#devourcr

GUYS?!??!?! GUYS?!!!! RIP ME AND CYN!

// did we just get our TICKET FOR A PHOTO OP WITH THESE TWO NERDS in vancouver??!?!?!!

YES. WE. DID!!!!! H O L Y S H I T!!! DESTIEL!!! IN THE ROOM?!?! TOGETHER??! WITH US?!?!?! how the SHIT am i supposed to live thru that? through both of them being RIGHT THERE? idk man. i think i might just start screaming and not stop for 26 more days. IS THAT POSSIBLE?? LET'S FIND OUT!!!

How long had it been since Daniel saw his maker? He'd stopped counting after a while. At first, he'd tracked it- in his mind, every time he looked at the calendar, every time a holiday came along. Waiting. Hoping- even as he hated himself for it. He didn't need his maker. He'd gotten 'Fledgling 101' from Louis. He knew how to feed himself.

Yet there was a part of him that wanted nothing more than to see Armand again. If for no other reason than to have answers. To understand what the hell had happened that night, and why. His memories of his turning were hazy at best...and when he'd awoken, Armand had been gone.

Still, he resigned himself eventually to the reality that it would never happen. He'd been created and then abandoned. Who was he to talk, though? If there ever was a deadbeat dad, it was Daniel Molloy. So he'd carried on. Writing, hunting, pissing off TV hosts around the country.

When he exited the sound stage one warm night to find Armand standing in the parking lot, it was more of a surprise than it might have been. The sight of him made Daniel freeze, unable to do anything but gape for a moment.

these days, the former servants' quarters in the attic of the manor house are used for storage; over a century's worth of outfits, antiques, and documents pile up, and amalia is loath to get rid of anything. fashions have a funny way of coming back around, and one never knows when some priceless relic might need to be unearthed for financial reasons. certainly nobody has lived up here since soon after amalia was turned — when she insisted on moving the servants out of the big house, claiming a need for space but really making it harder for george to get to them. it wasn't enough, but she'd had little power, then. it had taken time to grow it.

only one room remains as it had been, back when amalia had been human, intentionally kept as the sparse maids' bedroom it had been, almost a shrine to the living person she was. a reminder. it is here that armand finds her, sat on one of the narrow beds, knees tucked up to her chest. she'd not been hiding, at least not intentionally, but amalia imagines it was a little difficult to find her; she reaches out a hand to him, both silent apology and invitation.

❝ i was turned today. close to today, at least. i couldn't read a calendar, and my memories of the beginning are a little fuzzy. ❞ terror does that to a person, doesn't it? terror, and transformation. amalia looks up at armand, a sad ghost of a smile on her lips. ❝ it doesn't always make me melancholy, the anniversary, but... ❞ she shrugs, ❝ it's the first time i've been back in this house for a while. ❞ they were in london, before this, and paris before that. there are more good memories than bad here, but oh, those bad ones still linger in her heart. every so often they like to leak their poison back into it.

she gently tugs armand's hand, shuffling over to make room beside her, and nods at the other bed. ❝ i slept there, before. it was colder, by the window, but i liked the view. ❞

✦✦✦ ─────── THE STENCH OF DEATH rose alongside the debris of mangled cars on the road. Blood, precious blood, seeping from under the wreckage in a beautiful lake of temptation, before the air tasted it and spat it out as wicked waste.

Howard peeled the chassis that had been digging into his body from himself, gasping for air, his own rancid, blackened rot already working its way out to wrap all his injuries away. His broken bones clicked back into place before it was sewn together by the creatures within his veins, but when he managed to free himself, he collapsed onto the road, unable to stand up until his wounds were fully sealed in.

One of the vampires he'd shot through the window of his speeding car had long since died, the second screeching as she fought the sharpened wooden dowel off her chest, courtesy of Howard's steady aim, and the third, his quarry, was pawing the twisted carnage of the car off him.

Once he'd managed to stand, he peeled away a piece of metal and hurled it at the staked vampire. It sheared her head clean off, rolling onto the roadside, gasping one last time before falling silent.

