Si Waylen (lovelikeblood) wrote in plainsite, @ 2018-08-14 12:13:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | john abbott |
Temptation
Who: John Abbott and NPC
What: Oops! I Did It Again
When: Monday Night
Where: Greater Los Angeles
Rating: Mild (Some Violence)
It had been easier when John Abbott was no one.
Before the advent of television, the internet, the omnipresent cell phone camera, it was effortless to have a face no one remembered beyond the barest description… Especially in London in the 1800s. The streets were dim, lamp lights flickered, the air was both thick and pungent. Shadows provided obscurity when necessary and besides, the authorities were unlikely to launch investigations into the disappearance of poor folk.
Even before, when he was human, a member of polite society from a reputable family, John had done wicked things and none were the wiser. That good fortune continued for over a century. He bit and he took life as he pleased and never worried about the distinctive curl of his black hair, the mild laziness of one eye. People rarely recollected sufficient information to make a positive ID and the physical evidence was rudimentary.
But these days, one needed identification to navigate the world, credentials, an ‘online presence’. John accepted this increased visibility when took up a professorship in the United States and vowed to live a more careful existence. He wagered he would spend ten to twenty years as a semi-public persona, then slip into obscurity again. When the world had forgotten him, he would emerge as someone new.
Well, that had been the plan. Then his novels began to sell with a ferocity that his volumes of poetry had not approached. Suddenly, J. A. Abbott was both a name and a face. While it hardly compared to the fame of a Hollywood A-lister, it did require more attention to the complication of witnesses and truth be told, he was impetuous. He could be awful at being careful, especially when it came to a person he liked.
A person like Anna.
Anna was a graduate student. Anna was clever, a budding writer, a casual fan of his work. Anna had hair like a brunette medusa. It drove him crazy: he imagined the texture, the soft scent, and what it might be like to bury his nose in it while he fed from her. He was smitten and it led him here, to the foot of a residential driveway, his pale hands illuminated by the headlights of a MINI Cooper.
“Get out of the car, Courtney… Please.” He tipped his head, vying for the role of sympathetic scamp. “Allow me to explain.”
“No! Get out of the way!” As she cried, the blonde girl’s industrial-strength mascara burned her eyes. She pawed at her face and revved the engine. “You ate her… you ate my fucking roommate!” It was a shrill cry, but in this neighborhood on the edge of Los Angeles, it was unlikely to attract much attention. The good residents were tucked away in their beds, remote controls in hand, lulling themselves to sleep with HBO subscriptions, glasses of wine and a couple of prescription pills.
John shook his head. “No, I--” He stopped and sighed. Lifted his palm. “Well, I didn’t eat her. I might’ve stopped, except--”
“Ahhhhh!” Courtney squeezed her eyes shut and pressed the gas pedal. The little car leapt forward. She didn’t see Professor Abbott roll up the hood and windshield, then pitch over the roof, so much as hear the thump-crack-roll. At the end of the driveway, she slammed on brakes in a cloud of rubbery fumes. "Oh god... oh god." The seatbelt had tightened and knocked the breath out of her lungs.
Trembling, she looked in the rearview. Her tail lights threw the world behind the car into a strange, red haze. She could see the man lying on the pavement.
John picked up his head and shook a few chips of windshield glass from his hair. He rubbed his face. His skull was bashed in, he was sure of it. That was the only thing that could explain how badly his head hurt. "Fuck me..." Questioningly, he shielded his eyes and peered at the bumper of the car. The girl was looking at him, too, in the rearview mirror. He couldn’t see her but he knew it. Some foolish, entirely human curiosity -- or perhaps shock -- had compelled her to stop and check on him rather than drive like a bat out of hell.
It also compelled her to take her foot off the clutch. The manual transmission stalled. It was the opportunity he needed.
The door would be locked, that he knew, which left the best point of entry as the windshield he had destroyed. The vampire leapt onto the hood and punched through the spiderweb of glass he'd left behind. While she screamed and covered her face, he climbed over the dashboard into the passenger seat and seized her by throat. John shifted his weight partially onto her lap and pinned a knee against her diaphragm.
From close range, John watched her struggle for breath, then gather enough sense to claw at his wrists and face. “I only came for her,” he said, leaning away from her wriggling fingers. “Two is grotesque, even for me, but I can’t…” Her fingernail scratched his cheekbone. “...Leave a loose end.”
John lowered his voice and made himself stare at her. “Courtney, look at me! Look into my eyes and I’ll let you go. Look at me...” His words were an entreaty, soft, pleading, and kind.
And somehow, through her cloud of terror and pain, Courtney heard him and she listened.
He waited for her struggling to cease before he relaxed and let the girl breathe.
Up close, John watched her in that hypnotic haze and he knew he could plant any number of suggestions in her head, including that she forget all of it. It might work. Might hold up under the questioning of investigators, the strange dreams that would poke at her memories, the inexplicable fear of tall men with dark, curling hair.
But John was here now, and so was Courtney, and how did the saying go?
Waste not, want not.
"Don't worry," he said. His voice was low and accented; a lover's voice. John tucked his face into her neck and smelled her scent of perfume and sunscreen. This wasn't what he'd been expecting, but neither was he disappointed, even with the splitting headache. “It doesn’t hurt.”
John sank his teeth into her throat.