After the Calling

With the radio blaring tunes by the Beatles and other music that Jaxon’s parents would never give ear, Jaxon let Chloe drive him beyond the gated communities and manicured picnic parks, through the business sectors of the city, past the bridges and the skyscrapers, and into the slums, her father’s newly waxed black sedan drawing eyes from the vagrants and the prostitutes that territorialized each street corner.

Jaxon kept his nerves to himself, but wondered just what a girl like Chloe would find to do on this side of the tracks. He did not have to wonder long. Chloe drove into a dusty car lot, and shifted into park.

She sat back for a moment and eyed him. “Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?” he asked quietly.

“Well, it has been at least a year since you’ve associated with anyone who your daddy couldn’t fit into his wallet,” she said. “Maybe you’ve forgotten what it is like to be near real people. Are you ready for real people?”

“Are you not a real person?”

Chloe smiled slyly and lifted herself over the middle dash, laying a slow kiss on his lips. “I’m a figment of your imagination.”

Jax studied her while she toyed with the top button of his shirt. “I would hope not.”

She held herself over him for another minute before jerking back and out of the driver’s seat, practically leaping out of the car. “Let’s go!”

He got out warily and followed her further into the lot where a group of laughing men and women had made a small banquet around a fire pit in the midst of the rusted car corpses. Chloe walked right into the middle of it and bowed, garnering cheers and applause of recognition. She turned and tugged him into the sloppy circle of oddly dressed hippies and yelled an introduction.

“Jaxon Bouchard, everyone! Should he fuck your woman, his father will buy your resentment.” She leaned into the crowd. “Will anyone sell their woman?!” Chloe laughed as a number of hands shot up, and an impromptu bidding war began.

But just as fast as she had pulled him into the center of the chaos, she pulled him out, and led him to a quieter end of the car lot where a smaller, less rambunctious group lounged. Off to the side, although clearly the center of attention, a broadly tall, dark featured man noted their arrival.

“I do not have a woman to sell. Will he fuck me instead?” the man asked in a strange accent.

“But then it would be his father’s resentment that would require purchase, and even you could not afford it,” Chloe said happily. The man sat up and motioned for them to join him on his worn-looking couch, and Chloe guided Jaxon toward it. “Loris, Jaxon. Jaxon, Loris,” she introduced them.

The men shook hands across Chloe, but when Jaxon tried to take his back, he was met with resistance.

“Your palms are soft, hey? You don’t do much,” Loris noted.

“No more than I have to,” Jaxon answered suspiciously.

“Listen to you speak, boere. Your words are marred by the silver spoon hanging out of your mouth.” Loris laughed and let him go. “Is that why you’re not off dying on the edge of the world? Did daddy pay off your draft?”

Jaxon didn’t know quite how to respond or what to make of the man, but Loris didn’t wait for him.

“Hey, bru, where is your aura?”

“He hides it,” Chloe answered for him. “He makes a disgraceful vampiric, he does.”

“Shame.” Loris nodded. “I would not have known it if I didn’t smell it on him.”

Jaxon found himself growing uncomfortable with the pair, but without prompt he began to relax, a strange tranquility settling over him. And with it, his aura opened up. “Is it you doing this?” he asked Loris, not sure if he should be upset. No psychic had ever gained access to his aura while it was blocked. Not that anyone had ever tried.

“If you want it to be me, then it’s me.” Loris sat back and turned his attention to Chloe. “And you give him no warning, just toss him to the pigs. You’re a criminal.”

“I’m innocent!” Chloe said in mock surprise.

“Hardly.”

“Oh, but I am. You should ravage me, Loris. Do away with my virginal innocence.”

Loris chuckled. “China, I’m more of virgin than you are.”

“I’ll ravage you, then.”

“Ne? You tempt me.”

“Lies,” Chloe scoffed. “You prefer the weaklings.”

“Eh, neen, we all have weaknesses. I prefer those who don’t share my own. Usually,” he replied, glancing at Jax.

“Hmph.” Chloe eyed him demurely, before pouncing, rather childlike, into his lap. “Did you miss me at least?”

“I can’t remember ever having met you before.”

“Oh, and you’re mean tonight. To think, I brought you a gift.”

“Hey, now I’m positive we’ve never met. The Chloe I know would shoot me before bringing me a gift.”

“Look,” she smiled at him broadly.

“You’ve brought me bicuspids.”

“No!” She ran a finger down a canine. “They’re growing in.”

Loris shook his head. “Naff. You’re far from that yet. Aura as healthy as a healer.”

Chloe sat back from him with a frown. “I’ll never bring you anything ever again.”

“Wees kalm. Be sweet on me china doll,” Loris crooned before looking back at Jaxon. “You’re fresh. You tell her what the transition entails. I’ve forgotten.”

“I wouldn’t really know,” Jaxon replied. He felt the tip of one of his fangs, realizing he’d need to have them dulled soon. “I’ve always filed them.”

“Bullshit, hoekom?” Loris asked, suddenly far more interested in his guest. He lifted a giggling Chloe over him to the other side of the couch and moved closer to Jaxon. “You tell me.”

Jaxon shrugged. “Rowanne Kelley says that the existence of blood energy hasn’t been proven or – ”

“Shut that. I won’t hear that dof tune. That isn’t a reason,” Loris cut him off. “They grow for a reason, ja? Why do you file them down?”

The younger man thought about it, avoiding the eyes that were boring into him. “They’re for something I don’t see a need in doing.”

“And why don’t you see the need? Does your aura sustain you any better than mine sustains me?”

