It's done. I know there is a ton more I could write, but I'm not going to post anymore here most likely. I'm hoping to clean it up and write a series of books I can publish eventually.
*****
Annabel hit the stairs noting the bank of windows that continued from his bedroom. The light of the stars was drowned by the Houston skyline spreading out beside them and the moon was nowhere to be seen. It also became apparent at that moment she had no clue where she was at.
She grabbed the long coat he'd left lying over the back of the couch and settled into it as she made the elevator. She wanted people or proof she still existed. There was an unfortunate amount of time to think as the steel box she stood in descended 14 stories. If she really was going to live as long as the creature up stairs this wasn't even the start of it.
A soft ding alerted her to the fact that elevator was stopping. The doors parted and to reveal blond heavy set woman with a little blond boy talking nonstop. Just like the floor she'd come from, they stood in more of a room than a hallway with chairs and large fluted lilies arranged with other flowers and greenery in beautiful porcelain vases.
The woman was smiling and shaking her head as she started to step over the threshold, but then she looked up at Annabel and stopped. She smiled with nervous politeness, a silver filling reflecting in one of her top molars, and caught the boy before he could enter.
"Come on Camden. We need to go get something back at the apartment."
The boy took one look at her and didn't argue. The door shut and Annabel continued her descent.
***
Damien started trying to figure out just how he was going to go about finding Aaron. Honestly he was surprised the man hadn't shown up. He had a habit of popping in when Damien got particularly careless. Still he wasn't sure what this classified as. It wasn't forbidden. It just hadn't been done in a few...thousand...years. Or ever. Maybe. It was weird how he knew so little about it even though all of the instructions were there.
"Simple creatures." He said out loud.
He got what he wanted. He could feel where she was and knew her thoughts as if they were his own. She wasn't going anywhere without his say so. There was more though.
He could feel...everything. The air swirled around him in a tangible mass. If he wanted he could touch it, manipulated it. It stretched out across the city brushing stone and steel and flesh as far as he was willing to go. Through it he felt hearts beat in syncopated rhythm, minds wrapped in pleasure or pain or apathy, and the world itself breathing.
Reality vibrated with potential energy fueled by the connections everything in it shared. It wasn't the air he felt, but that energy moving with the strange cohesiveness of a flock of birds. Why the hell had this never been done before?
Something else: he could move through it. Fuck the breaks that slipped between his world and this. He could simply move through the connections surrounding him.
Aaron!
The thought hit him with the same weight as the deals he was accustomed to making. It wasn't possible, but it made so much sense it scared him. Not an inclination towards self-preservation, but an irrational thought that wouldn't leave him the fuck alone. It was a strange feeling to say the least.
It took an act of will to focus on the thing that caused it: Aaron wasn't simple. All the shit he spouted in all the years the two of them crossed paths more than any other of their kind was just that: shit. The bastard had stolen a soul. Damien knew it with every fiber of his being...every awakening power in him knew it.
Where the fuck was he?
He searched through the energy around him like the weavings of a spider's web not quite sure what he was looking for. It stood to reason that something like him, something that defied nature, would stand out.
He wasn't wrong. Amidst a cluster of beating hearts and chaotic thoughts he felt an unmistakably familiar presence. He knew the place a few miles away...or twenty. It didn't really matter to him. The fact that he could feel Aaron sitting under a tree in the green grass watching the eerily empty park in the moonlight from greater than the normal mile was far more fascinating. He moved to jump through one of the
planebreaks
when he had a second thought.
Concentrating on the connection that led him to Aaron, Damien let his form dissolve and be pulled along it though not without trepidation. That part was going to take some getting used to. Letting himself thin into the air around him was not the safest thing in this world to do but he'd never been plagued with the possibilities before. Fear was a bitch.
Relief found him solid in the moonlight of a relatively unlit section of the park. Aaron sat so still anyone else would have missed him leaning against the tree even as beautifully pale as he was.
Somewhere a mocking bird wouldn't shut the fuck up.
"That's an interesting trick, Damien." He was smiling without a trace of shock or confusion while picking up pebbles and skipping them across falling leaves. "Leaving Annabel alone right now isn't the best course of action."
"What have you done?" Damien parroted the question back to the creature sitting on the ground.
"Nothing, brother. Not a damn thing." He was grinning like the cat just caught the mouse as he tossed another stone.
"You're a meddlesome bastard. I've always known it...somewhere. I see things very differently now, though. I have an understanding of what that means."
"No, you are no longer a simple creature." Aaron stood; the black trench coat he was so fond of wearing folding out like dark broken wings. "And you are barely on the threshold of understanding. But you're on the right path."
