Disclaimer: I do not own, nor claim to own any characters pertaining to the 2007-2008 TV series 'Moonlight'. All recognisable characters and texts belong to Ron Koslow and Trevor Munson.
Author's Note: So many apologies, again. I can only promise to try not to take so long. I hope this makes up for the wait, though I definitely changed a lot of things from the original version of this party chapter when the fic was first posted ten years ago.
Reviews will be given characters in the Sims. Get Famous comes out this Friday! (And so does Pokémon, and also that happens to be the deadline of my next assignment. Dammit procrastination!)
The bar had been my first port of call the second I stepped foot inside Josef's flamboyantly lavish home. I knew without a drink in my hand to steady my nerves I would end up implicating myself somehow, be it with uncomfortably noticeable twitching close to any member of the undead or stumbling over some form of misinformation of which I had absolutely no doubt the irritable bloodsuckers would pick up on. Precisely the right amount of gin settled the nerves twisting and distorting their way around my stomach, enough to stop me fretting over where each of them were in regard to myself, and just how many steps it was from the nearest plausible exit.
To her credit Lilia was more or less my constant companion, which once again eased a little of my nervousness. She introduced – or at least tried to introduce – me to other girls she 'worked with', who looked me up and down with such little interest I had to double check I had not spilled something garish on my dress. The dress itself was hardly anything outlandish, but I realised with a thick feeling in my throat that I was being scrutinised not for being new, or encroaching in their territory, but for what I had chosen to present myself in. Grimacing, I took another gulp of gin, twisting myself to face a table that had been carefully adorned with the kind of party favours one would find at a health club.
I had eaten, and I had no doubt that what I had consumed would have been scrutinised to a tee, but I found myself considerably unable to pay much care to those who would sooner nibble on a small, indiscernible cube of cheese. My head throbbed, and so I pinched the bridge of my nose, turning away from the loud conversations dominating the centre of the room that Lilia had deliberately drawn us to. She did not notice, for all her closeness to me – I think eventually my inability to hold a sensible conversation with any of the younger girls here was reason enough for her to distance a little, so she could enjoy the evening herself. I could not blame her – after all, I had never claimed to be great in social situations outside of a classroom and had yet to disclose the close quarters I had been in with Josef just the previous evening. Perhaps, I considered, bringing the rim of the glass to my lips, I never would.
"English?" I spun on my heel, grimacing as the rubber sole of my trainers scraped against the stone floor. Behind me, a six-foot blonde short haired male stood holding a wine glass half filled with a slimy red liquid. Tasting bile at the back of my throat, I quickly swallowed a short mouthful and straightened myself as much as my petite height (in comparison to the individual before me) would allow.
"Yes." I answered, trailing the last syllable. A shiver went up the back of my spine and rooted me involuntarily to the spot. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, urging me to run – yet I stayed, refusing to break his stare. Did they not say that about animals? Holding their gaze was more important than breaking it and running away? Vampires – some vampires – were not entirely different.
In any case, he towered over me, and it took all my nerve and years of classroom experience not to back away. If I imagined him to be like one of my sixth form students, intimidatingly tall but with less authority, and me in charge, –
"Did Josef manage to entice you all the way from England?" The leer in his voice was positively coated in amusement. I straightened myself a little further, which was rather challenging in flat shoes. The only reason I elected to wear flat shoes anymore was because years of wearing heels on nights out ended in raw blisters and painful toes. Comfort most definitely hit the highest contributing factor to a fun evening. And, if I had learned anything from the book launch, I wanted to be able to run as far away as possible as quickly as possible.
I knew what he was getting at, of course, but I could hardly let him know this. Drawing in a breath, I replied, "I'm a teacher. I transferred out here last year."
The man raised an eyebrow, his smirk growing ever wider.
