All was not well in the world of Caina Barker.

Needless to say, she had been down and out before. She had feared for her life and had loathed the perversion of men until her blood ran sore in her veins and her stomach was sick with frothy poison. But this was worse. Oh, this was far worse. Never had her sensible pallor transcended the fine line of “normal” and “sickly.” Now she looked more like a shadow than a living person. Her bright, dark-lacquered eyes had gone cold, dangerously steely with constant suspicion of the waking world. Her soft lips were marred with the lingering impressions her teeth made on the tender skin throughout her vivid nightmares. She had contemplated moving many times, but she hadn’t the money. So instead she had thought of suicide and found herself lacking the courage to complete what she started. There were new scars highlighting the old ones along her slender wrists, and she her shame had become almost too terrible a burden to bear.

Yet somehow, life went on. Tucked back in the safety of her grey hoodie, she ambled to work and ambled home—she had had her hours changed so that she now left before sunset—to the place she now loathed above any other in the world. Without the income to move somewhere else, Caina had settled on abandoning the bedroom in favor of a much smaller room down the hall. Her bed—not her old one, of course, but a new one she’d purchased less than a week after the attack—hardly fit there, but the distance from that other, haunted room was worth the innocuous discomfort of her cramped dwellings.

Life, she had discovered, did indeed work in a balance. True, her hatred had never bit so deeply into her breast, but where something had broken, something else had taken root by means of self-preserving substitution. She was stronger. When something that should have frightened her came around, she no longer flinched. When she should have been afraid, now she was distractedly, coldly indifferent. She carried no knife anymore, for a knife she did not need. I knife would not stop him if by some sick twist of fate he came back, and he was the only thing she feared.

Ironically, he was also the one person most often on her mind. He was in her thoughts now as she sauntered quietly down the street, her eyes flicking now and again to the tiny scrap of paper with the address hastily scrawled across the front. In her other arm was a brand new dress, one she had sewn herself and one she was delivering now to the bubbly young lady who had ordered it. She was paying good money for it, too. Caina eyed the houses warily, greedily peering in through the drawn curtains to glimpse the warm people inside, their faces stretched with laughter or anger or confusion. What did they see, she wondered, when they glanced up and found her staring? She tugged the edge of the hoodie farther over her face, letting her long bangs slip down near her eyes while she counted down the number of blocks to the customer's home.

[[Like, mine is going to be totally short in comparison with yours. O.O ]]

What an illusion the sense of safety was. An illusion carried so innocently, so unknowingly, so comfortably - until some cruel person came and tore the illusion away. Once it was gone it was gone, never to return. But that wasn't enough, was it? Oh, no, it wasn't nearly enough.

Who was that, standing so casually inside the house she passed? With the dark hair and strong build and, was there a scar above that eye? For one breathless moment, for one short eternity, it was him.

But it wasn't. The black hair, the build, only coincidences. The scar nothing more than a trick of the light. Hurry on, little girl, he wasn't in that particular house.

Just don't be so sure of the next.

Were those footsteps echoing so casually behind her? Quick, turn, glance over the shoulder. But - Look, no one there. Just like before. There will never be anyone there. He'll be upon you before you know it, even when every nerve is tingling, searching for his approach.

Was that a laugh, so quiet and so full of pleasure, the vicious kind? Ears strain to hear more, to know for sure, but it's all so quiet. Quiet enough to hear the proverbial pin drop and there is no sound but for a short sigh of cold wind over the cracked sidewalk.

"Alexandra..." It was a voice! It was his. That horrible, husky voice, that deeply accented tone so wickedly pleased.

Or was it?

(Heh...I got a tad carried away.)

Paranoia. Or Insanity.

"Or maybe I'm just fucking delusional."

Who was she talking to? Her head snapped around towards a window, down the street behind her, in front of her. Nothing, nothing, no one. Glimpses of something. She clutched the bagged dress closer to her breast, the fingernails of her left hand digging into her palm hard enough to leave deep indentations. She gritted her teeth against the panic that fumbled deep in her stomach.

She saw his face in her mind's eye and ached in the many places he had cut her, some less apparent than others. Deep inside her womb, all along her spine. Strange, as the panic grew she realized the fear was gone. She wasn't afraid. Sickened, maybe. Disturbed, sure. But there was nothing left that could be done to that hadn't been done before--except maybe this damnable mind-play.

She wiped a tiny drop of sweat from her forehead with the back of her sleeve.

"Go ahead, mock me," she whispered to all the shadows that were and were not him. "You think you're clever, original. You think you're brutal, monstrous. My name's not Alexandra. You've got the wrong girl."

Maybe it was all in her mind. No voice, no husky, laughing voice came from the shadowy darkness to answer her. Silence reigned deafeningly instead and nothing seemed to penetrate it's oppressive weight.

A shadow that wasn't a shadow (or was it?) skittered just at the corner of the eye. Something tugged gently at her clothes. Normal, whole, and healthy people would disregard such little things. A cat perhaps and the wind.

Caina had to know better.

Unless, of course, she really was imagining this all. Unless it really was a cat and really was the wind. Because when you look closer, you see nothing. When glance for those fingers, there's nothing there at all.

Maybe she was just going mad. Maybe his voice, his face, his touch - maybe they were all memories. Too real to be, too evanescent not to be.

The wind picked up, sent leaves rustling fretfully on its cold edge. Hurry along, hurry along, it seemed to whisper. Don't linger here. Don't linger anywhere. You won't be safe. Hurry, hurry, hurry.

A familiar shiver took her spine by force, and her step faltered just slightly--though her expression did not change. Impassive, cold, focused. Take your pick. Make your choice. She did the wind's bidding and huried on, letting go the tainted breath that had lingered in her lungs a little too long, making her dizzy. The address flashed in chalky, black numbers, and she leaned forward as she strode up the driveway.

Chimes somewhere back in the house. A faint, warm voice bidding her to hold on for just a moment. Just a moment. That was exactly what she had. A moment. She was almost relieved.