“I’m seen by a healer. My aura is regularly attended to. I’ve no reason to – ,” he paused, insecure, ” - bite anyone. And why would anyone let me do such a thing?”

Loris gazed at Jaxon curiously for a long moment before turning his voice to the lot. “Who here would want to be bitten?” he asked with a smirk. The place erupted into a chorus of affirmations. Chloe appeared behind Loris, raising her hand and wiggling her fingers deviously in Jaxon’s direction. The dark haired vampiric raised his eyebrows at Jaxon, letting the raucous ask the question for him.

“I don’t see why,” Jaxon said quietly, smiling in confusion.

“Because you’ve never laid fang to flesh, you ignorant moegoe.” He was suddenly distracted when a blonde woman with a stiff demeanor, and a face that was as pierced as it was scarred, eased her way out of the clutch. “Eh, nie nou, Delana, don’t you dare,” he said.

The woman glanced over her shoulder and gave him a look that might have been given to a petulant little boy.

“Ag, bokie, I don’t slightly care,” Loris answered her expression, and motioned her over. When it appeared that she was going to ignore him he threatened, “I’ll strip every stitch and run circles around you for the rest of the night. Jy kom hiernatoe.”

The woman turned and spat on the ground, vehement and graceless, but began stepping her way back into the fray.

“She’s my wife,” Loris explained to Jaxon.

“She isn’t!” Chloe chimed in. “She’s one of his bodyguard, as if he needed one.”

“If I had a wife.”

Chloe laughed “It wouldn’t be her! She doesn’t even talk to him.”

 

“I’ve no concern that she doesn’t talk to me. The problem is that she doesn’t sleep with me,” Loris said as the woman joined them. She glared at him expectantly, and he shrugged, leaning forward on the couch. “Well, now that you’re here, I can’t remember what I needed from you. But you smell lovely.”

Her narrowed eyes burned with impatience, but she said nothing to him. Chloe jumped aside on the couch and motioned for the woman to join them.

“Sit, Delana, indulge us all,” she asked charmingly.

The woman paused reluctantly, before rolling her eyes and sitting down into conversation with the redhead.

Clearly pleased with that, Loris returned to Jaxon. “Eh, pouty lips,” he said, moving closer, “and what is the state of your life with filed teeth?”

“Richly poor, I suppose,” Jaxon replied.

“Ungrateful brat.”

“I could probably be more accommodating to my parents.”

“Ag, you’re young. I don’t mean that,” Loris said with a chuckle. “I haven’t met your parents. I don’t care how you treat them. I mean you’ve been given two veritable extensions of your dick, and you file them down.”

“I – that – I don’t – what?” Jaxon sputtered.

“What you can do to another body! Lead it to the edge of something unfathomable and then push it right the fuck off. Ja? While you’re floating on purana, feeling impossibly organic. Orgasmic. But telling you about it means nothing. You’ll have to find yourself, for yourself, by yourself.”

Jaxon frowned, confused and fascinated, and did not bother pretending otherwise. He had never heard of anything about vampirism except for in derogatory terms. He certainly had never heard that there lay some strange pleasure behind his fangs. And all he had heard of purana, blood energy, was that it was probably a myth. “But how would I do that?”

“You can start by finding someone who doesn’t mind that kind of penetration.” Loris ran his hand up his blonde counterpart’s thigh but was halted by a swift, injurious punch to the arm. He drew in a sharp breath through his teeth, and spun around in his seat, hunching toward the woman and speaking in a low urgent voice, as if passing along a crucial message. “Ernstig, Lana, but you know how endearing I find you when you’re violent.”

Chloe giggled while Delana made a show of giving Loris her back.

“Alright,” Jaxon spoke in quiet earnest, eager to get Loris back on topic, going as far as tapping him on the arm to pull his attention from the smell of Delana’s hair. Loris turned around casually, smiling at Jaxon in greeting, as though this was their first encounter of the evening and they had not just been in conversation. “But how – how do you make someone feel that way?”

Loris peered at him as though he had asked an unanswerable question, but he replied, “Well, it is as simple as wanting it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have to want it. Like you feel it building in you, you have to want it to grow in your host. Anything. All sensation. You want them to feel pain, they will agonize. If you want them to feel nothing, they won’t even know you’re there if they aren’t looking at you.” Loris tilted his head. “I’m sure there is some biological explanation, some connection to the aura, some nervous trigger, some molecule in the saliva, some pheromone, some delusion that makes it happen, but who the fuck cares? It happens, hey. And at your whim.”

He reached behind him for Delana’s hand and before she had even turned out of conversation with Chloe, he had bitten into the center of her forearm, right beneath the crease of her elbow. Jaxon watched the woman shiver violently, mouth falling open in a vicious gasp, eyes squeezing shut, before yanking her arm away and slapping Loris hard across the face.

She pushed off of the couch and stormed off, tenderly gripping her arm, but a laughing Loris was right behind her.

“Oh please, Delana, with the dramatics. Jy van dit gehou. Neen? Terugkom, my liefde. Ek is nie jammer. Ek weet jy geniet dit.”

Jaxon watched the strange man, his new definition of vampirism, walk off as Chloe crawled across the couch to his side. “How did you meet him?” he asked.

Chloe waved the question away. “I was looking for trouble, and I found it. But that isn’t your question.”

Their eyes met and he asked what he really wanted to know. “You’ve slept with him?”

Chloe smiled lightly before shaking her head. “But I would.”

Jaxon looked down, not surprised. “How powerful is he?”

