Notes: This is my 7th and final foray into the Sons of Anarchy fandom that I've already posted on Ao3. Originally posted 12/11/2013.

This strange brain-child was inspired by user flokism, on Tumblr; fueling my love for emotionally repressed bikers and God-complex infused monster-hunters, plus VAMPIRES, obviously. And of course, because I couldn't help myself, Tara and Chibs will appear (together, possibly naked).

I also ended up creating a small mix for this story on 8tracks: /alanabeans/demon-host

Pt. 1

"And I know there's no such thing as ghosts / but I have seen the demon host." – Timber Timbre

Do not look for my heart any more; the beasts have eaten it. – Charles Baudelaire, "Flowers of Evil"

A young, foolhardy Jackson Teller sat restless on the edge of his father's knees, fists clenched, body primed for a fight, brimming with the enthusiasm that only childish adrenaline can muster. A tiny t-shirt with a Harley Davidson logo emblazoned on the front, a small splattering of tomato sauce, dabbed away hurriedly over the "H;" his child-friendly uniform, worn only briefly before the ruggedly sewn, patchwork-map of his leather cut; draped over broader shoulders.

"…and one day you'll ride with us," John Teller finished quietly, his free hand fiddling with a pencil over the unfinished pages of a soft-skinned diary, good for bending and twisting; full of their history, his children's legacy.

"When you're ready."

Jackson's soft, chubby hand fell flat against the quick, messy sketch in his father's journal, hastily scribbled in the upper right-hand corner of the page, the brownish hues of a coffee stain circling the pointed fangs, the manic eyes. Being young and inexperienced he lacked the necessary fear, and JT watched his son with trepidation, yet determined to appreciate these moments of carefree joy between a father and son. But it was to be short-lived, a small reprieve before the next tragedy, the murder of his youngest son, the betrayal perpetrated by his wife and brother, Clay Morrow.

"They're not so scary," Jackson whispered, tracing the words with his fingers.

Thunder rumbled loudly, the windows rattling noisily in their panes. The young boy twisted in fear, the journal falling to the floor with an abrupt echo that rang ominously in the ensuing silence. Jackson turned his head round quickly, widened eyes staring pleadingly at his father, seemingly begging for forgiveness.

John smiled, mussing his son's already-wild blonde hair affectionately, reassuringly, "You have nothing to fear from me, kid."

A hesitant smile grew between his chubby, reddened cheeks, and he scrambled from his father's lap, lifting the book from the ground to return it to its rightful owner.

"Thank you," he said, taking the journal into his rough, calloused hands, smoothing his palm over its cover. His son nodded proudly before turning tail and running elsewhere, maybe to find Gemma, or play at outlaw again, carving stakes out of thin branches in the yard, hissing and snapping at the dog as if he were one of them; John's worst nightmare come to life.

The storm continued outside, a heavy rain falling brutal and noisy against the dry earth. His fingers crept warily within the pages of his journal, the spine cracking as he re-opened to the page with his sketch, a poorly drawn representation, inked to paper if only to release the image from the cob-webbed caverns of his head; his son, small and weak, within the grip of its powerful jaws.

When he was sixteen years old he would meet Tara Knowles, a quiet, determined girl, with an absent father and a negligent mother. "Wise beyond her years," was the apt expression, often heard between teachers in the hallways at school, or between nosy mothers at the supermarket. Awkward in her skin, but confident in her mind; like most teenagers, completely assured of her own rightness, and the utter incompetency of adults.

So when she met Jackson Teller – loud, self-assuredly handsome, and boisterous; there was no doubt in her mind that he was the be-all, end-all of her romantic life. The King to her Queen, and they would rule, as confidently as they prowled the streets of Charming in their youth, the town, the state, hell, the entire US if given the opportunity. She would grow into her body soon enough, the almost detached feeling of her soul, beginning to cling to the swell of her breasts and the traitorous new curves of her hips. And in this way she would learn about power; about the sway of her own femininity, and the bloody truth hidden right beneath the surface.

