Frailty, thy name is Woman!
In the amount of time that has passed since the "death" of Lucian, the Lycan King, the vampires have dropped their guard. But what if Lucian had been saved? Long before the vampires even began to be relaxed, long before the Lycan ambassadors reached the new Ancients. A girl, a gift, a love, and a war to win are now the focus of every immortal alive.
Note: Obviously I don't own any of the characters from the original Underworld, nor do I ever want to claim to have them as my own. But Ophelia and the characters that aren't from the film are mine. I'm a new writer here on , and would love it if people would review my story!
Ophelia stared down at her watch and sighed. It seemed like her young captive had gone into the club after all. Ophelia didn't know the girl as well as she thought, but the girl just lived in her apartment building, not in her apartment. Pushing herself off of the wall she looked back at the club and sighed. It didn't seem like she was going to play the guardian angel tonight. And who was she kidding really? Veer didn't want someone to watch over her. Yeah, Ophelia had babysat the kid when she was little, but now it seemed like she had distanced herself from the world. So it was time to let go of childhood memories and give up. Sure the kid's family might be a little mad, but Ophelia was twenty now! She didn't exactly want to hang out with a bunch of teenagers.
Casting one last look down the tunnel Veer had disappeared into, she started when she heard what sounded like a moan coming from down the tunnel. Her eyebrows snapped down and a frown planted itself on her face. Maybe she hadn't been wrong. Veer could have gotten hurt down there! She started to walk down the tunnel, but as she turned the corner a body launched into hers. Gasping, she wrapped her arms around what she soon found to be a man. He was shaking as if he'd just been in an earthquake, and she shushed him as she wildly looked around for what could have scared him this much. Cities weren't the safest places in the world, something she had learned just a while ago when some man tried to pick pocket her. Leaning herself against the wall, she took a deep breath and tried to calm her own thundering heart. "Ex-excuse me? Um, who-who are you?"
But the man didn't reply to her, instead he seemed to pass out in her arms. She grunted as his whole weight crushed her into the wall. Desperately trying to breathe, she ran her hands down his spine and frantically smacked his sides. "Please, I can't breathe! You have to take some of your own weight here!"
The pounding on his sides seemed to wake him, and he slowly pushed himself up on one trembling arm. It was then that Ophelia noticed that he was covered in blood. Huffing out a breath in shock, she gently leaned him against the wall and kept her hands under his arms until he was sitting on a block of cement. She knelt in front of him to speak, hoping to snap the man out of whatever stupor he was in. "Sir?" His eyes weren't even on her as he seemed to stare off into the distance. She snapped her fingers in front of his face. "Sir you have to listen to me. Are you alright?"
He didn't reply, but Ophelia was certain that at least some of the blood was his. But what was puzzling her was that a lot of the blood wasn't red, some of it was silver and oozing down his arms and legs in clumps. She gently touched one of the clumps, careful to watch his reaction. All she could think that he was going to jump at her and scream or something similarly scary. But the man didn't move at all, instead stared off into the distance as if searching for something. Staring at the silver ooze on her finger she realized that was exactly what it was. Liquid silver. She could have sworn that the only way to make silver liquid was to heat it, but this silver was liquid at room temperature. Furrowing her brows in concentration, she stared harder at the liquid coating her fingers. It couldn't be anything else, and no man bled silver. Shaking her head she tried to get her mind out of the clouds, the man was in pain in front of her and she was still thinking about why there was silver on him!
Cupping water from the pools around them she gently poured it down one of his legs. Grimacing when she saw the cuts that looked as though they covered his entire body, she gently ran her hands down his calf to clean it of the dirt. It probably wasn't the best thing to be cleaning his wounds with, but it had to be doing something. She looked back up at him to see his startled face staring down at her. He wasn't the greatest looking man in the world, despite his being covered in blood she could see a high arching widow's peak and unremarkable features that were really bordering on not handsome at all. His clothing was ripped to shreds and hung on his figure as though they were unclean. Ophelia could see through the rips and was surprised to find that he wasn't completely skin and bones. The man was well defined in musculature, and seemed to be in a good health. Other then the fact that he looked like he had been attacked by an animal and had lost a surprising amount of blood, Ophelia was shocked to see that he didn't look like some bum that had lived down here for years. "Look if I'm going to get you out of here, you can't walk around the streets covered in blood. It looks like you should be dead, let alone walking into me with enough power to knock me off my feet."