“Very,” Chloe admitted. “What you see now of his aura is hardly even the tip of the iceberg. He dampens it for the sake of those around him, but you can sense what he’s concealing. Maybe not fully but…”

He rubbed his eyebrow and nodded, understanding. Loris was strange, a bit indecipherable, but there was a command about him that shifted the very atmosphere. A force that lurked just beyond the senses. On appearances, it seemed that the man was unaware of it. But reality was that he was so completely aware of it that it would be futile to acknowledge it. And Jaxon had seen Chloe’s eyes on him. “Why haven’t you?”

“Why haven’t I what?” But she realized what he meant as the question was leaving her mouth. “Oh, well, he has preferences that don’t usually include those of vampiric nature. Those kinds of auras are a bit too much for his tastes. Maybe dealing with his own is enough. But even if I weren’t to be vampiric, I’m still not his type, as he always tells me.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not quite fragile enough for him. He prefers more delicate women. And men.” A thought suddenly hit her, and she covered her mouth in a giggle.

“What?”

“Your palms are soft.”

Jaxon frowned at her, but she didn’t elaborate. “That woman, his bodyguard, she didn’t seem very… fragile,” he said.

“Oh, not on the surface, but she’s glass,” Chloe said, looking out toward the lot. “She’s got demons. A past. Cracks, you know? Things that Loris finds…” she thought about it, “fun.” She shrugged, looking around, purveying the different groups and activities. “He’s mostly teasing, though. Do you want something to drink?”

Lately, alcohol did not seem to affect him very strongly, but never having had a taste for it or the feeling of drunkenness, Jaxon declined. “But feel free.”

“Because I need your permission to feel free,” she replied, but there was flirt in her voice. Her gaze was floating over his form, but she didn’t appear to be looking for anything in particular.

Jaxon had a feeling that she was examining his aura, and he took the opportunity to open his senses and examine hers. His mother had always told him that it was impolite to pay attention to someone’s energy. More rude than looking through them.

“The aura says nothing that you wouldn’t be able to find out through simple conversation,” she always said. But Jaxon wasn’t so convinced.

Chloe’s aura was a bit miraculous, bottomless with a bluish tone, rippling like a lake under falling rain. He felt he might drown in it if he looked too deeply, but he was snapped out of his trance when Chloe took to her feet.

“A night of freedom,” she said grinning. “You should enjoy it.” She ran off into the rowdy crowd and was immediately swept into a dance by the fire light.

Jaxon spent the night watching her. She would jump from the lap of one to the lips of another, man or woman, I didn’t matter, she flirted and fondled whoever would have her. She took long sips from any alcoholic beverage passed her way and occasionally sat still long enough to giggle drunkenly over some amusing story being told at any given moment. Not once did she return to him, but Jaxon found himself content with that. He liked watching her and took some strange voyeuristic pleasure in seeing a side of her of which he had only been given hints. So instead of joining the crowd, he kept to the edges, watching and trailing, rebuffing any intentions sent in his direction.

His was so engrossed in Chloe that he didn’t realize that someone was watching him in a similar manner. So when he felt the hand wrap around his neck, forcing him back and further into the shadows, he was caught quite off his guard.

Even before he felt his back press into concrete, and his assailant came into view, Jaxon knew it was Loris. His senses told him that much.

“What the fuck?!” he exclaimed and tried to take a step back toward the light, but Loris gave him an amused smirk and a forceful push back against the wall. Jaxon stayed put that time, but watched the man warily. Loris was taller than him, not by much but enough, built like a steam engine, and was looking him over with impious eyes. There was no confusing the motives behind them.

“Loris, I’m not…” Jaxon took a deep breath and bolstered his nerve. “I’m not of that persuasion.”

Loris blew out a silent laugh and stepped forward, closing the space between them. “And what persuasion is that?”

Jaxon braced himself against the concrete wall, feeling Loris’s erection press into his thigh. Were it not for the two large hands that had come forward to gently pin his arms, Jaxon might have taken flight.

“You should calm down,” Loris told him, and it seemed that the words triggered a release of soothing endorphins, as Jaxon was blanketed in undue tranquility.

“That’s not fair,” was all he could say as his mind and body betrayed him, and he relaxed against his captor.

“Poor you,” Loris replied quietly. He gripped Jaxon behind the neck and pulled his lips onto his own. Loris’s kiss was soft, playing on Jaxon’s resistance, but after a moment of this, his aggression ramped, leveraging against the wall as he forced Jaxon’s lips open.

Jaxon moved to push away, but before he could, Loris bit down on his lower lip. And in that instant, time stopped. Jaxon felt as though he had fallen to ground, but on closer inspection, he realized that he was still on his feet, but all sensation in his body had ceased, save for the electric pulse that was tearing down his throat into his chest. He thought for a moment that he could not breathe, or maybe that he had never taken a breath before that moment. The feeling did not waste time in ripping through the rest of his body, leaving him stripped bare, spine tingling, skin ablaze, and seeking more. But Loris pulled away, and Jaxon, trembling and moaning, finally did fall to the ground.

Looking down at him, Loris laughed. “And you wanted to run from me.”

Jaxon’s head felt a bit too heavy for his neck when he peered up at the giant man before him. “Is that… is that what…”

“Yes. Although, vampirics feel it differently. Intense, but not quite so incapacitating as it is for those with independent auras.” Loris knelt down, gripping Jaxon’s chin to inspect his mouth. “You’re bleeding.”

“You bit me,” Jaxon stated the obvious.

“Your aura doesn’t know itself yet. Slow to heal.”

“What?” Jaxon breathed, but Loris continued to frown at his lip until Jaxon could feel the edges of the wound binding together. “What are you doing?”