"I'm going to go and find my friend," I said, leaving without giving him the opportunity to reply. I could feel his eyes watching me as I left the designated safety zone of the human snack table, grimacing at my own inner monologues as I traversed through the crowd – decisively thinner in population than Lee Jay's book launch. Even after I had successfully made it from one side of the room to the other, I could still feel him watching me, so I headed towards the poolside area which, surprisingly, none of the scantily clad young females had indulged in. Some were dangling their feet in to the water, shoes tucked haphazardly beside them, and others were simply leaning against the brick wall adjacent to the glass sliding doors. I had hurriedly replaced my drink before coming out here, contributing my discomfort to the overbearing glare of who I assumed to be a rather unpleasantly hungry bloodsucker (there was no way that had been red wine). There had been so many different flavours of gin I had just gone for the one that sounded the most interesting, and as I found my own spot against the alarmingly immaculate brickwork, I sipped gingerly, unfortunately entirely aware that most of their eyes tended to frequent back to me between their enclosed group conversations.
People know I'm here, I thought to myself, but even that mild reassurance did not abate the niggling warning bells echoing distantly in the back of my mind. I had called Mum earlier, lying through my teeth as I reassured her I had been nowhere near the incident in question at the college, and that no, Christian had never touched me and no, I had not been near the study group. Nor had I attended the book launch or been anywhere near Lee Jay Spaulding. Even if I had told her the truth on that one, I would not have disclosed about the copy of his biography; as much as the hype died down and no-one really dwelled on the obvious, I felt oddly protective over ensuring the reach of the old photograph attached to one of the pages did not stretch too far.
After she had delivered her endearing speech of being overly concerned about her only daughter, I assured her I was not a reclusive hermit, that I had made friends and that I was, in fact, out this very evening. It all still felt a little false, however, trying to talk to someone who was in every way my mother, but also who wasn't. She was not my mother – and in the same breath, she was. The thought had gone around in circles so many times in my head I struggled to keep level whilst doing so, and I shuddered involuntarily. I wanted to talk to her, and I felt a rush of warmth and familiarity when doing so, but it was tinted horribly with guilt, like a nasty aftertaste that lingered on the back of the tongue no matter how many times you swilled your mouth out. That guilt quickly became submerged with sadness; going to work, working on autopilot, it all made me feel incredibly detached from my body, like I was watching it from a television screen – which seemed painfully ironic, and the chuckle that broke out from my lips earned me a few strange stares.
I'm here, I told myself, taking another sip, that is what's happening, and nothing right now can change it.
"There you are!" Lilia appeared beside me, devoid of the glass she had been cradling for most of the event thus far.
"I'm just being nosy," I smiled.
"Come on, there's a few people I want you to meet!" Before I could say no, Lilia pulled me indoors and immediately beelined towards a small group of people nestled by the stairway. For the most part, individuals were milling about – a few of the younger looking girls were earning an audience by dancing, after which I had no doubt they would be on someone's particular menu. I went through the motions of introducing myself (or, in this instance, Lilia handling the introductions), and engaging in moreover polite conversation, placating Lilia's thirst for social gatherings more than my own. I did enjoy events, but here it was different; if I relaxed, even for a second, something terrible could happen, and I had made enough errors that drew unwarranted attention in my direction for the time being – ideally enough full stop.
Only briefly had I seen our host, holding himself well enough between the masses of individuals, whoever they actually were. I could not prove it, not if I were paid all the money in his bank account, but I just knew he was keeping tabs on me. As a vampire it would hardly be difficult to sniff out one scent in easily a hundred, and I wondered perhaps selfishly when it was an acceptable time to depart from a party without being considered rude or ungrateful. The last thing I needed was for people to think I was unfalteringly belligerent; I would much rather that they ignore me altogether.
Credit where credit was due – as Lilia hurriedly introduced me to a stunning brunette who looked incredibly familiar in a deep blue dress, she never once stopped to glance in my direction and helpfully prompt me to interject. There was that guilt again, flaring up as I began another round of explanations over my career path and stringently trying to stick to the path of lies regarding why I had moved in the first place. I was getting attached to a girl who, in my mind, was not quite real. Yet the heat from her fingertips on my arm as she prompted me felt clearer than anything, and I swallowed back another bout of nervousness. I could feel the tension rising in my face, and no matter how many times I wriggled my toes the tingling persisted.
"I haven't really been to anything like this before," I found myself saying, earning a reproving look from the brunette – Eleanor, I believe she said.
"So," another asked – a tall, slender auburn-haired girl with a soft, creamy complexion and a heart shaped face. I did not recall her name, if she had even given one. "You're new blood?"
