And I'm back with a new chapter! Chapters will now be more infrequent, but they will also be longer. Hope you guys like this one :D
There are lesser hipsters than he expected.
Demetri was just in town to check in on the Cullens - as per Aro's wishes, Carlisle and his gold eyed coven merited a visit from one of the senior most member of the Guard. More importantly, it was about the child.
He'd tracked eight of them (Bella still elusive to his talents, damn that woman) to the college town of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Cullens had enrolled themselves as students here at Harvard, with Carlisle studying medicine all over again. They truly go the extra mile for blending in with the humans. And now he's here, accompanying a human he had contemplated killing for food eighteen hours back. To coffee.
Thanks to Fall Break, most students have left town and gone home, so the place is mercifully empty, Sophia (he has now learned) steering them towards a table at the back. Gods, I hope this human doesn't think it's a date. She's cute, pretty even, in the right clothes, but he has no interest in pursuing a dalliance with this one right now.
"Sorry, I don't really like sitting near windows - I just don't like being in a position where people can gawk at me," she offers an explanation for her seating choice, sliding onto the faux-leather clad booth seats.
"I understand - I don't like being in a public spot much either." The server comes over to them, the man looking at him appreciatively before offering them both courteous nods.
"Anything you guys want?"
"Can I get a Euro decaf standard, black, and a pain au chocolat?" She answers without looking, and the server turns to him.
"Same drink as the lady, nothing else." The man leaves with a quick "I'll be back soon", Sophia putting her phone back in her bag.
"So," she begins, leaning back, "the meaning behind the name."
"It directly translates to 'of Demeter'."
"Your parents great fans of the classics?" He grins crookedly at that one.
"Kind of."
"Kind of?" So she's a tenacious one - his charm usually throws humans off their rhythm, but she seems dedicated and rather dogged in her pursuit, so he decides to humour her.
"They taught Greek history and mythology back home."
Her face lights up. "Are you actually from Greece?" He is, but he isn't about to tell her that.
"Britain, but my grandparents immigrated from Greece, so yes, but ethnicity, I suppose I am."
"That does explain your curious accent," she nods, head perking up as she spots someone - he wagers it's the server. And it is, the man depositing their orders at the table.
"I've travelled the world quite often in my youth - spent my infancy back in Britain, childhood in Greece, was schooled back home in England and spent summers with my grandparents in Italy. Now I'm here, studying in the US."
She dramatically exhales in response, taking a sip of her coffee. He does the same, the liquid passing without offense. Unlike solid food, fluids don't pose much problems to his body, venom swiftly burning them away. "Quite the upbringing. Did you complete your undergrad here?" He shakes his head.
"Back home."
"Cool cool cool." He notices the slightly shorter attention span of his companion, her focus now on drawing abstract geometric patterns on the napkins with a ball pen.
"Sophia is a Greek name as well."
"Yeah, means wisdom, I know," she says after finishing her mouthful of pastry, "it's my maternal grandma's middle name." He has no idea why he agreed to this meeting with this girl - if he has no romantic inclinations towards her as he would towards a mate, he has absolutely no reason to hang around. It would be rude to leave in the middle, so might as well stick through this. And he is still here and is curious to know more about her, so there has to be a reason why. Given that vampires only mate once in their existence, it's hard for him to accurately gauge whether his interest in her is that of one towards their mate, or just casual curiosity.
There's a song playing in the background that he quite likes, so he decides to use that to further their conversation. "Do you know what song this is?"
"I have heard this somewhere." Her face scrunches up in concentration before she arrives on an answer. "It's 'Flawless' by The Neighbourhood."
"They sound good."
"It's definitely addictive in its own way. What is your musical poison?"
Given the amount of free time he has had over the centuries, Demetri has developed a rather eclectic taste in just about everything. He has been taken with Queen's music for the better part of the last 30 years, but there are some other bands which have caught his fancy as well. "I'm a Freddie Mercury man through and through, but I like Fleetwood Mac and Coldplay just as well."
"Nice! I like those as well, but I definitely spend a good chunk of my time listening to film scores, Florence & The Machine and whatever artist catches my fancy at the moment."
