Post by Khaos on Feb 26, 2021 19:50:16 GMT -5
The “ding” of the elevator sounded, prompting Damien Carter to step off on the appropriate floor, the young woman still in his arms. She had long ago passed out, whether from the drinks, drugs, fear, or some concoction of all three. This had left Damien to figure out where she lived, looking through her clutch bag for some semblance of personal identification. Diana Burton, residing in Sherman Circle Apartments; of course she’d be another stuck-up socialite living off mommy and daddy’s wealth. As he walked, he received quite a few stares from onlookers as he carried this half-naked woman the few miles required to reach her place of residence but, thankfully, none had been foolish enough to intervene. Gently placing her down in the hallway, Damien fumbled through the set of keys she had until finally finding the right one, unlocking the door. Opening it, he was immediately met with a pair of dark beige eyes staring back at him. For a moment, Damien began to feel as if he had just walked into a nefarious trap, before the eyes suddenly disappear around the corner and out of sight. Lifting the woman up into his arms once more, Damien proceeded into the apartment; turning the light on and closing the door behind him. Los Angeles was not an easily affordable place to live and the amount of extravagant amenities she possessed confirmed his suspicions that this woman either came from money or made a shit-ton of it. Still, how a seemingly smart and powerful woman like this found herself in the very predicament she was in tonight, it didn’t make much sense to Damien. He proceeded further into the apartment, finding her bedroom. The eyes were there waiting for him once again, staring at him defensively from the bed. As he hit the light switch once more, the brown-and-caramel cat hissed as if the lights themselves blinded her. She bounced off the bed and darted away into hiding as Damien laid the woman down onto the bed. He slipped his coat from off her body and grabbed a nearby blanket, placing it over her near naked form. For a moment, Damien looked upon her, recalling what Erebus had said to him in the alley. He had actually found HER and she was alive! He thought he would be ecstatic in this revelation or – at the very least – have peace of mind that she had somehow managed to survive. Why then did he feel anger and rage? His eyes closed of their own accord as he tried to remember what she had been like…
Damien found her where she always was, her normal hiding spot in the closet. She sat with her knees clutched to her chest, her face buried into her legs. Who knew how long she had been here, her tears long since dried upon her face. He sat down next to her, believing it better to not saying anything in this moment and just let her feel his presence. He couldn’t remember how old he was in this memory, maybe early teens? Whenever these flashbacks occurred, Damien always felt like an unwilling participant, knowing the outcome well in advance yet never being able to change it for the better.
“I managed to sneak you one of Sister La Rosa’s famous chocolate chip cookies,” young Damien finally said, offering the treat to his friend.
The mention of the snack at least prompted her to lift her head enough so that he could see her amber eyes peer out. She didn’t hesitate, snatching the cookie from his hand and clutching it close to her, as if she was worried Damien would change his mind and demand the treat back. Living in the Silver Oaks Orphanage often meant that you had to constantly compete with all the other kids for things others often took for granted. Arrive a minute too late for meals and you might end up with only table scraps. Don’t make it to the bathroom before someone else might mean you have to go outside and piss or shit in the yard. Damien had lived this life for quite some time so he was accustomed to the way things worked here but for her, well… she was still adjusting.
“You know,” young Damien began, seeing her take a little nibble of her cookie. “There are better places to hide, especially outside. I can show you, sometime…”
“They took away my stuff,” the girl responded, fighting back the tears. “They said it wasn’t ‘mine’ anymore…”
“They’re just testing you,” young Damien informed her. “You’re the ‘new girl’ so they’re going to see how far they can push you before you push back. You need to show them that you aren’t going to take any of their crap.”
Her eyes went wide at his swear word as Damien didn’t even seem to be phased by the fact that he said such a vile term, especially considering that it was one that would get his mouth washed out with soap if any of the Sister’s had overheard. The girl chuckled to herself as she took a few more bites of the cookie.
“Finish your cookie,” young Damien instructed. “And then we’ll go downstairs and get your stuff back… together.”
He had coddled her, protected her, and in the end… it was he who had been weak. Damien blamed himself for failing her, but the “how” and the “why” eluded him. Where had he gone wrong?
Turning the light off, Damien exited the bedroom and found his way to the bathroom. Carefully, he peeled off his vest as he examined the knife wound he had suffered in the alley. Erebus was right, he had gotten sloppy. He wasn’t the soldier that he had been raised to be by the Shadow Lord, not anymore anyway. Rummaging through the bathroom, Damien managed to find enough supplies to clean and patch the knife wound as best as he could. Checking his face next and making sure that there was nothing broken or that he wasn’t missing any teeth, Damien found himself admiring the various scars across his body; none as prominent as the six-pointed sun star encircled by three symmetrical barriers directly over his heart.
