Caradoc D. Dearborn (novus_caradoc) wrote in novus_sceptrum, @ 2009-11-20 00:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | rating: pg-13, when: november 1999, where: private residence, who: caradoc dearborn, who: npc |
Characters: Caradoc Dearborn and Tabitha Mackenzie (NPC)
Date: November 19th, 1999 - late evening
Location: Hampstead, London
Rating: PG-13 (suggestive content, language)
Summary: Tabitha attempts to get closer to the new resident. Things don't go as planned.
Status: Complete
Coming back to Laurel Manor had taken a great amount of effort, but siring that man that night, Caradoc had felt as if a part of him and died along with him. Since starting this, Caradoc felt like little bits of him were dying off, little parts of the man he had tried to remain. He wondered if this was how men became monsters: losing their souls piece by piece until they had nothing left to give, and all that remained was the demon beneath.
It made Caradoc admire Remus all the more for what he had been through, and Caradoc wondered if he would ever have the internal strength and character Remus had. Caradoc hoped so, or else what he was doing now would slowly be the undoing of him.
Upon his return, the atmosphere in the Manor towards Caradoc had changed. The siring of Henri Delacour had been like a rite of passage in the eyes of most of them, an act there was just no coming back from, and Caradoc felt it deep inside himself, and used it to make sure the trust he had earned amongst the Coven was not tarnished. He had been extremely quiet, passive, and after running away to Wales for a night had not left the Manor since his return. He listened to Christabelle, Mary-Anne, Jacob, all of them prattle on. He had somehow managed to stop himself from twitching when a glass of warm blood was brought to him, and every time he felt guilt, he had mastered a way to push it deep inside himself, where he knew it would either explode outwards later, or eat him alive from the inside.
Week two was the week of desensitizing. He had always been a quick study.
When not mingling, Caradoc spent most of his time in his room. Portions of the house were still off limits, and a lock had now been installed on the basement door. The grounds were not exactly off limits, but the few times Caradoc had expressed interest in going out into them, Christabelle had insisted he not go alone. He had stopped asking, and learned quickly within these four expensively decorated walls was the only place he was safe from their prying eyes.
Until tonight, when the door to his room suddenly opened and Tabitha stood there with a tray in her hands. Caradoc sat up rather abruptly on his bed, a book on his lap, and his eyes narrowed at her with obvious annoyance.
“Knocking is usually considered polite.” Caradoc snapped at her. Tabitha, a woman he had interacted little with since arriving, giggled and stepped inside, using her foot to close the door behind her.
“Sorry. I had no hands to knock with,” she answered, which was a pathetically lame excuse, but by the sly grin on her face Caradoc was made aware she knew it too. He scowled at her as she approached and set the tray down on his side table. Two goblets of blood, one of which she held out to him.
“What do you want?” Caradoc asked, taking the offered goblet but making no movement off his bed. Tabitha either didn’t notice how tense he had become, or didn’t care, because she sat herself down on the edge of the bed with her own goblet in hand and smiled.
“To get better acquainted.” Tabitha said simply, “I heard about what happened in the basement, and I must say, you had a lot of nerve to strike Christabelle...” Tabitha paused as she sipped her goblet, a quiet, pleased sigh escaping her lips, “You’ve gotten under her skin I think. She likes you. You’re like a new pet project.”
“I’m no one’s pet project.” Caradoc growled as he eyed Tabitha. The only thing he knew about this woman, was her love for men. She loved them to look at them, bed them, and eat them. She drank exclusively male blood, and she was usually hanging off one of the other men in the house. He had avoided her, until this point.
“You might not think so, but you are,” Tabitha chuckled and tipped her goblet towards him, “A vampire has never come looking for us. It’s been a very, very long time since a vampire has walked in here the way you do. Wanting to protect humanity, be all righteous, but at the same time you’re so pathetically ignorant and young. Christabelle wants to guide you and mould you, it’s obvious. Like I said, pet project.”
Caradoc’s scowl seemed to only deepen, but he knew Tabitha was probably telling the truth. Christabelle was over 200 years old; he was not stupid, he knew for her to keep him around, she had to be at least amused by him. He really didn’t care why she wanted him around, as long as he got to stay and keep trying to push his points on the other vampires and hope to form an ally.