They'd been seeing each other for almost a year before she would discover, thrown from the back of his bike, tossed like a rag-doll into the woods; the heavy, wet breath against the side of her neck, the smell of iron in her nostrils and she would learn – in pain and in blood, the lessons that his father had learned, his brothers. But she had already been confirmed, a baptism more innate than Jackson Teller's first kill, a different kind of blood rushed through her veins, and that instinctual fear – like the first humans, scared of the dark without knowing why – pulsed only slightly, tantalizingly, as if to whisper, You only have to run if you want to.

The beast had been pulled from her before he could sink his teeth into her flesh; Jax's elongated fingers gripping the back of its shirt, his eyes mad with the thrill of an unexpected kill.

"Wait," she had gruffly whispered, clearing her throat, absent mindedly rubbing away the feeling of its breath against her neck.

Jax held the monster at bay, its jaws snapping, a viscous drool dripping from between its lips. A slow, sensual smile appeared on his face, and the stake that had been poised above the creature's heart he suddenly lowered, his forearm extending, and the pointed edge of the wood angled in her direction; as if as an offering to the woman he loved.

"Right in the heart," he directed casually, "don't miss."

It would go on that way for years; hunting, riding, drinking... fucking. Right up until she turned nineteen she had been living on a never-ending rush of adrenaline – constantly toeing the line between life and death. Until one day she felt herself off-balance, her weight shifting oh so subtly into life, a few extra cells, a few days late. She had prayed, had actually walked into a church and thrown herself in between empty pews, hands clasped, pressed so tightly into the skin of her forehead it would leave a mark, "Please God," she whispered, begging, "I can't have a baby."

She muttered into the wood of the pews, the muggy, scent-filled air, but she felt like it had been shouted, echoing through the empty aisles in the wake of her confession. "Baby," as if her prayers had been amplified in the tall, curved ceilings of the chapel. She felt the small, silver cross resting heavy and warm between her breasts; up until now a means of protection only, just another weapon in the fight against the undead. She gripped it tightly within her fist, nearly breaking the clasp at the back of her neck.

God, she thought again, what have we done?

Belfast, Ireland (1997-1998)

Despite having served only a short time as a medic with the British Army, Filip Telford had seen and heard all kinds of strange things. As with most war-minded stories, they had an air of the fantastic about them; an element of the unknown, hovering between the letters of the words in his friends' stories. Wild, otherworldly tales that he had been hearing all his life; so long, in fact, that a small part of him had always gotten the sense that they werereal. Certainly, he had grown up, known that those stories were just stories, but the fact remained; sitting around a fire, drunk on whiskey, listening to the fanciful tales of his comrades, he could feel it – the fine hairs on the back of his neck, standing on end.

Soon enough the illusory fairy tale would reach its grim end. An internal, bloody rash of murders within his unit; strange neck wounds, bodies completely drained of blood. There had been an unsettling feeling in the air during those few weeks, as if there were a lion waiting in the brush, preparing to strike. A smell of death permeated the air, and even the oft-suffocating smell of a dozen or so chain-smoking men couldn't overpower its pungency.

In later years he would say that it had been the child in him who had saved his life. It was the inability to let go, to believe his mother's stories long into adulthood despite all this science, all the logical reasoning he had come to know. It was why he had been so prepared, his body tense, ready to strike; the lighter resting heavily in the pocket of his jacket, as if it were a loaded gun.

It had leapt out at him from the shadows (as they are wont to do), inky-black eyes, fangs extended; a heavy, hiss-like breathing, like a large snake trying to coil itself around him. He had been faster than it expected, the glass bottle of dark liquor thrown hard against its temple, a flame ignited, the lighter thrown – it had burst into flames, like a bottle rocket, screeching, limbs twisting and contorting in inhuman shapes until it fell silent, a burnt corpse, lying in a puddle of piss and whiskey.

He'd joined SAMBEL shortly after that, hearing drunken whispers at the backs of pubs; a motorcycle gang that weren't like any "gang" they'd ever seen. Very hush-hush concerning their business practices, would only deal with the "right" sort, freakishly good fighting skills, strong enough to knock-out any drunken Irishman ten-times over; and with an air of death about them, as if they were reapers themselves.