It wasn't like any of them to have an agenda. They moved, they fed, and they occasionally took pleasure in whatever it was that caught their eye. Damien had no clue until this moment just how simple they were - how little they cared for anything but themselves good or bad - because it didn't matter until now.
"Where is the owner of what you took, Aaron?" Strange he would care more about that than what he could now do. Maybe this connection thing made you what the humans referred to as 'a better person'.
Fair skin grayed and the icy blue light of his eyes dimmed. Something snapped inside of him it seemed as he gingerly leaned back against the tree, his eyesight weighted to the ground.
"Where is Annabel?" Aaron asked with a deadly seriousness.
She was fine...as fine as she could be. Everything about Aaron's demeanor indicated she wouldn't be for much longer causing a chill to slip through Damien's being.
"She's on a bus downtown."
Aaron held his hand out, black material creating a stark line across his flesh. "Let's go."
"Not until you tell me what the fuck is going on."
"Not until she's safe."
"And why the fuck is she so goddamned important to you?" Damien hissed.
"And what is she to you?" Blue ice light bored through him straight to the truth. Aaron might want her safe for whatever reason, but he needed her safe...especially now. He was so consumed with finding answers he didn't think that letting her out of his sight might be the dumbest thing he'd ever done. Damien grabbed the proffered hand roughly and dragged them both to where he knew she was.
***
The rest of her wanderings were no different from the late night soccer mom and her kid. Annabel had always been lonely, but she only realized now that she hadn't been alone. The list of shoulda/coulda/woulda started flooding back in and she chased it away again. Honestly, how the hell was she supposed to know what she was giving up? That whole exercise was pointless now and even the possibility of a momentary loss of sanity being a good plea in a prayer was silly. Oddly, even now, she really didn't believe in God...or maybe she was in denial. Wasn't she damned to hell now? The way people avoided her like she was covered in someone's blood certainly had that ring to it.
"What's going to happen now?" She asked softly to herself. The weight on her heart wasn't just the total lack of connection she felt with anything at that moment; it was also the deal. He was going to answer every question and show her everything.
Fortuitously a metro bus waited at the stop just ahead as an elderly woman tried to navigate the steps. It had to be one of the last as midnight edged closer, and Annabel had to wonder why the tiny woman was out so late. She waited quietly in the shadow of a lone tree while the woman finished with the help of two passengers.
Maybe the human race isn't so bad after all.
Or maybe she could finally see it now that she was truly on the outside looking in.
When the woman was settled Annabel got on with her pass out hoping she could make it through before things got awkward but failed. The look in the driver's eyes made her want to run screaming from herself. Thankfully he had no clue exactly what to do with his reaction to her, and she managed a seat in the back with no further incident. She thought of Damien running down the street in broad daylight announcing what he was to the world replete with his bag of tricks and no one caring beyond the entertainment he was providing. The reaction she inspired was palpable, but people ignored it quickly, most likely brushing it off as a moment of insanity, just like Damien said they would.
The Void plagued her thoughts suddenly. Somehow she'd managed to forget the singularly most terrifying moment of her life, but then shit had happened since then. Luckily it wasn't around at the moment...that she knew of. Could she even feel Damien anymore?
The bus rumbled to life taking her towards the place she tried to call home. The florescent lights seemed to push her down buzzing some damned language in her head. Maybe she wanted to the Void to get her. She looked at the other lost souls, playing on a phone or staring off into space and mentally kicked herself.
Fuck it.
At least she knew what she was missing. These poor bastards would never know. There was a small satisfaction in that. Now all she needed to do was make it across town, avoid whatever scary creature was lurking around the next corner, get the few things she wanted to keep from this life and then...say goodbye?
The goodbye wasn't going to be hard. There wasn't much to this life which had to be the reason she so recklessly opted out of it.
Annabel stared into the darkness outside as the bus lurched around a corner tossing her to the side. She barely noticed the lights flicker, and didn't care to be honest. She was still lost in nothing when the shrill sound of the air brakes warned her a second before she was tossed into the seat in front of her when the bus came to a sudden stop. Righting herself to the anxious whispers of the few people on the vehicle she didn't have to look far to find the source of the disturbance.
"Damien?!" Wide black eyes tried to process the scene before them.
"I don't really care how you got on my bus, but it would be best if you all left right now," came from the man up front.
The bus driver probably chose the best course of action remaining in his seat. He was no match for Damien on his own and he wasn't on his own. The demon managed to appear out of thin air with the fair creature she'd glimpsed for just a second in the bookstore earlier in the evening; arctic blue eyes sending a chill down her spine. It was just a few hours before...chaos.
"We want no trouble."
