Chapter 5
The good thing about having low expectations is that it takes something really bad to not live up to them, that’s how I got through college, how I got through my first experiences with dating, and honestly how I get through more or less everything that I do, or did, when I was investigating a case.
Did the killer wipe their prints clean and delete all the footage? No idea but let’s just go by the assumption that they did and go from there, oh would you look at that I found a fingerprint, I guess my day got a little better from this unexpected gift!
It was how I was able to go up to Alexis’ front door and ask for help so easily, I’d been working under the assumption that I would be turned away completely and told to go die in an alleyway, the fact that she actually helped me and gave me a few kind words was enough to send my spirit soaring into the heavens. Not expecting much gives me so little opportunity to end up being disappointed, because how can I be disappointed anymore now that I’ve resigned myself to always being underwhelmed?
I feel that it’s very important to explain this concept to you, because it’s very instrumental in you understanding that when I pulled up outside the house and felt my heart sink into my stomach I finally realized what it was like to be disappointed again. It wasn’t that the house was in the middle of a bunch of dead trees, that was honestly a pretty nice aesthetic and I was all for it, nor was it the fact that the only paint still remaining on it was a faded version of that same green paint that a hippy in the sixties would have dyed their favorite bandana.
It was the fact that the house seemingly had no front door to speak of, all the windows were shattered or at the very least getting there, it looked like the coldest, most unwelcoming place that I could have pulled up to short of the Bates Motel itself. Why Damon still had possession of a place like this, or why he hadn’t at the least renovated it even slightly, was a complete mystery to me. God knows that if you wanted to survive for a few weeks at a time it was pretty important that you could be warm once in a while.
“Oh Damon,” I said, turning off the car and letting my head fall against the steering wheel, “I love you but… what kind of place is this?”
When I looked back at the car it struck me just how out of place this whole thing looked, the highclass car with the injured driver parked outside what looked to be a worse version of the house from Nightmare on Elm Street, the thump of the door shutting echoing through the long dead trees and carrying off into parts unknown. There was a garage off to the side at least that I could park the car in when I was more certain of my bearings, honestly I still wasn’t sure if I should go inside the house or whether I should wait for the two of them to show up first. My leg was still screwed up and all I had was a knife, who knows if someone decided to move in and make a new home of this abandoned shack?
I suppose shack was doing it a bit of a disservice, it was two stories tall and looked to be a decent size at least, enough space on the first floor to hold a living room, kitchen, bathroom and a staircase from a first glance. In days long past this was probably a decent property to own, probably came with a good chunk of the land that I was standing on too, shame about it getting poisoned by all the industrial waste they decided to dump around here.
“Oh to hell with it,” I said, pulling the knife from the sheath on my calf and marching forward, “I’m going to check it out.”
The stairs to the balcony creaked beneath my feet, wood so old it had probably been witness to a witch burning spitting out dirt and dust beneath my boots, every step I took sounding like an eternity. Come to think of it I was glad that the door wasn’t a part of the house anymore, I’m not sure that I could take having to hear whatever monstrosity of a noise would have been produced from pushing that open, but the thick layer of dust that coated my sinuses as soon as I walked in was enough to kill just about all my enthusiasm for what I was doing.
On the inside it didn’t look so bad, a lot of cobwebs, no shortage of dust, marks on the couch where some sort of animal had decided it looked like a decent meal, far from the dilapidated nightmare that it looked like from the outside. Suspiciously so actually, logically this whole place should have been falling apart.
“Ah, you’re here.”
Screaming out loud and almost leaping straight into the air, I spun around and held my knife at the ready, prepared to thrust it into whoever had made their sudden appearance before I realized that it was Vincent. Smug, insufferable Vincent who was looking at me with a smug, insufferable smile at having managed to get the jump on me.
I can’t remember the last time that I saw something so beautiful.
“Vincent…” I said, stepping forward and wrapping my arms around him. Pressing my lips against his and winding my fingers through his hair, I pulled him deeper into the house and let my knife fall to the ground below, landing blade first and sticking straight up from the floorboards.
