InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I am going to take over..you"

Jade Armstrong (jadedheart) wrote in haunted_roads,
@ 2008-03-10 23:48:00

Current mood:	indescribable
Entry tags:	anthony, jade

Week Three: Thursday
Who: Jade and Tony
When: late evening
Where: Old Town Towers, D-11
Rating: there's absolutely no telling...

Jade was off from work tonight, and she'd been taking advantage of that by wandering farther from the areas where she usually fed. The day had been cloudy, and now that night had fallen, a chill had invaded the air, making the leather coat she wore over faded jeans and low-cut silk shirt completely reasonable. She did not feel the cold as she once had, finding that she was able to tolerate it very well now; formerly, she'd been the sort who complained every time the temperature dropped below fifty. She'd grown up in the dry heat of Arizona, and strangely she missed it even now. Still, that was the past and she knew that she'd likely never live permanently in Sedona again.

The heels of her battered brown boots clicked on the sidewalk as she walked briskly away from her latest victim, her stride fast yet somehow still nonchalant. She wore a thin silver wire necklace threaded with chunky amber and topaz-colored stones, and it thunked against her chest as she walked. It matched the dangling earrings she wore; she'd made the set herself before she'd been turned, when she'd been home for Christmas. Jade cast one last quick glance at the man she'd left on the bench, seeing that he was still sitting as she'd left him, hands folded loosely in his lap and his head lowered as if he might've dozed off while waiting for the bus. He wasn't dead, but he'd probably wish he was once he woke up. She was learning the fine art of how much blood she could take and leave a person reasonably coherent, but she didn't think she'd applied it in this case. She'd been too hungry.

Once out of sight, she licked at the end of one finger and dabbed at her lips, particularly in the corners of her mouth, wanting to make sure she hadn't left any blood on her face. As she walked along, she pulled a silver tube of lipstick from her jacket pocket and applied some more, blotting her lips with no need for a mirror. It was a trick she'd always been good at since the days when she'd first started wearing the stuff. Jade turned her head and glanced in the window of the shop she was passing, pleased to see that she looked the same as she had when she'd first left the Grand. Normal. If it weren't for the fangs that were ever-present in her mouth, she might think that she was normal.

As if to disprove her thought, she had to stop at the far corner of the building, bracing herself against it with one hand as she blinked at the concrete. He was nearby, and he felt her, too. It was nothing so simple as a flash of images in this instance; Tony had sent those to her several times since he'd pulled his disappearing act, and she interpreted it as nyah, nyah, you can't find me. A mental raspberry, as it were. Sometimes the brilliant confetti of images was pleasurable, seductive, as if to show her what she might be missing out on, and sometimes it was dark and laced with terror. Her father, Leo and Teddy, whose pictures he had seen, crucified upside-down in the desert, throats slit, blood running and congealing beneath the hot sun. Her mother, who'd vanished when Jade was seven, bloated and floating in the shallows of a river, filmed dead eyes staring up at nothing. How he'd gotten that last, Jade had no idea. She did not know enough about how telepathy worked. Yet.

This was different. It was a twisted current, like dark water trickling through a narrow channel. Like the thinnest of wires running between them. Drawing her. Instinctively, without thinking about it, Jade reached back, mentally grasping hold of his consciousness even as she started walking again. Her emotions felt splintered, and she was sure that Tony would sense that the closer she got. She couldn't help it. Threads of anger mixed with helpless rage mixed with confusion and dusted with the faintest echoes of hurt. She was getting better at sublimating feelings that made her weak, but she wasn't entirely there yet. She'd been a vampire for six weeks with almost no guidance, so that wasn't surprising.

She turned the corner and walked another half-block and she'd arrived at the building in which Tony dwelt. She didn't read the sign but simply entered, making her way through the foyer to the elevators. He was here, and he wanted her. For what, she didn't know, and it didn't seem to matter. She had no illusions that it was anything good; Jade had long since disabused herself of the notion that she would have any luck whatsoever with men. She didn't know what she wanted from Tony. To scream at him, to vent her rage at being left yet again? To ask why? That did not matter either as she stepped out onto the eleventh floor. Striding unerringly to his door, she didn't bother ringing the bell but simply pounded on it with one fist, three times, then waited for him to answer.

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shadowwhisper
2008-03-13 08:15 am UTC (link)

Sometimes Tony was happy upon waking up. Other times he was just irritable. This evening, he had woken up irritable. The night before had been one of those nights that one tries to forget. Not to mention the singing playful ghost always helped liven his spirits up. Right? Right.

