Incubus Dreams - October 27th

[anita_blake]

As Anita wakes up, she makes several realizations.

She is on the floor.

She is on the floor of her kitchen.

She is on the floor of her kitchen, naked.

Slowly, she looks around and sees Nathaniel on the floor at her side, his cheek resting on her thigh. Memory comes back to her, of the hungers, of the ardeur, of the fucking and feeding and memories. Anita eyes dart around, looking for Damian, because Damian was with them, and they land on his form, bathed in sunlight.

Like his pale skin had been dipped in honey, and Anita has the distant thought of how beautiful the vampire looked with his blood-red hair, warm skin, and relaxed features. But the most overwhelming thought was that Damian was bathed in sunlight! She scrambles over to him, grabbing Damian by the ankles, and pulls him out of the sunlight, but then he's awake, screaming, struggling, and Anita panics.

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[nathaniel_kitten]

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.

[mr-smarty-vamp.livejournal.com]

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.

[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.

[puppyeyedulfric.livejournal.com]

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.

[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.

[mr-smarty-vamp.livejournal.com]

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..."

[nathaniel_kitten]

"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..."

[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.

[puppyeyedulfric.livejournal.com]

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."

[mr-smarty-vamp.livejournal.com]

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.

[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.

[mr-smarty-vamp.livejournal.com]

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.

[nathaniel_kitten]

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.

[puppyeyedulfric.livejournal.com]

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.

[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.

[mr-smarty-vamp.livejournal.com]

The images turn misty and start to fade away, but the screams are slower to dissipate. They grow more distant as Richard keeps them from falling into the memories again, but as the voice starts to fade away, Damian's replaces it in reality.

"Moroven!" The distant voice of Perrin is joined by Damian, and as Perrin's voice begins to mutate, the name they both scream from different times and places changes. "Nemhain!"

While reality might be coming back to Anita and Nathaniel, it is Damian's memory, and it plagues him still. As he screams the name of his maker over and over, he tries to get to his knees, as if he will charge into the sunlit flames in his memory to try and save Perrin from his fate.

[anita_blake]

Damian continues to scream out the name even as he collapses into Anita and Nathaniel's arms so suddenly that Anita would have gone into the glass shower doors had Richard's arm not caught her.

Nathaniel strokes his hair and mutters soothing words to him right up to the point that the entire world bleeds into a nightmare of fear all over again. Even breathing hurts -- this isn't a tar that clogs up the lungs, but a scorching cloud that sears away the flesh. Moroven -- Damian's maker -- was making her presence felt.

In Anita's arms, Damian shudders and stills. His breathing slows, then stops, and Anita can't find a heartbeat at all. Moroven is taking back her power from Damian, just as Belle had done to Asher through Musette. He's not yours anymore; he's mine! she tries to scream out, but the fear chokes off her voice.

And the worst part is, even through the fear, she can sense no malice or motive in Moroven. She was simply sending the fear out to everyone around Damian. If it killed them, fine, if not, also fine. Moroven honestly could not care less. And there's no way to fight against that. All she can do is reach for Richard. He pulled them out of the fire before, maybe he can do it again.

[puppyeyedulfric.livejournal.com]

There's the faintest hesitance, though where it stems from he doesn't take the time to look, to think about. After it passes his hand settles solidly in Anita's, keeping his marks, himself, his wolf, open to her to try and help. Hoping that it will help pull her back like it did the last time.

[masterofstlouis]

Jean-Claude feels an echo of the power, but doesn't get the full effect because of his distance from Damian and the fact that Moroven just doesn't care enough to expand her focus. He continues to try and connect with Anita, but the fear is like static, blocking out everything else.

Finally, he senses the break when Richard extends his power to her, and he is able to send his message. He knows Moroven and knows her weaknesses. Raise the ardeur and feed, he tells her. Moroven does not understand lust free of fear; she cannot fight it. Feed from Richard, and I will add my power to both of yours. As the full triumvirate, we can cast her out.

[anita_blake]

Anita shakes her head as she tries to stop her teeth from chattering. "Can't," she manages to say around the trembling. "Can't feed from Richard."

[masterofstlouis]

Jean-Claude huffs at her stubbornness, and then opens the marks again, pulling Richard into the conversation, briefly repeating what he'd said before. What is your decision, Richard? Will you do this for Damian? Indeed, for all of us? It may be possible to use Micah, but the power would be cleaner and stronger if it were you.

[puppyeyedulfric.livejournal.com]

There's a hesitance, though he nods after a moment. There's a squeeze of her hand where he holds it, "Feed from me." The words don't sound as strong as he might mean them to be, because a part of him doesn't feel ready for this. But Anita needs him, as do Damian and Nathaniel. And this step had to come at some point and he can't leave Anita like this.

[anita_blake]

Anita, her eyes surrounded by white, that fear just clawing at her.

"You don't want to," Anita pants, staring at Richard.

[puppyeyedulfric.livejournal.com]

Richard closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, trying to calm the what all that fear riding the air is trying to get him to give into.

Brown eyes open and focus on her after that breath, "Feed from me." It's stronger this time, more solid. There's also a thought trailing through the marks on the end of that, I'd do anything to see you safe.

[anita_blake]

"Kiss me," Anita says.

Fuck me, kiss me, make it go away, Richard!