“Or maybe it is you who is slow.” Loris chided, eyes still focused at Jaxon’s mouth. After a moment, he let go of Jaxon’s chin, licking a spot of blood off of his palm. “And it’s gone. Like it never happened. Shame. Sometimes I like leaving a mark.”

Jaxon could feel the sensations fading and his nerves return to sanity. He reached up to touch his lip in the spot where he had felt Loris’s fangs pierce him, and there was no wound there to show for it. “How did you do that?”

“Kak, I did nothing. Your aura did that. You’ll pay real attention to it now, ja? So you won’t heal at the pace of a snail.” Loris ran his thumb down Jaxon’s mouth. “But then, had the wound lingered, so would the sensation. And then we could have done fun things with your lips. Maybe later, I’ll do it again.”

Jaxon inhaled sharply and his eyes widened at the thought of the intense sensation, and Loris raised his eyebrows.

“Hey, look there. Have you been persuaded from your persuasion, bru?” The dark haired man snapped his teeth at Jaxon’s lips before grabbing his arm and pulling him to his feet. “Jammer, your purana is no good to me. Besides, I’ve had wood for the past hour now and unless you plan on doing something about it, I ought find a better host. Come. I’ll find you more fun.”

Loris led the way back toward the fire pit with Jaxon trailing behind him, a bit dazed, but with senses lit like firecrackers.

“Deirdre,” Loris called a tall brunette out of the commotion. He pointed to Jaxon. “Yes?”

Dierdre’s eyed him from head to toe before nodding slowly. “Yes.”

“He’s a fresh one, hey, so be nice.”

Jaxon had a dull moment before he realized what Loris was walking him into. “Wait,” he protested, “I’m here with Chloe.”

“Don’t shade yourself in it,” Loris said, motioning to where Chloe was frolicking, “but she’s not here with you.”

Deirdre moved toward him, and pressed her finger to his upper lip, directly against the line of his fang. “You want to try,” she said. It was not a question so much as it was an observation. And a good one. Jaxon could almost feel his pupils dialate as all of his focus recentered on her.

Deirdre grabbed his hand and pulled him, with little effort, back into the shadows. The pair navigated the dusty lot until the blaze of the fire and the string lights were only twinkles in the distance. A stack of tires made an impromptu resting place, and they sat down beside each other.

Deidre did not let their silence settle. “Where?” she asked him spreading her arms.

“Where what?”

“Don’t you play coy with me,” she said flirtatiously, and he smiled. Taking his expression as an invitation, she climbed into his lap. “You have to be calm,” she explained. “And take your time. If you move too fast, you’ll take too much and kill me.”

Jaxon sat back, brow furrowed. “Wait, I don’t – ”

“It’s good to be worried. You’ll be careful that way. Just don’t be silly.”

Jaxon felt that being silly and killing someone were not necessarily comparable, but he kept quiet when she took his hand and placed it on her neck.

“You feel that?” she asked.

The mild rise and fall of the vessel beneath her skin made itself known to Jaxon’s fingertips and he nodded.

“No,” Dierdre shook her head and chuckled. “You really don’t know what you’re doing. Use your aura. Find it. Feel it.”

Jaxon was baffled, sensing through her aura that she wasn’t psychic. Not even latent. What would she know of auras? “I don’t know what you –” his words fell out his throat, suddenly very aware of her pulse even beyond the feeling of it under his fingers. The pretty brunette, by bringing his attention to the slight pounding in her neck, had flipped some switch in him. Her entire body rang out with different vibrations and beats. It seemed her very blood was talking to him, telling him secrets of her body that she may not have known herself. He had no idea the expression that had encompassed his face, but Dierdre laughed at it.

“You hear it,” she noted, amused.

“Yes,” he murmured with quiet fascination. “It’s… strange. I’ve never…”

“You’ve never heard it because you’ve never listened.”

Jaxon could hardly speak for his enthrallment. “I never knew to listen.”

Her legs tightened around his waist. “Do you want it?”

He nodded slightly and leaned forward, placing his ear against her chest. It seemed futile, this action, because something told him that his ears had very little to do with the resonance he had found behind her pulse. But he continued to listen, making out every push and pull of her heart valves, the pressure of her blood against their vessels. It might have made him nauseous if it wasn’t otherwise mesmerizing. “That is… strange,” he repeated.

Almost quicker than his mind could perceive it, a fever was growing in his chest, a desire for something vastly unknown. How could his body know to want something that it had never had before? His want for this unfamiliar thing was so strong, overwhelming even, but the mere idea of sating it was taboo, and his childhood conditioning reared and restrained him.

Dierdre, however, had no such preconditioned taboos, and broke through his with ease. “There is nothing to be afraid of,” she said to him sweetly. “We’ll take care of each other. You keep me safe, I’ll keep you safe. You make me feel good,” she paused to kiss each of his eyelids, “and I’ll make you feel even better.” She lifted his head and kissed him, waiting for him to return it without inhibition. “Not my neck. My husband will notice,” she said between kisses.

Jaxon paused at the knowledge that she had a husband, but only briefly, for she had taken hold of his hand and run it up the inside of her thigh. She pressed his fingers against one of the more forceful pulses of those he could sense in her body.

“Here,” she told him.

“Your husband won’t notice that?”

She giggled and kissed him again.

“No, not there,” he said, hardly letting his lips leave hers. Despite his new found willingness to taste her blood, and the strange audibility of her vascular system, there was still some anxiety over her initial warning to refrain from being “silly”. The blood flow was strong in her thigh, and while the location was tempting, he didn’t want to risk that. It was too much. He took hold of her wrist, feeling the less intimidating pulse at the base of her hand. “Here.”