“Amy,” He gasped, “Are you alright? When we heard that you had been hurt…”
His eyes fell to my leg, the bandages still tight but only a small amount of blood staining the otherwise white material. Alexis’ brother had done a good job of sewing me up, but a little bleeding was to be expected when it was still this fresh. Something I probably should have warned Vincent about when I first saw him, with how long he had lived he was no doubt familiar with just about every kind of wound in existence, but the presence of blood was still an incredibly intoxicating one. When I looked into his eyes though I didn’t see the amount of hunger that I would have expected, though his pupils were definitely blown wide and as dark as the night itself.
Instead I saw an overwhelming amount of care staring back at me, flicking between the wound on my leg and my eyes, so desperate for answers that he almost couldn’t speak.
I smiled gently, squeezing his hand and pulling him back into an embrace, laying my head against his shoulder and speaking softly, “I’m fine, I had a friend to help put me together when I really needed it. But… it still hurt getting it I’m not going to lie, it might be the most painful thing that I’ve felt in a long time.”
“Did they give you any painkillers?” He asked, leading me towards the old couch and taking a seat. “I think I might have some, if you need them.”
“No,” I chuckled, “No not that kind of pain it’s… it’s different, you know? Like if I’d been shot by a suspect, some random criminal who I’ve never met before and likely will never meet again I’d be able to rationalize it, just the cost that you pay in my line of work, you should go to work prepared for that to happen. But it wasn’t just because of some random criminal, I knew the man whose fault it was, I learned from the man whose fault it was. I just… I can’t really believe that this man who I knew for years and looked up to through my entire career could be capable of something like this.”
He nodded in understanding, staring off into nothing while he considered what to say. “I know what it’s like to feel like you never knew someone, for something to happen between the two of you that completely changes the way that you feel about everything that the two of you went through together. It’s… a very hard thing to deal with, but you should know that Damon and I are here for you through all of it.”
“Who hurt you?” I asked, surprised at his admission, “I can’t imagine someone being able to get under your skin so easily.”
“They did, back when I was an inexperienced, reckless amateur, still concerned with the moment rather than the bigger picture,” He laughed, shaking his head from a fond memory, “It’s been so many years that I don’t even remember their name, but I can still feel the sting of betrayal like it was inflicted on me yesterday. Memory is such a strange thing.”
That it was, even now it was like all my previous memories with Rick were being overwritten, all the small seeds of doubt that I’d had ever since he’d found out my secret finally sprouting and making me question every interaction that we’d had. How long had he been working with Tristian, had it been from the very beginning or was it more recent? Was the serial killer the first time that he had offered his assistance, or had he already dipped his toes in the water prior to that? And perhaps most importantly, but what I honestly didn’t know if I wanted the answer to, was the question of whether or not it even really mattered. My mentor betrayed me, I’d been shot, I was on the run, who cared why all of it happened when I could focus on making sure that it never happened again?
But never mind that for now, for now I could just relax and take comfort in the fact that one of the men that I cared about was here at my side, But that just raised another question…
“Where’s Damon?” I asked, “Is he almost here or..?”
“He went to check on Faye and to sort some small things out, he told me to come here and make sure that you were taken care of around here. He’ll meet us here soon I’m sure, he just can’t help but help others can he?”
I smiled. “Yeah, that sounds like him alright. But what’s to take care of here? It’s just a broken house with an upstairs and a downstairs, hardly the most secure or comfortable of places.”
Vincent smirked, rising to his feet and extending his hand to me. “I have something to show you in that case.”
Leading me towards the kitchen, I grimaced at the thick layers of dust coating the countertops, no way was I going to even think about making food on one of those, lest I get at least three types of hepatitis. I was about to raise my objections when Vincent stepped on top of the counter, pulling on the hanging light and popping a hidden panel open on the opposite side of the room.
To say that I was confused by this was… an understatement.
“What… are you doing? What’s happening right now?”
“Damon told me that this place is weathered against hurricanes and other natural disasters, he made sure to be clear that we’re also considered natural disasters, which means that this house had to be renovated to accommodate for his unique needs as a hunter.” Pressing the button with his palm, he knelt down and lifted the bottom of the counter as easily as picking up a piece of paper. “He got this house to have somewhere to be able to hide if things got too rough, what use would that be if someone like me could just smell him through the ground anyway?”
