemed antagonistic, and Klavier had no legitimate reason to think that. But there was some instinct lingering in his chest that made it impossible for him to relax.
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And yes. He knew. He'd taken a bite out of Claire. As if she counted even a half. He'd been bleeding out at the time. Not the same thing.
Anyway, it'd only take, like, five minutes, tops. He wouldn't be long. He did have other things to do, thank you, than terrorize his roommate. Current focus aside, he was well aware he needed to find Stefan and Elena, figure out where to go from here.
"Among other things."
Plenty of other things. And yeah. They were backing up. For each step Klavier moved away, Damon moved forward. They backed up until Damon had Klavier pressed against the closet, palm planted flat against the solid door. He didn't hesitate to make eye contact. Did he call this an experiment earlier? That might've been the wrong word. Less experiment, more confirmation. He knew, even before he felt his pupils dilate, that this would work.
"Stay still for me, will you."
His instinct was to bite down. Immediately. His teeth itched for it. Still. No reason to get too reckless here. Fang marks? Slightly on the identifiable side.
Blood flooded his eyes, filling the whites red. Now that Klavier wasn't going anywhere, he took his time, sliding a nail along the side of Klavier's throat, breaking the skin, leaving a cut thick enough to hide any punctures. As soon as the scent of fresh blood hit the air, he struck. His teeth sank in, one hand pinning Klavier by the shoulder in a solid grip.
Mm. Wow. This was. Good. It really had been too long. Not just the flow of fresh blood under his lips, but the ability to simply take it. Effortless, without consequence. God, he'd missed it.
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Unfortunately, the patient rooms aren't exactly the most spacious of areas. It didn't take that many steps to walk from end to end as it was. So Klavier barely had time to eye the exit and consider how quickly he could reach it before his back met resistance. A hand blocked off immediate escape and Damon himself was now standing mere inches away from him. ...Call it a defense mechanism but Klavier was briefly torn between whether or not to voice the smartass comment that immediately rose to his tongue. But shoving Damon away and making a run for the door seemed far more appealing, were he to be frank.
He'd moved to do precisely that, actually, but the action was nothing more than a bending of elbows by the time Damon spoke. "Stay still for me, will you."
Klavier blinked, staring at Damon like he was wondering if he'd heard that right or was about to ask if he was joking. Neither thought actually crossed his mind, however. Instead, he just blinked again and, indeed, remained right where he was while continuing to look at Damon as though fascinated.
He didn't react or seem surprised when Damon's eyes suddenly darkened and dark crack-like marked developed underneath. He didn't even turn to look down when a sharp pain pricked his neck and quite literally dragged itself further down his throat. There was a vague feeling of wet and warmth before Damon's face shifted out of view entirely. Then a pain much, much sharper pierced that same, precise spot.
"Agghhh!!" The pain in his voice was muffled only by grit-teeth. His hands shook, a tremble that was more reflex to pain than resistance. Klavier wasn't really exposed to extreme pain back home so his tolerance was somewhat low. But it was slowly becoming a less alien sensation the more he stayed here. So he withstood it with a clamped jaw the entire time.
The terror that would have moved him away was dampened, and all he could do was focus entirely on the physical sensations. The stabbing pain that somehow ran throughout his entire neck and toward his shoulder. The slight pull of flesh as Damon drank. A shuddering sensation that ran up his back. His fingertips slowly starting to feel colder. Something like small specks in his vision....
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So. Was it a really big surprise that the night started immediately with something to obliterate his sense of calm? (The answer was no.)
The alarm squealed, surprising him while it echoed in their tiny room. He winced, but went about business, trying to ignore it. To his surprise, popping open his box revealed a present. Compensation. Right. He'd been promised compensation before a needle had been forcibly shoved into his arm. Didn't compensation usually come with things you willingly agreed to? Wasn't that an unspoken rule somewhere?
A crossbow. Somewhere, someone was laughing at him.
