Phaedra Romani (stronger_than) wrote in blood_red_sky, @ 2011-09-12 10:22:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | lindsey mcdonald, phaedra romani, saerian |
If I gotta sin to see her again, then I'm gonna lie, lie, lie (Lindsey)
Character interaction may be NSFW. You were warned.
Phaedra watched a little girl and boy playing, saw the little girl trip and fall, and the boy walk away. It was just after sunset, and she was heading back to Harry's, past a park near an old church.
She had time to gasp as she saw the little boy walking back to his fallen playmate. And before she had finished a thought, she realized the boy wasn’t alone. He walked, freckled face smiling, hand in hand with a good looking man she recognized. Well, recognized might not be the right word. But he felt familiar
Phaedra took a step forward. The man smiled slowly, never taking his eyes from hers. His eyes were light brown, laughing silently. He kept his grip on the boy, who by now was looking with concern at his sister.
She was his sister. That easy, from a child. Like catching a ball to read them. The boy started forward, but the man gripped harder, working a squeak out of the child.
“I’ll count to ten,” Phaedra said, eyebrow raising, one had reaching instinctively for a dagger. The tableaux did not change, though now the little girl was standing, confused, and looking back and forth between her brother, the man, and her.
“Jek,” she began. The man’s eyes glinted with something that felt like anticipation. Or foreplay. “Dui. Trin.”
The dagger was out of its sheath now. The street around the four of them had quieted, emptied, as if time had stopped. And what if it had? Phaedra had no idea what the creature standing before me, so handsome and oh so human looking, was capable of.
“Schtar. Panj. Tschov...”
The little boy squirmed. The man smiled. In Phaedra's mind she was already aiming the dagger at his neck, the jugular, though the movement, when it came, would be fast and fluid.
The man tilted his head, letting go of the boy’s hand. The boy ran to his sister, eyes wide and terrified, and both of them hurried away. The man waved goodbye as they ran, opening and closing his hand in deliberate, exaggerated movements.
He turned his eyes back to Phaedra. She hadn’t moved— she was still tensed, ready to wound him. The fact remained that she did not know how to kill him. She hated that.
“Let me save you the trouble,” he said. The voice was low and clear, with a smoothness to it that suggested Ireland.
“Efta,” he said.
Phaedra blinked. Her mouth opened. She felt something inside her drop.
He kept counting. “Otor. Enija. Deque.”
Phaedra was gaping, and knew it, but couldn’t stop. The man laughed, and the sound made her skin feel liquid. Something about his physical presence was... wrong. Something didn’t fit.
“Oh, it’s been a while, Phaedra, but I remember,” he said, winking at her. The five foot space between them was dead air. She knew that air should’ve been like fire. She couldn’t speak. Had he really just spoken to her in Roma? She licked her lower lip and found her voice.
“You used those children. To trap me.”
He nodded, face suddenly grave. “As you might figure,” he said, the voice now lilting, sweet, “we have a great deal to talk about, you and I.”
Phaedra didn’t move. No. Not just that. She didn't think she COULD move. There was something wrong with that voice... The flirtatious glint was back, faster than it had gone. “Don’t make me beg. Let’s get out of here.”
He smirked, and the street around them was alive again. A woman pushed passed Phaedra, talking loudly on a cell phone the vampire couldn’t see. Phaedra could hear the cars again, hear cabbies yelling at each other, hear a siren. She wasn’t sure what he had done to give them that quiet, but now it was undone.
He extended a hand to her. The look she gave him could’ve peeled the flesh off of his bones.
“No tricks,” he whispered. Phaedra didn’t move.
“You think I’ll believe you?”
He laughed again. She wanted to cringe, but something about that laugh was caressing her, inside and out. Phaedra wasn’t sure she wanted it to stop.
“No,” he said. “You’re not stupid.” With that, he started to walk away, slowly, with a stride that said he knew she’d follow.
Phaedra watched him moving away, disliking the situation more with every swaggering step he took. She didn’t know enough yet to be able to kill him. She until he was two blocks away before she moved, and then blurred past people walking near him, falling into step beside him. The dagger was still in her hand. He didn’t look at her, but he gave a short laugh.
“There,” he said, giving a fast nod of his head. There was a small park set into the city block, surrounded by black iron fencing and riddled with street lights and benches. Trees hung dark like a canopy over paved walkways.
Phaedra didn’t say anything. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong (aside from the fact that she was walking next to a demon.)She jumped over the locked, wrought iron gate and perched up on the back of a bench, balancing like a gargoyle statue. Phaedra could hear a water fountain, flowing like a metronome behind the night time city noises.
