De-fray [Clover]

[Jesse Fforde]

There were some things that Victor said, not too long ago. Some things that he tried to discard. Or, well, he hadn’t tried to discard them but when Jesse accused Victor as calling him out as a shitty sire, he tried to retaliate. To say that’s not what he’d meant at all. But still – there are some things that Victor had said that have Jesse thinking about his own actions. Or lack thereof.

No, he does not believe that all he offers is a safe place and a thumbs up to those he sires. What he does believe, what he has faith in, is the independence of those he sires. Though he stays with them in the beginning to teach them what they need to know, the basics, everything that he can teach them to help them along, beyond that, he has faith that, should they need him, they know where to find him.

As for the Crownet – it’s a ******* internet forum. Never has Jesse ever placed any kind of weighty importance on these forums. Where he’s mostly silent face to face, he’s also grown rather silent on the internet, too. The internet is a breeding ground of misinterpretation and misunderstanding. One cannot convey tone on the internet, whether by pitch of voice or by bodily gesture. Far too much drama has resulted from Jesse’s involvement on the internet, so he’d taken a step back.

But he still reads. He still pays attention to what people are doing – and the things that they must deem important enough to broadcast to their family. First, the thing that bothered him was Abigail – talking about someone harming her family, but not elaborating. And then there’s Clover – missing a hand, and shot by cops. ******* cops. What has he done wrong, that these new progeny of his can’t seem to evade the authorities?

It’s her latest vagueness that has him picking up his phone to text her. She is his newest. And maybe he let her go and gave her independence too soon. He swipes the screen and opens the messages. He selects Clover’s name, and types:

Who’s the ********? We should catch up.

Of course he has an idea. An instinctive gut feeling at who she’s pissed with. But he could be wrong, and he knows better than to jump to conclusions. Best to talk to her, first. Face to face, so as to avoid any misunderstanding.

And there he waits, lingering at the entrance to the Caverns; the brisk coldness of the air sinks beneath his clothing. The Salamander has crawled beneath the collar of his jacket. But he enjoys the fresh air – and the cold doesn’t bother him anyway.

[Attire]

[Clover]

[clothes]

Clover pulled her wool-blend cardigan tighter around herself and cut across the lawns of Larch Court. The frozen grass and fallen leaves crunched under her heavy footsteps, giving way beneath her white sneakers. If it weren’t for her job, she might have stayed in the family house, avoiding the cold and the snow.

After the cops and the hunters, she felt like vegging out, melting into the sofa as if the two were conjoined. She couldn’t break into businesses without attracting further attention, so she relied on her job. She’d spent hours washing dishes, doing all the mindless work in the kitchen, but she’d run out of tasks and out of time. She’d tried wasting time at the Handle Bar, but she’d spent too many nights there. That sent her back home. No, not home. The place wasn’t a home.

She swung her right foot forward and destroyed a neat pile of leaves, sending the brown, broken leaves scattering in the breeze. Some pieces of leaves clung to the white fabric of her sneakers and the bottom of her blue jeans. Just as she bent down to brush the remnants away, she felt her cell phone buzzing against her hip.

No one called her; she used her phone for texting or surfing the next. When she saw the little smiley face at the top of her status bar, she pulled the menu down and stared at the name. It was a text message, a text message from her sire.

“Great,” she growled, tempted to delete the message.

Who’s the ********? We should catch up.

He typed out the message as if they were friends that needed to reacquaint themselves. As if he cared what she ranted about on the net. He’d made it perfectly clear that her problems were her problems unless she did something big, like breaking the masquerade, in which case he would end her life. Yes, she was still angry about his comment.

You.

She forgot all about cleaning the broken bits of leaves from her shoes and clothing. She replied to his text and then used her tome to enter the family home. Her fingertips dancing across the touchscreen, she fired off another text.

Why the hell would I show up? So you can shoot me? **** you.

No, she backspaced on the message and continued her stalking by circling around the room. If she sent that message, he would have--she didn’t want to know what he would have done. She hated to admit to herself, and she refused to admit it to anyone else, but Jesse scared her. She was afraid he’d change his mind about her and kill her.

Where do you want to meet? I’m at the house, Larch Court.

Maybe it was the blood or maybe she acknowledged her own backbone, but she felt like meeting him face-to-face.

[Jesse Fforde]

While he waits, Jesse pulls the pack of cigarettes from his back pocket. The pack is slightly crushed, but the sticks inside are still entirely serviceable. The lighter he wields is silver, and it clinks as he opens it, as his thumb flicks switch to bring the fire to life. The tiny flame dances in the cold air; it rebels against its polar opposite. It refuses to be doused. For a few long seconds Jesse is distracted by the tiny flame, by the searing blue at its heart. His eyes are the colour of that blue; the heat at the heart of the flame.

