tenderest touch leaves the darkest of marks

cash-stone​:

[ PRIVATE F2F ]

Right now he seems calm, collected, and set on a singular path. Chaos has no part in his revenge, only calculated torment for the witches in the room. “Being a kid is no excuse when that kid pretends she has any business keeping wolves. Both of you had responsibilities. Both of you failed. Either you had those responsibilities or you were kids. You can’t fucking have both.” He adjusts the knife further up Aurora’s throat, just enough so Victoria and Moll could see the cut that had been made as they were standing there talking. “There is nothing I want to take back,” he snaps back through gritted teeth, growing annoyed, and tightens his grip on the knife. “That’s the whole point. I want to see the look in your eyes when I gave you a fraction of a taste of what you put your pack through. You have no right to stand there with your power, Moll, and shirk off your failure to someone else. And Victoria has no right to be anything that she’s parading around pretending to be. So you’ll watch the life leave her eyes…” His tongue darts out to wet his lips as the energy builds and he gets closer and closer to tasting his vengeance. “…Slowly, or quickly. This is for me and all the wolves you killed on that day.”

[ PRIVATE F2F ]

She can’t just stand here and do nothing, bleed out in someone’s arms and not fight back. She can feel her strength slipping and she guesses it must be the blood loss, because she feels the grip on her abdomen slowly giving out and a wave of discomfort that she recognizes as nausea. It reminds her of the time she was sick with whatever Noah had accidentally brought into the manor, before she started throwing up blood, but she keeps her slowly closing eyes on Victoria, eyelids only half open, and decides – against her better judgement – to drop her hands from the gushing knife wound and close them altogether. It brings her focus away from her body and towards her magic, because whatever is wrong with Cash, she hopes to find before its too late. It pulls every bit of energy she has left, finding it, trying to push herself through the barrier in his mind against his will – she knows Victoria will know she’s using her magic – except she finds, not the mind of Cash Stone, but something far more otherworldly, something her magic can’t push through, something… Eerily spiritual. Angry. When she opens her eyes she’s bleeding far more profusely, and her fingers are trembling, white as a sheet. “Its not…” Her voice shakes. She feels cold. Her teeth chatter. “This isn’t Ca-Cash”. Its the last thing she chokes out before she faints, the side of her neck pressed against the blade.

[ PRIVATE F2F ]

It’s not Cash. That explains a whole lot more than anything else. She’d been staring at Aurora, watching as her wife no doubt used what was left of her strength on magic. Victoria resisted the urge to not tell her not to do it, there’s a reason. If she knows Aurora, there’s a reason. And the reason comes out in her stuttering, weak sounding voice just before she collapses. It’s not Cash. Because of course. Victora’s mind reels, flashing through her conversations over the last few days. Wren – the witch who talked to ghosts. She’d mentioned a wolf, one who was angry. His words could very well be mistaken for Cash’s, along with any other wolf that had been at the Compound that day. And Victoria knows, perhaps the most important point, that fighting someone with nothing to lose is almost impossible. Shifting won’t be possible if she wishes to spare Cash’s body. So she relies on magic first, quietly altering the energy around her with determined focus until she can zap him with a force so strong it will hopefully knock him out before he has the know-how to hurt Aurora. 

She pushes Moll behind her further and with one quick, barely detectable blast, the wolf and her wife are separated. His body on the ground, Victoria clears the space between them and pounces, with abandon and strength usually only reserved for her shifted form and yet, still entirely possible with her years of training as a human with alongside wolves. “Moll, get her!” Victoria shouts as she lands on top of Cash’s body, delivering a solid blow with her own bare fist to his jaw. “Get her out of here and help her!”