A crunch of leaves behind her. She turned slowly, normally--it felt like forever, spinning on her heel. Nothing, of course. She wiped away another glistening bead of cold sweat and gave a terse, hoarse laugh.

"You're fucking crazy, Caina, girl."

"I'm sorry?"

Shit.

She turned around, beaming. The young woman, who had had her brow posed worriedly, beamed in return, comforted by the genuine-looking expression on Caina's face. She held out her arms eagerly as though waiting to take a baby. Caina draped the bagged dress over her anorexic-thin arms, the woman thanked her, paid her, dismissed her so that she could go answer her phone.

Whatever. She had the money. A good bit, too. The majority of which would go into her New House Jar.

She started down the sidewalk, across the lawn instead of the driveway, angled down towards home, or a more populated area. Which ever came first. Every now and then she'd do a little pirouette, looking all about with the intensity of a hunter and the heartbeat of the hunted. Alone. So unforgettably alone.

There is no such thing as a sixth sense. Not if you were a human, in any case. If there was, perhaps it should have warned Caina that her nasty, grinning ghost really was haunting her. Perhaps the hairs on the nape of her neck should have stood up, or her ears would have caught the tiny flare of sound as her ghost allowed her to slip away - for the moment.

Instead of following her, it slid into the house whose lawn she had just stepped off of, a thin fog that seemed to wait as the bone-thin woman chattered happily into the telephone.

"Oh, Linda, it's lovely. That girl you recommended, Caina, right? She does wonderful work. I'm going to have to let you go now, because I have to put it on and admire myself in the mirror." A pause. A laugh. "Yes, yes, all right. You too. 'Bye."

She dropped the phone into its cradle and rushed from the room, unaware of the skim of fog that followed her. She hummed as she striipped, as she shimmied into the dress, as she spun in front of the mirror, and smiled from ear to ear at her reflection. But the smile vanished as the arms came around her, as a hand pressed over her mouth, as the voice whispered harshly in her ear.

Caina didn't have to worry as she fled towards home or safety. Her ghost was too busy with her customer to worry about her.

Her skin prickled, her very nerves drawing on the electricity that seemed to crackle through every step in which she did not falter, every glance that did not freeze on the wicked face she was expecting to encounter in every window. There was nothing but night around her, and still she found she could not breathe so easily as if, somehow, she was suffocating very, very slowly.

So she could still fear. Only now it disclosed itself rather differently. Instead of crippling panic there was adrenaline. Instead of torment there was grim anticipation. And hatred. Cold, focused hatred like a frothy poison in her stomach.

Caina hit the block, her stride remaining steady, strong. It was urban Demaitre. Even at this hour, there would be plenty of people around to witness any sign, any glimpe of her tormentor--if indeed she was even remotely sane. Too many things seemed too similar to that other night for her to believe that she was crazy. He was here, somewhere, and she was certain of it. Her arms felt empty and awkward with nothing to carry, so she bundled them deep in her coat and continued forward at a tiny slant until she came across a tiny drugstore.

It was empty. The old man working at the counter might have been dead. But no, his scraggly beard trembled beneath his nose with his shaky breaths. Caina headed straight for the display of cigarettes, and the man jolted into wakefulness, blinking at her curiously.

"These," she slid the pack across the counter, retrieving some loose change from her pocket.

She thanked him and left, lingering in the narrow pool of light emanating from the front of the shop and. She flicked her lighter and lit up, easing her shoulderblades back against the cold wall and allowing herself a deep breath of smoky air.

Night
Lift up the shades
Let in the brilliant light of morning
But steady there now...
For I am weak and starving for mercy

Hammer absently hummed the song that had been playing on the woman's stereo as he stepped from her home, his freshly scrubbed skin going slightly numb as it was slapped by the icy night air. Tipping hish ead back slightly, he inhaled, his eyes drifting half-closed. Cold air made it harder to track by scent, but he caught a whisp and, with a slight smile, began to walk.

This was out of character for him. Hammer was not typically the sort to follow and stalk - not, in fact, the type to leave a victim alive in the first place. And yet he had and was. Strange, wasn't it?

His pace quickened to a trot. To anyone looking on, he looked like anybody else anxious to get home on the frigid night - a tall, broad man bundled into a leather jacket, head down, steam issuing when he breathed. Hammer's speed was deceptive. It looked natural, but it was too smooth to be so. He covered the same distance that a car would, but didn't look out of place.

He slowed as Caina's scent grew stronger, pausing for a moment to take another deep breath. Walking now at a normal pace, he slowly moved along the street, she had walked. His blue eyes glinted as he glanced up, they gleamed as they fell on her, practically spotlighted in the doorway of a small convenience store.

Hammer smiled, though from across the street she probably couldn't see it. So there was no way she could miss him, he lifted a hand, but then was gone in an instant. So swiftly it was questionable whether he had been there at all.

Her skin tingled all over as though kissed a thousand times by an armored wind. Every sense was heightened. Every outline was sharp and crisp like the eddge of a blade. Every scent was redoubled, processing, coursing through her consciousness like the blood pounding in her veins. It was something far more potent than fear, and sweeter. It was a vague and trilling excitement, twisted as it seemed, and it was an excitement that reached a fervent height as she tilted her slender jaw and laid her gleaming eyes on him.

A slow, long-lashed blink and he was gone, no more substantial than the air that filled her lungs to the point of bursting. One hand clutched into a crooked claw in her deep coat pocket. The other plucked the cigarette from her lips and tossed it to the ground to be crushed beneath her wide heel. Her other leg curved up, her foot against the jagged wall. Her black eyes carved a steady course up and down the quiet street, seeking out each face for any comforting detail: a smile, a gentle look. Instead, he smirked back from behind every stranger's pupil.

Caina turned and walked on, her clicking heels speaking her careless confidence. The cost of such was high. Higher, perhaps, than the value of her life itself. Still, she did not stray far from the wide pools of lamplight and wide windows of late-night drugstores and diners.