Stepping over to the new hole in the ground, I stared down at the stairs leading down into darkness. I’d just managed to make peace with having to lay low in a shitty, broken house, and now I have to wrap my head around the fact that my boyfriend owns an apocalypse bunker. This has been a very strange day indeed.
“So this is supposed to hide him from vampires?”
He nodded, taking a step down and reaching up for me. Taking his hand and letting myself be led down, I made a mental note to ask what other places like this Damon had that he’d just… forgotten to let me in on. “How does that even work?”
“The concrete in the walls is filled with all sorts of herbs and fluids that are more or less repulsive to most paranormals. Wolf’s bane, silver, salt, all of it basically acts as a warning beacon that shuts down our sense of smell, I’m not even fully inside and I can feel my sense of the outside dulling already.”
“This is insane…”
Flicking the light on, I was taken aback by how… cosy the room in front of me looked. When I thought underground bunker I naturally thought there would be an overabundance of exposed concrete, maybe some metal shelves with brands of baked beans that hadn’t been in production for the last five years and a poster of that cat hanging off that wire. Instead I was presented with a lush, carpeted floor, a full, if not utilitarian kitchen and what looked to be a minimalist but still comfortable bedroom.
Vincent obviously shared my astonishment, when could Damon have had the time to do this? There was even a tv set up off to the side, which meant that there had to be a satellite setup or something. A quick glance down at my phone showed me at least three bars, so yes, even through all that concrete which masked whoever was in here from whatever paranormal threats might be coming after them, you could still make a call on your cell phone without having to leave the safety of the bunker. Incredible.
“I think that I have some very serious questions to ask him once he gets here, if he has more of these then we could very well hide for the next few months at least.”
The thought of spending months on end underground wasn’t… overly pleasant to say the least, but in terms of an advantage in outlasting a hunt it couldn’t be denied that I was incredibly fortunate. I’d ditched my cellphone, my car, didn’t plan on using my cards for any finances to speak of, for all intents and purposes I was a ghost to the world now. No one would be finding me unless I let them find me. As for what I was going to occupy myself with in the meantime, I guess there was a good place to start…
“You want to help me make dinner?”
The ingredients hadn’t been fresh by any means, given that the bunker had been sealed for at least the last few months, hardly the best conditions to keep fresh vegetables in. Though there were spices, dry ingredients like pasta and freeze dried meats in the cooler, so we were able to make a somewhat passable dinner between the two of us. Definitely going to have to go out and buy some vegetables sometime, though I suppose it would be best to leave that to Vincent to take care of. He could vanish without a trace at a moment’s notice after all.
“That wasn’t too bad,” I said, wiping my mouth with a paper towel and leaning back in my chair, “Very MRE-ish but… still pretty tasty.”
“Mm…” He smiled over at me, leaning forward to place his hand over the top of mine. “It’s always nice just enjoying the simplest of things with you, a movie late at night, a walk out in the moonlight… a vaguely military dinner that reminds me of the nineteenth century.”
“Hey!”
“But it’s moments like this that I like the most,” He said, running his thumb across my knuckles, “This, right here. Nothing else but my eyes staring into yours, my hand on yours and wearing my heart on my sleeve. You can make even the most mundane of situations… utterly extraordinary.”
“Vincent…” I stood from my chair, walking over to his side and placing myself in his lap, placing my hands on his cheeks and pulling him in for a kiss. We’d kissed when we’d first reunited but we hadn’t had the time to enjoy it, so overcome by emotion and the need for immediate answers that everything had fallen to the side. But here, with my legs wrapped around his and our faces so close to each other, we could do nothing else but feel the love that we shared, to pour it into our every movement in the hope that we could make the other feel even a fraction of what we did.
“Amy…” He grunted, his hands squeezing around my hips and his nails scraping against my skin. I ground myself against him, desires finally pushing their way through the persistent adrenaline that I’d been coasting on ever since I’d first stepped foot in the station, every tiny bit of friction that I worked up shooting through me like a lightning strike. From the harsh gasp that I swallowed up through a kiss he clearly felt the same.