Alaric didn't look a gift horse in the mouth. He picked it up with obvious reverence, rolling it in his hands, testing the weight. Easy. Taut string. Five bolts already loaded, though he didn't see any more in the box.
Wooden bolts, lacquered black. Somewhere, someone loved him. (For once?)
Well, that was all the encouragement he needed. Even a wave of pink... whateverthehell didn't stop him, though it sure as crap gave him pause. Did he feel different? No. It was - witches? Could Aguilar have witches working for him? If he could have vampires, didn't seem like such a big stretch. That was great.
First things first, since. Damon was the closest thing to him.
Alaric was cautious when he left. Damon hadn't come to him and he certainly had had the time to. That wasn't to say he expected the vampire to ever come to him particularly outside of to bother him or for his unique meatshield services. Hell, maybe Damon didn't want anything to do with him anymore. Understandable. Also wasn't a big surprise. But he figured, what the hell? It was totally stupid, but he felt like he owed him something. Sure, Damon was a dick and Alaric could easily chalk what had happened up to him killing Isobel or hell, killing anyone he had, but Alaric wasn't that kind of person. He'd gotten over it, let Isobel go. She wasn't a part of him anymore, which meant he couldn't be mad over her.
The others? He didn't think about them.
Alaric would've knocked and made himself known once he'd creeped into the hallway, keeping the crossbow against his chest, quick to aim if something came out. Something was sure as hell going on, that was for sure. He wasn't taking chances, not when he finally had a viable weapon on his hands. He let his hunter instinct (if he could really even call it that) guide him; he heard the scream, even muffled by door and space, and that was all it took. He pushed the door open with his shoulder, the first bolt pointed into the room. Whatever he'd expected to see, Damon feeding on his roommate wasn't the most surprising.
It did, however, get the most immediate reaction.
A bolt sailed right past Damon's left ear about a foot away, bouncing - bouncing? off the wall. Whatever. Priorities. He didn't let it phase him, moving the point of the next bolt an inch to his right. Next time wouldn't hit the wall. His aim was a lot better than anyone accounted for.
"Let him go." Just an order. Simple, and he said it in a voice that wasn't afraid. That was saying a hell of a lot. Damon might have been - something, almost friends with him, but he was still a vampire. That meant killing him, even when he wasn't at full strength, would be relatively easy. Or at least significantly easier than a human could.
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The thing was, he'd been ready to release Klavier because he wasn't interested in having a body in his room to deal with. It was when Alaric got in the way that he didn't let go. Not at first. His fangs receded, but he swallowed one last mouthful of blood, deliberately taking his time to stop. So if Klavier wound up feeling a touch even dizzier, he had a well-meaning history teacher to thank for that.
They should just both be thankful he wasn't in the mood to clean up a corpse.
His fingertips rested on Klavier's shoulders. He didn't look over at Alaric and if he cared he had a crossbow trained on him, it didn't show. He licked his lips, catching a drop of blood. "And a good evening to you, too, Rick."
Finally decided to come out of his rabbit hole, had he. All geared up, too. How about that.
With the door open, though, it was easy to smell everything. Not the attractive smell of fresh human blood, but more, a thick, rotting scent that was filling the air. Wow. That really wasn't pretty. And couldn't be good. Time to pack this in, then.
He caught his roommate's eye for the second time. "When we leave, you're going to forget this. You had a lovely uneventful dinner and then you blacked out."
See? Done. Just a little blood loss. No one had to die for him to indulge in a proper meal fresh out of the vein. There was no reason for everyone to insist on overreacting every time he put his teeth in guy. Talk about unnecessarily complicating the natural order of things.
He let go. Whether or not Klavier could stand on his own wasn't his concern, though he had taken a decent amount of blood there. Oops. Whatever, he'd recover it soon enough. Human beings were useful like that.
