Re: Carriage House atticus: Daniel & Atticus
It would be a hard thing, to care for the mess of charred flesh and bloody cackle that made up the vampire, even when he was pinned flat like duck for roasting. He might be pathetic, but there was nothing of empathy to him, no apparent warmth of intellect or heart. He had certainly done nothing for his host, nor did he seem likely to, caught up in his own struggles with his past. The prison of waistcoat and watch seemed as much for soul as mind. It was too bad that Atticus' haunts so closely resembled those in the hazy mess of Daniel's memory, peopled with the angry and long dead; no one in Daniel's memory had cause to love him. There were those that theorized the mind wasn't made for centuries of memory, but when it came down to it he was probably just damaged goods.
Daniel's hands kept the hag's filthy claws from digging too deeply, and he showed her his teeth. "Bloody amateur," he told her, eyes now glazed obsidian and impossible to read through the squint and the blood. The broil of flesh in the air grew pungent, and Daniel was quickly unrecognizable in the wreckage of burnt skin. His spine curled up through the literal haze of smoke (though there was no flame) and he half-rose into sitting position under the glare of the light to squint through swollen eyes at the soldier restraining him. He let the hag slash at him, inciting more flairs of pain that Daniel accepted and ignored, like a beast in a rage. Daniel kicked, kicked, and kicked again, and the third time got free as the soldier overtaxed himself trying to hold something much stronger than a normal man. A splash of blood printed onto the attic's dusty floor as Daniel rolled out of the light and onto his feet into the sudden quiet.
The slow thud of Atticus' heart became impossible loud as the ruined vampire staggered to his feet and looked around. He smiled his mad murderer's smile at the air, and strode across the attic, now his to transgress as he would. He bent down and, with effort only slightly interrupted by the agony of flesh, hauled the inert body of the scholar off the ground entirely, held up by the severely-taxed plaid shirt. Through his working eye Daniel stared into the pallid face as he held the body aloft with one arm. He listened for the heartbeat, gauged very carefully, and bit sideways across the beer-spattered flesh under Atticus' chin. He wanted him to stay weak, and there was nothing a vampire was better equipped to do than leach someone ever so carefully to just this side of living.
Daniel turned and spat the blood out to one side, licking it off his teeth as he dropped his arm so poor Atticus' feet were dragging. He pulled him into the corner, dropped him unceremoniously, and then spent the next two minutes covering the windows with old fabric from a box and nails he literally drove in by hand. Afterward he staggered over and peered into Atticus' face to see if he could hazard another drink without slowing the heart ever further.