When he didn't move at all she stared up towards the heavens, hadn't she just decided she wasn't going to be a guardian angel? But here was this wounded man in front of her, and it wasn't like she was able to just leave him here. Rubbing her eyes tiredly, she stood up and dusted off her pants. She shrugged off her oversized jacket and held it out to him. "Here, at least you can cover yourself up a bit."
But when he tried to move he almost fell over. Ophelia didn't want to get close to him again, but what else could she do? So she fit herself under his arm and supported what weight she could. She couldn't help but notice that she fit under his arm like she was made to do so, but this wasn't the time for such romantic thoughts. Trying to ignore the nagging feeling that Veer was getting into trouble, she started the slow and painful (for him at least) walk down the tunnel. It was far too long for him and by the end she was carrying most of his weight. Eventually they made it to the end of the tunnel where she propped him against the wall and shoved the door open. Of course the monolithic guard wasn't there anymore, so she had to drag the man out to the bus stop nearby, where she sat him down.
He didn't look so good. His cheeks were the color of ash, and he was violently shaking. This worried Ophelia to no end, and she crouched in front of him with her hands on his knees saying, "Look, I think I should bring you to a hospital. Really, it's not good for you to be like this. I think you could be dying. I'm not a doctor but you really don't look so good."
He shook his head at her words, but the movement seemed to do more harm than good when he immediately rested his head against the back of the bench. She tried to hail a cab while sitting, but Ophelia quickly realized that she would be unsuccessful. Cab drivers seemed to hate her, and she could never get them to stop for her. The thought of flashing them crossed her mind, but that would do no one good at this point. She glanced at the man with a thoughtful look on her face. Really it wouldn't be a good thing to have a stranger in her apartment, but she had a lock on her bedroom door. Making her decision quickly, she hefted him up and said, "Come on, my apartment's not too far from here. All we have to do is walk five blocks. We can do it."
She wasn't sure they could do it, but they would have to.
They finally reached her apartment, but the man she carried looked far worse than he had sitting on the bench. She had a moment of hysteria when they got into the elevator though. It was a morbid parody of her bringing a boyfriend home. Her elderly neighbor always said that she'd come home with a boy that had his arm around her and she'd see them get out of the elevator and wink at Ophelia. Well here she was with a boy wrapped around her in the elevator, but it wasn't a good thing at this point.
The ding of the elevator pushed her through the hallway, and she was shocked to realize that no one opened their door to see who was coming down the hallway. It seemed like fate was on her side for the moment. There was a bit of a struggle as she tried to reach her purse, which was under the arm she was holding him with. But they eventually got into her apartment where she headed for the bathroom.
She kicked the toilet lid down and sat him on it. Leaning down, she smiled at him. "See? We did it." It didn't matter that she was extremely out of breath. All that mattered was that she and he made it safely to her apartment.
The man was hurt, and hurt bad. Ophelia had detected this from the first moment she laid eyes on him. But now that he was sitting on her toilet waiting for her to heal him, she couldn't remember anything that she'd learned from her brother when he was in boy scouts. All she could think was to get the wounds clean, disinfectant, Neosporin, and then wrap it up with whatever she had. But for some reason all she could think was that she didn't know what she was doing. What if she ended up hurting him more and infecting his cuts? What if she was really healing someone that the Higher Powers wanted dead? Not that Ophelia was the kind of girl that believed in fate, but she had spent a while practicing Wicca and still believed that some things were probably meant to be. The last thing she wanted was some avenging God in her living room.