He toyed with the idea of going to some club that evening. Find some fresh, young thing, and go to someplace secluded in the city. Then, he could torment and torture at his leisure to living things up for him again. That was indeed, at first, the plan for the evening.. He had even gotten dressed and ready for the clubbing hours to start.

Then he sensed her once again. It almost surprised him for the first moment. For the past week, he had entirely forgotten about her. The new complex and its inhabitants had gathered most of his attention for the last several days. Not that he had really cared what was happening to her, she was just another aspect of his life.

Any other night, he would have ignored her. Ignored her and let her go on her little merry way. He knew he could block any images she had of him easily through the bond that he shared with his childer. He had often tormented her with images over the past several weeks, and he thought there might be some bit of enjoyment to be found there tonight.

Tony sensed her fresh feeding, and her feelings that she had perhaps gone too far, and his smile only widened. He was a little impressed she had manage to live. When he had decided to turn her, he hadn’t given the soft young woman more than a couple of days to live on her own. But she had surprised him, and that was all together too rare.

With her being so nearby, he decided to let her find him that night. So, for the briefest of moments, he dropped the mind shields he normally kept up that blocked her sensing of him. Let her feel just how close he really was, and just where he was. He closed his eyes and focused on the link itself, and lead her through images toward the building and then to his door.

When he heard the knock, or in truth, the pounding on his door, he rose from his couch in a slow motion. Then, he turned and headed toward the door. He let her wait outside for several long moments, just to get that rage burning that much hotter, before he actually opened the door. Tony stood there for another moment as he studied her face, knowing that he didn’t really need any introduction otherwise. He would also ignore any actions she’d take against him, even ignoring her if she dared to slap him or tried to speak to him.

After another long moment, he stepped back from the door, and motioned toward his living room for her to enter. “Come in.” he said in a simple, soft voice.

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jadedheart
2008-03-13 09:41 pm UTC (link)

Truthfully, Jade had not expected that she'd hear from her Sire again, though she'd felt certain he was somewhere in Seattle. If he'd wanted her around, he wouldn't have left with no forwarding address in the first place, right? There must've been some bad karma somewhere in her life, because she was on a losing streak of bad luck with men, and she had been for the past few years. Tavin, whom she still loved beyond all reason considering how he'd treated her, and now Tony, who'd turned her and then bailed a couple of days later.

Was that the vampire version of fuck and run? A cynical smile edged her lips at the thought.

She didn't consider herself all that forgettable, so it had to be bad luck. She was slim, blonde, attractive with green eyes and a wide smile; she'd certainly never had any real trouble with guys in her younger years. From the time she'd started dating at nearly sixteen up until she'd met Tav, she'd mostly been able to have her pick, though she wasn't bitchy or stuck-up about it. It was just an accepted fact of life for her. Something, evidently, had changed. She often wondered if it wasn't something deep inside her that had, something that sought the dark.

Jade often surprised people who made the mistake of thinking that she was a soft, fluffy and mostly useless dumb blonde; she'd encountered that attitude all her life. There was a strip of steel a mile wide in her, and she'd used it to get her through any situation that was thrown at her. She found that she felt the same way about being a vampire that she did about her career: if she was going to do it, she was going to damned well do it right. Soft squishy feelings about her prey were sublimated as best she could manage, and just because she hadn't yet killed did not mean she wouldn't. It wasn't smart to kill everyone from whom she fed. That would attract the wrong kind of attention.

She crossed her arms and tapped her foot as she waited for Tony to get his slow ass to the door. She knew what he was doing, and it made her even more annoyed. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of slapping him or beating her fists against his chest, nothing like that. Oh, she wanted to. She was likely as physically strong as he was now, but it would solve nothing. She'd simply look like an idiot.

Her green eyes were cool when he finally pulled the door open to gaze at her, and she did not flinch from his assessment. She waited him out, even in the midst of her anger curious to see what he could possibly say, what he would do. His words when he spoke were almost anticlimactic, and she continued to stand there after he'd invited her in, as if trying to decide whether or not she'd accept the invitation. Finally she rolled her eyes slightly and stepped through the door, carefully closing it behind her.

Striding past him, she slid her jacket down her arms and threw it in the direction of the couch, then whirled to face him. One hand on her hip, she snapped, "Do you make a habit of turning people and then running off, asshole?"