He was marked…
The reminder of the fire touching flesh was too much to bear as Damien leaned forward, gripping the countertop, sweating profusely as if he was being roasted alive from the inside. His breath became ragged and he could feel himself losing consciousness. He managed to drop to his knees before falling, lessening the blow he felt as his body heave forward, his face hitting the tile of the bathroom floor, the last thing he saw being the eyes of the cat staring back at him.
“What are you doing here!? You shouldn’t have come for me! Why would you do this!? If they found you…”
Damien’s eyes fluttered open as he pushed himself to his knees. It took him a minute to get his bearings, remembering just where he was. It felt like he had been asleep for days when, in reality, it hadn’t even been a full hour. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to his feet, doing what he had been trained to do… cleaning up the evidence he had left behind. The fall to the bathroom tile had forced his knife wound to bleed through the gauze, leaving traces of crimson on the surface. Re-bandaging his wound, Damien then placed all the bandage wrappers and blood-soaked pieces of gauze and towels into the plastic liner of the trash bag. Slipping his vest back on and grabbing the trash bag, he turned to see that he was greeted by the familiar eyes of the young woman’s feline protector. This time, the cat seemed to be tolerable to his presence, as if realizing just what Damien had endured to make sure that her owner returned home safely. Rubbing up against his leg, as if silently thanking him, the cat offered a “purr” of farewell and slipped back into the dark bedroom, cuddling up next to her owner. Damien excused himself from the apartment, having done his one “good deed” for the year, disposing of his trash on the way out.
By the time he had managed to get Diana home and get himself cleaned up, twice, it was now well past midnight. Damien staggered past all the “night owls” as they drunkenly went from one party to the next. The night’s events replayed in his head as he tried to recall how he had come to be in that very specific alley earlier in the evening. The darkness within was a gift and a curse, granting Damien the ability to see or feel what evil resided in within people’s hearts and souls. However, it was more than that. Whenever a sinful deed is performed, it leaves behind what is called a “veil of haunting”. Those in tune with the darkness can sense this aura, even feed off of it. But for Damien to be drawn to a place prior to the crime being committed was something else entirely. Either he was becoming stronger with the darkness or he was being led around, like a dog on a leash. The winter winds had not let up, the cold air allowing a few snowflakes to accumulate wherever they may land. Damien wrapped his coat tightly around his body as he walked, having no real sense of where he was going, he just knew he would “feel it” when he got there. A few blocks later, Damien found himself standing before a magic shop aptly titled Pandora’s Box. Despite it being well past normal business hours, he reached for the door and pushed it open, not surprised in the least that it was unlocked. The bell on the door chimed to alert those in the store of his imminent presence as he stepped inside, his eyes scanning the area. At first glance, this place seemed like nothing more than a street performer’s paradise, but as Damien proceeded further in, he could sense that there was something else here; something magical.
“Took you long enough,” Erebus announced, slipping through the curtain that led to the storage area in the back, carrying a wooden box of various mystical ingredients contained within. “You weren’t living out some ‘Knight in Shining Armor’ fantasy with Miss Burton I hope.”
“No, nothing like that,” Damien scoffed, immediately put on the defensive about his intentions with the woman he had saved earlier.
Inside the shop, Damien glanced around nonchalantly, never really having developed any sort of interest in the mystical arts. Considering all the things that he had bare witnessed to, perhaps he should treat these types of things with more respect and reverence. As it was, he might very well have been inside a bakery that only sold day-old bread.
“Doing some late night shopping?” Damien questioned, noticing the box of “goodies” Erebus had collected.
Unlike before, Erebus wasn’t cloaked in his black-as-night robe, opting instead to just appear before Damien as a “normal” person might, wearing a long-sleeved charcoal shirt, with jagged black lines running every which way. For some reason, it brought to mind of what a cage made of barbed-wire would resemble.
“Well…” Erebus began, placing the box on the counter and looking through the other display shelves. “When have I ever been known to pass up a bargain? Especially… when the deals are just simply ‘to die for’!”
Erebus laughed to himself as Damien’s eyes floated to behind the curtain from whence the Shadow Lord had emerged, seeing a pair of legs lying motionless.
“Was that really necessary?” Damien condemned.
“What? That!?” Erebus stammered, doing his best to act appalled. “What kind of monster you must think I am, Damien. The man was dead long before I got here. Besides, he was one of the “good ones” so there’s nothing for me here. Well, maybe not nothing… might as well pick up a few things, am I right?”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Damien cocked his head to the side. “I don’t feel… anything.”