Dierdre leaned back and looked at him, clearly not too pleased with his less intimate choice, but she shrugged and closed her eyes. “Go ahead.”

He hesitated for only a moment before bringing her arm to his lips and letting his fangs sink slowly into her wrist. It immediately began to ooze, the taste of iron filling his mouth. Blood spilled down her arm, and if not for her calmness, Jaxon might have panicked.

“You’ve hit a vein.” She said evenly, as though she was noting the time. “The vessels are smaller here, you have to pay more attention. Aim for the pulse next time. You’ll hit the artery and it won’t make such a mess – don’t stop now, you’ll make it worse,” she said, when his nerve began to run out and he started to pull away. With her free hand, she took hold of his and pressed his thumb to the center of her forearm, right beneath his bite, slowing the flow significantly. “Now stop worrying and feel it.”

Jaxon wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be feeling and he swallowed hard, less because of the thick, reddening liquid that was pouring into him, and more from anxiety. But the moment he did so, he felt it. A simultaneous draping and unveiling of his senses. Every nerve ending in his body came alive, jerking to attention at the new stimulus. His own energy was cocooning him in warmth and a thick pleasure that sent him whirling. Even his sense of balance and orientation was thrown. He could no longer tell if he was touching or being touched. If he was awake or asleep. He was tripping. Falling.

The hazy reminder of reality came with Dierdre’s voice. “Give it a minute. You’ll find your balance.”

Her words sounded like gibberish. He had lost his sense of language, but in trying to interpret her, he remembered what had been told to him not too long ago. That she could feel this with him. He wanted her to. Everything.

Barely into his thought, Dierdre let go of a faint moan and her head began to droop a bit. “Not bad for a newbie…” Her voice trailed as the tension left her muscles and she leaned toward him.

After a moment, a shift in the sound of her pulse told him stop. An instinct he didn’t know he had. He pressed his thumb over the holes he had made in her arm and silently begged them to stop bleeding. Surprisingly, they did, and quickly.

Dierdre, eyes still closed, was pulling at his belt with her free hand and mumbling soft incoherencies into his chest.

“Maybe you should just rest,” he said to her, cautiously.

“Nope,” she breathed a reply, retrieving her wrist from his grasp. Her lips fell onto his, despite her blood still coating them, and she pulled him down on top of her.

__________

____________________

__________

 

Jaxon awoke to someone kicking him.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Loris scolded him. “Sun will be out in a half hour.”

“They why are you still here?” Jaxon mumbled sleepily.

“The sun owes me money. Don’t ask me fucking questions, doos.” Loris dangled a set of keys over his head and Jaxon recognized them as the keys to Mr. Moran’s car.

“Chloe!” The thought of her startled him awake and he stood up, looking around for his clothing. He had forgotten all about her, something he would have never thought possible.

Loris continued to frown at him, although Jax did not miss Loris’s subtle study of his bare body, while he rushed into his pants. Dressed, he caught the car keys when Loris tossed them in his direction and was about to run off, but he remembered the woman who had shared her night with him. He turned back to Dierdre, still sleeping peacefully on the ground and looked back up at Loris, conflicted.

“Like you’re a virgin,” Loris sucked his teeth. “Voetsek. Get the fuck out of here. I’ll take care of her. Not that she couldn’t take care of herself.” As he waved Jaxon away, he knelt beside the woman, calling her out of her sleep. “Dierdre. Dierdre. There you are. Howsit? Wake the fuck up.”

Jaxon sent another glance toward the tall brunette, and then rushed off to find Chloe. He didn’t have to look far. She was asleep, curled up in a ball in the front seat of her father’s car. She didn’t stir when Jaxon got into the driver’s seat, or for the whole ride back to her house.

He parked her father’s car in a spot that seemed the least suspicious, and lifted Chloe out of the front seat. With care to avoid the estate staff, he broke into the Moran house and, not knowing which room was hers, laid Chloe in the first free bed he could find.

“Enjoy your hangover,” he whispered to her sleeping form before sneaking back out of the house.

The walk from the Moran estate to his own house took him half the morning. The sun was bright in the sky, but he didn’t care. His aura was the fullest it had ever been, even with the sunlight stealing from it. Even more than in days past when his aura could hold up its own weight. And now that he knew how to get it to this state, what it did for him, what he could do with it, he couldn’t care less about the sun. In fact, he welcomed this brilliant new day.

His house was harried and bustling by the time he arrived, everyone no doubt looking for him, and it took his mother no more than half a minute to block his path as he came in through the front door.

“You were with that slut!” she accused.

Jaxon smiled, still in his reverie, and nodded. “I was.”

“Your nerve should be illegal!” she snarled, clearly not expecting such an easy confession. “Well, I hope your goodbye was memorable, because you will not cavort with that wicked thing again!”

“I probably will.”

“Jaxon, I swear – I swear on the rotation of this planet – I will have you institutionalized if you so much – ”

Jaxon sighed and took his mother by the shoulders, pulling her into a hug. She choked on her tongue and stiffened like a board, having not hugged her son in over a decade, but he was careful not to trigger a vision in her.

“Mom,” he said kindly, “it’s such a nice day out. You should smile.”

Mrs. Bouchard did not attempt to speak at that point, but stared at her son as though he were headless.

“You can cancel the dentist and the healer. I won’t be seeing them anymore.” And with that, he left her in her shock and went to his room and sleep off his night.

The following weekends, for months, were spent on Loris’s lot, Chloe and Jaxon taking turns in stealing cars out of their fathers’ garages. Upon arrival to the party, the two would go their separate ways, Chloe diving into the center of attention, and Jaxon rendezvousing with women into the shadows.