And then the moment is gone, and the lighter is back in his pocket. Air is sucked into his lungs through the cigarette, and the burn at the back of his throat, constant and irritating, is distracted. It doesn’t go away, but at least it is joined by another source of irritation. The addiction of the nicotine that hadn’t gone away after he’d been turned, but which now had no ulterior effects.

The phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out. Larch Court. Easy.

The cigarette drops to the icy ground. Although there’s no chance of a fire in these conditions, Jesse still stamps out the butt of the cigarette. It’s habit. He shoves the phone away, and reached into the inner pocket of his jacket for the tome that would take him back to the Eyrie. Although he has attempted to make all of Fforde a tome to take them to Larch Court, Jesse has other means by which he gets there.

He keeps his head down and his path straight as he heads for the Elevator in the Eyrie – as that elevator takes him up to his hut. And from there, to the portal that would drop him in the same place where it drops everyone else – just by the stairs in the basement. It doesn’t take him long to shed his weapons and lean them by the door; to peel away his jacket. There’s dirt smeared over his cheek and forehead. There’s blood splattered on the white front of his t-shirt. The messenger back over his shoulder rattles pleasingly, all the rocks and gems inside that’ll make him a small fortune when he sells them.

It had been about five minutes since Clover had sent her message.

”Clover,” he greets. He clears his throat. Habit. ”How’s the hand?” he asks, voice at his usual pitch, a broken husk. Because, well, severed aren’t really the forte of cops and hunters. Severed hands are something else entirely.

[Clover]

Clover had been pacing for a few minutes, still dressed in her thick cardigan, when she truly felt the oppression of the room. She wasn’t hot, but she felt itchy. She felt swallowed by the larger item of clothing. In a momentary surge of irritation, Clover tugged the cardigan off and threw it to the side, where it slid across the floor and met the wall. What was she going to say?

The brunette didn’t notice when she ceased having the room to herself. She was too busy going over every possible scenario, each one ending with her subsequent banishment. Her mouth had a way of getting the best of her. She couldn’t explain why, just that she’d been so on edge. Every little thing got on her nerves. And then there was her failed attempts at feeding and stealing and so many other actions.

When she heard her name, she jumped and grabbed for her gun, It was only him. That thought left her relieved, but it took her longer to lower her weapon. She had to force herself to lower her left hand. It was her sire and she didn’t shoot her sire. There was no danger. He wasn’t going to shoot her, after all.

“It still doesn’t exist,” she sighed, returning her gun to the back of her jeans. She didn’t need to show off her right hand, or the lack of a right hand. Since she’d removed her cardigan, she was in a short-sleeved shirt, leaving the wound for all to see. “I think it’ll really start healing tonight. But what would I know? I’m not an expert.”

Bitter. That was the theme she noticed within her own response. She had expected something more than she had received. She had expected when she knew better than to expect anything. Looking down at what remained of her right wrist, she saw a splatter of blood on her shirt, probably leftover from her time at the bar. The blood had dried long ago, but it had soaked into the fabric.

She looked over at her sire to gauge whether or not he would notice if she tried to lick at the spot, but he also had blood on his shirt. Blood that looked lovely set against the white background. The age depended on the spot and on the layer of said splotches. Blood like the liquid that had graced her glass less than an hour ago. She didn’t care if he said anything, or if she was expected to say anything else. If she inhaled, truly inhaled, she smelled the blood.

[Jesse Fforde]

The tone doesn’t upset Jesse, even though his eyes narrow. The expression otherwise is mild and blank; the narrowing of eyes is not anger, or irritation. It’s mainly curiosity. The vibe he gets from Clover is not one of welcome. The answer is snippy. There’s another reason why he hasn’t asked about Clover’s hand earlier; why the lack of concern seems reasonable. The hand will grow back. They always grow back. They heal. She’s not dead. It’ll take Jesse a while to realise that it might take a while for some people to adjust, and that they might some modicum of sympathy when injured in such a way.

Catching up is a mild way of putting it. Jesse knows he needs to have a discussion with Clover; that he needs to try to soothe her anger – to figure out what exactly she’s angry about – and try to dissuade her from the emotion. Unless it’s something that he condones, in which case he’ll encourage her anger, and join in. Conversations, however, have never been Jesse’s forte. He has no skills in the area of social nicety or in… well, in being at all in any way nurturing. It’s all very new to him. But deep down, he knows it has to be done. Maybe it’s an obligation. But he’s walking into it willingly.

A few heavy seconds had passed within which he’d just assessed Clover; her mood, her well-being. He doesn’t miss the blood on her shirt; he knows that he, too, is home to a few grimy patches. Again, he clears his throat. The kitchen upstairs is well stocked.

