Anita Blake

Richard's eyes settle on the floor a moment. He should be able to be there for his pack when they're in need of him. His gaze comes back up after a moment, his features not entirely happy though it's more at himself. "Thank you for looking after my wolf."

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chartreuse_eyed

"Wolves are a part of the coalition," Micah says, as if that explained everything. "I'd do it for anyone's people."

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"All the same," Richard counters, "thank you."

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anita_blake

An awkward silence falls around those in the room, and Anita sighs. She's covered in blood, she has Damian's come smeared between her thighs, and all she wants is solitude and soap. A shower was on the agenda next, whether they all killed each other while she's gone or not.

"I'm taking a shower," she announces. "Everyone can just... behave themselves and I'll be back soon, but I just need to be clean. Now."

She doesn't wait for a response, heading for the bathroom at a quick walk before anyone can call her back.

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Damian just watches her abrupt departure, sadness welling up inside him. The practical, reasonable side of him knows that he really did dirty Anita up, not just from the sex, but with all the blood as well. Anita always likes to be clean... The unreasonable part of him wants to take it as Anita simply wanting to forget what just happened.

Then again, the unreasonable part might have a point.

He clings to Nathaniel, knowing he should tend his friend and get cleaned up himself, but not wanting to move except to get closer to Nat and farther away from the sunlight.

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Nathaniel takes a deep breath, trying to keep himself treading above the clawing need inside Damian, the sadness threatening to well up and drown them again. He looks to Micah, sighing.

"Can you get me a couple of wet wash cloths and a towel, Micah?" he asks. The downstairs bathroom was the only one without a window, and Nathaniel really wanted to clean himself and Damian up. "And maybe find Anita's first aid kit so we can patch Richard up for the time being?"

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chartreuse_eyed

"Yeah, sure," he says, taking stock of the other three's injuries; or at least Richard's...

It doesn't take him long to come back from fetching the items, passing most of them to Nathaniel and holding on to the first aid kit, turning to Richard. "Need help?"

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"Wouldn't hurt," Richard answers, eyes studying his own wound. There's a rather large hole where muscle and skin should be on his upper chest to shoulder on his left side. Cleaning it and patching it up would be difficult at best to do by himself.

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Nathaniel begins mopping Damian down, speaking softly to his friend, trying to keep him here, with them, and calm. He pushes aside his own fright and confusion and jealousy, trying very hard to focus on the immediate.

"Everything will be fine," he murmurs. "Anita will make it fine."

He has every bit of faith in Anita, and he clings to it.

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Damian is noticeably shaken, which is saying quite a lot for this particular vampire, who so values his control. He tries to distract himself by searching Nathaniel for wounds where the blood has spattered thickest. Taking the second wash cloth, he tries to clean Nat up.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs every so often, unable to ignore what he feels from himself and from Nathaniel's mind, in addition to the physical harm he can tell he did from the blood on Nathaniel's arm.

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chartreuse_eyed

"Just hold still," Micah says. "Let me clean you up."

He does wonder what in the world happened, but he'll get an explanation later. For now, he's just going to clean Richard up, dabbing at the hole in his shoulder--the fact that it isn't just a graze is cause for a little concern. He didn't get a chance to check Anita over before she rushed off to the shower, and now he wonders if she's hurt.

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The very fact that she had hopped up to the shower on her own two feet quick as possible, should tell close to how she's doing. Though since Richard's been here, is tied to her, all Micah would have to do is ask and he could tell the other man.

Richard gives a small hiss of pain, trying not to flinch at something touching the wound. His mind is already going over how many days he may need to take off sick because with shifting it will heal faster but not fast enough for people to not notice.

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anita_blake

In the shower, Anita tries very hard not to think. Very hard. As her hands move over her body with the soap, she catalogs the various hurts. Bruises, cuts, sore muscles. Thanks to the marks she shares with Jean-Claude, those would all be gone by the end of the day.

The bite, though, that would take at least a week to heal. Just what she wants to do, walk around for a week with the healing proof of Damian going batshit and fucking her on the living room floor in front of Richard.

"God," she groans, leaning against the tiles.

Not thinking wasn't working.

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Back in the other room, Damian suddenly drops the wash cloth he had been using to clean up Nathaniel.

There is a spark of a presence in his mind, instantly identifiable. He doesn't want to feel it, doesn't want to be reached at such a distance. He had thought himself safe under Anita and Jean-Claude's protection, but with his own shields dysfunctional from the trauma of the last 24 hours, he can't push her away and shut himself down.

He goes completely rigid next to Nathaniel, his lungs gasping in a breath but not releasing it as he cradles his head and whispers, "No..."

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"Damian?"

Nathaniel looks up at the vampire, feeling nothing but panic there. He does the only thing he can think to do. He rushes to the bathroom door, knocking several times before Anita answers him.