She turned to the medicine cabinet and stared at the contents. There was no way that she had anything that would help him. She had a few wraps, rubbing alcohol, and Neosporin but she wasn't positive whether or not she would be able to do anything with those. He was a big guy, maybe it wouldn't do anything and she'd just hurt him more then he already was. But she piled all those things next to her on the counter and then scooped them up in her arms. Ophelia tried to ignore the man next to her, but that was easier said then done. He watched her every movement as though he completely trusted her. She wasn't sure whether or not she liked that. Someone that immediately trusted a person that they had just met was asking for trouble. The thought made her pause in her sorting and she had to fight not to smirk. Hypocritical much, she asked herself. Here she was with a strange man in her apartment that she wasn't even watching!
Turning to the man, she smiled and placed everything next to him on the counter. Here came the hard part, and she wasn't quite sure how to go about it. But Ophelia had never been the kind of girl to not be direct about things, so she stood in front of him and quietly asked, "Can you lift your arms over your head?" Slowly he lifted his arms as she asked, and she reached behind him to grab the back of his shirt. Ophelia was desperately trying to ignore the heat coming off of his body and the feeling of his breath at her collarbone. She was very nearly intoxicated with it all before she realized that his shirt wasn't moving anymore, and that it wasn't because she had stopped pulling at it. Grimacing, she quietly murmured, "This is going to hurt. Your shirt has stuck to your skin from the blood. I'm going to just rip it and get it over with, like a band aid yes?" She noticed that his jaw was set, and she took this to mean that he understood her. "Okay, 1… 2…" And then she ripped the shirt upward.
It was cruel to do that to him. But when she was a kid that was always how the band aids came off, and it stopped the waiting. Ophelia felt horrible though. She felt his chest press against hers as his back arched in pain, and she heard the groan that eventually came out of his mouth. She whispered, "I'm so sorry," and then continued to pull his shirt over his head and up his arms. Her eyes avoided his in an almost desperate way, but she had to meet his eyes at some point. With a small smile, she pulled his left arm towards her. Wetting a cloth, she gently washed his arm. She dabbed at the cuts, smoothed over the unharmed areas, and then used the disinfectant on the cuts. That he stayed completely still made her surprised, but he seemed like the kind of man that could stand pain.
When she reached his back, she sucked in a breath. It looked as though his back had bullet holes in it. Now Ophelia had never seen bullet holes in a person, but she had seen movies. The gaping hole through his back looked very much like those in the movies, and she couldn't help but feel slightly faint. This was the reason why she leaned against his shoulder as she cleaned the wounds, at least that was what she told herself. In truth, she couldn't help but be drawn towards this surprising visitor. The way he smelled was enough to drive her wild, a strange mix of wilderness and man, the scent of a Wildman, not a city boy. His shoulder under her hand was as hard as granite and the muscles rippled as she tended to his back. He was a man that could deal with pain, the more she worked on him the more that he stayed stoic. Sighing she leaned back and let out the breath she had been holding.
Ophelia was rather proud of her work. And when she stood back to look at him she couldn't help but let out a small laugh. "You look like a mummy."
But the man didn't even seem to hear her, instead he was simply staring at her mirror, though she doubted he was staring at his own reflection. She backed towards the door and motioned to his legs. "I'm sure you can do your own bottom half. I'm just going to find something for you to wear so you don't have to stay in those clothes."
She closed the door quietly, listening for a moment until she heard him moving around. Then she made her way over to the apartment across the hall, though she honestly didn't want to visit her neighbor. He was the oddest man, and seemed to think that he was God's gift to women. When she first moved to the apartment across the hall he would saunter over to visit her every day claiming that he was going to save her soul from the rest of the scoundrels around. The only other men that lived on her floor were either married or in their sixties. But Ophelia dealt with it, mostly because she couldn't stand hurting him. He was a nerdy guy, and she always had a soft spot for the nerds. But now he seemed just about the right size for clothing for her new bunkmate and she was certain that she could convince him to give her the clothing that she needed.
Ophelia knocked on the door and waited for the onslaught of hell to come. And it did in a very brisk manner. When the door opened Bert's face light up like a thousand candles and he screamed, "Oh my God! I knew you would come over here, get inside I swear we'll have a good night." And he even had the audacity to wink at her in a way that made her want to cringe.