[ PRIVATE F2F ]

The time for arguing is over. Moll recognizes the signs of a man past reason. And then she watches in horror as Aurora stops pressing her hands into her wound so she can do some sort of unseen magic. In that moment, she doesn’t care if it’s Cash or not - the truck is off road and barreling towards them, regardless of who’s behind the wheel. She staggers back at the push, watching the crackle of energy that breaks the two apart and the snap of violence she has no desire to watch. She’s already moving to the crumpled heap of Aurora on the ground. “Yes to half of that,” she huffed to herself. They’re already cutting it so close and Aurora has a few inches on her - she isn’t wasting time or magic trying to get her far. Instead she drags the witch by her legs out into the hallway with a wince of apology, careful not to hit her head on the doorframe. She drops to her knees. There’s so much blood painting the front of the tailored shirt that she can smell it, nearly making her gag as she slowly peels it back. Moll shuts her eyes tightly and covers the wound with both hands. It takes a second to start working, but once it does her desperation to fix it is so strong that the surge of power steals her air. Her magic sinks into Aurora’s abdomen, flooding over the torn tissue and nicked organs and knitting them back together, mending veins and arteries and refilling them with blood. 

blacknessaura​:

cash-stone​:

[ PRIVATE F2F ]

“I think that’s pretty obvious. I stabbed your wife in the gut and now she’s bleeding out in front of you.” He ignores Moll, just as she ignored him…. both spirit and host. “The fact is, you and your healer are doing as much as you’re going to be able to right now. Yeah. You’re going to stand there, watch your wife die from just feet away, and you’re going to see the pain of all of the wolves you two abandoned at the compound and let die for Victoria’s secret in her eyes.” He presses the edge of the knife harder against Aurora’s throat, beginning to pierce skin. She smells so strongly of blood now that he’s losing the floral scents of her perfume. All he can really smell now is the pungent sage that’s clung to her hair as he holds her close in a tight grapple. “You walk around with your head held high, your chest puffed out like some kind of commander, like you’re a divine gift to these wolves and they should all be grateful for your leadership, but you’ve let down an entire pack before. You’ve killed your wolves before. Now look at your wife. See how expectant she is that you’ll do something to save her? I mean, why should she expect anything less? Why should I have expected anything less? But you never came for me. Neither of you did. So now, you won’t be able to come for her.”

[ PRIVATE F2F ]

She doesn’t know what to focus on, the pain, the words coming out of Cash’s mouth, or the sight of Victoria looking at her by the door. The knife is pressed closer to her throat and she can feel it slicing through her skin like butter, followed by the rush of slowly trickling blood down to her collarbone. If he were to press it any harder, he’d slice right through her neck, and the fact that she’s trying not to writhe in his arms and trying to keep her hand steadily over the gash in her abdomen is making it very hard for her to keep her neck upright and away from the blade. And she tries, she looks at her wife and moves her hand away from her wound to attempt and use her magic to pry Cash away from her, but a rush of blood has her hands pooling in red, forcing her to keep them pressed against it. Aurora can’t use her magic, and that same familiar feeling of helplessness she’s experienced before comes back in a rush, bringing prickling tears to her eyes. “Victoria –” She thinks she doesn’t know why she says it; she’s not calling out for her when she’s right in front of her, but when when Cash assures them he won’t let anyone come close enough to heal her, she knows why. She’s terrified. “C-Cash please, let me go…”

[ PRIVATE F2F ]

This isn’t Cash. Something’s wrong. It’s in his voice and his face and his anger. But the words he says aren’t untrue. That he never would have been lost if not for what had happened that day at the Compound attack. Victoria doesn’t have time to parse it though. The fear in her wife’s voice, the overwhelming sent of blood as it drains far too quickly from Aurora’s body are all far too powerful a distraction. Moll’s behind her, and reasonable. Moll can heal Aurora, as long as they can get her away from Cash. Victoria’s jaw tightens. She’d never choose her own feelings over the pack, but she’ll take him out in a heartbeat if she has to. “Cash, I won’t let you hurt her.” Victoria speaks even and determined, eyes focused, jaw tight. “You have five seconds to let her go. Whatever you’re trying to do here, you can still take back. But I won’t let you kill her. Five seconds. Your choice.”

