Another city. Another job bartending a nameless pub, serving faceless people. The years had run together now, she'd been doing this for so long. She couldn't recall how many years it had been since she'd left home, it had become something she had to really think about.
At first, it had been simply instinct. She didn't know what she was doing, or how she was doing it, all she knew was that she let herself go until she got so hungry she couldn't think straight, and then she'd let the monster take over, she'd hunt, and she'd wake up in another bed with another nameless lover. And they'd be stone dead.
Somewhere along the way, she'd learned how to recognize the pangs of hunger. She resigned herself to the fact that she could not fight her own nature. She could not starve the beast that lurked in her soul. There was no way out of the lifestyle she lived: crashing in abandoned, derelict houses, in condemned buildings, skipping from job to job, bed to bed, dead lover to dead lover. But her lovers didn't have to be innocents. If she had to kill, she could at least choose who died, and she chose the darkest hearts and souls she could find: rapists, thieves, and murderers. She wandered to the seediest parts of town to find them.
She was a bottom-feeder, a cannibal. She fed on those lost, black souls that were just like hers. And finally, she allowed herself to enjoy it.
Bo couldn't remember which city this was. She couldn't remember if she'd been here before. Everywhere she went looked the same to her now. She wiped down the bar's surface with a rag, rubbing the smooth waxed finish with sharp, quick strokes until the wood beneath glowed in the bar's dim light. People milled, talked and drank, and the sounds of their activity was an incessant buzz that hummed in Bo's sensitive hearing. A game was on the TV screen perched over her right shoulder, it flashed in the mirror across the pub from her in bright, staccato bursts of light and color, but Bo paid it no mind.
The strong, heady smells of liquor permeated the air. The rich, wheaty scent of beer remained the most pervasive, a sweet overtone to the subtler aromas of whiskey, vodka and gin. Every so often, a patron dropped by the bar to request another drink, and Bo could smell the alcohol on their breath too. It was acrid and rancid when it mixed with the bitter scent of cigarettes and the pretzels that were served complimentarily at every table in the bar.
"Can I get a glass of white wine? House is fine," the low tenor of a female voice caught Bo's attention. She smiled politely as she moved behind the bar to fill the order and caught her breath upon meeting the tawny gaze of the tall blonde who'd made it. Bo's smile spread a little before completely vanishing, she tensed with the excitement that blossomed low in her gut and made her heart beat heavily in her ears. She poured the chilled wine carefully, as though afraid to spill a single drop. "Also whatever dark beer you have on tap. For my friend," her voice was low, sweet, almost musical, and it made Bo want to lean in to catch every inflection, every sound of every vowel and consonant. Bo looked up again, her sight flickering from the gorgeous blonde that spoke to the dark-skinned brunette that edged onto the stool beside her. They were both absolutely stunning. A shiver of arousal slid down Bo's spine, and she knew, though she had hunted and fed her fill only the night before, that she would have to hunt and feed again tonight, if only to calm the sudden hunger that bloomed warm and intoxicating throughout her.
"Guinness sound okay to you?" Bo couldn't help herself, she leaned across the bar flirtatiously, her grin was teasing and coy, and it brought an immediate smile from both women. A blush crept up the blonde's long neck, and Bo felt the insane urge to trail her lips along it. The brunette's voice was soft when she agreed, and the shy expression in her hazel eyes sent a rush of warmth running through Bo's entire body.
Not for the first time, Bo's resolve to maintain her slim hold on morality wavered. She was tired of the low-lifes she fed on, of the corrupt, tainted flavor their sexual energy was always infused with. She ached to taste the sweeter, cleaner flavors of the innocent and virtuous. But if she lost what tenuous hold she had on her conscience, Bo feared she would lose everything. Her hunger gnawed at her like a dog at a bone, and Bo knew that if she hoped to maintain even a semblance of self-control, she needed to hunt and feed. Tonight.
Bo scanned the crowd in the dim, smoky light of the pub, her eyes never settling on one single person and avoiding the hazel and tawny eyes that first searched hers curiously, then stared deep into each other's lovingly while they spoke. Instead, her gaze drifted sporadically over men and women as they mingled and talked and watched the hockey game with an interest that ranged from mild to severe. Not one of them struck her as special. Not one seemed outcast, seemed too comfortable or too uncomfortable. Not a single one scanned the crowd in the same predatory manner in which she did, herself.
They were all very ordinary, very law-abiding folk.