"And which artist has your attention as of now?" He leans a little forward, taking her aback - so this wasn't a date for the lady. Or she just didn't expect him to show interest this early, not that he actually is. He's just figuring out why he's still here talking to someone he expressly ordered to leave his vicinity if they wanted to live the previous night.
"Well, Florence has a new album out right now, so I'm listening to that quite often. And I will probably go back and listen to more of The Neighbourhood again. Speaking of home," she craned her neck to look out, "I should be getting back. The sole reason I left the library was because it was getting late, and I got sidetracked like always."
"I apologise for keeping you from anything you had scheduled."
She waves her hand dismissively, draining her drink. "I had jack shit scheduled - I would have just rewatched Brooklyn Nine Nine." A commonality.
"So glad the show didn't get cancelled - I need to know if Holt becomes commissioner."
Her entire face lights up hearing that sentence - she is practically beaming at him. "You're a B99 stan?"
"I like the show quite a bit, yes."
"Well, that brings you like a good five steps closer to being my friend now." That is quite the curious metric to measure the formation of a friendship, and the slightly juvenile, innocent nature of the statement makes him smile.
"And how far am I from the finish line?"
"Like, three or so steps away." The server approaches them, studying the two of them, looking for clues regarding their relationship status, Demetri guesses.
"Would you like the bill, guys?"
"Sure," he withdraws a card from his wallet, the two of them heading towards the counter.
"The total will be $10.84," the cashier informs him, and he passes his card, only to be stopped by the lady beside him. She is looking at him with mild disapproval.
"I'll pay my fair share - I did ask you to explain all that."
"And I did keep you from getting home earlier."
"It's not a date, you don't need to pay for me. And even if it was, I wouldn't let you," she says at a volume only audible to the two of them, the cashier busy organising the many tins of tea that adorned the wall behind the counter.
"All right. But do let me walk you home, because it isn't exactly safe at this hour." They pay their respective bills, stepping out in the cool, misty air.
"I can take care of myself," she digs her hands in the hoodie pocket. "And my apartment is like a short ten minute walk from here, so I'll be good."
"We have a better chance together against a wolf, rather than just alone." She regards him with a critical stare, finally agreeing with a nod. He follows the lady's lead, the two walking in silence, his eyes trained on the road ahead.
That is until police sirens race past them, heading towards the woods.
Her first instinct was to head straight home.
Her companion seemed to be on edge too, and the two of them began walking faster towards their destination. They were only a good two blocks away when her phone rang, breaking the tenuous silence of the night. In such a situation, she would have ignored most calls, but seeing 'Campus Police' on one's screen is enough to make a person pick up their phone in the midst of what constitutes as a scary situation.
"Hello?"
"Are you Sophia Summers?"
"Yes."
"Are you well-acquainted with a Miss Gemma Atherton?" Her stomach drops, that funny feeling of the anticipation of something really bad taking over her.
"Yeah," she gulps, fighting to keep the fear down.
"We need you to come and identify a body." The sentence takes all the wind out of her, and her phone leves her hand, clattering to the ground. Demetri's face is alert, eyes narrowed. "What happened?"
"I need to go to the police station," she gulps harder, fighting to keep the bile from rising in her throat, "to identify a body."
"My car's nearby." She just nods as he leaves her side, the purr of an engine following in the next five minutes. He gently guide her towards the passenger seat, and she simply curls up in the plush leather, mind still trying to piece together everything. He doesn't push her for any details, which she's thankful for, and they come to stop in front of the police station, police cars dotting the front of the building. "If you don't want me to come in, I'll just wait here." As of now, she would rather not.
"You should go home. The police will escort me back home." He nods, passing her a small slip of paper.
"Call me if you need any further assistance." She nods in reply, mutely pocketing the piece of paper before heading in - a look back, and she sees the man driving off into the night. Maybe letting him go without a police escort was a bad idea. But he looks like someone who would be able to take care of themselves.
Not against a wolf or serial killer, you dumbass.
"You're Sophia Summers?" A police officer inquires, motioning her to sit down. Feeling like her legs might give way, she takes the offer, setting down in the seat. "How do you know Gemma?"
"She studies Physics here, and she's been my friend since junior year of undergrad."
"A body was found at the edge of the woods - and it appears to have been drained of blood. Since there was no ID and you were the emergency contact listed in her information, we called you in to identify the body."