He’d jumped the gate, too, and stood across from her, those eyes still laughing at a joke she'd never hear. She took a minute to look at him, really look at him. She wanted to see if she could find the monstrous old man he had been when she first knew him in that young man. The brown hair was messy, but that stylish kind of messy, as if it’s been done on purpose. He wore jeans, and a plain blue button down shirt. Light blue. The color Phaedra missed most. Sky. A light-looking zip-up sweater over it.
The face was causing a problem for her. Nothing like him deserved that face. It was too smooth, too young, too pretty. It held no malice—but the eyes did. They looked almost out of place, as if they had nothing to do with the features positioned around them. She was glaring.
He made a “tsk” noise at her. “That’s no way to start this conversation, baby,” he said, moving to sit down.
“Don’t call me that,” Phaedra snapped, not moving her eyes from him. She only had so much patience for psychopaths. He was using it up. “Who are you?”
He looked amused. “You think I’m going to tell you that?”
Her voice was getting rougher by the minute, as if she were hoping to hunt him with it, bite him with it. Here was hoping. “No.”
She pushed at his mind, not sure how well the jolt would work on something like him. But something gave, moved under the prodding. Phaedra knew his name. It was as if he’d said it. But somehow, she knew that this wasn’t like Rumpletstiltskin. If she said his name, he wasn’t going to lose any of his power. He just preferred to keep me in the dark.
“Saerian,” she whispered.
He nodded. “I’ve waited a long time to hear you say that.” His face softened slightly. “Say it again.”
As if he’d caught himself, he let the attitude creep back in, work itself over his face, his body. He reached into his pocket, removing a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches.
“What do you mean?”
He looked up at her, lighting the flame and pulling on it with practiced ease. Phaedra could swear his eyes went red, for a heartbeat.
“You don’t remember,” he said, exhaling a light cloud of twisted smoke. He winked at me. “And you’ll be lucky if you remember this little encounter.”
The feeling that her skin could slide off, that time had stopped, returned. Phaedra didn’t want to, but she slid down onto the bench until she was seated next to the demon. Touching him. Saerian took her hand, and while all Phaedra wanted to do was drive a dagger through his palm, she let him. He took another drag.
“Phaedra, I can feel you fighting me,” he said, taking his pointer finger and tapping it on her temple. “Stop it.”
It was like someone had taken her will- all of it- or smothered it, pushed it down so deep inside her that the act was at once intimate and the worst violation Phaedra could imagine. She wanted to flinch, but couldn’t.
Phaedra couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t be. Not unless Saerian asked her to.
He smiled at her, letting go of her hand, looking her over, head to toe, fangs to daggers. “You’re more beautiful than I remember,” he said. Something in his eyes went cold. “And my memory is infinite.”
Phaedra was holding his gaze, but she wasn't sure how. When she looked into those laughing eyes, she saw red. She saw torment, and death. She saw fire. And she saw herself.
“It’s not Hell,” he said, and Phaedra knew he was reading her mind. “It’s worse than that. And bigger.” Saerian finished his cigarette, throwing it away toward the sound of the fountain. He kept his eyes on Phaedra, and for a second she found herself again.
She moved fast, and luckily, vampires move faster than demons can see. She’d unsheathed the dagger at her right hip and sliced open the right side of his face before he could blink.
The blood came quick and free. It looked and smelled for all the world like human blood. Saerian hissed, a low sound at the back of his throat.“Stupid gypsy,” he said.
The air around him had begun to ripple, a fierce disturbance of the otherwise serene setting. He grabbed her hand and squeezed, and the pressure was better than human. She dropped the dagger, and he shoved it through her hand. Phaedra cried out, but only a little. When he pulled the blade out, she watched the wound close, skin closing over new skin, knitting her back together.
“Don’t fight me,” he said. And suddenly she didn’t want to anymore. Phaedra was blank.
When he kicked her to the ground, Phaedra let him, limp like the straw dolls she’d had as a child. Lifeless. Vacant. Echoes of his words floated to me, but she felt like she was under water. Felt like the surface was on fire, and it was safer below.
“You’re going to make this so hard on yourself, baby,” Saerian said, standing over her, flicking a match to life. He smiled at her again, walking away, leaving her there, that ripple following him like a kite’s tail. “I can’t wait.”
He started whistling. The heat grew, trembling around Phaedra. She was sweating.
“Oh,” he said, turning around, eyes on Phaedra, working over her prone body like fingers. “One more thing. Don’t move until I say.”
He winked, and laughed, the sound making her wish she could go deaf. And as he jumped back over the iron fence, leaving the park, he threw the match over his shoulder.
The ripple became a fireball, and Phaedra was lying in the middle of it.