Bending down, he lazily plucked the fallen bolt from the ground and took the dagger off the desk. The bolt he pressed into Alaric's hands, almost gently-a mocking gentleness. There was decided amusement in his eyes when he raked them over Alaric before he turned to leave. Or seemed to. He was brushing a half-step past Alaric in one instant and had him shoved against the wall with a hard crack in the next.
"I wouldn't do that again."
He slipped out the door without waiting or a glance back, wiping the blood from his lips with the back of his hand. Rick could follow or he could stay and play Good Samaritan with the roommate. He had his brother and a girl to look for.
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Lovely and uneventful his foot.
And yet he still tried. He tried to maintain eye contact with Damon, tried to maintain a frown so he didn't look like some kind of helpless rag doll. Unfortunately, that's pretty much all he was at the moment. The fact that Damon had been holding him steady was probably the only reason he hadn't dropped earlier. Without that foundation, the swirling sense of vertigo made it impossible for him to maintain balance and he simply toppled over. He couldn't even tell which way the floor was until he'd hit it.
But as dizzy as he was, he hadn't lost enough blood to his brain to make him stupid. No, he was fully aware. And it was difficult to tell if it was blood loss or the reality of what had just happened that made him feel this intense urge to throw up. No, forget throwing up. He wanted to yell. He was furious! He was horrified. Damon... Damon, he... How could...? What was...? Klavier was going to...!
...Okay, he wasn't going to do anything. In his mind's eye, he wanted to find Damon and glare at him and either yell at him or get the hell away from him as fast as humanly possible. But in reality, he couldn't manage that. Lesson of the day learned: Toppling over sideways does absolutely nothing to help with vertigo.
He'd planted a hand on the tile beside him, to push himself back up, but it suddenly seemed like a better idea to stabilize and figure out which was was up and down first. Not that he wanted to stay immobile on the floor like that. He was actually really scared to. And he was scared to show that he was scared. So he decided to be pissed instead. That was better than crying or puking all over the floor, anyway.
Thankfully, that was astonishingly easy when he heard Damon's voice one more time before the psychopath toddled on out the door. The sound of it nearly made him see red. Damn it. You...!
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He almost hit the ground when Damon released him. He caught himself, trying to go over the fact his heart was racing and his mind was going crapcrapcrapcrap over and over again. The device? The device was broken, maybe? If it existed at all, because he knew Damon had not been able to move like that last night. If he could have, there was no way Alaric would've been able to get that knife in him in the first place.
Just what he needed. Unmuzzled vampires. Unmuzzled Damon, who he had just pissed off and stabbed twenty-four hours ago.
"Shit," the teacher hissed, gently putting the bow down on the floor and kneeling next to the fallen blond. Still conscious. When we leave. Still knowing what the hell was happening.
"Hey, you're okay. Just don't move too much." Maybe? Christ, he was a vampire hunter, not a doctor. He didn't know what to do for blood loss. How much had Damon taken? Whatever. Alaric put an arm under the guy, helping him to first sit up, then stand (which took more effort and holding up more of his weight.) He helped him over to the bed, sitting him on the edge. "God, I'm sorry. But you won't remember, so -"
That didn't make it any better. Goddammit, Damon. He kept his hand on the guy's shoulder, looking back at the door, into the darkness of the hallway. He should stay, make sure Damon's roommate didn't get hurt any more, but as long as he stayed inside... and Alaric couldn't let Damon go off alone. Sure, it was a stupid thought. Sure. Didn't stop him from thinking it. He had to go to make sure this didn't happen again. If Damon - if any vampire went into a frenzy tonight, he. Could help, maybe. He had the crossbow and experience in aiming. He could help. At the very least.
"Just stay here, okay? You'll be fine." He gave his best reassuring smile and a soft pat on the shoulder (neither were reassuring in the least bit), picking up the crossbow again and running like hell to catch up.
This was going to be the worst night he'd had in a while. He could just tell.
[To here.]
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