It took a certain type to see the beauty in utter terror. The way it first drained then flooded pale skin with blood, the way muscles tensed beneath skin. Terror made living sculptures out of mortals in that brief moment before he grabbed them, squeezed them so hard the bones snapped and broke through flesh.

That was the look he saw now on the girl's face. The dilating pupil, the tremor just below the surface. In the case of this particular piece of prey, it wasn't the blood that made her such a treat, it was the spice of loathing.

Hammer wanted to curl his fingers in her hair once more, wanted to see her mouth part in a sweet, strained cry of pain. But that was to be in time. Not yet, not here, it wasn't the right time or place.

Or was it?

Like a fingersnap, he changed his mind, appearing in her path like a phantom made solid. He smiled, took gneltle hold of her as she walked straight into him. "Hello again, Alexandra. Have you thought of me?"

Her thoughts were in regrettable disarray. No. No, she couldn't afford to do this. She wasn't crazy, damn it! And he wasn't there!

But he was. Somehow and in some form, he was. Perhaps because her thoughts made him so. Like a night terror, she couldn't shake it off and continue on her merry way. Muttering a steady stream of curses under her breath, she jammed the heel of one hand into her weary eye and tried to scrub away the fatigue, the discomfort...the fear. She had to get home and get to sleep. She had work to do tomorrow. Things to sew, deliveries to make. She didn't have time to go crazy.

Stuffing her hands deeper into her pockets, she bowed her head into the direction of her path and walked faster until strong hands closed gently on her arms and a gravely familiar voice made her start with alarm.

"Hello again, Alexandra. Have you thought of me?"

Her eyes widened as she stared up into his face. His face. Him. Her first reaction was to attempt to tear herself from him, but after just a moment she knew the act was pointless. She knew all too well who the stronger of the two was.

"How did you find me?" She whispered, her jaw locking tight to keep it from trembling.

"How did you find me?"

It was, Hammer thought to himself, entirely too perfect. The way her lips shook, just barely, before she firmed them toegether. The tension in her jaw, in her lovely neck. Hammer leaned in, brushed his lips over that neck to torment teh both of them. He turned his head so his mouth brushed over her ear. "Now, now, a man must 'ave his secrets..."

On a half-laugh, he caught her earlobe with his teeth and tugged lightly. "But you didn't answer my question. I've thought of you, my dear." Hammer's eyes glinted as he skimmed a finger over her cheek. "Your warm skin and how smooth it is." He leaned a little closeer, letting his hand slide down her neck. His words were gravelly whisper in her ear. "Your tears."

Then he laughed and drew back with a smile. "I think we sholl meet again sometime, luv. And sooner rather than later."

Her breath was a sharp inhalation as he touched his lips to her neck. Though she was frozen in place, her muscles screamed and ached for her to run like hell to…to anywhere but here where he was. Her stomach seemed filled with pins and poison, all of it roiling inside of her more potently with each second he was next to her. She closed her eyes, biting down hard on her tongue to keep from making a sound, to keep from trembling. But at his threat her gaze snapped to his face, and her eyes burned with unspeakable loathing.

“I’ll be dead before I let you touch me like that again. And you can fucking count on that.”

She would. She’d rather die. But she told herself that wasn’t necessary. She’d find someone who would protect her. She’d go to the police, even if they weren’t much help. She’d do something. No way was she living with this secret of him looming over her shoulder at every turn.

Spinning from him, she swung her head, left, right, and started across the street, forcing herself to not look back at where he had been standing. A touch of cold on her cheek. With a soft sound of frustration, she smudged the belated tear from her face.

Hammer only laughed once more, his hand fisting around her arm and spinning her back to him. "Let me, Alexandra? You let me do nothing, sweetie." His voice dropped once more to a throaty whisper. "I just take." To make his point, and cruedly, he kept one hand fisted around her arm, the other spread just over the swell of her breasts, but didn't touch her.

The point was, he could if he wanted to. And what would she do to stop him?

"As for death, luv..." he trailed off, holding her in place as he dipped his head let his fangs scratch against her soft neck. "That's just another question mark." Hammer grinned, his fangs in full view.

Let her tell. A monster with a man's face and an animal's ripping fangs. Who would believe her?

She twisted her arm furiously as he pulled her back, to no avail, of course. But she fell quite still, her expression frozen in a spiteful glare, as he spoke, his abominable touch just a fraction of an inch from her body. Her heart was racing faster than she'd believed possible, and it ached in her chest. He moved for her neck again and she tried her best to avoid the contact, but his teeth scathed her skin with a brutal mockery of intimacy anyway.

"Monstrous bastard," she murmured, and in that moment she looked up at him and caught sight of his fangs, bared and hideous. "Christ!"

The sound was a hoarse whisper, barely audible, and for a fraction of a second her vision grew dark as if she might faint. Forcing herself to stay at attention, she tried one more vain attempt to twist from his grip, then swallowed hard. Her stomach was roiling, her senses screaming like those of an animal cornered by its primary hunter. And perhaps, she thought...perhaps that was exactly what she was.

"What are you?" Her voice was low to keep it from shaking, but it demanded an answer. She tilted her chin forward with assumed defiance. "Tell me."

Hammer quite calmly held her in place, his hands firm upon her arms but his fingers moving restlessly, as if stroking. "You were supposed to be a quick bite," he muttered, more to himself than to her. "Instead you wormed your way under my skin and I find myself obsessed. Bloody hell."

He eyed her almost angrily. "I should have killed you then." Hammer's hands tightened slightly, then relaxed by a fraction. "Well, as for mistakes I've made a few. This'll not be the last."

Then he grinned at her pseudo-defiant question. "You seem to be a clever girl, luv, sureyl you can figure it out?" He cocked an eyebrow mockingly. "Should I pull the creature of the night act? Impress upon you my eternity, call up a nice fog in wich to swirl away?" He laughed a little. "I think not."