[ PRIVATE F2F ]

blacknessaura​:

cash-stone​:

[ PRIVATE F2F ]

“Of course.” He moves forward, toward Aurora and the closet, and doesn’t reach behind him until the last step. The cold hilt of the knife is quickly warmed by his hand as he grasps it and pulls it from the back of his waistband. There’s no hesitation, not even a change in expression as he raises it and drives the blade hard into Aurora’s stomach. The overwhelming scent of blood cuts through the smells of sage and lotus and citrus as he pulls the knife out and quickly steps behind her to catch her weight with an arm across her chest and a large hand grasping her throat. Quickly, quickly… he thinks to himself as he drags the bleeding witch down the hall to the room he observed as a spirit: Victoria’s, the true setting where he’d get his revenge. He kicks the door closed behind them, wrestles Aurora to the opposite side of the room, then angles her toward the door, replacing his hand with the sharp edge of the knife to her throat. 

[ PRIVATE F2F ]

She’s not expecting it. Why would she? Its Cash Stone; if there was a poster child for a dutiful wolf, him and Presley would be plastered on the walls of Carden Manor like stellar examples of what it means to be in the Devereaux pack. And she’s so certain of the person he is that she doesn’t even notice until she feels the stabbing pain on her abdomen, the feeling of wetness on her perfectly tailored shirt, and how the pain makes her lose her balance on the chair only to be caught by him with a knife to her throat. “C-Cash?” She clutches the bleeding wound, whimpering in pain as she’s dragged away down the hall, feeling powerless against the grasp he has on her neck and her rapidly beating heard. She sees the trail of blood she starts to leave behind, and when she attempts to shuffle away from him, the knife digs ever so sharply into the side of her neck, making her wince, until she’s subdued inside her and Victoria’s room, breathing rapidly and training her eyes on the door in front of her. “Why are you… Why…” She can’t get the words out, but she knows, as she slowly bleeds out in Cash Stone’s arms, that somewhere in the manor, Victoria had felt it.

[ PRIVATE F2F ]

“Aurora –” Victoria feels it immediately. She mouths her wife’s name, cutting off whatever Moll had been saying as they both walk down the hallway. The full moon had gone off without a hitch, things beginning to slide back to normalcy. It’s nice to have Moll around again. She’s a friend, an ally, someone who knows Victoria’s whole life without having to say it or work not to. But that feeling interrupts her. Something in her gut. And then fear. Her hand goes to her own abdomen and she freezes before her eyes shoot up to Moll, much more intense than they’d been a second ago. “Something’s wrong,” Victoria says nothing more but takes off down the hall around one more corner to their room. There’s blood on the floor. She clocks Moll behind her, as if to tell her to stay back,  and shoves the door open fast. “Aurora what’s –” but her questions die in her throat at the sight on the other side. “Cash – what’s going on here? What did you do?” Her eyes flicker from the blonde wolf to Aurora, bleeding in his arms. Victoria locks her eyes on her wife’s. “What happened?”

[ PRIVATE F2F ]

Last night was a one of a kind occurrence for us: a full moon during Hallow’s Eve. Some witches decide to indulge in this peculiar burst of power while some others decide to use it as a time to meditate and restrain ourselves. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve been feeling this strange burst of energy in the air all morning and its either this crippling anxiety I’ve been feeling for weeks finally taking a toll on me, or something not even I can identify. So my advice to all of you, keep your eyes peeled for anything… Weird.

There’s always next time. Didn’t hurt too bad, did it? Tasing aside. 

You look much more threatening with fangs, bring those out the next time someone is giving you trouble. Feel better?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hold still, dummy. 

See now would have been the perfect time to break out the phrase, “make me”. If I’d just been patient.

Don’t call me out on my sadism, it’s rude. You know, I’m going to turn it back on you– If you want to see them, all you have to do is ask. Wrist okay?  

I mean. If I’m going to get lightly tasered either way, you might as well go for the kill right?

It did. But I’m agreeing with you, I don’t want to treat it as an off / on switch. I’m not trying to isolate anymore than I have to– I’d rather practice than lock it away, get real true control of my magic, rather than let my magic control me. Plus, selfishly, practice gets me more time with you. And after all of that, I would rather just take what’s available than ask anyone to go out of their way. The bloody cup routine will probably have to stay for a bit, though, unless you don’t mind a bit of fang with your magic practice. 