Damien proceeded through the curtain, kneeling over the corpse. He was an elderly man, no doubt having spent his entire life working this little shop. As Damien brought his hand over the shop owner’s body, he could sense no haunting left behind. Maybe it had simply been natural causes that had killed him? Still, there was real power here; real magic. Was this man oblivious to what he had in his possession? Did someone find out and wish to remove it from him? What could kill someone and not leave behind any trace of sin?
“You know,” Erebus began, sticking his head through the curtain. “I can’t help but feel like you’re avoiding the real reason why we’re meeting for the second time tonight.”
Maybe there was some truth to this, Damien looking for something – anything – to distract himself from having to face down this reality; from having to face down her.
“You’re right,” Damien swallowed, rising up to his feet and walking back through the curtain. “Tell me what you know.”
“First,” Erebus countered, grabbing a few more items and placing them in his crate. “I need your word that this isn’t going to be like last time.”
Damien didn’t need any more recaps of what had gone “wrong” the last time. It had almost cost Erebus his soldier, a fact that the Shadow Lord seemed to love to constantly remind him. Things would be different this time around, of that he had no doubt.
“Don’t worry,” Damien reassured his mentor. “I’ll be ready this time, for whatever happens.”
Erebus paused his scrounging for artifacts long enough to look up and meet Damien’s gaze.
“I don’t need to remind you of her importance in all of this,” Erebus warned. “The Nightshades were very specific…”
“Yeah, yeah,” Damien interrupted. “We all have our role to play; I’ve heard the speech a thousand times.”
“Well you’ll hear it a thousand more – if need be,” Erebus retorted, blowing a pile of dust off what appeared to be some sort of grimoire. “Also, Thea says ‘Hi’…”
“Now who’s the one avoiding the topic!?” Damien snapped, slamming his fists down upon the glass counter top, splintering it. “Where is she!?”
For a moment, there was nothing but the still quiet of the snow falling outside. Damien glared at Erebus, as if he was staring into the very abyss itself; and like the dark chasm that he was, Erebus stared right back. Were the two men to come to any sort of physical altercation, Damien didn’t stand a chance… he had no disillusions about this fact. None-the-less, he was not going to back down, not when he was this close.
“Fine,” Erebus broke the silence, heaving a sigh. “I’ll tell you, but first…”
“And there it is,” Damien groaned, turning away from the Shadow Lord. “There’s always something with you!”
“This is as much for me as it is for you,” Erebus replied. “They told me as much.”
“I don’t care what the Nightshades saw!” Damien shouted. “My fate is…”
“Theirs,” Erebus finished, not willing to go down this road with his pupil once more. “Believe what you want Damien, but your fate was sealed long ago and nothing you – or I – do will ever change that.”
Erebus’ words lingered in his head, as if receiving the answer to the question as to “why” he had been in that alley tonight. Damien didn’t like thinking that he had no control over his life; that he was just another pawn moving across the cosmic chess board of existence. Still, for the time being, he was alive – and he owed that to Erebus.
“What do you need me to do?” Damien asked, admitting to defeat.
“I love the enthusiasm, I really do,” Erebus perked up, flashing his pearly whites. “But it’s nothing we need to concern ourselves with… at least, not tonight. Besides, from the look of things, you could use a little R&R.”
Erebus paused his plundering long enough to turn around, finding what he was looking for on the countertop next to the cash register. Turning, he tossed Damien a pair of car keys, to which he simply watched them soar through the air, hit his chest, and fall to the floor with a “jingle”. Damien looked down at the keys and then back up at Erebus.
“I guess we never really played catch much…” Erebus started, hiding his snicker.
“Why are you giving me a dead man’s car keys?” Damien interrupted.
“Does it look like Mr. Stewart is going to be needing his ride anytime soon?” Erebus retorted, pointing his hand back in the direction of the rotting corpse behind the curtain.
“What happened to ‘being discreet’… or ‘laying low’… or ‘blending in’…?” Damien began, quoting to Erebus the rules he had learned so long ago.
“Oh for Me’s sake, just take the damn truck!” Erebus growled. “Go to Mr. Stewart’s residence, help yourself to a nice hot shower, get some actual food NOT from a garbage can, and enjoy the comforts of a cozy bed. These opportunities don’t come around very often.”
“What makes you think Mr. Stewart lives alone?” Damien retorted.
Erebus simply raised an eyebrow to Damien’s foolhardy question before waving his hands around at the store they currently stood in, indicating that no one in their right mind would “shack up” with a purveyor of the mystical arts. Kneeling down, Damien scooped up the keys into his hand.
“And where, exactly does Mr. Stewart…” Damien began to ask, before a wallet struck him in the chest.
He barely managed to grab the wallet before it fell to the ground, flipping it open to see the driver’s license of one Warren Stewart. An assortment of dollar bills peaked out from inside as Damien lifted his eyes up at his friend.
“A little something extra, for your troubles,” Erebus winked.