“I might be harder to crack than she thinks,” Caradoc mumbled as he took a sip. B negative, male, a little on the aged side. He was getting much better at defining taste now.
“You’ll crack.” Tabitha said with a little grin, “What are you fighting against? You’re a vampire, there is no cure for that, you know. You really need to start looking at it as the gift it is.”
“Gift?” Caradoc snorted.
Tabitha set her goblet down, and inched further onto his bed, which made Caradoc shift further across it. Tabitha smiled, ducked her head a little, trying to look coy, “We are faster, stronger and immortal. To become what we are, you have to give the ultimate sacrifice, which is your life. You must cross death itself, and if you survive, you are given the ultimate reward. The world could fall at your feet Caradoc...” she reached out, and playfully tugged at the front of his shirt, “You could snap any enemy in half, woo any woman you wanted. You will never age or grow old, you will stand on top of man and watch them fumble around and be above it all. We can smell life itself, hear life, taste it. The pure energy of the living.”
“Ironic that we can tap so closely into the one thing we gave up. You know, being alive and all.” Caradoc retorted, “What kind of gift is that if you spend eternity chasing what you lost? Being alive? Why would I want to ‘tap into’ life and be reminded that I don’t have it anymore?”
“You didn’t lose it, you rose above it. You can have life and more. You will never die of disease or famine. You will never thirst but for one thing. You will never feel the pains of aging, your senses will never fade or fail you...” she shifted closer onto the bed, and before Caradoc could move again her fingers were weaselling between the buttons of his shirt. Her fingers were cool as they touched his chest and he squirmed, unsure of what she was doing. She grinned, “We’re above it all, Caradoc. We are perfect by design. There is nothing out there we can’t kill or conqueror.”
“I have no desire to kill or conqueror anything,” Caradoc murmured as he tried to pull away, but Tabitha was now shifting closer, her fingers tightly gripping his shirt, “The true gift is the gift of feeling fulfilled, of knowing you have lived your life to the fullest, made the best of what you have been given in the time you are allowed here on Earth. Vampirism takes it away, takes away that clock, and with it the drive to be a better person, to learn and grow. You all sit here and look down at the world, but never change. I pity you. I pity all of you.”
“You shouldn’t...” Tabitha purred, closing the distance so she was now directly beside him. Caradoc growled quietly in warning but Tabitha took no notice, and began to unbutton the collar of his shirt, “You can experience the world in a way no human could. You just haven’t done it yet, haven’t tapped into your potential. Siring that man opened a great many doors for you... you just need to let go. You need to let go of what you’re holding onto and embrace that which you are denying.” Tabitha began to grin, a grin that was devious and sultry, one Caradoc didn’t like, “You ever made love to a woman as a vampire, Caradoc?”
“No.” He answered sharply and quickly, grabbing her wrist to stop her hands from undoing anymore of the buttons on his shirt.
“Oh, that’s a pity...” Tabitha whispered, “It’s amazing, sex. Before, it was just the body... the rush, the orgasm, and the aftermath. But as a vampire? Oh, Caradoc...” Tabitha looked like she was about to swoon, “You can smell every change in your partner, when the adrenaline hits, when the hormones rise and crest, when the sweat begins to bead. If you’re with a human, you can hear their poor hearts thunder just for you, their little lungs gasping for air to keep up. You can smell their blood heat up, so hot, so boiled with lust and passion you can nearly taste it in the air.”
Caradoc frowned, and when Tabitha pulled her hand away, Caradoc let go. She grinned and finished unbuttoning his shirt as well as taking away his goblet, “And if you let yourself go, really let yourself be what you are, every sensation is intensified. Take your best orgasm, and multiply it by 10. Not just your body reaches a peak, but your senses do too. Your nose is filled with the most amazing of scents; your ears can hear their moans, their heart, their lungs, their blood and their gasps. Your entire being orgasms, Caradoc. We are designed to hunt and become one with our victims, take their life into us... we are meant to feel it all.”
Caradoc listened to her words, and finally shifted away when her fingers began a dangerous dance down his bare chest. He was now on the complete other side of the bed and he shook his head, “There’s a part of that entire equation you’re missing.”
