Warts And All [Cassie]

[Dacian]

Was the door moving? Did they usually undulate like that? He couldn’t recall, but some surviving logic in his fevered mind told him it wasn’t, and they didn’t. The wall was currently his most trusted friend, and he leaned on it heavily. He thanked it, quite grateful that it hadn’t let him fall when he was so close to his destination.

Five. The number danced across his vision, golden and magnificent. There is was in front of him, greeting him with open arms. Five was his favourite number as of right now. His hand remembered what to do about closed doors, and lifted to knock on it. It was a polite knock, his brain told him, and that was a good thing. Monsters didn’t knock on the door. They tended to hit them. Really hard. His right hand caressed the old wood of the door, tingling at the feel of the threshold still keeping him out. Then those magic words came, and the threshold was gone. Come in, they said. He went in.

The room was a blur, but after remembering how to open doors, he entered and closed it. Then the dam burst. His left arm felt like it was trying to rip itself from his body. Pain flooded his body, invaded every dead organ and brought it to life with burning impossible pain. His legs buckled and he fell to the ground with a crash, having hit something that might have been a table on his way to the floor. Dacian didn’t notice. He was too preoccupied with the wave after wave of pain coursing through him. Oh God, the pain. His spine bowed with it, and he gagged at an invisible hand around his throat.

He lay face up on the floor, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling with the most terrified expression contorting his face. His shirt was gone somehow, but the absence of it hardly mattered with the state of his arm demanding any viewer’s attention. In contrast to the almost white paleness of his body, his left arm was red. Blisters of skin had risen up past his elbow, and parts of it were blackened while others oozed almost black blood. On his forearm, almost obscured by the burns, was a slightly darker outline. It was cross-shaped, with a few deviations. Rather than blistered, the thing was a perfect reverse etching of the item that had made it. It looked almost benign, but it was the source of the vampire’s current condition.

The rest of him was relatively normal, though his torso and trousers had a liberal covering of mud and his face and chest had a light coating of red-tinged sweat. He was gasping for breath now, breath he shouldn’t need. His heart was sporadically thumping, usually in time with the particularly vicious tides of agony. He saw nothing, heard nothing, and definitely smelt nothing as he jerked, writhed, moaned and whimpered uncontrollably on Cassie Vime’s hotel room floor.

[Cassie Vimes]

As she had predicted Cassie was not having a very good evening. As soon she’d got back to her room she’d climbed into bed, fully clothed, and burrowed under the covers to wallow in self pity. When a quiet cry and a good forty minutes of A-grade wallowing didn’t help in the slightest she relented and clambered out of bed again, deciding a shower might make a difference. At least she would be clean and miserable then.

She headed into the bathroom, shedding clothing as she went and made sure to turn on the water on as hot as she could stand it before she stepped under the spray. The water stung a little as it hit Cassie’s skin, but she could already feel it easing tense muscles in her shoulders so it was worth it. As she pushed her head under the spray she considered drowning by shower, then Ed and Dacian would be sorry for confusing her, but she decided to just wash her hair instead. Soap in the eye was a bitch anyway.

Cassie was just stepping out of the shower when she heard the soft knock on her door. ”Come in,” She called, wrapping up tightly in one of the big fluffy towels supplied in the room. Funny, Jaz hadn’t mentioned having a night shift, but sometimes things got switched round at the last minute. The crash of furniture alerted her to the fact that it probably wasn’t Jaz, unless Jaz had taken to random destruction of property.

Frowning, Cassie poked her head around the bathroom door and gasped at what she saw. Dacian was lying on her floor clearly in agony. She rushed to his side, fingers pressing into his neck to check for a pulse before she realised that was a pointless exercise. ”Dacian!” Her hand reached for his, squeezing hard when she took in the extensive burns on his other arm. ”Dacian, I don’t know what to do. How can I help you?”

[Dacian]

The pain was drowning him. His only functioning fist clenched and unclenched. He heaved in shallow breaths between clenched teeth as his lungs demanded air they didn’t need. His injured arm lay uselessly at his side, feeding in more and more pain until he felt as if he had to pass out. But he couldn’t. He had to endure this pain in its full horrific glory. Women complained about childbirth? They should try being undead for six-hundred years and then have a crucifix of high potency shoved onto their arm. They wouldn’t complain so much then.