“What do you want Vincent?” I asked, pulling back to look him in the eye, “Do you want me to stop?”
I wish that I had a camera just so I could capture the disbelief that crossed over his face, genuine confusion morphing into hungry lust as he swept his hands underneath me and stood up straight, my legs kicking at the air in surprise before wrapping around his hips. “I don’t think that we should stop.”
“Oh,” I giggled, pointing over to the bedroom, “Well then, I guess you know where to go then don’t you?”
Even though I obviously knew he was a vampire it still caught me off guard how fast he could move sometimes, I’d barely finished my sentence before we were across the room and I was being dropped to the mattress below, his lips against mine in an instant to swallow the surprised moans that he always seemed to bring out of me. One look between us was all the permission he needed, our lips separating and his fingers going to the buttons of my top, each bit of skin that he revealed immediately having his lips upon it, biting and soothing all at once and winding me up even more, my hand on the top of his head pushing him further down all the while.
“Come on Vincent, stop teasing me,” I panted, “Just do it already.”
I could feel his smirk against my breast, two strong hands ripping open the rest of my top and sending buttons scattering across the room, my bra going the same way before his lips closed around my already hardening nipple, tongue and teeth pinching against the nub and shooting a spark behind my closed eyelids. He palmed my other breast, every groan and grunt of pleasure that he let loose pulsing through my body straight to my heart, the room already filled with my gasps of arousal and begs for more.
“Yes…” I moaned, taking hold of his other hand and pushing it down my stomach, “You have another one, hurry up and use it already.”
With an expert flick my fly was undone and unzipped, his fingers already inside me as we finally started to lose ourselves properly to the moment, thumb rubbing and sliding along my clit with the distinct lack of gentleness that I’d needed. My hips rose to meet his fingers, each thrust pushing deeper and deeper into me, each crook of his fingers scraping against just the right spot inside me to have me keening in no time at all, my arms around his shoulders and pushing his face tighter against my breast.
“God yes, don’t stop Vincent, please don’t stop!”
Pulling off my nipple with a pop, he surged back up to claim my lips with his own, enjoying the tenderness of the act for a few moments before he began making his descent, tongue flicking out to lap up the small drops of sweat that were already beading on my skin from our lovemaking, each inch closer that he got to where I needed him so desperately feeling like it was crackling with pure electricity.
When he moved his mouth between my legs and dragged his tongue across my clit my entire body seized up, mouth falling open in a deep moan and my hips starting to move on their own against him. My fingers were fisted in his hair so tightly that it must have hurt, pulling and dragging him against me in a selfish pursuit of my own release, but we would never have it any other way. We chased what we could for ourselves, then we let the other do the same, I adored the moments where all of us could work together, to bring pleasure to each other and to be able to feel the love coursing through our veins all the while, but moments like this… taking the time to so thoroughly dismantle each other, to use and be used, it was one of the most incredible feelings in the world. We were just so good at it.
“Oh my god,” I gasped, reaching down and pulling him as deeply into me as I could, “Oh my god!”
Vincent didn’t need to rely on our link to know what I wanted, what I needed, he just pushed himself deeper and faster, his eyes gazing up at mine from between my legs and watching me so thoroughly unravel. And I did, with a shallow snap of my hips and a tipping back of my head I shouted up at the ceiling in utter bliss, thighs clamping around his ears and tears falling from the corners of my eyes as I finally fell apart around him, his fingers and his mouth keeping up their incredible attentions all the while.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of bliss I tapped him on the shoulder, all but begging for him to stop and let me come down from the high that I had been sent to, that insufferable smirk of his revealing itself as he took over my thoroughly dishevelled form.
“Oh don’t look at me like that, you know just as well as me that you don’t look any different when I’m through with you.”
“Oh?” He hummed, laying down next to me and running his finger along my lips, “I don’t know about that.”
Without another word I swung my leg over his, fingers immediately working to undo his fly and unsheath what must have been an incredibly painful erection, jeans and arousal really were a match made in hell. Every ounce of my tiredness had evaporated as soon as he called me into question, as it so often did with the three of us, now all I wanted to do was show him exactly how I could have him wrapped around my little finger without really trying. A quick flash of worry across his eyes told me that he’d regretted stoking my ire for all of half a second before I took him in hand and sat myself down, not stopping until my hips were flush with his and he was hitting the deepest parts of me.
