"Hey, wake up. We're here." Val said and almost nudged the big man dozing in her passenger seat. He didn't budge. "Hey ugly! Get UP!" She yelled louder and thumped the seat near his head.
"What?" He jumped and whipped his head from side to side. When his green eyes rested on her he settled, if only slightly. "Are we here?"
"I just said that." She laughed and opened her door. Quickly, Mark followed suit, yawning as he stood. Val was already heading for a shabby looking metal door. The big man blinked twice to clear his sleep-addled head and followed.
Once inside, she began making her way up a long, narrow flight of stairs.
"How far up is it?" Mark asked as they climbed.
"Why do you ask?" She said over her shoulder to him. "Getting tired?"
"No…just curious. I figured I'd make conversation." He muttered. Well hallelujah! She thought. He does speak!
"Well since you're up for talking, we're going all the way up."
Mark glanced up over the railing and sighed. It was a long, long way up.
"Is there any reason you like to torture yourself with stairs all the time?" He continued. Val shook her head. Yeah, that southern accent would be the death of her.
"Call me paranoid but it'll take the bad guys longer to get to me if I live on the top floor of an eight story walk up."
"Bad guys? There are bad guys?" Val couldn't be sure but it sounded like he nearly swallowed his tongue. She rounded a landing and turned to look at him.
"Yes…there are bad guys." Her voice was deadly serious. She watched Mark for a long moment to make sure the information sunk in. She figured it must have, he looked just a bit green. Nodding, she turned and continued up the stairs.
Mercifully, they came upon the final landing and her front door. Val dug out her keys and jammed one into a lock, twisting it, and kicked open the door. A high-pitched keening nearly made Mark's head split in two. Val whispered a curse and hurried over to a panel on the wall. After punching some numbers, the sound stopped.
"A security system?" He asked as she flipped a switch and light filled the room. Mark was slightly taken aback. The outside of the building resembled the abandoned warehouse she'd taken him first but inside? The studio apartment seemed to run the entire top floor of the building and everywhere he looked he saw money. The wood floors were polished and gleaming even if the walls were bare brick. To his left were two couches in black leather so fine it looked like butter in the spotlights. Across from them was an entertainment center that took up nearly three quarters of the wall and was jam packed with everything a person could want from the fifty inch plasma TV in its center, to the racks and racks of audio equipment flanking it.
The big man took a deep breath and let out a low whistle.
"It's not much but it's home." She grinned sarcastically.
"Where'd you get all this stuff?" He asked venturing in a bit further. Val immediately shut the door and locked it behind him.
"I bought it." She said dryly and tossed her keys on a black lacquered table that sat next to the door. "Get comfy, I'm going to make that phone call."
Mark glanced at her and nodded as she walked away and disappeared through one of two doors to the back.
"Jesus Christ…" He said to himself as he wandered her apartment and paused to look through a massive bookshelf. Her tastes were definitely eclectic. Mark let his hand run gingerly over the spines of "The Celestine Prophecy", "The Da Vinci Code", "Sidhartha", "The Great Gatsby", "A Clockwork Orange", and the complete works of both William Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe.
There were two entire shelves dedicated to Egyptian and Norse mythology and another shelf full of bibles. Each one was different. Mark let out a soft breath and pulled out a King James Version that looked so old it could've been an original.
"Good lord woman. Where did you get this?" He muttered as he began to carefully turn the yellowed vellum pages.
"Find something you like?" Mark jumped at the sultry whiskey voice behind him and stood, turning to face her.
"This is…" He muttered gesturing to the book in his hand.
"I know, I spent a pretty penny on that a lot of years ago." Val smiled and removed it from his hand. "I bought it because I'd never met anyone older than it." Mark watched her eyes as they took on a strange dreamy quality as she spoke.
"You hadn't?" He pressed softly.
"Not then." She glanced up and smirked before bending to return the book to its proper place. "I made some calls."
"And…" The one word evinced a desperation Val hadn't known was possible.
"He'll be here in an hour." She said and looked up to meet his eyes. There was such pain there, she nearly reached out to him. Mark's eyes opened wide and he stepped back, bumping into the bookshelf.
"Who will?"
"Sorry." Val grinned and turned on her heels. "I'm gonna go change. Sit tight." Before Mark could respond, she was gone again.
The redhead made her way back to her room as calmly as she could manage. For the first time in decades she found herself flustered by the man sitting, against her better judgment, in her living room.
"Come on Val." She chided herself as she stripped out of her black T-shirt and jeans. "Get a grip."
Sighing heavily, Val dropped her clothes in a pile and headed toward her massive armoire. As she passed her mirror she stopped and for a moment, stared. If there was one thing Val had never gotten over in all her years, it was looking at herself. In her own time, she hadn't been fancied a tremendous beauty so she'd worked to better herself in other ways. She'd watched the men fight and liked what she saw. It wasn't long before she was fighting along side them when raiders from neighboring steadings had tried to raze them.
It wasn't terribly uncommon for Norse women to fight but in Val's case, it was downright astounding. Her prowess on the field of battle had left such an impression on her people that the warriors among them had taken her in and given her a new name.
"Valdis." She muttered and ran her hands over the scars that marred her otherwise flawless white skin. The change had taken away every imperfection she'd ever thought she had except those. Over the years, Val had given the matter quite a lot of thought but no answers were ever forthcoming.
Shaking her head, she finished the trek to her armoire and pulled out a red tank top and a pair of loose, black, drawstring, pants. Shrugging into her shirt, she ran her hands through her hair. Once upon a time it wasn't so dark. As she finished dressing, Val couldn't help but remember a time when it wasn't so far off from the color of Mark's hair. The brightness had gone out of it after a while. Without daylight, it had slowly darkened to the deep, wine color it had now.
