Knock. Knock. Knock.
The sound of her hand against the door seemed awfully loud in comparison to the eerily silent night. Oh sure, there was the distant sound of a dog and the soft sounds of crickets, and distantly muffled, the sound of the neighbour's televisions in the night's air, but still. There was something… still, about the night though. Maybe it was just the fact that adrenaline was making her heart beat a little too fast and a lot too loud for her liking or maybe it was the fact she was about three feet away from near certain death.
Deep breaths, she told herself over and over again, she was trying to calm down, stop nervous shakings and such, but even if she could get her heart to calm down, her sweaty palms and shakes would be an entirely different story.
The door opened and Pam stood wearing a pink sweater, black slacks, and white ribbon in her long blonde hair. She looked like Alice gone vamp and it worked really well for her. But Theo herself wore her new shoes with her new high waisted pencil skirt and blouse. She was professional, she looked good and she felt scared as hell. The latter was not working well for her.
"Come in." That was a laugh considering the fact that humans didn't need an invite to enter, unlike vampires. With her handbag in hand, Theo stepped through the doorway into what she assumed was a fang-bangers house. There were used utensils in the kitchen, proving the fact that humans lived there. Vampires didn't eat after all, they drank either Synthetic blood – like the overpriced, but most popular brand; TrueBlood – or they drank blood, the real stuff.
Rumour says Fairies are their drugs of choice- but Theo didn't know for sure and it wasn't like Vampire's to seriously go around spreading secrets like that.
"So ah, wher-" Theo began nervously (and slightly too high in vocal range) as she stood in the middle of lounge room. She made a noise of clearing her throat before she retried the sentence, "Where's Eric?" She coughed again, still not satisfied with how she sounded, which was probably due to the thumping in her ears from her heartbeat.
"Unavailable until later," her blue eyes looked into Theodora's green eyes, "he has business to attend to." Vampires were famous for little words and Pam was no exception to the unwritten rule. But by how she spoke, Theo assumed she meant that Eric was working at his bar Fangtasia.
"I see, so ah, should we wait?"
"Sit." Strangely, she did. The command its self had not been forced upon her by glamour, but the way it had been spoken and how Pam said it seemed to have shaken Theo into sitting on the leather lounge at her command like a dog. "I can answer any question you have to ask." Fumbling in her handbag, Theo pulled out her notebook and pen and made another noise of clearing her throat.
"So ah, how long have you been a vampire?"
"At least two hundred years, maybe more." Theo had no doubt in her mind that Pam knew exactly how old she was, but liked to keep that private for what ever reason that was. Vampires were very private people.
"And ah… Eric was your… maker?"
"Yes." Theo was beginning to gain confidence with each answer Pam gave her, and in that moment of confidence, she asked a question that normally she wouldn't have.
"Were you ever… lovers?" Pam looked at her; it was lucky that glamouring didn't work on witches or wizards because this all could have ended in disaster.
"Irrelevant." She quirked her lips after speaking the single, four syllabled, word. Maybe she smelt the sudden jolt of fear that one word at caused deep inside Theodora. Theo was using every slice of control she had to not shake. She'd been to Azkaban and interviewed murders for an article, how could this be any worse? Maybe because they were witches and wizards just like her, and Pam was a vampire, an old one, who could break her neck without breaking a fingernail.
"Oh… ok then." Her pen shook as she crossed out the question from her notebook. The line squiggled and she had to go over it twice more before it didn't look so worrisome, also so that it didn't bring any unwanted, or shameful in this case, memories back when she checked it later.
All the confidence she'd gained, Theodora suddenly realised, had fallen flat from the one look Pam had given her after asking that question.
There were no questions left on her page that she felt confident in saying now, or that she could ask Pam. "Do you have any more questions?" No, she didn't, and she could tell that Pam could read her expression easier then Theo herself could read a giant neon sign. But because she was worried that Pam would kick her out, she said the first thing that popped out of her head.
"What's it like, to be a vampire?" The question, because of it's spontaneity, was the most human and truthful question she had asked as of yet.