Vincent hissed through his teeth, staring up at me with eyes that had gone completely black and trained directly on my neck. He was hungry in more ways than one, and I knew exactly how to torture him just that little bit more. Call me petty, but I really don’t like being questioned like that.
“You look like you’re in pain,” I cooed, leaning over his chest and starting to move my hips up and down, “Are you alright? Can I make you feel better?”
Clamping his eyes shut, he instead tried to grab my hips and pump me along the way that he wanted. I couldn’t let that happen. Reaching down quickly and grabbing his wrists, I moved them up above his head and held them tightly, pressing them into the mattress and coming face to face with that expression of hunger once again.
“Aww…” I said, laughing at the pinch in his brow and his deepening breaths, “Are you alright? What’s going on Vincent, you can easily move if you want to.”
He growled up at me, but tellingly made no move to take his hands back under his control. He did try to move his face closer to my neck, looking up at me desperately and wishing that I would just give him the barest of permission to drink. I wasn’t going to give it to him just yet, not even as I dipped my head lower and just barely brushed my skin against his lips, making it clear that what he wanted was so close, yet he wasn’t allowed to make a single move until I uttered one single word.
“Come on Vincent,” I said, increasing my movements and sighing every time he bottomed out inside me, “Show me what you can do, that’s the only way you’ll get your reward…”
Though it was awkward without access to his hands, he still thrust upwards into me to the best of his ability, almost making me bounce with the force that he was giving out. I didn’t hold back either, our bodies smacking together with enough force to leave bruises and echoing off the walls, my willpower to hold back the aftershocks from my previous climax starting to waver and leaving me shaking above him, so close to falling into another that I almost couldn’t think.
Thankfully he wasn’t much farther behind, clearly keeping himself together from a pure desire to get the reward that I had promised him, mouth open in desperate pleasure but his eyes trained unwaveringly on my neck, ready to move as soon as I uttered that one final, glorious word.
“Oh god!” I leaned forward as best I could, holding my head back and baring my neck to him as I finally tipped over the edge. “Do it!”
His fangs sank into my skin and sucked down as he snapped his hips upwards and buried himself as deep as he could go, his release coming fast and violently, the taste of my blood touching his tongue and sending his senses into overdrive. He gulped deeply, the feeling of our bodies connected both above and below hitting me like a freight train and sending me even deeper into the throes of pleasure, only capable of uttering affirmations and pleas for more, until finally all the energy left my body and send me falling bonelessly against his chest.
After a few moments he finally got control over himself again, withdrawing his fangs with a shuddering gasp and wrapping his now freed arms around my chest, holding me tightly against himself and breathing deeply.
“Ok,” He said, “Maybe you were right.”
I laughed weakly, turning my head in his grasp to look up at him and wink. “I usually am, I thought you would be used to that by now.”
“I guess I just like to keep being surprised.” Placing a kiss into my hair, he lay back against the mattress and stared up at the ceiling, brow furrowed in concern. “Damon should be here by now, he sent me off so he could deal with Faye but that shouldn’t have taken this long.”
“You think something happened to him?” I sat up, looking between him and the stairs to the outside, pulling up my pants in case we needed to leave right away. I would still need to find a top given that he’d destroyed mine, but we could work something out.
“I don’t know if anything happened,” He said, “He could just be running late, maybe Faye needed his help but… I don’t know.”
“We could go out and try to find him, I still have the car to use.” Standing up, I moved out into the living area and turned on the television, staring at the array of camera feeds that were available and frowning to myself. Though he didn’t immediately know why I was doing so, Vincent understood as soon as he walked over to join me.
“The sun is going to rise soon, I can’t leave the bunker.” He frowned, running his hand through his hair and sighing, “Sometimes I really am fed up with these limitations.”
“I could just go on my own,” I said, “You can stay here and call me if he shows up, divide and conquer and all that!”