He felt something near him just as the next wave caught him, and his spine bowed, his head flung back into the floor as he tried to hold in a scream. He was being torn apart from the inside, and the tide was dragging him under. Something took his hand, and instinctively he grabbed for it. He broke the surface for a moment, his eyes rolling madly as one thing came into focus. The girl. What was that she was wearing? A toga? God, he wasn’t in Italy again was he? His mouth and eyes opened wide in another silent scream before he could make some sense of this.

One word, help, made it’s way though. “Oh God.” He panted, wild eyes meeting hers for the briefest of moments. “C-can’t. Agh, ARGH!” He held tightly to that hand, and thankfully the pain had sapped enough of his strength that it was a mortal hold. He gagged on his yell, finding it impossible to breathe as the next tidal wave took hold. He choked for a full minute before it released him and he relaxed limply to the floor. His burnt fingers had taken now to twitching on their own accord as if playing some invisible macabre piano.

A minute’s recovery followed, with only a few almost bearable waves of excruciating agony that brought whimpers with every shaky breath he exhaled. By now, his hair was plastered to his face with the blood-tainted sweat, and he had barely the energy to turn his head. His nose came into contact with a very warm, very bare knee. His sense of superhuman smell had been stolen, but the skin he was presented with still smelt delicious. He nuzzled into that warmth, using it as an anchor from the ripples of pain still plaguing him.

“Ugh,” he croaked, finding it too painful to even bother opening his eyes. He knew who the knee belonged to, and he had memorised the feel of that hand now again in his. He tried his utter best to squeeze the hand in his, but he wasn’t sure if he managed it. Aside from the pain, he couldn’t feel much else. He had been about to say something, but anything profound slipped his mind. He settled for the first thing that came to mind, “Mm, you smell good.”

[Cassie Vimes]

Cassie’s heart was beating rapidly in her chest, her lip trembling with concern as he seemed to twist himself to impossible angles as pain visibly rippled through his body. She was completely helpless, none of he life experiences gave her any clue what to do. She’d never been so terrified before, her mind racing at a mile a minute but still failing to provide her with any solution to the impossible problem. How could you tell if a dead man was dying?

He seemed to hear her, eyes meeting hers for only a second, but anything intelligible he’d been about to say was lost to a strangled cry. For a moment Cassie was worried his grip on her hand was going to snap bone, she knew full well he was capable of such strength, but he stopped just shy of painful and all she could do was wait it out, silently praying for it to end. When at last the agony seem to recede Dacian went limp, but she kept hold of his hand anyway, taking as much comfort in the grip as she hoped he was.

In any other situation she would have protested at the way he nuzzled into her knee, she was only wearing a towel! Okay, maybe not any other situation… But Cassie was too relieved that Dacian was still even able to move to care about how inappropriate the move might have been. Her free hand moved to stroke the hair away from his face, fingers coming away stained with blood, which she stared at for a moment before deciding there were more pressing matters.

Cassie let out a choked half-sob half-laugh as he spoke. ”Do I?” She asked with a shaky smile, fingers tightening her hold on his hand as she felt the slightest twitch of movement. While he was lucid she needed to keep him talking, get answers if she could. Cassie didn’t think she could sit helplessly through another bout of pain like the last. ”Dacian what’s happening?” She asked, hoping this time he would get the chance to answer.

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[Dacian]

He thought he might have felt her fingers on his brow, but he couldn’t be certain unless he opened his eyes. Something about the dull ache in them suggested opening them would be as good as shoving a hot poker into each. Instead he took comfort in the warmth of her skin on his frozen cheek and summoned an inch of strength to direct her hand to his chest. Using his own fingers as a guide, he pressed her fingertips to an old blackened scar under his heart. It had been obscured by mud, but as it cleared, it appeared to be a simple shape of a cross. The touch stung, but it was tolerable in the face of what had been and what would come.

“God’s big joke.” He hiccupped a laugh, though he was quite obviously not amused. “The faith is trying to bring me back to life, but the demon in my blood is stealing it away.” He inhaled deeply of her scent, his breath hitching as something felt as if it stabbed into his lung. “I’m dying all over again.” He whispered. He’d tried to be casual about it, but it seemed the immortal feared death just as much as the average mortal. He was experiencing the failure of every dormant organ and muscle in his body while his vampiric blood simultaneously killed and healed it ready for the next round. Dacian tried distracting himself by tasting her leg with his lips. “It’ll pass; it’ll just hurt like, argh, Hell.” He squirmed and groaned as a metaphysical hand took hold of his heart and squeezed.