"No thanks, Bert. I actually just need to borrow a pair of sweats."
Bert was short for Lambert, something his parents must have thought extremely funny at the time when they were naming him. Who knows why they named him that, but now they claimed it was after the player on the Steelers, even though the guy was probably just a kid when Bert was born. You see, Bert always claimed that he was going to be famous. Ophelia very highly doubted that, possibly because he rarely left his apartment. He was a very skinny man who constantly was hitting on women. His hair was usually slicked to his scalp with old fashioned grease and he seemed to be one of those men that could very likely be in some kind of cult. Ophelia wasn't one to judge though, so she usually left him alone in his apartment doing whatever it was that he did.
"Oh don't be like that baby!"
"I'm not kidding Bert, just give me the sweats."
He nodded at her tone and walked towards his room, and she was certain that he left the door open on purpose. She stared into his apartment and wrinkled her nose. It was dirty, worse then dirty actually. Clothes covered the floor, even the occasional bra or underwear that Ophelia knew didn't belong to a woman that that had come to his apartment. She didn't want to know what the magazines on the couch were, though she had a good feeling that they were Playboys. And his counter was covered with rotting pizzas that she could smell from the door. But when he came out of his bedroom with a pair of normal grey sweats in hand, she could have kissed him in gratitude. "Thank you so much Bert!"
She reached in and grabbed the sweats from him before he even made it to the door. She didn't want to talk with her neighbor anymore than necessary. But she paused when he called her name.
"Ophelia, why do you need a pair of my sweats? They aren't going to fit you."
She wanted nothing more then to groan. Bert wasn't an idiot, she should have known that he would have asked her why she needed his sweats. But she didn't have an alibi, so she turned and said in a falsely cheerful voice, "A friend of mine is staying over and he doesn't have a pair of his own."
At Bert's shocked look she knew that she had started something that she'd never live down, but before he could ask her anymore she had slipped into her apartment and shut the door. Banging her head against the wood of the door, she groaned. "Idiot, idiot, idiot," she whispered to herself. Looking into her living room she stopped dead when she saw the naked man standing directly in between her fading couch and the coffee table that her grandmother had sent her. Whirling on her heel, Ophelia tried to keep her gasp inside her mouth. But there was nothing she could do, she had a naked man in her apartment. Okay, so now what? This was definitely something new.
"Um, here are the sweats." She reached her arm out behind her, trying not to look at anything except the whirls of the wood on her door. When he took the sweatpants from her hand she let out a breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Ophelia didn't know what to do with a naked man. Hell, it was her apartment! Where had he gotten the thought that when she had left she meant get naked? It was all she could do to stop the burning of her cheeks and it felt very much like a volcano had gone off in her head. Counting to fifty silently she waited to turn her head slightly to the side, trying to see him in her peripheral vision. "Can-can I turn around now?" When he didn't say anything she figured that he was saying yes. But it was a very slow turn, giving her enough reaction time to whip back around if he somehow hadn't understood that she meant for him to put the sweats on.
What a strange man. That was the only thing that she could think. He was a mystery to her. He didn't talk, she didn't know where he was from or what happened to him, and he was beaten to within an inch of his life. If she had been correct some of his wounds were bullet wounds, but there hadn't been any bullets in his body. She frowned at him as he stood swaying in the middle of her living room. "Come on, you can't just stand there." Reflexively she grabbed his arm and led him to the chair. It was the most comfortable piece of furniture in the apartment, and that included her bed. That chair used to be her father's before the upholstery started to tear. Her dad had given it to her because he knew how much she loved it. It was very odd to see a man sitting in her father's chair. But here was a man sitting on there looking for all the world like he was going to throw up.