“Not in the condition that you’re in, with a wound like that it would only take one good hit to drop you for good. I can’t let you leave if I can’t be there to protect you, and Damon wouldn’t allow it either.” He placed his hands on my shoulders, making sure that I was looking him in the eye. “I know that it doesn’t seem like the right thing to do, that we should do something, but that would not be the smart thing to do at all. The best thing to do is to stay here and wait for news, trust me.”
I didn’t want to believe it, I wanted to go out there and find him but… as much as I didn’t want to admit it he was right. I was wounded and the sun was going to be up in a few hours, what hope would we have of finding Damon in an entire city in only a few hours? As much as it killed me to think, the best thing to do was… absolutely nothing.
“Alright,” I said, taking his hand and leading him over to the couch, “Alright. We’ll wait, but if we get the news that something has happened to him I’m going to be out of here before you can even blink.”
He smiled, squeezing my hand and nodding. “I doubt I could stop you if I tried.”
We sat there for a good two hours before the phone in my pocket started to ring, the unfamiliar ringtone making me panic for a second before I realized where it was coming from, a private number flashing on the screen before I pressed the answer button and held it to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Oh, now that’s a voice that I haven’t heard in a while.”
My blood ran cold, hand squeezing so tightly around Vincent’s that I could feel his bones shifting, his ears alert and his eyes narrowed when he recognized the voice on the other end of the line.
“Tristian,” I growled, not bothering to disguise the hate in my tone, “Why are you calling me? How did you get this number?”
“I just asked a friend for it, took a little while but eventually she gave me the number.” The smugness in his tone was insufferable, but his words made my heart stop altogether. “Don’t worry, I didn’t kill her Amy. Not yet anyway.”
That didn’t bode well for her. Or for my temper.
“Tristian just let her go right now or I swear to god…”
“You’ll do what? In your condition I doubt that you can do anything, not when you can barely walk,” He laughed, “Someone should teach them to shoot properly, the fact that you’re still alive is really just shameful.”
I couldn’t really deny that, I’d thought much the same myself. Not that I was going to agree with him, I was too focused on making sure that Alexis stayed alive. “What do you want Tristian? Did you call me up to say that you’re coming to kill me?”
“No, no nothing like that,” He said, false cheer seeping through into my ear, “We don’t know where you are, and Rick doesn’t really have the power to start tracking your phone. That sort of thing goes to a level much higher than his. I wanted to call you up personally because I wanted to tell you to come and meet me yourself.”
“What?” I said, not sure if I’d heard him correctly, “Meet you myself? What, are you insane?”
“Far from it Amy, I’m just not sure why I should put in all the work when I can just get you to do it all for me.” He dropped the happy act, his voice filled with malice that was so sudden it almost made me drop the phone completely, “Because if you don’t I’m going to kill Alexis. And then I’m going to kill Tariq, then Tabitha. I’ll make sure that you’re on the phone when I kill poor, precious little Cara, and you’ll be on the line the whole, excruciating time that I spend killing Damon for laying with a whore.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, I didn’t want to believe what I was hearing, but Tristian wasn’t in the habit of making idle threats. He knew exactly how to get what he wanted from whoever he wanted, and he was ruthless enough to do whatever it took. Ruthless enough to clean up any loose ends too.
“You’ll… you’ll just kill them anyway.”
Tristian chuckled, “I’m not going to lie Amy, I just might. But I can tell you that I’ll definitely kill them if you don’t show yourself, and even if the chance of them dying after you is still ninety nine percent you won’t pass up the chance to save them.” He leaned into the line, almost breathing his next words to me, “Just let this happen Amy, this is the only chance that your friends have. Give it some thought, I’ll be sure to call you back with the details.”
The line clicked dead, the inside of the bunker suddenly feeling so empty, so closed in, but maybe that was just the feeling in my chest making everything else feel so much smaller. The phone fell from my hand, Vincent’s hand coming out to catch it before it could break against the floor and rising to hold me.
“Amy!” He said, “Amy talk to me, we can… we can work this out, we just need a plan.”
“I… I don’t…” I trailed off, stepping back and falling against the wall, sliding down until my arms were wrapped around my knees and my head was falling forward, so overwhelmed with everything that I couldn’t even see straight.
“I don’t know what to do anymore...”