“What?” Tabitha said, her minx facade faltering for a moment with genuine confusion, “What could I possibly be missing in that equation?”
“Try what a human mind thinks,” Caradoc snapped as he slowly buttoned his shirt back up, “What a human heart craves. The physical release, as bloody amazing as it might be, can never be complete without loving and being complete with the partner you are with. The act is all well and good, but it’s nothing without the emotion behind it.”
“Oh emotion!” Tabitha snorted, darting across the bed to grab his hand, stopping his attempt to close his shirt. Caradoc blinked at her with surprise and watched as her other hand undid the buttons again, “Love is a messy business. Who needs all that when you can literally feel the essence of your partner anyways?”
“I need all that.” Caradoc said simply, smacking her hand away as she reached up to touch the carved wooden eagle that hung between his collarbones, “I bet there’s a part of this you’re not telling me. You screw your human lovers, and literally take in their essence, don’t you?”
“It’s very natural for a vampire to want to bite and drink,” Tabitha said with a shrug, “Don’t you bite when you orgasm, or want to sink your fangs into something?”
Caradoc refrained from answering, his jaw twitching as his eyes diverted to the comforter for a moment. Tabitha giggled as she took that as a yes, and her hands tried again to play with the two necklaces around his throat, “Blood tastes the best when it’s filled with the hormones of a raging orgasm. I love taking my lovers right when they peak, then watching their gasp of pleasure change to a gasp of pain as I take them in their sheer, blinding moment of ecstasy.”
Caradoc felt his skin begin to tingle as her fingers caressed his skin, flesh that hadn’t been touched by a woman in a very long time. His body was quite pleased with the sensation, but the rest of him was beginning to squirm with distaste and he quickly grabbed her hand and pulled it away from him, “Get out.”
“What?” Tabitha blinked, then giggled as she leaned in and planted a few very soft kisses on his neck, “You don’t want me to go. You know you don’t.”
His eyelids began to flutter, and there was a mixture of lust and disgust all at once that confused him. His body was happy to feel her lips, but yet when they moved across his skin, it left him feeling cold and tainted, like every trace of her on his skin was toxic. He growled softly and jerked his head away and quickly stood beside the bed, “Yes, I do. Get out, Tabitha.”
Tabitha frowned and stood as well, and came around to stand infront of him, “Don’t be like this. Nothing wrong with it, Caradoc, and honestly... you need to loosen up. Why, is there some little woman waiting for you back home, where you came from?”
Caradoc frowned heavily, his eyes diverting away, and Tabitha grinned, “I didn’t think so. No woman, no lover, no nothing. So, have a bit of fun...” Tabitha began to run her hands up his bare chest, “Let me show you a side to our kind I know you’ll love. You don’t need the sticky attachments, Caradoc. Let go of that weakness.”
“Maybe it’s weakness, maybe it’s something you vampires want to beat out of me,” Caradoc snarled, stepping away from her and slapping her hands down, “but you prove my point exactly. How boring your life must be if your only purpose is to find the next best fuck or the next best feed. I would rather lead an exciting, fulfilling, life as a weak human than a boring eternity as a ‘superior being’.”
Tabitha frowned at Caradoc, and when she made an attempt to come forward again the growl that came from Caradoc was so deep it made his lip curl, and she darted backwards instinctively. “Is that why you fight with this Order of yours? To protect humans and pretend to have that ‘fulfilling’ life? Well what about when all those people you fight with die? They are all going to fade away with time, leaving you here alone. No Order, no friends, nothing. Then what will it mean? Nothing, because they are gone. It’ll all disappear. ”
“It’ll mean everything, because my friends and the memories they will give me will live inside me, giving me life, and making a part of them live on. It’s an amazing sensation to live for something that isn’t selfish, to live for someone else, and to feel like you, as small as you are, have shaped a little corner of your world,” Caradoc snapped at her, “The day I start living to merely scratch an itch or stroke my own ego is hopefully the day the sun never sets, so I can burn away.”