With that in mind, Ophelia rushed to the closet to grab a bucket and placed it next to him, all thoughts of her momentary scare when she remembered that he was ill. She quickly turned on the tv and felt his forehead. "You don't have a fever, so you should be fine. Here, just watch tv for a while and try to get your mind off of whatever it is that you went through." As she made the couch into a bed for him, she couldn't help but listen to the news that was on. It was comforting to listen to the news. Ophelia had always liked to do so since she was very little. But when she heard that five kids were found underneath the city dead, she paused in her work. Taking a deep breath, she tucked the edge of the sheet underneath a cushion. He couldn't have killed those kids, could he have? She glanced out of the corner of her eye at the man sitting her father's chair, but he didn't look fazed at all. He just looked like he was going to pass out. Chewing on the inside of her lip, she quickly finished making the bed before walking over to him. She tried desperately to convince herself that he wasn't a killer, but somehow she was losing the battle.
As she plumped the pillow she pulled the covering off. It seemed very likely that either he was the killer or a victim that had gotten away. The fact that he was covered in blood really didn't bode well for her chance of survival of the night, but he didn't look like someone that had just killed five teenagers. She swayed as she thought about Veer. Oh the poor kid, what were her parents going through right now? It had been Ophelia's job to watch the girl, and now she just felt like she had been apart of the murder.
There was a knock on the door and Ophelia knew just who to expect. Setting the pillow onto the couch she walked over to the door and took a deep breath. Pulling it open she smiled at Veer's parents. "Hello, Mr. and Mrs. James, what can I do for you?"
Mrs. James looked like she had been crying for quite some time. Her eyes were ringed with red and she was still clutching a tissue like it was her last lifeline onto the earth. "Dear, we know that you went out with Guinevere tonight. Is she with you?"
"No, I'm sorry Mrs. James. She gave me the slip only a few minutes after we got to the… where she was taking me." Mrs. James had no idea that her daughter Gwenie was actually apart of a group of teenagers that snuck into a club called the Underground every weekend. Veer had given her slip just before she reached the door under the city. It was a gross club, locked away in the caverns of the city sewers, but the teenagers had desperately wanted to go. Ophelia had only gone because she knew Veer was going, and she knew what type of people hung around the Underground. It had been an older sister move, but Veer had never wanted an older sister.
Mrs. James burst into tears at the realization that her daughter was missing and that there were five dead teenagers on the news. Ophelia awkwardly gave her a hug through the door, making certain that they couldn't see the shirtless man sitting in her father's chair. "I'm sorry Mrs. James. I would have tried to keep a better eye on her if I'd known that this could have happened. I'm sure she's not one of those teenagers, she's a smart girl."
But the truth was, Veer wasn't a smart girl. Ophelia had known Veer since she was a very small girl, and Veer had just gotten worse as she grew up. She got ignorant. Ophelia had lived in the city her entire life, but she knew that certain places in the city no sane person walked around at night. Veer was still in the teenage stage where nothing could harm her. And Ophelia was scared that that very attitude had gotten her into a lot of trouble.
She said good bye to the couple at her door and turned back to her now very mysterious visitor. All she could think was that maybe he was a killer. Could he have killed those kids? Could he have somehow harmed them and then gotten hurt himself? But it didn't seem likely to her. He was sitting in the chair shivering uncontrollably and looking for all he was worth like a man that couldn't kill a fly, much less a gang of five teenagers.
Taking his arm, she moved him to the couch and pulled back the covers. "Here you go. If you need anything my room is not far. Just yell or knock on the table loud enough for me to hear you." She backed away slowly and made to go towards her room. But at the last moment she paused and leaned against the door jam. "You… You didn't kill those kids did you?" When she didn't hear an answer she looked towards him on the couch. But he was staring at her in that way that made her insides squirm and as she watch he slowly shook his head. Relief flooded her body and she swayed with the force of the emotion. A bright grin passed over her face and she said carefully, "Oh good. I didn't think that you had but, you know, you can never be too careful. I didn't want to be harboring a killer in my house, I'm sure that the police wouldn't find that very amusing." She leaned against the door jam a little more forcefully before adding, "Well, goodnight." And she gently closed the door on her very odd, but appealing, houseguest.
Well enjoy! Reviews would be LOVELY, but until then, I'll see ya'll next week.
Note: yes that does mean I will update every week on Monday, hopefully that schedule will be followed.