That was okay. Bo was skilled at finding the rougher parts of town. When her shift that night ended, she would go for a walk. At the end of it, she would find her prey, and hidden within the safe, dark confines of a deeply shadowed alleyway, she would strike, and she would feed.
It had become a point of fascination to Bo how many different guises in which sin and evil would hide. Her only hard and fast rule was that the people she preyed on were those who had preyed on others. Her only exception to that rule was children.
And sometimes, Bo would wonder if there was another like her who would one day feast on her.
There was no such thing as complete and utter silence. At least, Bo thought, until you were dead. The air around her was static. No mice or bugs scurried around underfoot in the furthest recesses of the study. There was no whisper of cloth or hair moving carefully around her. Even the clocks had been silenced, muffled under layer upon layer of thick, velvety cloth and tucked away in drawers made of rich, dense wood.
Everything around her was still.
Everything inside of her, however, seemed to rage.
She could hear her own breath, even as she tried to control its flow through her lungs. The harder she tried to control it, the louder her heart beat in her ears, and the stronger the pulse that thudded, heavy and thick, through her veins. She could hear Trick breathe too, though his breaths were far slower and more controlled than hers. Light glowed past her eyelids, and slowly, she opened them.
She'd squeezed her eyes shut for so long, the orange imprint of the study's dimmed lighting had burned through her eyelids to her retinas, and its negative washed her surroundings in a subdued blue glow. Trick stood before her, his own eyes shut and a peaceful expression painted across his aging features. His arms hung limply at his sides, palms turned slightly outward, and his face tilted marginally upward, as if he were praying, or placating, or – the thought brought a touch of a sardonic smile to Bo's lips – accepting energy from above. His aura was calm, peaceful, and it aggravated the frustration and irritability that scratched and clawed at her like nails on a chalkboard. She just wanted it all to stop.
The adam's apple that had been perfectly still along Trick's throat bobbed, and his chin lowered slowly. His eyes fluttered open, and his gaze focused immediately on Bo's own. He looked so calm, expectancy waited patiently in those dark brown eyes she'd come to love, to depend on, that shone with pride and adoration whenever they settled on her. Frustration and disappointment burned up from her chest and squeezed at Bo's throat, and her carefully monitored breathing faltered, just a bit.
She couldn't do this.
"You can do this, Bo. Walk through the threshold," his voice was so composed, so quiet. It sounded like he might have only just awoken from a deep and restful sleep. He waited, patiently, on the other end of his study, for her to step forward and join him.
Bo's lip quivered with fearful anxiety. A muscle high up on the left side of her jaw ticked. She raised a hand in front of her, experimentally, and met no resistance. Bo knew there were still inches between her fingers and the threshold, even as she lowered her hand again and took a shuffling, insecure step forward. The thin, stiff twigs and branches that wound around the doorway shivered on either side of her, though no wind had stirred to move them. Bo wondered if they could sense her uncertainty, and irrationally, if they were laughing at her.
One more step would take her over the threshold. Bo took in a deep breath, attempting one last time to calm the roiling emotions that shook and battered her tired soul, and stepped forward.
Her toes met a solid wall of angry, rejecting energy. Her knee bounced painfully against it, her head crashed violently into the mystical force field and agony shot through her heart, almost physical in its power and force. It flared across her skin, the heat of it scorching every nerve ending, and sending her reeling backwards into the wooden furniture once again.
"Goddamnit!" she swore, shoving herself away from the desk she'd crashed into and throwing her hair back out of her face. Her mouth was twisted into a disgusted snarl, and her eyebrows knit into an angry, snarling frown. "I can't do this, Trick!" she shouted, her frustration bubbled up to the surface and pinched at the tensed muscles along her shoulders and neck.
"Yes, you can," exasperation breathed through Trick's words, he sighed heavily and shifted to the table beside him. A large tome sat upon it, propped up by other books stacked untidily over the rough, worn surface. The old bartender brushed a finger against the page it was opened to, reading over again the passage he'd found to help his granddaughter through the first trial of her Dawning.
"No, I can't," Bo stomped around the twisted wooden threshold and made her way to the door. Humiliation burned low in her belly, futility and helplessness twisted in her chest and her eyes stung with the frustration that had finally bubbled to the surface with yet another failure to add to all the ones she'd tallied since the start of the day, and if Bo were truthful enough with herself, the start of her adult life.