"Tha' was wha' got me the most," the older man had whispered, slurring his words. "Was like someone had walked o'r my grave."

In his year or so riding with the men of SAMBEL, Filip had lived a fuller life than in all his years growing up. His eyes opened to a dark underbelly that he'd just known had always been there. A brotherhood he'd always craved, and a wife and daughter he would have gone to the ends of the Earth to protect.

He was to awaken one night, uncomfortably wet and sticky, like he had fallen in mud. There was a familiar scent in the air, but breaching the surface of sleep he would have a hard time placing it. Reaching for his wife, he opened his eyes, her own staring, wide and un-blinking back into his own.

It would all be a blur after that ("Tell me," she would whisper into his ear, eyes reflecting pools, "what do you remember?" "Nothing," he would reply, lips thin, "I remember nothing."), a panicked scrambling from the bed he and his wife had so recently shared, feet and hands sliding against the floor and walls, what could only barely be defined as running for his daughter's room, his chest tight, a brief, naive thought at the back of his mind, Heart attack?

She had never looked so vulnerable, for in the very second that she had been born there had been life, a screaming cry that shouted, "I am here! I am alive!" Now she was only a silent, bloodied bundle, carelessly left on the floor of her nursery, the shaggy white rug a mocking pink. In his hasty, blinded panic he had been careless; defenseless and weak he thought not to look for the intruder. Flung towards the wall of the bedroom, the framed pictures crashing to the floor, he felt the sharp edge of a knife, slicing through his cheeks as if his flesh were warm butter.

"You and your friends better back the fuck off," the voice hissed, spitting into his ear.

"This is only the beginning."

Charming, CA (1998)

On the blistering hot, August day she had decided to leave Charming, Jax, and the Sons of Anarchy – she would meet him for the first time. The youngest she would ever know him, and only for a moment. A pack slung over his weary shoulders, stained gauze haphazardly taped over either side of his face.

She had wanted to stop at the garage just one more time, to say goodbye to her family, even if they didn't necessarily know it was goodbye. Jax and Clay were gone for the weekend on some trip up North; a nest, presumably, a tip from Wayne Unser. It had been her perfect opportunity to escape. And to think, she'd been restless, nervous about her visit; an empty bus waiting for her at the depot, with a ticket burning a hole in her pocket. But then she'd seen him, sitting alone, a dazed look in his eyes, and that hurry to depart had been replaced with a sudden curiosity strong enough to keep her from bolting – if only for a moment.

A brief, introductory exchange and then there had been only silence; a strange, full silence, unlike any she had ever known. She could feel the weight of each of their secrets in their perfunctory "hellos," and in the sounds of their names. But neither relented, only silently observing the other, a trained look in their eyes and stances.

The medical tape which had only barely kept the gauze clinging to his skin had begun to peel in the heat of the day and she stepped forward, hesitating briefly before saying, "Would you mind if I…?" her eyes shifting meaningfully towards the cuts on his face.

As he would later learn, in her usual way, she had just barely waited for his reply, her smooth, warm hands coming up towards his face, flattening the bandages against the skin and he winced in pain and surprise, suddenly realizing that he had left Ireland wondering if he would ever feel a soft touch again.

"Sorry," she whispered, hands returning to each other, fidgeting, and her previous desire to flee returned in an overwhelming burst of adrenaline, her hands shaking. She tried to smile but only grimaced slightly before running quickly past him towards the garage, a vague scent of pine following in her stead. He watched her go, her legs moving quickly but assuredly, with a strength that seemed to rest at the base of her spine.

In her absence he thought of her only briefly, as if she'd been a figment – a ghost or an illusion that had seen fit to grant him a moments distraction from the nightmarish visions he couldn't seem to clear. He had only just begun to think of her; her face a mere blip in his mind, before a man named "Tig" had arrived before him, all smiles and hair, reaching for his pack; extending a friendly, firm hand to SAMCRO's newest brother.