August 2013
I was sitting in my favorite lounge when Alexander Devonshire walked in, a fair-haired individual in tow. I didn't recognize the human, but I could smell the fresh chemical scent of the Nexus wafting off of his skin. The Nexus smelled a bit like bleach. The human also smelled a bit like Alexander himself, who looked very pleased.
"I see you've gotten a slayer," I commented when he approached my chair. He sat on an empty sofa and the fair-haired man joined him.
"Domare, this is Winter. Winter this is Domare."
"Charmed," I said flatly.
"Where's DeBrock?" Alexander asked.
"Running. Winston's a track junkie." It wasn't a joke. Winston seriously spent a lot of time exercising. It gave him a good focus though. Even sitting idly in the lounge, I could feel the rush of blood through his veins, feel the strain of muscles working, and bask in the clarity of my human's thoughts as he pushed himself through each new task.
Alexander chuckled. "I heard about the fight with Teirren. You practically broke the kid, Domare."
"He deserved it."
Unsurprisingly, Alexander took the news in stride. "It's amazing how many of them don't know how easily we could control them. The pureblood's power is unmatched. I'm still shocked that you so rarely exert your authority over these lesser vampires."
"Neither have you," I noted.
"I'm not really the type."
"And you think I am?"
"I think you're far more vindictive than I am."
I smirked. "You got that right." A quick glance to Alexander's right had me wondering. "You're in each other's heads?"
Winter nodded, face tense. "It's trying."
"Isn't it?" I insisted. "What's your match rate?"
"Eighty percent," the other vampire declared proudly.
"Pretty high," I commented.
"Oh, shut up!" he said cheerfully. "Everyone knows that you and Winny have the highest match-rate in the history of the prison."
"Watch yourself, Devonshire," I warned. "You are not to call him by that name."
The icy quality of order flooded my blood as I let the command take wing. As Alexander had said, I rarely took the time to use my powers of control over other vampires. However, when it came to the other pureblood, I was often more liberal with demands, which didn't always stick, seeing as he was a pureblood himself. Winter shifted uncomfortably on the couch, but Alexander made no sign of acknowledgment or discomfort as the push of my words surely overtook him.
"You're overprotective," he observed.
I raised a brow. "Aren't you?"
"Utterly," Winter piped in. "It's maddening."
"You and Winston would get along swimmingly," I pointed out. "He claims I'm far too possessive."
You are, Winston's voice filled up my head, causing me a small amount of relief. I liked the calm, but not the distance that his single-minded focus could build between us.
I'll be done soon, Winston reassured me, then distanced himself again to finish his workout.
"You've gone all hazy," Alexander observed. "Winston chiming in?"
"You know how it is."
"Yes. What did he say?"
"He was reasserting the fact that he thinks I am too possessive."
"Interesting," Winter said and I smirked, recognizing the reply for what it was. Winter had accidentally spoken Alexander's thoughts. "Funny how that works, when your mind lines up just the right way."
"It's like having one mind shared between two bodies," Alexander said. "A challenge, but an intriguing one."
"We're getting better at it," I insisted.
"I hear you're sleeping together," the lesser pureblood observed.
I sat up straighter and frowned at him. "Says who?"
"Everyone."
Head, meet hands. I groaned. "Winston's not going to like that."
They think we're what now? Dammit, Domare!
I chuckled. "Shit."
"Are you?" Alexander asked, genuinely curious.
"Not in that sense," I admitted. "It helps with the mind thing, especially for the dreaming."
Alexander shared a surprised look with Winter.
"We might have to give that a try," Winter said. "Anyway, I'm supposed to tell you...Brucker wants you to train some new slayers on rank structure in half an hour."
"Right," I said unhappily, and stood up from my seat. "Room?"
"31C," Alexander supplied.
And I was off.
I came in late that evening. Winston was already tucked away in bed, not dreaming yet, fortunately. It had been about a week since we started sharing a bed, and the dreams had been few and far between. Nightmares were thankfully nonexistent. Sadly, though, I wasn't sleeping as well as I might have liked. I missed the comfort of a confining space, and the complete darkness that my coffin provided. Unfortunately, I knew that there was no way I would ever get Winston into a coffin. He had informed me a bit more about how his nightmares worked, how sometimes they would disappear for a month, only to reappear later. I found myself wanting to sleep alone, to curl up comfortably in my own space.
I showered, drank a pint of blood that I had secretly stashed in the refrigerator, and wandered into my own room. After a moment's contemplation, I opened up the coffin-lid and climbed inside. We could stand to sleep apart for one night, I hoped as total darkness surrounded me.
I stood in the middle of an empty classroom. The walls surrounding were familiar. My old high school, my brain supplied, but it wasn't mine. I had never gone to school. I felt the familiar brush of Winston's mind against my own. We were dreaming, only he failed to grasp the fact, and as usual, I couldn't control our connection fully enough to make him understand.