Trick's head shot up at the thick, sullen tones of despair that echoed in Bo's words. He darted towards the doorway that led up to the bar, his powerful arms spreading across the threshold to bar Bo's exit, and his eyebrows shot straight up his forehead, crinkling his skin and leaving a look of admonishing expectancy on his face. When Bo stopped suddenly before him, he reached across to grasp her hands in his own. Her skin was so soft and young between his leathery old fingers, he rubbed his thumbs soothingly over her knuckles and tugged gently at her hands to pull her gaze to his. It hadn't escaped him the way his granddaughter's shoulders shook subtly with strain and disappointment.
"Bo," he spoke softly, and when Bo's dark brown eyes finally met his, he gave her a small, warm, comforting smile and her hands a gentle squeeze. "You can do this," he reassured her. He understood her fear and her doubt. After everything that had transpired over the last few days, he would have been surprised and not a little worried if Bo wasn't affected by the events that had shaken not only her, but everyone around her.
But Bo was strong. Not simply as a Succubus, but also as a woman. Trick had faith that Bo would succeed, that she would triumph in her Dawning and come back to the people she loved, that loved her, an even stronger woman than before.
"Let's try it again, okay?" he peered up into Bo's tired brown eyes, smiled supportively and gently led her back to the table upon which they'd spread their copious amounts of research. Bo followed reluctantly, she spread her hands over the tome Trick had opened to the page about the Dawning and leaned over it. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders and around her face, hiding the resigned, weary expression that stretched in thin lines across her tired features, and sighed heavily. Trick's hand, placed gently over her back, felt warm and reassuring. "Don't think," he intoned quietly, his voice a murmur in Bo's ear, "just put everything behind you. Focus on the now – "
"Shift consciousness and achieve an effortless merging of action and awareness, to allow yourself to cross through the threshold," Bo interrupted, her voice sharper than she intended and her head bobbing in time with the words that had become the mantra of this futile, frustrating exercise. She pushed herself off the table, once again allowing her exasperation to rise to the surface, and shoved the heavy book away from her. Bo's jaw clenched, she struggled to calm herself.
But she was so scared.
"Bo," once again, Trick's voice penetrated the thick haze of anxiety that hung in a cloud around Bo. Her eyes met his, but instead of the calm patience Bo had been expecting to find there, she found worry and an apprehension that reflected her own. Once again, her hands were engulfed in his, and he gently turned her to face him.
"I know," she replied, interrupting him once again. She sighed heavily, her weariness felt like a physical weight across her shoulders. She wished she could just go home, crawl into bed and forget anything had ever happened, that anything was happening now, like a little child that was lost in a sea of change and confusion. Stubbornly, she drew herself up again and looked Trick directly in the eye. "I can do this," she repeated his mantra to her, her voice soft, but determined. She had to do this, for everyone else's sake, as well as her own. For Kenzi's sake, for Trick's, for Dyson's and Lauren's.
She had to do this. Failure was not an option.
It was cold. Bo drew her full-length jacket closer around her, drew the leather tightly across her chest to shield herself from the frigid breeze that blew through the empty streets. She avoided the flickering street-lights that pooled at regular intervals over the cracked, broken sidewalk, and watched her breath solidify in a hazy, pale cloud around her face as she breathed. Softly, she recited the address she'd overheard the beautiful couple from the bar give their cab-driver. Every whisper of the apartment number, of the street name, sent a stab of covetous jealousy through her. She could charm them, go home with them, take her fill from them. Bo couldn't acknowledge it, even in the dim, flickering streetlights she passed under, but hidden deep within her subconscious, Bo knew she was quickly unraveling.
Somewhere in the distance, a siren sounded. A cat yowled behind a trash dump further along the street. Her evenly measured footsteps clicked quietly on the filthy, badly maintained asphalt. The lights of the buildings that ranged around her, slumped together untidily and crouched sullenly against the world, were sporadic, dim and far between. It was late enough that it was early, hardly the best time for a hunt.
Bo followed the sound of the siren as it cried through the streets, it faded into the icy air, but Bo followed it all the same. This was the right part of town, the part where people forwent the Tasers and pepper-spray and went straight for knives and guns for protection. Every gritty surface was covered in graffiti, more gang tags and violent messages than the colorful, meaningful street art that showed up downtown. Bo shivered into her coat and walked quickly, she could feel eyes watching her from alleyways along the street she prowled, wary and watchful, calculating, predatory.