Hammer pulled on her arm, not so subtly pulling her away as the sparse crowd flowed around them, ignoring them like sheep did a stone. "Games," Hammer mumbled to himself, "I play my games and sometimes they get the best of me."

Caina stared up into his monstrous face, her dark eyes narrow with unmasked disgust and her lips parted slightly in shock. A quick fucking bite? Was she supposed to feel sorry for him? His hand tightened around her arm, his fingers crawling across her skin like parasites, and she bit back hard on the urge to shudder. No doubt it would please him to feel her tremble.

But his mocking words broke her resistance, and try as she did to stop it, her skin crawled. She tilted her jaw forward, attempting a mirthless laugh, but the sound was unconvincing and she could already hear him laughing at her. His explanation was ridiculous, meaningless, so why did the fear spike beneath her breast as she called to mind his sadistic grin and the jagged, ripping fangs? The word, fictitious and overused and laughable, played in her thoughts, scrabbling to make itself known. Vampire. Impossible.

"You're insane," she whispered, her eyes wide, as she put forth another futile attempt to free herself.

And then he was pulling her forward, dragging her from her makeshift haven, the safe pool of light. He was pulling her, and her knees went week, her face cold. He was pulling her, and she was going with him, and the panic struck at last.

"No!" She twisted away from him, her arm burning and screaming and his grip not easing. "No! Let me go! Please...someone help me!"

Hammer hardly spared her a glance as she questioned his sanity. "Maybe so, luv, but don't play coy. You saw 'em, di'n't you? If you can't believe your eyes," he flashed her another fang-filled grin, "what can you believe?"

Damn girl. Something about her made her more interesting than God only knew how many pretty little things he'd fucked and killed over the years. Hammer couldn't tell you waht. Just that he hadn't killed her when he always killed them. It was strange, weren't it?

In some ways, Hammer was a simple sort. She had something about her that intrigeud him and gave him a raging case of the stiffies. To make it go away, he figured he ought to just take her and pound out that case and see if that helped. If it didn't, well, he'd figure something else out.

As she started to scream, he twisted, driving her back until her back aws slammed against a building wall. He slapped a hand over her mouth, his head bending down close to hers in the guies of a ferocious kiss. "You scream, and I tear your tongue out. Then I'm gone 'fore any of these fine people catch a glimpse. Understand?"

Sharp pain cracked down her back. She gasped against his hand, closing her eyes hard to cut off the sudden tears that sprang up in the corners of her eyes. Trembling as he bowed close to her, she turned her face away from his and nodded. She opened her eyes and her blurred vision cleared. People were still walking by, just walking, not one of them even bothering to glance her way. Something cold and sickly, something rather like rage and despair, cleared her muddled thoughts. She wasn't getting away.

She fought the urge to cringe as he flashed her another nasty grin. Vampires didn't exist. Period, end of story. She'd known people in high school who'd half believed themselves to be vampires, but they were just kids being kids. Obsessive, often depressed, social outcasts. Still, while she knew nothing about her captor, she knew people, and he wasn't one of those types. He was a thousand times more dangerous than any of those types. He was either genuinely crazy, or he was telling the truth. Either way, her point was only reaffirmed: she was going with him.

But it was a strange thing. There was something similar in his touch that she hadn't recognized before, something familiar to that of someone else she knew and cared for. The mere thought of him brought to mind so many things: the muscles of his shoulders, the curve of his back, his cold, thoughtful eyes. His frigid touch. She looked up at her captor as he continued to tug her along, refusing to acknowledge the sinister connection.

Hammer studied her face a moment longer before letting his hand drop. His breath blew out. "Good." The vampire glanced around as if curious, once more pleased and surprised by the ability humans had to ignore anything that might be remotely dangeorus or sticky. Grip still firm upon her arm, he tugged her on again, moving through the mortals with unnatural grace for a man as broad as he. Perks of being what he was.

It didn't take long for the two to leave the false security of the milling people. All it took was a quick turn down a side street and they were in a deserted alley, as if the other had never existed at all. Hammer spun Caina into him, his arms wrapping tightly around her as if in an embrace. "You're gonna want to hold on tight, cutie," he warned her, a moment before springing off of the ground like an enormous flea. Hammer couldn't fly, but he could cover ground quickly this way.

He debated where exactly he was taking her. Hammer could still remember where her apartment was and that was the most logical place to go. But he moved in another direction entirely, towards his own apartment. Not one of the crapholes he used as sort of bases, but the place he actually lived - in a manner of speaking.

Caina followed him in silence, glancing up at what little she could see of his face every now and again before reverting her gaze to the sidewalk. Her arm was beginning to ache under his hand, and she twisted it slowly, not gaining much freedom from the gesture and not expecting to. She felt as though she might be physically sick at any given instant, and she couldn't get her pulse to steady itself. What if she died tonight? It was more than possible, more than likely. What if she died with him beside her, smug to see her bleed?

Her head reeled and she stumbled, but within the very same instant he pulled her off balance anyway and into his crushing arms. She shuddered as her face was forcibly pressed to his unyielding chest and closed her eyes. Without thinking about why he asked what he had, she obeyed and wrapped her hands about his upper arms. And then her feet were no longer on the ground and her eyes snapped open to the street and what seemed like half the city beneath them. Her lips parted in alarm, but any noise she might have made was instantly ripped away by the wind as he literally carried her across the rooftops. Her fingers curled into his arms, her nails burrowing into his freakishly impassive skin.

Sick, cold dread flooded her limbs so that all she truly do was hold on. Her wide eyes flicked to his devilish face, then back to the buildings that slipped past with abnormal quickness. She thought of his fierce grin, his hard words, and all the pain of their last encounter some time ago. Monster. Tears slipped from her eyes, but whether they were strictly pulled from her by the wind or were genuine tears of panic was impossible to say. Vampire. She closed her eyes again and turned towards his chest, afraid she might actually be sick.