"Stop it." She growled at herself again and shook off the same dark thoughts she wrestled with every night. "Scott'll be here soon."
Walking as quietly as possible back to the front of her loft, she had to smile. Mark seemed to have indeed made himself comfortable. The big man was sprawled out on her couch and apparently contentedly flipping channels.
"Anything good on?" Val asked and chuckled as he nearly jumped out of his skin.
"I was just waiting for you." He muttered standing and swaying slightly on his feet. Val frowned.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, I…just get tired." Mark opened his mouth to continue but before he could, Val watched the color drain from his face.
"Shit!" She spat and insinuated herself under his shoulder. As soon as she felt his bulk settle onto her she cursed again and considered dropping him. He'd been more than clear about being touched. He wasn't, however, having any kind of spaz attack so Val edged him around and let him fall limply back onto the couch. "Sorry." She said to his inert form and made her way over to the window.
No wonder…As Val laughed as she watched the first inklings of dawn eke over the buildings to the east. Mark was so young. Why hadn't she thought of it?
As she watched the coming dawn she thought back to her first few years after her change. She remembered the slow draining of consciousness and the feeling of helplessness that came with it. Feeding fairly regularly could stave it off but not much, not enough to worry about. It gave you another hour at most. Mark would be out for most of the day.
"Damn it." She grumped and let her curtain fall back into place. "What the hell am I going to tell Scott now?"
As if on cue, a knock sounded at the door. Before Val could open it, it creaked open and the man she'd been waiting for slipped in.
He was an imposing sight. He wasn't a terribly tall man but he made up for it in grand style. He was built like a pit bull with his solid arms and chest. It was as if Scott had gone out of his way to make himself intimidating. His hair fell down his back in ropelike blonde dreadlocks and he'd covered quite of bit of himself in tattoos but none of those things furthered his intention more than his eyes. His dark eyes held an inherent intensity that made it very hard to look at them for long. It was as if all the pain he was fond of wearing on his sleeve was amplified in their hooded depths.
Val however, had known him long enough to sidestep his intimidation factor.
"I really wish you wouldn't do that." Val grumbled and crossed her arms over her chest. "I lock that for a reason you know."
Scott shrugged and peeled off his tattered leather jacket, tossing it on the floor.
"I don't like to wait." He said smoothly and locked eyes with her. It made Val shiver slightly. Scott didn't ever look at you; he was always looking through you. It was his gift. He had once been a lot like Mark but somehow, he'd managed to overcome it all by himself. "So where is he?"
"Passed out." Scott nodded and brushed passed her to the couch. Without a word, he knelt down and placed a hand on the big man's forehead. Before Val could warn him, Mark jerked violently.
"Jesus Christ." Scott breathed. "No wonder this guy's all fucked up."
"What do you mean?" Val asked, her voice taking on the same note of apprehension as Scott's. Slowly she went over and crouched down beside her friend, glancing at Mark's massive form still laid out on her couch. Whatever Scott had done, it hadn't been enough to jolt him out of his sleep.
"He knows more about what's going on than he's telling you. I can almost guarantee that. People with no psychic ability don't throw up walls like that with no knowledge of what they're doing." Val went cold at his words.
"God damn it." She whispered, mentally kicking herself…again. How did she figure this one would be any different? She'd managed to stay away from most of her own kind for so long and here she was, letting another one into her life. What happened to following her own rules?
"Don't get your thong in a twist." Scott said waving away her obvious discomfort and smoothing down his unwieldy hair. "His third eye is blown wide open. All I'm saying is he's tried to stop it himself. He knows a bit more than he knows he does."
"What the hell does that mean Scott?" Val grumbled and settled herself into a sitting position on the floor against the couch, lighting a cigarette. The man beside her shrugged and sat down beside her.
"It means what it means. What do you want me to say?" He said cryptically and stole the smoke from Val's lips. The redhead shot him a withering glare and lit another for herself.
"Whatever. I don't suppose there's anything I can do about it." Scott shook his head and let a stream of blue smoke escape his lungs.
"Look…Can I crash?" He said after a long silence.
"Daylight getting to you?" Val smirked and stubbed out her cigarette in a nearby ashtray. As she stood up she took a good look at her friend. Scott was a bit gray, his brooding eyes a little more haunted than usual. It was sometimes hard for Val to remember he was still very young in his own right. Scott was easily as mysterious and tight-lipped as any of the very old ones she'd ever met. Every so often though, he did something that reminded her that he wasn't quite fifty years old himself.
"You know I can't stay awake like you can." He muttered unhappily as if the mere admission of exhaustion was indicative of some inherent weakness.
"I'd offer you my couch but…" She chuckled waving her hand idly toward Mark's sleeping bulk.
"I'll take the bed." He said nonchalantly and headed back toward her room.
"I don't remember agreeing to that." Val called over her shoulder. Scott's steps didn't even slow down.
"I'll let you have the left side." He chuckled. Val rolled her eyes and, after spreading a black afghan over Mark, wandered after him. It wasn't the first time they'd shared space. Val had come across Scott less than a decade after his change and, much like the situation she found herself in now, had taken him in.
Just thinking about Scott eased the knot in her stomach. He hadn't turned out so bad. In fact, he was probably the closest thing she had to a real friend.
"Come on…" She heard him whine from her room. "Sleep!"
Hold your horses, she thought and with a final glance at Mark, disappeared into her room.