"Off the record," Pam began with an intriguing expression on her face, "you'd enjoy it." The witch blinked at Pam's blunt statement, and when she went to ask why, how, or say 'hardly' Pam stopped her with her next sentence, "absolute power over almost anyone? To be able to do anything you want, I can read you, you're like someone I once knew, you crave to be different."
"Being a vampire isn't different, there are a lot of vampires-"
"No, being a vampire isn't different, but you being a vampire would be very different, it would change everything about you. You would be different- which is what you want." Theo frowned at the blonde vampire's comment, that wasn't true, she didn't want to be different, she didn't want power, she wanted to be her, she wanted people to know her and she wanted… something.
"I may want something, but it isn't to be powerful, or-or different I like who I am, and I don't want to be power hungry-"
"I never said power hungry." Theodora swallowed as Pam suddenly was very close to her; all she could see was the vampire's face and her long blonde hair. "I just said you wanted power. I can see that you weren't known in school, you didn't and don't, have very many friends." She smirked.
"I have friends."
"But not many." Pam was reading her like a book and it frustrated Theo, she didn't want to be read, she didn't want to be so easy to read, she wanted to be… different. Oh… Merlin, her thoughts suddenly said as realisation slipped over her features like a bucket of cold water and her mouth dropped slightly.
"H-how-?" But she never did finish her sentence as the door opened. Jumping she realised that Eric had finished at Fangtasia. He smirked at them as he stood in the shadow of the doorway.
"Having fun?" The question was directed at her and she didn't know the answer. She was confused, she was frustrated, she was annoyed and she was suddenly very, very scared of herself. Emotions she normally squelched in the pit of her stomach were bubbling to the surface, and she wasn't sure what to think of it.
Suddenly she had to leave. Relaying so to the two blond vampires, she stood up and went to walk out. But before she was able to completely leave, Pam appeared (or used her vampiric speed) in front of her, and kissed her on the cheek. "I'll be seeing you my itchy-witch," she murmured before Theo had to get out as fast as she could.
Sitting in the motel room with a notebook full of, well, notes. She wondered if she should begin writing what she was sent out here to do. But Theodora couldn't concentrate, and she still had five days left.
Just like reading letters, a lot of the time, she left her work to the last moment.
She was sitting on the side of the bed, her head in her hands and her long red hair falling out of the French braid she had done for the interview that had ended only two hours ago. Her knew shoes were kicked off next to her feet, and her stockings were on the ground. But none of this mattered, Pam's words still rung in her head.
Vampire. Different. Friends. Power, the latter and former running through her head like they were wildfire. Vampire. Power. Vampire. Power. VampirePower.
Standing up suddenly she slipped the rest of her clothes off and took her hair out as she slid into the shower. She didn't want to think about it. Nor did she want to think about the kiss on her cheek on the way the words seemed to mean something entirely different to what they were supposed to.
Come to think of it, the first time Pam had said that had the same meaning-
No. She wasn't thinking about vampires, power, or powerful vampires that could rip her limb from limb.
Swallowing hard as she stood in the scolding water, Theo looked up at the ceiling and closed her eyes as the jets of water began to sting her eyes. If she pretended that none of this was real, that none this was really happening, maybe she'd wake up in her bed, be able to call her ex (or maybe he wasn't an ex? She'd forgotten where they were in their current relationship) boyfriend Marcus for some breakfast or lunch or whatever and just pretend that none of this was really happening.
As she got out the shower, and wrapped the devilishly soft hotel towel around her, she heard the hotel phone ringing. With a grumble, she stalked over and picked it up. "Hello?" She asked.
"This is a warning, stay away from Fangtasia," and then the phone line cut and whoever called her hung up. She frowned at it and shrugged her shoulders. She had no need to worry about threats like that- she was a witch, whoever called her obviously didn't know that she could hex them into oblivion, or maybe they did know her and knew that the reason she was a journalist was because she couldn't remember a proper incantation under pressure to save her life.
Either way, she didn't take it seriously.