"Damian isn't doing so well," he calls to her, glancing over his shoulder. "If you'd concentrate, you'd feel it..."

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anita_blake

Anita concentrates, following that line in her head to Damian. Fear hits her so hard that she's amazed she can still stand. It bears down on her like rocks crushing her chest. She quickly turns off the shower, wraps a towel around her hair, and starts drying off at least enough to throw on a robe.

Before she manages it, though, the door kicks open, and she sees Gregory, still half-shifted, supporting Damian on one side while Richard holds the other. She sits down on the floor and helps them get Damian into her lap. The contact only makes the fear that much more intense and real, and suddenly Anita can't even breathe, as though the fear were a black tar coating her throat.

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Richard's had moves out to Anita's shoulder. "Anita." He's on his knees when he doesn't get a response. His hand shakes her, hard, sharp. Trying to pull her back into the here and now instead of that fear he can feel through the marks. "Anita, talk to me."

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It isn't just fear that runs through him. It's something much more real, a palpable force. It's that slick, suffocating quality that identifies it for Damian.

Half-way around the world, and She Who Made Him could still reach out to touch him with terror. No matter who he is blood-oathed to, she is his maker. No other can claim that connection.

Chills run through him, and the terror disorients him so he barely even notices when he opens his eyes that he has been moved from one room to another. Anita is there, though, and he wraps one arm around her, holding onto her as if she is the one stable thing left in a world being swept away on the tides.

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anita_blake

"It's... horrible," she breathes, knowing that she uses the word as it was originally meant, having the same root word as horror.

Voicing that thought seems to resonate with Damian, and suddenly she's plunged into a shared memory. Just a face, one that Anita doesn't know but Damian does. Blond hair and blue eyes, with a scar from forehead to cheek. She knows that Damian's maker was this other man's as well, and that she had said that scar saved him because it made him less beautiful than she so she did not have to destroy him.

Then the scent of vanilla overwhelms her, and she snaps out of the vision to see Nathaniel beside them, not touching except to drape his hair across them both, breaking the spell without being drawn in himself.

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The heat and scent of Nathaniel also reaches Damian, but it doesn't overpower the spell of terror that still grips him like a vice. He can feel Nathaniel close, and he doesn't think about the consequences of drawing his friend closer.

His hand darts out and grips Nat's arm before anyone can get a word out to stop him. The heat of Nathaniel hits him like a palpable force with the contact and it triggers another memory.

Blinding light, golden and white, and blazing heat all around him. The kind of light that simply dazzles the senses. All he could feel were Her hands on him, caressing in that horrible, teasing way that always happened before she would perform a new torture. The scarred man's hand was in his, their fingers entwined. Perrin. He remembered the man's name, the way people had run screaming when they had raided villages. His large hand always felt like an anchor in the nightmare of the light.

In an instant, she tore their hands apart, and her voice, which had once seemed so beautiful, was an evil whine. "One to burn, one to keep." The words had made him turn to Perrin in terror. He looked angelic in the light, all blond hair and eyes the colour of the clear sky beyond the window. For a moment, it seemed like there was hope.

A messenger had come from a rival, claiming that it was not the sharing of their mistress' power that enabled them to walk alone in the sunlight, but that they were gaining powers of their own, independent of her. She had been furious, but for that heart's beat, we believed the messenger was right...

But the look on Perrin's face said it all. Terror. Something was wrong. Smoke began to curl off his skin in the light, and in the wake of the smoke came flames. They burst over him, and for a moment, he was haloed in golden, orange. Perrin shrieked, and it wasn't a human sound but one of indescribable terror. The horror, sorrow, and fear rolled from them both in the sunlight, one burning, the other remaining whole. And all the while she fed off it all, not just Damian and Perrin, but all those assembled who now feared her more than ever.

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His scream joins Damian's... joins Anita's. Nathaniel's world is Damian's fear, and he swears he's never known fear like this. He never wants to again. Never.

Nothing Gabriel had done or Raina or Gavin or Luke... nothing any of the men who had owned him over the years had ever done to him had evoked this sort of soul-deep terror that leaves Nathaniel's mind a barren landscape of suffocating smoke and dangerous flames.

He screams, and he doesn't think he'll ever stop.

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Richard let his hand slide down Anita's shoulder to her arm, gripping it solidly as he pushed towards her through their marks. Trying to offering her his strength, his world as a way to pull herself out of what she was caught in. Offering her all things earth, forest, and wolf. Hoping it would be enough to bring her back.

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anita_blake

It's the scent, more than anything, that draws her back. Christmas-tree pine and freshly turned earth, moss and mushroom. And riding above it all, the musk of the wolf, of Richard's wolf.

It gives her something real -- something now -- to focus on, and the memory starts to fade into mist as Richard anchors them and draws them back to the present.

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