OOC: I like being evil entirely too much. :blink:

Flight, Hammer had often thought, must be exhiliarating. But this was just as good, in his opinion. Bounding from rooftop to rooftop, or clearing one in just a single leap. Perhaps he ought to put on tights and a cape one of these days and convince the little humans he was Supernam. Hammer nearly laughed aloud at the thought of him impersonating a hero. That would be one hell of a joke, wouldn't it?

He hardly felt the way her fingers dug into his arms, glancing down when the tiny sting made him notice. No matter, it wasn't as if she were foolishly trying to hurt him, only doing as he had said and holding on tightly. Looking at her face, eyes squeezed dtightly shut and pressed against his chest, Hammer again wondered why he was even bothering with this whole affair. He was taking her to his hojme for gods sake when it would have been simpler to snap her neck and be done with it. But there was something about her that just fascinated him and he wanted to do some in-depth study as to what.

You know, before he snapped her neck. That was the only way this could end, her death. The idea that he would keep her or let her live... ludicrous. Positivlty.

Hammer stopped moving at last, his breath coming a little quickly from the exertin of vaulting from one roof to the next. He was so cold, however, that it did not puff out into the air as it should have - which was a bit eerie. They were clinging to the side of a wall, almost a skyscarper. His apartment building. And Hammer was all the way at the top. Doing what he did paid enormously well and Hammer spent enormously as well. Like a crab, almost, he scampered up the straight up the wall to a small balcony where he hopped over the railing to open the door.

If you were thinking of the type of place Hammer might live, his apratemnt was everything you hadn't imagined. It was clean and tidy as a pin, which seemed incongruant with the vampire himself. And, oh yes, it screamed money. Thick carpet a king could comfortably sleep on, Oriental rugs, heavy and deeply manly mahogany furniture polished to a gloss - the whole nine yards. Hammer walked in, carelessly tossing his leather coat onto a wide-backed armchair to reveal a snug long-sleeved shirt beneath.

He didn't turn as he addressed Caina. "You can try and run if you like. I'll just catch uou. But, if you're desperate, you can take a flyer off the balcony. Were about fifteen stories up."

OOC: And you do it so well! Which is totally a compliment! :mwaha:

Her eyes snapped open again as they stopped, but she looked too soon. The entire city seemed to loom below, and the only thing keeping her on the side of the damned building was him. He let her go and she stumbled to her feet, more than slightly disoriented by what she had just witnessed. Surely this wasn't real. Surely this was just another nightmare. They'd flown across what seemed like half of Demaitre in a matter of minutes, spidered up a vertical wall as though gravity was a fictional, self-imposed limitation. Surely she'd wake up in bed, a fine, feverish sweat on her brow and nothing worse for it.

But she knew the truth, knew that she was here and he was there and she might very well not be alive much longer. Before he'd even given her his by now standard warning, she was back at the balcony and peering down over the ledge, taking in the view herself. Tiny, glinting lights floated lazily along, the street hardly visible from such a height. She caught her breath and took a sharp step back. It was a long, long flight to the bottom. Maybe it was worth it?

"Not worth jumping after, huh?"

She turned, staring hard at his turned figure. Stepping forward, she placed her hand on the doorway and lingered there, neither inside nor outside but in-between as if the indecision of the one slender spot might somehow provide her a barrier between her...and him. Her gaze unintentionally flicked across the room, noting the smaller details and trying to tie them in to what little she knew of him.

"Must pay well," she murmured, swallowing the perverse lump in her throat.

Hammer smiled a little at her question. “I’z not that,” he replied, finally turning so he wasn’t speaking to her over his shoulder. “I can’t fly.” At ease, he crossed to a small end table, pouring a glass of gin and gesturing towards the door with it as he continued, “That was leaping. You jump, you go splat. I go out after you, I go splat.” He smiled again. “Even I can’t fall fifteen stories without it leaving a mark. I’d not advise you to try pushing me offa balconies, though. Might piss me off some.” Ignoring the fact that he had, technically, kidnapped her, Hammer lifted the decanter of gin again. “Drink? You’ll not be leaving any time soon. Might’s well be comfortable. Or drunk.” He shrugged truck-like shoulders. “Either, both.”

Hammer walked over towards her, pausing in front of Caina as if he were about to touch her, or kiss her, or something, but then moved out onto the balcony. “Helluva view,” he commented, though more to himself than her. If, when he’d been a raw young soldier, someone had told him he’d see great cities one day, and to be honest Demaitre was small in comparison to such sprawling metropolises as New York or Tokyo, he’d have laughed them onto their ass. And yet, here he was. Helluva thing.

As she spoke again, though seemingly in a self-directed mumble rather than at him, he took another sip of the gin. “Being a vampire?” he asked, turning to rest his elbows on the balcony railing – the picture of the perfect affluent gentleman at home. Hammer’s night blue eyes studied her face as he idly swirled the liquid in the glass. “Or being a rapist? Because, the first not necessarily. The second... well, it depends.”

At his response she began to tremble, and her fingers unwittingly curled around the balcony rail until her knuckles had gone quite pale. Perhaps she'd have that drink after all. She left him on the balcony, her head beginning to spin again as she took small, measured steps to the table. She lifted the glass, staring hard into the pale liquid and biting harder into her lip. Drunk. Caina had only been drunk a couple of times before and hadn't cared for it much, but the idea was starting to sound pretty good now.

Sipping hesitantly at the bitter drink, she forced her feet to move, to carry her back outside. Standing around inside his home left her feeling claustrophobic, contained, like he might corner her at any given moment and she wouldn't even have the choice of taking her own life before he could. Even if it was ultimately pointless, she felt safer outside. And he was there. Hate him as she did, it was better to not play games than to make him think she was up to something.

As expected, the cool night air helped. She reached the railing and closed her eyes for a moment, wondering what they must look like, the two of them, to a passerby. Casual friends, perhaps. Maybe even lovers. Certainly not a vampire rapist and his unwilling plaything. She could have laughed.