This side of you that craves control and loves torture is fun and all, but I feel compelled to point out that you can see me whenever you’d like. I don’t mind a bit of fang. The last person that fed from me was Silas? It would be fun not to be able to say that sentence anymore. Never actually seen your fangs, either.

Better weird than horrifying. It was a choice. After the ritual, my magic was out of control.. like now, I guess. And I isolated to figure out how to turn it off, by not using any magic for a while. I’ll figure it out, maybe talk to Thierry some. I’m looking forward to Moll the mysterious blood fairy. But.. thank you. For offering. I appreciate it and you more than you know. 

That sort of worked, right? Until you turned it on again. Call me biased, but I really don’t think isolation and touch starvation are going to help. The only thing I learned from this whole healing mess was that treating it as an off or on, all or nothing ability didn’t help with control at all. I can start doing research - if there’s a way to enchant an object to trap a girl in her wolf form for months on end, there must be magic suppression things we could make or find. Or we could keep practicing. Yeah, of course. I’m surprised you didn’t ask before honestly - but I was in a nasty loop of treating blood as a bribe or bleeding into a cup on request, so I guess it wouldn’t have been entirely possible.

I’m a certified badass, Moll, didn’t you know? Yeah, same. I’m honestly expecting a little more strict rules from here on out, but we’ll see. I.. can’t ask you to do that for me. I’m not going to turn it down, but– Please don’t make me ask you for that, okay? 

As for the massage, that’s an easy yes.

Things might get weird for a bit, but it’s better than the alternative. Why’d you get here so much later than the rest of your coven? What kept you? You didn’t ask - I offered. Everyone else seems very certain that this peace is only temporary. You nobly starving does no one any good. And....I’m not a soldier. People are always going to want to shove me into corners first when danger comes around - gotta keep the medic on ice for the aftermath. At least this way I know I can protect someone. If it stresses you out and you don’t want to think about it, I can just start making random appearances throughout your day with full wineglasses and answer no follow up questions.

Less fire, more grand theft auto, I think. It’s just weird finally being able to settle into things after moving here two months after the fact, you know? It’s like things are suddenly not on pause anymore. I.. have been rationing, just enough to make sure I don’t fade away into nothingness or start acting like I’ve been bitten by a raccoon. It’s just making me a bit more on edge and tired is all. 

Didn’t think you had it in you. I know what you mean. The vampires had control from the first day I got here, these are the only few days I’ve see this place function under witch control. Not everything is what I expected. Okay, well, if you are sleep deprived, and also rationing your stores, I’m going to have to really spell some things out for you instead of being subtle. You are not the only person who can wear gloves, so I could help you with that first request. And also, now that vampires aren’t roaming the halls asking for the dagger and goblet quickdraw all the time, I’m an Original witch with blood to spare.

Without the constant threat of trauma and death, I’m.. having a hard time adjusting to normalcy. I’d also probably commit several crimes for a massage and a good night’s rest. 

Several, huh. In terms of severity, petty larceny or are you setting buildings on fire? I need to know how dire these straits are. It’ll get easier to sleep, y’know. It just might take a few days to come down from the adrenaline of it all. Is it weird if I ask if you’ve been getting enough food? Shortage.

Damn I’ve never been so happy to get back to training in the outdoors. Anybody else still feel like they could run a marathon right now after this morning’s session? I’m starting to realize how close I was to losing it in that manor these past couple months. 

Horrifying would’ve been staying there for the rest of eternity. Or being dug up by someone else entirely. Its… difficult to explain. You’re aware that there’s a stake in your chest, but you can’t move, you can’t scream, you can’t do anything but sit still and try not to go crazy with your own thoughts. Without blood pumping through the heart I suppose we mummify, I think that’s what Lina called it. 

You’re doing a great job at making a girl feel young. Around four hundred years, give or take. 

Oh, that age. I’m not… sure. Somewhere around 450? A little over. I could’ve give you an exact age even if I wanted to.