She nods, clamping her mouth shut lest she throw up on the table. The officer notes her distress and directs towards the closest bathroom, where she promptly throws up in the nearest toilet bowl. She doesn't know how much time passes until the officer fetches her, but she is directed to a police car.
"The body is at Boston PD's ME lab, so we will be required to drive you back and forth from the location." She nods, taking her seat in the back of the vehicle and trying very hard not to think of anything at that point. It's not a long drive, and the scene at the lab is a little too quiet for her liking. There should be more cars, more chaos, right? A person was murdered.
Her friend.
The cops lead her down a narrow, plain corridor lined with doors opening into similarly stark rooms, the three of them entering the last one in the row. The morgue is sharply lit, instruments neatly lined up in a tray next to the body currently outside. They lift the cover, and her friend's face is very clearly visible to her - impish features contorted into those of horror, face drained of blood. With shaking hands, she moves the cover below her neck, revealing a mess of torn, bloody muscles and bone.
The sight is officially too much for Sophia, and she turns and pukes once again into the trash bin right next to the body, crouching over the receptacle and heaving all that remains in her. After a point, there simply is nothing left to spill out, and she sits there, dry-retching until it feels like she can stand. Very carefully, she makes sure not to look at the body as she rises to her feet.
"That's her," she forces out, voice scratchy.
"I'm so sorry for you loss, ma'am," one of them says, leading her out out of the room and into the brightly lit reception. She sits there for a while until the officers request her to supply them with her home address so they can drop her, and she writes it down with a shaking hand. Her mind is a fog of confusion and shock until she gets home, and after a few minutes of listlessly lying in the dark, her stomach decides to revolt again and she rushes to the washroom. Even though she knows nothing will come up, she goes through the motions anyways.
If only this could purge everything out of my brain.
Gemma's face swims in front of her eyes - alive and vibrant, all backhanded compliments and witty banter. She is ambitious and hardworking and a dreamer, and she can't be dead. But she is, and at the hands of some wild creature who somehow got her at the edge of the forest. As of now, that is all her mind feels fit to comprehend, and she stares blankly at the ceiling until sleep claims her.
Those few hours of unconsciousness are not easy or comforting, however, as she wakes from a dream involving the bloody, mangled corpse of her friend, a shadowy entity and her, running for her life from said thing.
Sophia looks around, the cool blue lighting of the room putting her to some ease. The clock on the nightstand reads 1240 hours, and she somehow makes her way to the kitchen with her jelly legs and puts on a cup of coffee. Her hands instinctively move towards her hoodie pocket, left hand closing upon a scrap of paper.
Demetri.
The man was sensible enough to leave when she asked him to, but she's scared if the thing that killed Gemma might have taken him too, so she punches in the numbers and puts it on speaker, foot tapping impatiently against the ground while the ring goes unanswered.
"Hello?" His voice fills her with relief - good, he's alive - and her worry must be plain in her tone because of his following statement. "I'm fine. How are you holding up? You sound rattled."
"Well, I just saw a mangled dead body less than a day back."
"I am so sorry," the concern in his voice is genuine. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"I'd say just stay in your house and don't leave until you need to, because whatever thing killed her got her at the edge of the forest."
Eventually, the news report covers this as well, and Sophia has to physically stop herself from bolting out of the room as she checks for any new developments. The chief of Cambridge PD and the captain of the precinct jointly investigating say that it was the same animal that killed Dwyer. But her friend is not the kind of person who willingly goes into forests and that has been bugging her ever since she heard them say it. They do mention that this could be the work of a serial killer, but the method of killing, patterns of wounds and choice of victims is too random and violent for this to be the work of a human, they add.
"Sophia, are you still there?" Shit, I hadn't disconnected.
"Sorry, I'm just really -"
"Shaken and distraught?" He offers, sparing her the trouble of finding the right words to fit her harebrained state.
"Yeah."
"I would be worried if you were not. Please contact me if you ever feel like the situation is being too much for you, or if you feel like you need a listening ear." He is good at the latter, I guess. At that, they bid adieu and she is left alone, with her thoughts and the news stream.
Nothing about this seems to add up. She is going to find out what is wrong, and she is going to do it without getting killed in the process.
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