"So," she murmured and leaned into the rail, her dark eyes opening to the electric cityscape, "do you have a name?"

Hammer watched as she clenched her fingers aroun d the railing as if she wanted to throttle it or, perhaps more accurately, was hanging on for dear life. He took a drink, studying her, every inch of her, the way a full cat might study a mouse it was debating eating. He didn't bother hiding that he was staring - why would he? She knew he wanted her, less she was stupendously stupid. There was something about the way she moved that made him want to lick his lips and lean in and plant them somewhere.

Her back was to him and he remembered the way the muscles beneath the skin had trembled as he'd run her knife over it, throug h the pale curtain of skin. Hammer wondered if it had scarred and, if it had, if she would still taste of fear and defiance when he split the scar open again. She returned with a glass of her own, though she didnt appear to enjoy the taste of gin very much. "Nice view," Hammer remarked, a twist to his voice that suggested mockery at the wayh er eyes sought out said view and not him.

He was still watching her, long and speculative looks out of those dark blue-black eyes that seemed to strip her every bit as bare as his hands could. "Edmund," Hammer replied after a momen'ts hesitation, "Edmund Mallet. Won't find it in the phonebook though."

"So," he began, mimicking her and turning his face from her and to the view, one finger casually, posessively, trailing along her spine beneath her jacket, "tell me, Alexandra, why don't you jump?"

Her glass clattered lightly against the railing in time with her trembling hand. Frustrated, she clutched her drink harder and brought it again to her lips, wincing at the taste but urging it to do its thing to her nerves.

"Should I? Should I jump?"

She turned her head to look hard at him, as if the answer was one she truly wanted. Maybe it was. The end he had planned for her was likely to be considerably more painful and no less undignified than the flight to the pavement below, so why hadn't she done what was in her best interest and thrown herself from the damned balcony yet? It was because, despite how she tried, her bravery could not convince her to let go. She was proud, and that pride extended to her appreciation of her own existence. She was certainly not the most beautiful woman in the world, nor was she the strongest, the most intelligent. But Caina Barker was proud, and she would continue to cling to her survival until the very last instant before it was torn from her.

"I'm sure you know what it's like," she replied, her voice detached, cold. "The will to survive. Some people can let it go if they feel they should or if it's necessary. Others can't. They cling to life even when they'd be wiser to let it go. Don't they?"

She looked away from him again, staring out and down at the pavement, trying to place herself there, her limbs broken, her blood a bright, bright red. She raised her glass and took another drink.

OOC: This makes me go *cheshire cat*. It's just so funny, the two of them having a nice chat on the balcony after he hops her halfway across the city and alll

"Should I? Should I jump?"

Hammer drained his glass, considering. "Well now, tha's up to you, idn't it? Some folk... they'd ratha die than be in pain, ratha die than face a sticky, hard life. Others keep their chin up no matter how many times someone hits it with a fist." He held the glass loosely between his fingers, dangling over the edge, then let go. It seemed to fall and fall and fall, though surely they weren't that high up, befoure landing with the muffled tinkle of shattering. Hammer looked at the small blotch of broken glass. "In the end, really, essentially the smae thing happens to you - should you jump. Only a big bit messier."

He smiled and, sicne his hands were empty now, pleased himself by brushing the back of one over the back of her neck, feathering his fingers in a light caress. "It's been a long time since I felt the 'will to survive' as you mean it. I'm not dead because I've chosen not to be dead - because there's always something new a decade around the corner. An atomic bomb, LSD, Star Wars, the Internet. The more you humans invent, the more I wonder what it's gonna be next." Hammer fell silent, his fingers playing lightly with her dark hair. Likely they did look like lovers.

"I wasn't the first man to rape you, Alexandra." Hammer said, in a rather abrupt change of subjet. "Tell me, was it the other vampire who was?"

"My mom's boyfriend," she murmured, unable to tear her gaze from the sparkling ring of glass on the pavement below. "I don't even know what the bastard's name was."

The man had been a nothing, just like every other man her mother had ever dated, including her father. But unlike Hammer, the man who had raped her before had been weak, cowardly. He hadn't so much as looked at her even as he forced her down onto her bed again and again. Had she been older, she would have killed him. But she had been a child, had thought she deserved no better. So what did that make Hammer? A better man? Or worse? Or just another one of many inseparable evils? His fingers began to twist through her hair, and she took a sudden step back, turning to face him with a perfect glare in her eyes. How she hated him--and, fortunately masked by the hatred, feared him. How she wished she could crack that sick, smug demeanor and see him really howl in pain. Even if it was the last thing she ever saw.

"Other vampire? What do you mean?" Her venomous stare softened the slightest bit, the hatred temporarily replaced with curiosity. Any doubt that he was telling the truth had dissipated by now, though she had no idea what being a supposed "vampire" could entail. Was he like a thing from the movies, and if so, which ones? Had she been a religious girl, could she have warded him away? Would he die if she found something sharp enough, strong enough to gash into his stony chest?

A mother's boyfriend... Hammer thought abbout it for a few moments. "You must have been younger then," he mused aloud, a sudden thought coming to him as he wondered about what made people what they were. What would pretty, prickly, fiesty Alexandra have been like if her mother had had a different boyfriend? Would their paths have even crossed? Never knew, did ya?

As she spun to glare at him, he met her poisonous stare with only a quick, flipapnt grin. Their faces were lit by the orange glow of city lights, the two of them, givng an odd and ghostly cast. He the grinning, cackling jack-o-lantern a few months too early; her the furious, ineffectual phantom. Unperturbed by her anger and disgust, he ran his fingers down her arm to bracelet her wrist. Holding it firmly, but not clenching, he tugged her inside. If she'd wanted to jump, she'd missed her chance.

"You've been with another vampire. I can sense it. Immortals leave a smell quite unlike anything else." Hammer glanced at her as he poured himself another short glass of gin. "But this one... it's faded and vague. Either it was some time ago, or he was young - even younger than me." He toko a sip and shrugged. "Or both."