Slick green must have been visible in my face, because everyone acted rather suddenly. Josef was beside us in an instant, hand gripping in the crook of the auburn girl's elbow and steering her away. Eleanor and Lilia looked between them, then back at me, and I forcibly closed my mouth. It was, however, impossible to hide the thundering in my chest and the white-knuckled grip threatening to smash the glass I held to pieces. Guilt rose in my chest. I knew why Josef had whisked her away, but the look of concern passing between the two girls in front of me told me a different story – perhaps one I had been blissfully ignorant of until that moment.
"I need some fresh air," what I had intended to come out as a confident statement, instead fell from my lips in a garbled mess, though I did not stop to acknowledge their responses. That also meant I was not paying attention to where I was going; no sooner had I found my previous spot against the immaculate wall outside did I crash headlong in to a regretfully familiar sight: the blonde vampire, this time without his glass full of nutritious blood for good measure.
"In a hurry?" The smirk I had seen before held a different kind of threat now. There was a predatory hunger behind his eyes, a leer that made me feel even smaller than I already was. Stomach churning, I tried and failed to raise my height by straightening, pushing my shoulders back and holding my head high. None of these mattered, of course; my knees were threatening to buckle, and the world around me, despite being outside, felt suffocating and small, as if walls were closing in rapidly around the two of us. Behind us, nobody was paying any attention; we had become momentarily invisible, and I was trapped, and unless I thought quickly on my feet I knew from the thickness of the atmosphere I was most certainly headed for trouble.
"No," I responded, aiming to push past him towards a table set at the far end of the pool with jugs of water, but as soon as I did he gripped my elbow in precisely the same fashion Josef had with the other girl. This time, I could feel the intense pressure of his fingers, nails digging violently in to the skin. Wincing, I whirled to face him. "Let me go before I snap your hand off at the wrist." I had never before needed to use such a threat, and indeed I knew full well I would never have been able to carry it out. I had taken a few sparse self-defence courses at the gym years ago just before I had turned eighteen, but nothing heavy handed. For whatever reason, the instructor had left out the key components of defending yourself against vampires.
The words, of course, did precisely what I knew they would do, rather than what I wanted them to – he grinned wider, baring pearly white teeth, lips stretching back to reveal delicately pointed edges. "Feisty… but you know there are rules here." His other hand quickly swung to grab my free arm, applying equal amounts of pressure to the underside of the skin. "If you're not marked, you're free and obligated to give…" He trailed off, eyes climbing up and down, tongue moistening his lips. I shuddered, tugging myself away but the grip was too tight to even move an inch.
"I'm not free, thank you very much." Sod it, no way was I going to be some hormonal vampire's pudding. At that precise moment I could not have cared less about hiding what I knew. Damned be the consequences, I refused to end up in a morgue again, and I refused to be intimidated.
The problem with thinking like this, of course, was that one-hundred percent of the time in this precise situation it really did not matter in the slightest. Even if I willed it to happen, spat out a million and one threats with the intention of causing the offender to back down, I knew deep down that he wouldn't, and that my only hope was to cause enough of a commotion to get someone else to intervene. I knew that the vampires were fast, but were they fast enough? I could open my mouth to scream and he could have snapped my neck in half before anyone even heard it.
Heart pumping wildly, I looked around again, but once more no-one was paying any attention, and no-one caught my desperate silent plea for help. Too many hearts racing, too much heightened conversation – and he knew it.
I felt myself being pulled towards him, but from then on everything moved in slow motion. My eyes never left his face, even as he dipped his head towards my bare neck. In one single, swift, instinctive motion, I raised my knee clean between his legs, shoving myself backwards as I did. Everything blurred in to silence. Instead of by arm, I was yanked backwards by my hair, and subsequently the combination of my own reflexes and his horror at being fought back against resulted in me falling backwards.
As I hit the water, my head smacked hard against the edge, swallowing me in darkness.
Even before I opened my eyes, I knew I wasn't home.