He had become quite fascinated with the pulse that lay right beneath the palm of the hand and spent much time perfecting his seduction of it. The tips of his fangs seemed to sharpen at the vibration of that tell-tale beat, and it became easier to hit his mark every time. It also became easier to leave his hosts blissfully high off of his bite.

“What a strange fetish,” Loris commented when Jaxon’s tendency toward the wrist had become common knowledge in the camp. “I can’t fathom what you’d find so attractive about that part of the body.”

Jaxon shrugged in explanation, but he knew exactly why he loved it. The thought, the attention, the care required to perfect the experience, it was the best foreplay to be had. Instead of diving head first into the enormous jugular, or getting caught in the no-man’s-land of the femoral artery, he could take his time, tease, play with the smaller vessels until they did exactly what he wanted. So immersed he was, it became something of a joke among the ladies how ridiculously simple it was to catch his attention. A jingle of a bracelet, or innocently brushing his hair from his face while passing by, or even a well-executed wave could gain a woman one charming young gentleman at her side for the evening.

As time passed and forays to Loris’s late night fiestas became common place to Jaxon, he began to notice that Chloe was surveilling him. Not extensively, but where before she had never spared a moment to send her gaze in his direction, he would now catch her in an occasional stare. He was usually far too distracted to pay it any mind, so he didn’t, but he always knew. There was only one woman who could raise the hairs on the back of his neck.

The rides home with Chloe were always quiet, but hardly reflective. They did not speak of their nights, or the actions of the other. Depending on the mood, the ride might end with a short kiss, but in most cases, a parting wave was sufficient. At home, Jaxon found that Chloe did not take up nearly as much space in his thoughts as she had before. All the same, he did think about her. He was grateful to her for introducing him to these strange freedoms, and would never think of asking for anything greater than that, but still, he could feel a never-forgotten desire building in him. He wanted more from her. Although, he found himself unsure of what he wanted more of, exactly. They did nothing besides carpool with each other.

Jaxon was pondering just this while he waited for Chloe near the 16th hole of the golf course halfway between their homes, their designated meeting point. He caught her silhouette in the foggy sunset and watched as she slowly made her way up the suburban hills toward him and his car. She was still far away when he could tell something was off. Her demeanor was a bit shifty, and he put his guard up, waiting for her to approach. But she stopped a few yards away and kept her head low, not looking at him.

“I don’t want to go anymore,” she said. “Go without me.”

Jaxon narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

“I just don’t want to go.”

“You walked all the way out her to tell me you didn’t want to come?” Jaxon asked. “You could have called the house earlier.”

“I just decided a few moments ago,” she explained.

“That makes no sense.”

“It doesn’t have to. I’m not going.”

Jaxon pressed her. “I want to know why.”

She threw he chin up, somehow managing to look down her nose at him despite being significantly shorter. “I saw you and suddenly didn’t want to be anywhere near you. In fact, from this point on, I want nothing to do with you.”

Jaxon clenched his jaw, studying her skeptically. “Really?”

“Really.”

An invisible cord between them was held taut, a near tangible manifestation of her intent to abandon him, and his resolution that she wasn’t going anywhere. He sped up the air current behind her, creating a wind strong enough to push her forcibly in his direction, all the while reading the wafts the circled around her figure. He had never deliberately sought vision from anyone before, and choppy images that he found in the air around him were proof of his lack of practice, but they were enough to test a theory and deem it correct. He smirked spitefully. “Liar.”

There was violence in her eyes as she spun on her heel and began walking back in the direction she had come. But Jaxon was quicker on his feet and had cut her off before she had taken two steps.

“Get out of my way.”

He made no attempt to hold back his laughter, as he had never been so happily amused in his life. He stepped forward, using his body to pressure her toward the car, but she didn’t yield, glaring up at him maliciously. However, her weight and height could not match his, and as he continued to move forward, she had no choice but to stumble back.

She gave him an angry shove, but it didn’t budge him at all, and she managed only to push herself further backward. Still she postured. “Get the hell out of my way!”

He shook his head. “You know, I would have never expected this. I always had such an impossible view of you. You were impervious to everything. You were perfection. But look at you now.” He lowered his eyes, taking her in. The glow was gone. The shine that had made her seem so unattainable. Her mortality was seeping through, proving she was real, proving that he could have her, that he could take her, and damn all if he didn’t want her.

“Don’t you fucking touch me,” she said in a low growl, reading his gaze.

“The impossible Chloe Moran,” he spoke quietly, her words only driving him forward, looking on in satisfaction as her room to back away from him ran out and she was forced to stagger back onto the hood of his car. He pressed his hand firmly against the bare skin of her thigh and slid it up under the fabric of her skirt, smiling meanly when she slapped it away. “You don’t even know what to do with yourself. You’ve never wanted anyone before.”

There was another break in the shell, and her face briefly lost its incivility and crumpled into apprehension. Her eyes began darting in search of escape.

“And of all people,” Jaxon continued, leaning forward and forcing her further up the car hood, “you want me.”

She paused her restrained search for a way out and looked him in the eye for the first time since she had arrived. “Get away from me,” she whispered.

But Jaxon was leaning into her, bringing his face down to the low cut of her shirt, up her chest, close to her neck to catch her scent. The smell of her skin was exhilarating and he closed his eyes to revel in it, wondering why he had never noticed it until now. This is mine, he thought to himself.