“I was four or five, I think. I don’t really remember,” she replied, blank-faced. Not that he cared. So why was she bothering telling him. Now that she thought about it, she was probably just giving him ideas.

She watched his hand trail down to her wrist and lock there, her glare quickly melting into a wide-eyed, knowing stare as he drew her away from any lingering semblance of comfort the night air could have given her…and her one chance to get away from him before he could do whatever he had planned for her this evening. But she bit back the fear and struggled to keep calm. She’d kept him talking this long. Maybe she could keep it up. Maybe something would come to her. And maybe a fucking vampire slayer would burst in the door and stake him in the heart before whisking her away from his eerily kempt apartment and back into her life pre-Hammer.

No, if something was going to be done, she was going to have to be the one to do it. That meant paying close attention. Or sticking with the original plan and getting very drunk. She bit her lip and took another drink. Being the inexperienced, occasional binge-drinker that she was, she was already noticing a bit of a buzz. Lovely.

“And how do you tell a vampire from any other man? I imagine he’d have to be pretty pale, right? Cold skin? Elusive?” She paused, tapping her nail against her glass as she watched him. “Like you?” Her gaze wandered to his glass, then flitted back to his hard eyes. He'd asked his questions. She had a few of her own. Might as well see what she could get away with. "Can you get drunk?"

To be honest, Hammer didn't quite know why he was wasting time talking to her rather than... well, that was the other thing he didn't quite knkow. He couldh ave killed ehr at any time. Had wanted to. And yet - hadn't. Of course, that went all the way back to their first encounter. Why hadn't he killed her then? To make her... suffer more? Since when had he looked byond the smash and kill of the whole affair? Never. So why now?

His hand flexed over her wrist, tightening to the point of pain before letting up, before he let her go, so confident was he thta she could not elave. Hammer drank deeply of the gin like a man might water - unmindful of the possible side effects. And why not? His tolerence for liquor had always been high.

"It's harder for you. When I see another, I simply know. The scent, the feel of the air, and in some, the aura of power. For you..." Hammer frowned a little thinking on it. "Cold skin, sure, in some. Pale, again, in some. Black vampires, not so much. And even some of the yonger ones can hold their living tan and a few that I know of actuall look human after they've freshly fed." He shrugged and took another drink. "Depends on the vamp."

He glanced over at her at her next question, another smile crossing his face. "Are you wondering if I'll drink enough of this that you can stick a stake in me chest and run off? Sorry, blackbird, but it'd take near a gallon of this - " he shook the glass of gin " - to get me drunk. Vampiric constitution and what have you."

"Figured it was worth a shot," she murmured honestly, pacing in deliberately slow, light steps about the perimeter of the room. It was clear she wasn't going anywhere that he couldn't immediately catch her. Fine. She was a nervous pacer. "So you're a sneaky lot. Guess you'd have to be, what with not having been discovered by the human populous and all."

Another drink. She was starting to feel a bit numb, but it was difficult to differentiate between drunkenness and slow, slow panic. She staunched the feeling before it could well up again. It was a pointless, and at this point reckless, emotion to give into. She paused when she'd reached the other side of the room and quietly began to make her way back until she was about in the middle.

"What about crosses? And all that religious, holy stuff? Does that have any effect on you?"

True, she was doing a bit of a dance, here. She wanted to distract him, but she was also genuinely curious. Not that she had a damn cross on her, but even vaguely knowing Hammer, well, one cross probably wouldn't have made all that much of a difference. Had she held it up to ward him away or whatever you did with it, he could have easily snapped her wrist and been done with it.

"Tricky, aren't you, blackbird?" Hammer asked aloud, though he didn't expect an answer. "But honesty is a virtue, 'tis." He listened, swirling his drink pointlessly as he watched her pacing around the room with all the tnesion of a trapped cat. "Sneaky? S'pose ya could say such. But really, haven't got a choice in the matter, have we? Ask me, 's moer fun this way, being the ghouls that nobody thinks are real. Til we show 'em we are, now tha makes some priceless moments." Like hers, though he didn't add that.

His hard blue eyes studied the level of alcohol still remaining in her glass. Not too much. Well, seemed she was taking his advice and getting nice and drunk, eh? Hammer figured it would be something of a sight to see little Alexandra toasted. He focused again on her next question. "Well, tha's a 'nother thing that I think varies from vampire to vampire. Holy symbols and all. I've met a few that holy water, crosses, crucifixes, etc. doesn't bother in the slightest. Come to think, though, those're mos'ly the older sort. The pre-Christian sort. I di'n't ask, but it makes ya wonder if older holy symbols give 'em a sting."

He drank a little more. "Course, I'd not advise ya to go toss holy water on a vampire. If it does bother them, it'd likely just piss 'em the hell off."

She was still pacing, back and forth, around and around. She turned and bumped solidly into Hammer, who set his glass on the polished mahogany coffee table. He wanted a drink of a different sort now. He took her wrist again, his thick fingers surprisingly delicate as he lifted her pale, pale arm, studied the eqully pale scars adorning it. His eyes lifted to hers, burning, as he brought his lips to her forearm, as his lip curled upwards to reveal oddly flattened fangs that pierced her skin with the ease and delicacy of a scalpel.

Virtue. Coming from him, that was a fucking joke. He was enjoying himself already, she was certain. He loved his little game of cat and mouse, and that was why he hadn't killed her yet. But of all the mice in Demaitre, Caina wasn't sure why she'd been picked to play the part. She watched, she listened. But despite the alcohol in her veins, she was starting to get tense and restless. There was only so long she could keep him talking. Once he got bored of their civil little chatting, her time was up.