But she felt no fear.
The urgent, undulating call of the siren cut the air with its shrill cries again, it gathered in strength and volume as she neared the ambulance's destination. Bo hadn't known exactly where it would be, but she was experienced at this now, could make good, educated guesses as to where these police cars and ambulances were headed. She wasn't always right, in fact, she was wrong more often than not, but trying to track them down had become an interesting game, a way to pass the time while she hunted. And very often, it would lead her to the best hunting grounds in the area.
Blue and red lights flashed in dizzying, staccato notes on every surface, throwing spastic, thrashing color on the buildings, cars and streets around her. Bo's ears rang with the screams of the police and ambulance car's sirens, and she dropped into a crouch behind an enormous, beat up, black SUV. Her hand settled on the frozen, scratched metal of the back bumper, and she hissed against the icy pain it spread through her fingers.
Two policemen held a woman against their car, her wrists were bound in steel cuffs that shone in the painfully strobing light. Her hair hung in lank strands down the sides of her head and over her shoulders, concealing her face and looking dull and lifeless and greasy. Her clothes hung loosely over her thin frame, and her skin, bare from elbows to wrists, was sallow in the bright, screaming light. EMTs pushed a pair of gurneys to the ambulance, the bodies in both were covered head to toe in body bags. One lawman patted his accused down while the other scribbled onto a clipboard. Both were armed, their guns gleamed sinisterly in their holsters.
Finally, the sirens shut off. Silence reigned, thick and heavy through the night. It felt even louder to Bo than the wailing that had preceded it. Only the lights continued to flash, sporadic and revealing in bursts throughout the street. The ringing in Bo's ears prevented her, at least for the time being, from discerning the muffled words that passed between the policemen and the EMTs on the scene. But their tone of voice was factual, casual. They did this all the time.
Carefully, Bo took stock of her surroundings. The darkness around corners was thick, denser where the seizing lights couldn't reach. But Bo caught the subtle gleam of eyes peering around corners, the indistinct glow of skin as it moved through darkness. The cops had missed one of their suspects, and judging by the low, crazed laugh that burbled from the handcuffed woman's shuddering body, had only just come to realize this. They both stared at their prisoner in shock, their hands flew to their guns, and Bo heard the snap of clasps unfastening and the click of the safeties as they came off.
Bo felt a thin, humorless smile stretch across her lips, dry and cracked in the freezing air that stilled expectantly around her. She slipped around the SUV she hid behind, creeping through the shadows across the street to the alleyway in which she'd espied the cautious movements of the woman's partner. Her movements were fluid, she stalked closer to the unsuspecting human that stole away from the flashing police lights, and heard the sound of rushed footsteps as they pattered away into the darkness.
They were too far away now for the searching, vigilant police officers to hear them. The ambulance had shut off its lights, and Bo could hear the crunch of its tires as it pulled away. Bo had to hold her breath and press herself close to the alley's wall as it drove past her, but only for an instant before she broke into a run after her victim.
Author's Note:
Leader: Well thank you! To hear that you think my version of the Dawning is better than the show's is HUGELY gratifying! I'm honored! Honestly, I hate the idea of Bo doing anything at all to hurt Lauren. Even when it's for growth. I adore Lauren, I'm Team Lauren even more than I'm Team Doccubus. So yeah, I'm with you 100% about absolutely despising the fact that Bo lied to Lauren for no apparent reason in Fae-ge Against the Machine. I hate the hurtful things that Bo does at all, even in my own story. But these are unfortunate facts of life, and without enormous, horrible mistakes like it, characters can't grow. I'm not okay with Bo lying to Lauren the way she did in Fae-ge Against the Machine, under any circumstances, but for the sake of character growth, I've accepted it. I hope it's something Bo learns from in the series as well. And I accept that Bo is going to do things I dislike in my own story, for the same reason. So absolutely, 1000%, I'm with you on that front. Lauren's spotlight is great. It's bittersweet. It's my favorite part of this whole 'book' too. I really hope you like it as much as I do. All but one of the chapters is longer than any other chapter in the book, as far as I recall. They were also some of the hardest chapters for me to write, for many various reasons. We still have Trick's spotlight before Lauren's, I saved the best for last. Anyway, we're sneaking steadily closer to the first of our rock bottoms here. Thank you for sticking with me, I'm always eager for your reviews, I look forward to them every week. =)