Dacian retaliated by pressing his forehead firmly against Cassie’s leg. If he could just focus on something else, rather than letting the agony take over again. “Talk to me.” The vampire whispered with urgency. “Distract me, please.” He begged, his face strained with pain and pleading.

[Cassie Vimes]

Cassie let Dacian guide her hand to his chest, her fingers brushing lightly over the cool flesh to trace the outline of a cross-shaped scar. Realisation dawned and her eyes flicked to his burned arm, seeking out the matching shape on his skin there. Of course she’d known religious items were a vampire’s weakness, but she’d never though the damage could be so extensive. The scar under her hand was old, clearly long healed, but the fact that it had left such a visible mark told her it was pretty serious. Not that she hadn’t already known that from the state Dacian was in.

Tears welled in her eyes all over again at his words and for a moment she really believed he’d come to her to die. But it seemed that once again dying was going to be a temporary experience for the vampire and Cassie sniffed with relief, wiping at her eyes with her hand and smearing the smallest race of blood from her fingertips onto her cheek. Her other hand lifted from his chest, seeking out is hand again as their brief respite from the pain ended. Knowing what was happening really didn’t make it any easier to see it start all over again.

Cassie shivered, both with dread and with the chill. She really wasn’t dressed for spending any length of time sitting on the floor, namely because she wasn’t dressed at all. Nor had she had time to dry off before she discovered Dacian in her room, droplets of water clung to her skin, slowly evaporating and leaving goose bumps in their wake and her hair was hanging in damp strands around her face. None of that mattered though, not while she could see the agony building in Dacian’s face with every passing second.

”Okay,” She promised, squeezing his hand. Why was it that given the freedom to talk about any subject under the sun her mind was coming up empty. Cassie’s eyes darted around the room looking desperately for inspiration. Anything. Her eyes fell on the copy of Witch Weekly that had been knocked to the floor when Dacian had stumbled into her table. She reached for it, letting it fall open on her lap at a random page. ”Horoscopes, I’m a Virgo you know.”

Cassie found the appropriate paragraph, reading it aloud for him. ”Virgo: After a few fairly prickly days it’s all change. Highly beneficial influences should boost romance; work; cash and style. Be warned though; if you go shopping or do something that is out of character, you could have one of those ‘what on earth was I thinking?’ moments before the evening is through!” If she hadn’t been close to tears she might have commented on the accuracy of the prediction. ”Your turn.”

[Dacian]

In hindsight, Dacian would have mourned the opportunity of Cassie’s state of undress. Lingering droplets of water called to be licked from her cooling skin, and her damp hair demanded to be touched and smelt. He would wonder exactly how she would smell so fresh from the shower, and he would spend a long while imagining the scenes that might unfold. Unfortunately for him, any thought besides the latest roaring pain found it impossible to make purchase on the slippery slope of what was now his mind. Any thought trying to clamber out of that miserable pit was brutally dragged back into it. Pain and Agony were his mistresses now.

Then there was that hand in his, the anchor in the brutal seas of torture. He held it tightly, straining to hear her voice over the roar in his ears. It helped. He could make out her voice more clearly now, enough to hear her words. “Horoscopes?” He choked out, his grimace possibly a grin. She’d decided on an odd topic, but at least it was distracting. He knew little about horoscopes, but had he been presented with the night sky, he could pick out the constellations. Virgo, the virgin, the maiden. Well he knew that wasn’t true for a fact. His arm throbbed and his hand clenched on hers as the pain subsided, no doubt gathering for a more brutal assault. “A ‘highly beneficial influence’. Is that supposed to be me?” He gave a strained chuckle before it turned into a groan, eyes squeezing shut as it appeared his ribcage was refusing to cooperate and was staging a revolt.

“January. My birthday was in January.” He dimly recalled there were two star signs in January. “Near the end.” He couldn’t be more accurate than that. Dacian drew in a rebellious breath and wondered at the scent of her how he was going to resist eating her once his appetite returned. His confused stomach gave a lurch at the thought of food, and Dacian squirmed. He wasn’t a Virgo, but he was having one of those ‘what on earth was I thinking?’ moments. Resisting Cassie was going to be almost as difficult as resisting this God-awful pain. He absently laid a kiss on the side of her knee. Hopefully plans of keeping her alive for future use would hold him back. She was too good to be wasted on one frenzied meal.