Caina turned again, her eye not on him for maybe half a second, and then he was in front of her. She started and took a quick step back from him, her eyes widening with alarm as he took her arm with a gentleness more menacing than if he'd flat out struck her across the face. His cold eyes locked with hers and she froze, her arm involuntarily trembling as he brought it to his lips. She caught a flash of his vicious fangs once briefly before they vanished into her skin. Crying out at the sudden, searing pain, her grip quickly weakened to the point of uselessness and her glass crashed to the floor.

She'd forgotten the feeling, or her clouded memory of it didn't do it justice. It was an instantaneous helplessness or weakness. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. She could barely stand. She could only watch him watch her as he bit further and further into her skin. Her blood welled up immediately about his lips, some spilling in slow, deep tendrils across her arm. She clenched her teeth and looked away, her breast heaving with each uneven gasp.

It didn't matter how many throats he'd opened, how many veins he'd sliced, the taste of blood was as seductive as it had been the first time he'd gulped at it. Hammer could still remember his first kill, the wild frenzy of ripping and screaming as he'd torn into the soft little human. He'd had no finesse then, even compared to what he was like now. Now he sipped instead of feasting gluttonously. His yees had dipped down to that soft white skin of her arm, but lifted again as she cried out and the glass shattered to the floor. His fangs pulled, reluctantly it seemed, from her flesh and he pulled her closer, his mouth moving to lap almost delicately at the flowing blood.

Hammer could remember being bitten, vaguely. The burn of it, as keen as ice, the underlying tension. It was agony, a searing agony he couldn't help but crave. Anod though he'd rarely thought of it since that day, he wondered now if it was the same for little Alexandra now - or if it was simply pain. He bit down again, though without puncturing skin, suckling hard at the bleeding wound.

Her breath caught in her throat with an audible gasp as he pulled his fangs from her skin. Their eyes met for a moment as he drew her closer and pursued the bleeding wounds. She swallowed hard and looked away, her stomach wrenching with revulsion, but her entire body seeming to shudder with something darker and more complicated than disgust. The searing pain was beginning to subside to a dull, persistent ache that only heightened when he forced the blood. It was the dizziness that was becoming overwhelming, and she closed her eyes against the slowly revolving room. She inhaled sharply, clenching her teeth as he pulled away at the tattered skin of her arm, her fingers inadvertently reaching out for something to keep her standing and finding nothing but air. Air or him. Her hand trailed feebly back to her side.

He bit down again, aggravating the incision to the point of dizzying pain and something else, something deeper and perhaps even more primeval than the pain, but she could only afford to breathe a quavering sigh. But it was apparent that she could not stand now if she did not touch him, and so it was that she placed her hand on his shoulder and alleviated some of her weight from her own unreliable legs. She could feel her heart racing in her chest, unintentionally betraying itself - each quickened beat was more blood lost, now, and she could not remove her arm from his grasp.

Look at them and be puzzled, for what two creatures were more divergent than Edmund "Hammer" Mallet and Alexandra Caina Barker? He the confident, to a fault, and violent to boot. And she? What was she anyway? Hammer knew nothing about her besides the least meaningful - her body. And that had not even been given to him willingly. But, no, perhaps he was wrong in that. Didn't he know what was surely her deepest, darkest secret? He gave one last, reluctantly last, pull at her wounded arm as her other hand closed on his shoulder and her weight leaned against him. Hammer could see her weakness almost like a smoke that spun around her head.

Smoothly and, perhaps, unexpectedly he lifted her, sweeping one iron arm at her knees as he took her into his arms as if a bride. What a strange picture, indeed. He smiled, as he was apt to do, but didn't carry her far, only to the plush leather couch - though, granted, the couch could have easily doubled as a bed. "Hurts, doen't it?" Hammer lifted his still partly full glass of gin as he sank into the soft sofa, tipped the clear contents over the bite on her arm. Removing a handkercheif from his inner pocket, he tied the white cloth into a makeshift bandage.

But his humor was black and calling for something a little more entertaining than a simple bite. So he laid his lips to hers, with his own blood on his tongue. "Drink... or die," he lied.

”Hurts, doesn’t it?”

His words sounded a bit slurred, but so did every other little sound. There was something wrong with her head. But then she’d never lost a great deal of blood—perhaps this was supposed to happen? Opting to block him out, Caina dared a glance at the messy laceration on her arm and couldn’t help but wonder what alternate universe she somehow had fallen into where vampires existed and flitted up walls and lived in swanky apartments drinking gin and raping women.

She was about to dizzily mumble something to the effect of what a perfect bastard he was when he doused her wound with the alcohol from his glass. Her eyes shut, her teeth clenched. Seemingly every muscle in her body tensed in unison as she stifled a potential scream of searing pain to a broken whimper. But the feel of his fingers on her arm made her crack open a bleary eye to—a handkerchief?

“What the hell are you doing?” She rasped, but his lips were nearly touching hers and a cold wave of familiar fear momentarily doused her anger.

”Drink…or die.”

For a moment or two she could only stare, her dark eyes appearing all the darker in contrast with her drained pallor. But the fear in them ebbed into disgust.

“No,” she shoved at him and only just bit back another cry as her wounded arm rebelled. Shaking- with anger, with fear, and not least of all with a strange, drained exhaustion- she twisted her lips away from his and tried to wedge her good arm between them.

Hammer gave a grin and then pressed his lips to the white, makeshift bandage in a quick kiss that left a trace of blood behind. "Wha's it look like I'm doing, dollbaby?" He wiggled his thick fingers. "Never was no good at stichen." Hammer finished tying it off with a slighty flourish, knotting the kercheif securely around her slender arm.

As she tried to push him away, he only grinned. "Alright, I lied. You won't die," he admitted. His fingers trailed over the bandage, alread showing the slightest kiss of blood. Shrugging his trucklike shoulders, he leaned in over her protests to nip slightly at ehr lower lip. "Could lose the arm though," he added as he squeezed it almost playfully.

"I can make you, you know. Wouldn't be pleasant at all." His grin flashed back over his face. "B'sides, I'd think you'd jump at the chance to bite me, to draw blood."