"I told you not to fuck with me," Howard's hands tore through the carnage as if it was made of paper, pulling his quarry up by his collar so close that their foreheads met. All fangs bared, jittering in the happiness of the violence unfurling before him. "I told you, haven't I? We're not the same stock, you and I."

"Alright, fuck-- fine. FINE." The other vampire lifted his hands. "We messed up, okay? We thought nobody's going to notice. Just skim off the top, bit by bit. Look. We have dead drops across the city. I'll send it to you, I have it on my phone, it-it-it's saved on my Maps. It'll make up for the loss. Alright?"

"Alright." Howard repeated, and just as the other relaxed in his hold while offering his iPhone, Howard bit into his neck, crunching the spine easily between his clenched teeth then yanked, tearing the head off in one horrendous rip.

He took the phone, tore a thumb from the dead vampire, and unlocked it. There he removed the lock, keeping the thumb in his back pocket, then dialled @devourcr's phone number.

@devourcr Asked:

" But every day you can start again and face your demons. ” ( jesse )

The words echoing through the room struck Jesse as too theatrical, like he was quoting from a manual written for younger, more optimistic vampires. Maybe he just didn't believe it anymore. Jesse shoved her unwashed hair behind her ear. Even through double-pane glass, Jesse could smell the faint, perpetual rot coming up from the canal: algae and gasoline, ancient food wrappers ground down by city bikes. She fished her phone from her pocket and scrolled, pretending not to listen, though she caught every syllable.

Jesse felt a sudden charge-- anger maybe, or hunger, or simply the wish to shatter the tension with the nearest breakable thing. ❝ You must get tired of pep talks. ❞ It came out words brittle, but there wasn’t even a tremor in her fingers as she cracked at the phone case. ❝ I really don’t need one. I just need a nap. Or whatever we’re allowed in this sunlight-free wonderland. ❞

The idea of taking life to sustain her own was still theoretical, and it churned in her gut almost endlessly. Jesse pressed a knuckle into the soft skin above her cheekbone, grinding out a ache that had nothing to do with food. She’d heard about Armand, he still looked fifteen, criminally soft behind the eyes, but sometimes when he looked at you, there was this glow, burned in by centuries of decisions. She wondered what it was like to wear the same face for centuries.

Daily she has to remind herself that this is the life she chose, whether she wanted to or not: the deadness, the ache, the strange obliteration of time. It didn’t matter that her hair was greasy or that her skin threatened to shine grey in the yellow lamps. No, what mattered was the thing she’d become, the way hunger swept over her in tides, hourly, relentless as the canal tides coming up at midnight. ❝ Besides, that’s not very good advice. I face those demons every night, and every night they win. ❞ Jesse let herself savor the sour irritation that spiked through her. ❝ I'd prefer not to call this living. I'm not sure we get to keep that word. ❞ She stood, hoodie zipper catching on the edge of her T-shirt, and stalked to the window. She pressed her knuckle to the glass. The city was the color of a bruise. ❝ Lestat says it will pass. That most of us go through this. That it’s just a phase. ❞

Nicolas can sense Armand long before he arrives on his doorstep.

There are few vampires in the French countryside. Vampires are city creatures by necessity, but Nicolas doens’t mind the inconvenience, doesn’t mind feeding primarily on animals. Sometimes a wolf, for the symbolism of it. But even if the place were crawling with vampires, he would sense Armand. 

Armand did not make him, but he did mold him. He took the creature that should never have been created and made him capable of tolerating the world, even if he chose to do it through cruelty at first. Those years spent locked away with only visits from Armand from time to time had left marks on them both. Good and bad, yes, but Nicolas chooses the good. The bad seems very far away now.

He smiles when he sees Armand. Once again, Armand is dressed in what Nicolas knows must be fashionable now. Although Armand always wears it well, the clothing is always strange in some new way. A neckline that makes no sense to him, a shape that clings in peculiar ways, an inconceivable fabric of some make. He remembers when he was fashionable. Absurdly fashionable for this region of France, with a draper’s eye and his time in Paris. He used to care so very much about his clothing. Now he is wearing something he either found in a shop while in town or something Armand sent him; years out of fashion by now.