Unlike before, the return of my senses this time was gradual, which in a way helped with the realisation that it was not all just some weird, horrible, invigorating dream. (No matter which way I looked at it, at the dangers and the rush of adrenaline, it was impossible to view it as a nightmare). Not that it mattered, of course; I was still here, wherever here was at this precise moment in time.
As I flexed my toes, I noticed the cool comforting brush of wool. Fingers brushed against a softer, less grainy texture beneath me, and when I finally did open my eyes, I was greeted with an immaculate, pure white ceiling, specks of sunlight breaking through closed curtains, and a comforting silence broken only by a hushed whisper beside me.
"She's awake!" Lilia was sat in a chair beside the bed, leaned over, eyes wide and smudged makeup gathering underneath them. Though I could have guessed, I did not really have the energy to care just who she was talking to; in that moment, I was simply grateful to have woken up at all, no matter what universe that may be. "Hey, are you okay?"
I nodded, wincing as the pressure caused a horrendous rush of pain across my neck and over my temple. "I'm breathing," I exhaled, the half-hearted attempt at a joke eliciting a small breathless laugh from my friend. I did not know when she had suddenly become that, but the mere sight of her presence here had subconsciously decided it for me.
"You hit your head pretty hard, but there wasn't much blood; they got you out fairly quickly after –"
I did not need to ask who 'they' were, nor did I press her to continue after the hesitation paused her flurry of words. She sounded exhausted, concern tinged with relief. "I promise I barely had anything to drink." It was difficult to talk; what I wanted to do, what I intended, was to sit up and assess my situation, to take stock of my surroundings and ascertain what I needed to do to get out of here and back home. I wanted to close my eyes and rest until I could catalogue what had happened, as the edges of each memory were blurred and fuzzy. "What happened to that man?" The words were out before I could stop them. My heart was beating furiously, and panic-stricken I shifted, eyes darting to every corner of the room I could see, as if I expected him to be there, expecting him to jump out.
"You won't have to worry about him." That voice, I realised, ignoring the lead weight that fell in the pit of my stomach – that voice could only belong to one person. Josef had moved to the foot of the bed, Lilia immediately sitting back. Using what little energy I could muster, I pushed myself up on my elbows and positioned my back to rest against the headboard. I had no idea what I looked like, but what became abhorrently clear as the covers slipped down with my movement was that I was not wearing my dress; the item in question was slung over a chair by the window, seemingly dry, but what I wore amounted to little other than a button-up shirt and my underwear.
"I hope you did not do this." My cheeks flushed, words holding barely any weight of disdain and utterly failing to highlight my objection.
"I may be many things," Josef replied, arching an eyebrow. "But I am not, despite what some may say, a pervert." He nodded towards Lilia, and I found that I still hotly objected to either of them undressing me. As if having Guillermo see every part of my body without my knowledge was not bad enough, this was even worse.
Balking at my rudeness, no matter what the situation, I swallowed, grimacing again. "Thank you. I didn't mean to cause a disturbance."
"On the contrary, it was hardly you that did so. The problem has been dealt with, and when you are fully recovered, there are a few things that need discussing before you can leave."
Somewhere between his words, that were, regardless of his apparent hospitality, most certainly a warning, Lilia had removed herself from the room. Was that a requirement of freshies, or a skill they picked up on along the way? Knowing where and when to disappear without being told, and to do so as quickly and quietly as possible. I felt a hot rush of indignation at being told what to do – I was twenty-five, fiercely independent, and I did not want to resort back to being a teenager under a parent's thumb. "I have to go to work, I can't just not show up."
"If it were not for Mick vouching for your discretion, I would have dealt with this differently." He paused only to walk to the empty space beside me. Each footstep caused my heart to skip a beat, which I knew he noticed despite giving absolutely no indication of this fact. "Lilia will be back momentarily with some things, but you are to stay here and rest until I say so." My chest rose and fell heavily as he leaned forwards, breath cool against my cheeks. Why did they do that? Why was I not arguing back? "When you are better, which should take no longer than a few days, we will talk again. Attempting to leave right now would be inadvisable." He left before I had a chance to really digest what he said, but when I did, I sank back in to the pillows. The throbbing behind my eyes barely softened as I shut out the world, though the quiet aided a little, where it not for the consistent throbbing of my heart permeating the silence.
What have I done?