With a hand on the small of her back, he pulled her body up to join with his, but Chloe was trying to ruin his moment, pushing away from him as he moved closer, recoiling from the hand that strove to caress her breast, turning her head as he tried to kiss her. It wasn’t anger that enflamed him, but a fierce confidence, a need to exact what was true, to root out and destroy her dishonesty. He gripped the back of her neck and pulled her face close to his, pressuring himself to be gentle. But a sense of possession had overwhelmed him and, in taking offense to the idea that Chloe would try to deny him what was his, he tightened his hold on her.

“Chloe, you need to understand something,” he said with frightening calm. “This is no longer about you. It’s been about you for years, but you took advantage of that, and now we’re done with it. You have to know that you brought this upon yourself. You’re the one who brought us here. You’re the one who taught me. You’re the one who made me see that I don’t need you. I don’t need this, and I don’t need you.”

“Fuck you,” she spat at him, trying to jerk herself away, but Jaxon grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head back, squeezing her arms to her sides. She cried out in pain and ceased her struggle, but the fury that lit her eyes did not dim.

“But for all of that,” he continued as though she had done nothing, “I want you more than I can even think to bear. And you’re no longer in the position to keep me from what I want.” His erection was hardly subtle and he pressed it against her crotch, bearing down and trapping her between his pelvis and the hood of the car. He wanted her to imagine his every intention, draw every conclusion, consider every possibility. He released his vice grip around her shoulders and let her fall loudly onto the car. But Jaxon didn’t leave her with a moment to consider her brief freedom, forcing her shoulders down onto the cold metal and touching everything he wanted to touch, kissing everything he wanted to kiss, crossing her arms and pinning them to her chest, without second thought, when she tried to fight him.

At that moment, Jaxon was struck with a delirious urge to bite her, but he refused to give in to it. He wanted Chloe to feel him, and only him. He would allow nothing to distract her from the sensations that he would create between them. He needed her to know that this was his, he owned it, and it could not be recreated by anyone, anywhere, save for him.

__________

____________________

__________

 

The night had been unkind. The moon, pale and cowed, was a mere wisp of its full self, sickled and abandoned by the stars. The vapors of the atmosphere clung to each other against the cold, leaving tear drops on the grass. The air was crying. The girl was crying.

Chloe wanted to be held.

Sitting in the grass, she watched the dewdrops form and break over the scenes her wreckage, brought to her aura in mourning. Her psyche lilted in the disaster, the remnants of her citadel crumbling in the sand. How long had she spent building it? Brick over boulder, cement and stone, it had protected her from pain. From sorrow. From regret and disappointment. From unhappiness.

And from joy.

From the sky and the sun. From the winds of life and circumstance. From reality. From herself. In keeping at bay the dark, she was also kept from the light. This broken pile of gravel, this had been her fortress. In the water she could see it.

There was nothing to protect her now. Nothing to keep the intruders out and she could sense them curling in her blood. Stark and cruel they forced from her eyes tears. They gashed her soul and made her ache. Tore at her lids so that her eyes may testify that she was awake. That she was alive. That this was not death, only the craving for it. They forced her to feel and suffer her own pathos. Her own pathetic humanity. She was a woman.

She wanted to be held.

There were fingers, timid and questioning, brushing against down the back of her arm, but she shied away, and the hand fell. She would hold herself, and in her own arms, she tried to find solace. In the dew she tried to find companionship. She wished for rain.

“Chloe.”

The dewdrops fell quiet, sliding down the blades of grass into the dirt. Frightened by the tragedy that one voice could provoke within her, they hid her visions and abandoned her. “Come back,” Chloe begged them, her voice breaking over her whimper.

Chloe touched the surging streams on her cheeks and stared at her fingers. If the dew wouldn’t speak to her, maybe her own tears would. She could see herself, bursting, crumpled, fading. She spread her fingers as the light of her tears dwindled to nothing.

She could hear her heart breaking in the silence of her aura. It had left her alone with herself. Making her listen to this voice.

“I want to marry you.”

Chloe had poor recollection of the more meaningful moments of her life. There were no grand milestones, no harrowing experiences that she kept close in mind and heart to shape her. Maybe she hadn’t had any. Maybe she couldn’t have been bothered to remember. Maybe she hadn’t seen them for what they were.

She hated that this would be her first true memory.

She hated that she could hate. If she could hate, what else could she do?

The hand returned, and when she didn’t move away, it spread across her back. It became an arm, then two, pulling her back into an entire body folding around her.

God, she wanted this, to be held. If only she could remember how to think. Just think. If she could just separate from the conflict warring in her core, if she could stop crying, if she could stop feeling, for just one fucking minute. But she couldn’t stop, and could not ignore the screaming of her skin, reminding her that the warmth that comforted her was the same warmth that had violated her. There was a man behind this warmth. Behind this horrid break in her. Behind the discovery of her humanity. Pathetic. So pathetic.

If she could hate him for this, what else could she do?

The air was still. The girl cried. She knew there was no going back.

“I won’t be faithful to your bed,” Chloe softly relented to herself and to her pathos after an interminable silence.

There was a moment of respectful acknowledgement, Chloe’s voice having jarred the air. But then, a quiet reply, “Nor I yours.”

“We won’t have children,” she continued. “Vampirics are sterile.”

“For the best.”

There was a break, tears escaping her again, and the hand came up to push them away. Jaxon’s hand.

Chloe looked up, recognizing him, “I can’t cook,” she said, weeping.

“We’ll starve,” Jaxon said, with a small smile.

She found something in his eyes, something that she knew had been there before this moment, but had never really seen. She couldn’t bear seeing it now. “No, no, I can’t,” she cried. “I can’t do this.”