[Cassie Vimes]

”Yes horoscopes.” She confirmed, not sure if the expression on Dacian’s face was dislike at the topic or just more agony. Either way he didn’t get to be picky, she was doing her best in difficult circumstances. It wasn’t like she knew Dacian all that well, had it been Ed lying on her floor she’d have known exactly what to say. Her stomach gave a little swoop at the thought. Scratch that, she never be able to hold it together if it was Ed.

”I’d say you were, yes.” Cassie agreed, managing a wry smile. ”You’ve got style and I was going to rifle through your pockets for spare change if you passed out. Three out of four isn’t bad as influences go.” She said, trying to sound upbeat and failing slightly as Dacian groaned. All this talking to distract him only succeeded in making her feel a little hysterical. She felt completely helpless. Mainly because she was, there was nothing she could do to really help.

Her eyes returned to the page of the magazine, quickly finding Dacian’s star sign to read to him. ”Aquarius: When it comes to romance, other signs are being encouraged to do something different, while you’re being encouraged to follow a more traditional line. The ‘hearts and flowers’ angle of the day may not appeal at all, whether you’re single or attached, but there is an element of warmth and even discovery in your general relationships, this week!” She had to snort at that, these predictions were hitting a little too close to home.

The way Dacian was nuzzling into her knee was a little distracting. Not that it didn’t feel nice, but she didn’t think anybody had paid that much attention to her knee before. She wanted to return the gesture, perhaps not by nuzzling his knee, but by doing something. Somehow she didn’t think it was supposed to be a flirtatious move though, more like Dacian trying not give in to the pain coursing through him.

[Dacian]

Dacian gave a rasping chuckle, his voice raw and hoarse as he spoke. “This isn’t exactly traditional.” He sniffed; his sinuses were starting to burn. “I can do much better than this. Which do you prefer, red or white roses? You seem like the white type.” The heat in the centre of his face continued to burn, and he felt something dripped from his nose to make its way across his face to the floor. He tasted it. Blood. He’d caused plenty of nosebleeds in his time, but he wasn’t sure if he’d actually ever had one himself. Unable to wipe it away, he left it.

“Just so you know I don’t bleed on just anyone’s floor. I only do that for special occasions.” He wasn’t usually so liberal with words. He blamed it on the pulsating pain of his left arm. He liked Cassie, but not enough to share these deeper parts of him. Than again, he never shared these deeper parts of him. They were reserved for him and him alone. He tried cracking his eyes open to get a look at the situation and sober himself up, but when presented with a finely toned slender feminine leg, he forgot what it was he had been attempting to do.

“Are horoscopes always like this or are you making it up to make me feel better?” He stiffened a little, his eyes unfocussed as a silent surge of suffering tightened all the muscles in his body. The vampire had to be careful not to convulse so violently as to collide with Cassie. Afterward his sullen eyes – staying open despite the glaring lights of the few candles dotted around the room – rolled up to see her face. The young mortal was coping commendably well, and he was quite glad she had not left him alone here. Alone would bring a whole new level of pain that he was unwilling to experience.

[Cassie Vimes]

Cassie had to agree with Dacian on that one. Ending up back in her room wearing only a towel with her date writhing on the floor in pain had never happened before. Actually there was that one time in Rome, but he’d totally deserved the knee to the groin, and she was fairly certain this time still won for weirdness factor alone. Dacian was sweating blood and yet he seemed to be under the impression that discovering what colour rose she preferred was a priority.

”I do like white roses.” She admitted, humouring him anyway. She’d never really thought about it before, mainly because only one man had ever given her flowers before: Ed. They’d been wattle flowers and she’d watch him pick them from the grounds at school. Not exactly an extravagant romantic gesture, but still sweet. ”I won’t hold my breath though, you’re in no condition to be going out and buying flowers.”

Cassie chuckled at that, wanting to wipe the blood away from his nose but not sure if she should. Seeing Dacian bleed made her strangely uncomfortable, since learning he was a vampire she’d developed an image of him as invulnerable and everything she was witnessing now went against that. ”Must be Tuesday.” She murmured, smiling at their own private joke, on that was probably going to crop up between them for a long time to come.

”I’m reading exactly what it says!” She said in her defence, refraining from showing Dacian the page in question as his eyes went unfocussed with pain. The magazine slipped forgotten from her lap as Cassie concentrated on rivalling his tight grip on her fingers with a squeeze of her own. ”But I want you to feel better.” She added quietly, more hoping that saying it out loud would make it come true than talking directly to Dacian.

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