We walked to the doors of the classroom and entered a long hallway lined with blue lockers. The floors were tiled, and sunlight poured in from the windows suspended above the lockers. That, at least, I could appreciate. We started walking toward one set of brown double doors at the end of the hall, but they seemed never to get closer. It was the dumbest dream cliché in existence, and I caught myself almost laughing at the stupidity of it all, but Winston didn't react to my amusement. Our body was singular, but our mind was disjointed. Winston was starting to worry. I was just along for the ride.
The hallway suddenly veered right, and Winston turned sharply, but the doors were in our sight. We passed a Pluto guard in the hall. He appeared out of thin air and walked right by us, seemingly oblivious.
In dreamland, apparently that was perfectly normal.
Winston ignored the guard completely, but I curiously turned my eyes in the man's direction just long enough to see him disappear. It created the strangest sensation of looking too many ways at once. I was assailed by dizziness, so I turned my attention frontwards again, settling back into Winston's dream persona. He suddenly ducked into an open doorway, another empty classroom, except it wasn't.
We were now in a messy living room. Clothes were strewn all over the red carpet and the flannel blue sofa. There was a sheet draped over what I identified as a television, and a lamp glowed yellow-orange from a corner. I was more worried about the crimson-colored carpet. Anything red in Winston's dreams usually hinted our doom. I knew that before long, that stained carpet would shift into folds of blood-red water and we would drown in its depths.
I mentally screamed at Winston to get his ass out of that room, but he seemed to have his own agenda. We sat down in the middle of the filthy room and curled into a ball.
"I don't want to," he whined pathetically.
I didn't know if he was responding to me or something else, but I wasn't about to let the opportunity pass me by. Drowning was not fun.
I found my voice in the walls of that room.
"We need to get out of here," I told him.
"This room is safe," he replied noncommittally.
"No, it isn't, Winny. The floor is red. It's not safe!"
"I want to see you."
And in that moment, I fell, stumbled into existence in the dream. I glanced for a moment at my hands before reaching forward to grab Winston's shoulders.
"Winston, I'm here. Look."
He opened his eyes and smiled.
"Domare, you have wings again."
I felt something shift against my back, but didn't spare the time to look.
"We need to get out of this room," I reinforced the idea by screaming it.
Winston tiled his head to one side, revealing a long strip of tanned skin for me.
"Eat," he ordered, and I don't know what possessed me to do it, but I did it. I was sinking my teeth into his neck before I had time to think about it.
"Impulsive," Winston said around a groan of pleasure.
And maybe that was it; it was his dream after all.
I sucked the blood from his veins far more fervidly than I often did in real life, having no intention of stopping. He just tasted too good.
"What do I taste like?" asked Winston.
Like something amazing, I thought at him.
He sighed. "Like chocolate?"
A new flavor filled my mouth, one that I had never experienced before. It was smooth and rich and unfamiliar, but it still wasn't as good as Winston's blood.
"Chocolate," Winston reassured me and giggled.
He was bleeding chocolate, and I was still drinking him.
There was a growl behind us, and I ripped my fangs from Winston's flesh in surprise, taking a chunk of it with me. Winston didn't cry out, simply put a hand to his own shoulder and smiled. I stared long and hard at the chocolate-blood dripping down his bare chest.
"Hello," he said to the thing behind me, which was still growling.
I turned to face it and frowned. It was a lion this time: black as night, with stars twinkling in its dark blue eyes. The blue seemed to stretch across the lion's face like an old scar, and it's fur glittered with twinkling lights like a lost stretch of night sky.
I felt something wet touch my ankles, and oh God, why wasn't I wearing shoes? I glanced at my feet, now the blood-color of the carpet, and knew that the room was filling up with the stuff. I worried a bit that I didn't remember standing up, but Winston was too now, and well, we had other things to worry about. I stood protectively in front of him, between the coal-black lion and my human.
I bared my fangs and growled.
It roared back.
I stood my ground.
A pair of arms wrapped around my waist from behind. Winston was hugging me, trapping me.
"Thank you, vampire," he whispered in my ear, and started urging me forward.
"Stop, you moron!" I shouted at him hysterically, struggling to escape his grasp as the angry lion took a step forward, fangs bared. I opened my mouth to yell at Winston again, but the beast chose that moment to sink its teeth into my leg, grinding down into my bones as hard as its jaw would allow. I screamed when it simply snapped off my leg from the knee down.
"Bad kitty!" Winston hissed in my ear, as I bled tears. The blood in the room came at us in a rush, sloshing against the white walls as it filled the room. Somehow the lion stayed in place, not drowning or sinking, but watching us fiercely with its night sky-eyes and my literal foot in its mouth.
I felt the blood reach my neck and didn't fight it when Winston pulled me under.
I just prayed that we would wake up soon.