“You can,” he said, catching her cheeks and pressing his face against hers. “We can.”

She shook her head against his, and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Talk to me, Chloe, please.”

Chloe was witnessing a phenomenon inside of herself. This all was too new. “I’m afraid,” she admitted in a whisper. “I’m so scared of this. I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t be afraid. Be with me.”

Chloe jerked herself back to stare at him. She clawed his hand from her face and slapped him hard across his. “This hurts!” she yelled at him. “This hurts so bad, I can’t even –” The sob ripped through her and stole her words, and for a moment she could barely lift her arms to cover her face, but when Jaxon reached for her again, fire ignited her limbs. She threw her fists at him, finding more anger in his submission to her pummeling of him, until her tears overwhelmed her once more. “Why would you do this to me?” she asked from a crumpled heap in his lap. “Why would turn me into this?”

“I’m sor –”

She slapped her hand over his mouth before he could lay more destruction upon her. “You’re not. You never will be,” she spat, tearless at last, glaring at him. “You wanted this! You wanted to make me this way so you could win! It was the only way you could have won!” She let her hand slide from his lips, defeated. “You’ve won, Jaxon.”

If she could hate him.

He looked back into her furious eyes, his own brimming, and shook his head. “I haven’t, Chloe.”

They watched each other for a minute. For an hour. For a millennia. Then, finally, he touched her, his fingers tracing away the wet streaks across her face, and her skin did not burn with the injustice. He brought his face close, and his lips did not lay waste to her heart when he pressed them to hers.

She would hate him. She would love him.

She stepped over the broken bricks of the wall that she had forever kept up against him, against the world, and against herself, and returned to him his kiss.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 AUTHOR’S NOTE:

So, if this is anything it is a showcase of the grand set of psycho/social issues this pair had as youths and which ones stayed with them into adulthood. Chloe was nothing short of a sociopath as a teen, and prior to her relationship with Jax, her emotional range was slim. She had fairly little, if any, empathy towards anyone. You see hints of this trait in her as an adult, but it’s usually in response to some trigger. Jax(on) on the other hand, is quite emotionally charged, and at the same time, very observant, very manipulative, and very self-seeking. If he wants something, he figures out the situation and then works it until it ends in his favor. And he usually tries to do it in such a way so that the person that he is getting over on feels like a winner in the deal, so when he comes back to get over again, he’s welcome.  He’s done this his entire life (and will continue to do it), and it always worked, until he met Chloe. She was a very confusing situation for him that he couldn’t quite figure out immediately. Once he did figure her out, and realized the sort of emotional break she would have to experience in order to be able to emote at all, and subsequently do what he wanted her to do, well…

 Chloe very well would have gone through life quite callously. She was looking forward to vampirism in such a way that her fangs probably would not have been beneficial for anyone. She already saw her oncoming vampirism and her aura as better than the “weaklings”, and it is likely the only reason she gave Jax the amount of attention that she did give him was because he was vampiric. I can’t see her having been nearly as indulgent with him in the beginning if he was just your average aura.  And being that she was a witch to him for the most part, that says a lot about her indulgence. She probably would not have gone on to be a nice vampiric. But, due to the deep emotional trauma that Jax set upon her, she found her own humanity and empathy, because she was forced to empathize for herself.  Now this might have prevented her from becoming something scary, but is that justification for cruelly violating another person? 

Then you have Jax, who is desperately in love with a woman who, in realizing that she might have the capacity to love him, is willing to go out of her way NOT to love him. Is willing to completely disconnect from a person for the simple reason that she might be able to love him.  Jax, himself, is not at all malicious in nature, and could have very easily watched her walk away from him, been broken hearted for a while, and then gotten over it. I don’t know what kind of person he would have became after that, possibly a better one than the person he did turn out to be, but while he could have moved on, he didn’t. Jax is an excellent people reader, with or without his aeromancy, and that allowed him to recognized the budding serial killer in Chloe, and correctly predict the fundamental shift that would occur in her if she was forced to emote. But did he do what he did because he felt she had to be brought back down to earth with the other lowly humans? And if he did, was that even his place? Or did he do it because his entitled “I get what I want” attitude trumped his own human nature? He did get what he wanted in the end, but he had to do something completely inhumane to get it, which says a lot about how far Jax is willing to go when he wants something. Although, if he had never met Chloe, I’m sure he would not have been capable of doing something like this.

Also, not that this absolves anything, Jax genuinely felt for Chloe. He is not a sociopathic brand of crazy. If someone that he cares for is hurting, he feels it, and it affects him. The problem here is that he is the reason Chloe was hurt, and while he’s definitely thinking “oh shit, what did I do?” that factor isn’t really playing a part in his subsequent actions. He’s not acting out of guilt. The woman he loves is having an emotional crisis, and he’s trying to comfort and support her because of that. Not because he feels guilty for being the reason why she’s having an emotional crisis. In his brain that has nothing to do with it. Is he going to take advantage of this opportunity and put a ring on it? Yes, because Jax is always down for Jax. But he’s going to try and amend it and help Chloe through it as much as he can.

I have to tell you though, I tried to rewrite this like 80 gazillion times, because even though we already knew Jax was an asshole, this puts a whole new spin on him, and a whole new brand of crazy on Chloe.  And even though it fits with their entire story, I really wasn’t sure that I wanted them to be this. And it will also drastically change perspective on many upcoming events in the main story. Jax and Chloe were already riding the “wtf?” line, and this crossed it. But after trying and failing to rework it for weeks, I just had to give in to the characters in my head. It’s just what happened with them. Ok, ok, ok, I’m shutting up now. Stay tuned for Part III.