“Maybe she won’t crack you,” Tabitha growled, “You might change your tune in 100 years or so, when you are alone, and you’ll see you wasted good years that could have been spent being on top of the world slumming around, pretending to be mortal. You should reconsider my offer, handsome.”
“Who says I can’t do both?” Caradoc said with a smile that was bordering on cocky, taking pleasure in getting the harlot annoyed, “I can embrace everything there is to vampirism... my abilities, my ‘gifts’, and still chase my dreams. Still live for my friends, live a fulfilling life. Maybe you’re the sad one, Tabitha. When was the last time you woke up, or looked in the mirror, and felt content with what you were doing? Do you have a purpose, beyond getting your hands down every guys pants?”
Tabitha tensed, her little hands fisting at her sides. Her eyes quickly faded in colour with anger, and she bared her fangs for a brief moment when she snapped, “What kind of question is that? A purpose?!”
Caradoc answered her snarl with one of his own, but when his face shifted, he gave her a fanged grin that was nearly mocking, “You feel pretty empty inside, don’t you? Is that why you fuck every man that crosses your path, so you can try and make yourself feel full? All the super powers in the world, and at the end of the day you are just a soulless walking corpse, unloved, unneeded and unwanted. If you died, no one would mourn you or care. If I died? I’d have a funeral, I’d have friends who’d pay their respects, and I would have loved ones that would carry my name on with them. You would be dust. Your name would disappear. You would be, and are, a walking nothing. That is why I ‘cling’ to humanity and why I fight with the humans, Tabitha. Because doing so makes me something and gives me direction and a reason to grow. My body may have died, but I haven’t.” Caradoc felt the weight of the pendants around his neck, and he stood up a little straighter, “I’m not, and will never be alone. Even after they all die away, because their memory will be company enough.”
Tabitha was somewhere between crying and screaming, and she was trembling with her anger. “Christabelle will want to speak to you later on; she has plans for you in the next few days. She wants to bring you into the Coven, but I’m going to make sure she hears about this conversation. She won’t want you here, you stupid, stupid man.”
Caradoc, with an arrogance he wasn’t used to feeling, approached slowly with a stride that obviously instilled some sort of fear, because Tabitha backed up until she was against the wall. Caradoc growled low in his throat, and somehow enjoyed watching her shrink against the wood, his undead eyes drilling into hers, “You go ahead and tell her that. Tell her everything I said. If I’m the pet project you say I am, she’ll just get more enjoyment out of breaking me, won’t she? Taking the poor mislead vampire and showing him what he’s missing. I am learning things, a great many things, and I’ll have to thank her for that. Obviously she is doing something right, because I have you frightened... and if I’m so weak-” he snarled hard into her face, causing her to flinch, which made him grin, “-you should have no reason to be scared. Now get the fuck out of my room, you little slapper.”
Tabitha growled loudly at him, but seemed quite happy to leave his room with a dramatic flip of her hair, and slam of his door. Caradoc turned to watch her leave, and once he was sure she was gone he locked his door. He sighed and blinked his eyes a few times as they went back to blue, and rested his forehead on the wood.
It was an odd feeling - to be connected and holding onto that which made him himself, but feeling the creeping sensation of that which he tried to hide deep within him. He never would have spoken to Tabitha like that a few weeks ago, but maybe a small part of him believed he was a bit superior, a bit better. The thought disturbed him for a moment, until he smiled. No, he wasn’t a better or superior person; he was just better and superior than her. The words he had just spoken, he didn’t know if he fully believed them, but for the moment they felt right. They had gotten her out of here, and although most of the time he did feel the creeping sense of loneliness grip him, he knew he was less alone than she was. He could still look in a mirror and recognize who he was.
He walked away from the door and reached up to hold the pendants, which had become talismans for him, something to ground him to the life he had outside these walls. For all the arrogant confidence he had spouted at Tabitha, he knew the battle wasn’t over, and he wondered how far he could go before he perhaps did break. He hoped that was a long ways away, so far away that he would never need to know what that point was. He was scared to think of what Christabelle was going to ask of him now, but if Tabitha was telling the truth, entrance to the Coven would give him the access he would need to reach out further, and try and get more help.
Caradoc put both goblets of blood back on the tray and sighed, laying down on his bed where he curled up and closed his eyes.