The Universe's Mixer

"Mrs. Banner, there is a Damon Salvatore downstairs to see you" Jarvis' voice made Effie jump, a curse slipping from her lips as she dropped her wrench and several nuts.

"Don't call me that," she muttered under her breath as she tugged down her dress, straightening from the miniature robot she had been working on. She then blinked slowly, staring at the wall. "Who's Damon Salvatore?"

The name was familiar in the way Jarvis was, but she couldn't place it.

"He is a friend of yours, Ms. Nashton."

"Ooo, let him up!" she said brightly, eager to meet...well, re meet a friend. As she waited for Damon to come up to the apartment, she started making small finger sandwiches, the manners her mother and grandmother taught her kicking in. It wouldn't do to let a guest go hungry!

There had been far too many quiet evenings at home alone. Maggie was not, by nature, someone who liked being solitary, which made her weird back home. Her bulldogs were great for noise, and she liked talking to them, but when she waited for an answer she knew that she had been shut in for far too long.

But, to put it pretentiously, the muse had been with her. She'd spent the past week doing almost nothing but drinking tea and writing, and she now had actual content to put up on her blog. And thousands of crisply-edited words later, she was up for a relaxing night out.

Make that a night out where she could blow off some steam. She'd heard about a club. A vampire club, if that could be believed, and considering that this place had no KA and Hannibal Freaking Lecter had written her a scrip for pain meds, she was pretty sure that it was entirely possible. The horror movie junkie in her said that she absolutely had to go, no question about it.

She sorted through her closet, picking out her third-sluttiest outfit--high heels, tight pants, a sheer cropped top, and left her long hair loose. At the last minute, out of concession to the early-21st-century aesthetic of the City, she added a bra for modesty's sake. She frowned at her reflection, trailing her fingers over the scars from her gunshot wound, and decided to leave it uncovered. Screw anyone who couldn't deal.

She grabbed a tiny purse, left the TV on for her dogs, and made her way out to the bar.

The kiss had done nothing for him sexually. Dexter didn't care about things like that. Neither his body nor his mind responded to it as a normal man might have. Though, Dexter was aware of how a normal man would have reacted. Red was a beautiful woman. Sensual. She had all the markers of what would be attractive to somebody else.

There had been, however, a reaction.

Her power tugged at him. She had given him a taste of what he had been before. The Dark Passenger delighted at what was felt there. Urged Dexter on. Encouraged more contact between the pair. Her darkness called to his. Her violence riled his needs. Deepened the hunger that he was already feeling.

It wasn't safe.

He knew he could very easily give in to her, to the Dark Passenger. He could be everything that he wanted to be. Deep, deep down, Dexter wanted to let go and see the blood. Let it flow. The self control he'd practiced for so long, however, held tight. He needed a lifeline. He needed something, or he was going to team up with this woman who wished nothing more than for him to be a destructive force within the City.

He would lose himself in her.

Already, he was slipping.

Dexter knew that he wouldn't tell Charlie of what he'd found. He would let Red and her partner kill the last Arkham employee. He would eagerly await seeing what they did. What they produced. He had warned her to do whatever it was she was going to do as soon as she could. Because the police currently had nothing. And once it was all over with, there would be no hope in finding anything. The case would go cold. He would pretend to be looking over the information given him, and he would pretend to find nothing new in any of it. He would give his expert opinions on what he saw there in the blood, and he would possibly give them more than they had, but it would never be enough to find the killers.

He had gone from wanting to help the police by either discovering clues that would aid them, or by ending the lives of the murderers himself to helping out on the other side of the line.

There was no chance, Dexter knew, that Red would bring him in to the circle on this one. Whomever she was working with currently - playing with, really - was the one who would finish the job. They were bonding, the two of them. Sharing an intimacy. Maybe one day Dexter would know who the other hands belonged to, and maybe one day he would even meet those hands face to face. For now, he would be kept out of it, and it had nothing to do with who he worked for. It had everything to do with how things had been done up until now. With only one name left to cross off, they would want their crescendo.