”C’mon,” he says. His feet collide with the staircase and he takes them, two at a time, upward. Defying gravity. If she chooses to follow, she’ll find him busy in the kitchen; two large glasses at hand, tearing corners away from blood packs to pour them into the glasses. The glasses that he will zap in the microwave. Because blood is always better when warm.

”Talk to me,” he says without lifting his eyes from the work at hand.

”It’s obvious you’re not happy. Let me have it,” he says. He glances up. Brows arched. Waiting.

[Clover]

The spell was broken with the simple request and she watched him walk away. Clover was supposed to follow him, but she took her time. She was in no hurry, not when he was waiting at the top of the stairs. At least he didn’t let someone attack her, like with Vic. At least she wasn’t a spot on the floor, not that her blood could leave a permanent stain on anything, much less on a wood floor.

She wasn’t petty enough to lash out at others because of her anger toward her sire. She wasn’t immature enough to slaughter inanimate objects. She wasn’t crazy enough to--to ask for a white-haired girl in a bar to make her a doll of her dead sister. Clover grunted when the thought surfaced and she hastened her steps, ascending the stairs.

“Jesse.”

Clover didn’t get more than that out, not with the blood dribbling from plastic packages. It wasn’t fresh, but it smelled amazing. One glass was hers--it had to be hers. He kept working away, draining the blood from the packages into the glasses, but she couldn’t hear him talking, not over the sound of the blood moving along the different surfaces. She tilted her head to the side, watching the blood as it drained from the package, her eyes moving along the stream, top to bottom and bottom to top.

“Obviously you’re not here,” she heard. No, she wasn’t. She was inching toward the blood, head still tilted to the side. Her jaw began to ache, the familiar feeling when her mouth filled with her fangs. She didn’t know that she could hunt a glass or a package or a liquid, but she learned then.

“You’re a ********.” Her voice was quiet and slightly higher than usual, coming out more like a sigh. It was an afterthought, or maybe something to fill the time between her first move toward the blood and when she reached out to prod at a glass. “It’s not the same, but it smells amazing. It looks amazing.”

Amazing.

She reached out again to poke at the glass and then ran a fingertip along the rim. He had said something though, something she’d missed, and she looked up at him with furrowed brows. What was he talking about? What were they doing at the home? Drinking. Yes, they were drinking.

It hurt not to pounce on the glasses. It hurt so deep into her bones that she swore she felt the pins and needles protruding in all directions. She’d been caught so many times because she’d lost control. She couldn’t stop. It didn’t matter if one person saw her feeding. She kept going back to that same area and trying over and over again.

Jumbled. Her mind was a tangled mess of misfiring neurons. She pulled her hand away from the blood and took a step back, but she couldn’t keep from fidgeting around. She dug her nails into the wound at the end of her right arm, digging beyond the skin and deep black fluid that fell like the thickest of liquids.

[Jesse Fforde]

Clover doesn’t let Jesse have it.

Except for that one sentence. That one accusation. You’re a ********, she says. And that’s nothing new. Jesse’s been accused of far worse in the past, and the insult barely touches him. Flung at him as it was, it merely glances off the skin and falls, useless, to the floor. It’s not the insult that Jesse finds interesting, really. They can get back to that. They have time. Instead, he finds himself falling back. Watching Clover as she approaches the glasses of blood; as she fails to even look at Jesse, but instead focuses mainly on the red liquid. Maybe she was calling the blood a ********, though Jesse hardly thinks so.

He’d only just finished squeezing the last drops of blood into the glasses when Clover reaches out for one. His arms fell to his sides and he waits for her to take it. Because he’s curious. The way she looks, the way she’s acting – it’s how he feels, most of the time. As if he just can’t get enough. No, not as if he can’t get enough. He knows he never gets enough. Never enough to satisfy his thirst, anyway. The craving, the lust for blood that lurks always in the back of his mind, which sends him on sprees of neck-gouging and slaughter.

Slowly, he tosses the empty packet of blood in the bin. For the moment, he forgets about the microwave. The microwave isn’t strictly required. Blood just tastes better when warm, rather than cold. Lukewarm, rather than hot. Body temperature.

He could be a ******** and take his time to nuke the blood, but he doesn’t. Instead, he pushes one of the full glasses toward Clover, a very clear indication that it’s hers to take as soon as she wants it. If this is what Jesse thinks it is – the way she’s reacting – then perhaps all his questions are answered. He has only to address the problem.

”No, it’s not the same,” he agrees. ”It’s so much better from the vein. Hot, fresh. Alive,” he says, the last word uttered almost in a growl. It’s why the blood packs don’t send him into as much of a frenzy as they could. It’s definitely not the same. The blood that he wants, he cannot get from blood packs. But, he has noticed, the supplies in their fridge very often need to be replenished, and he’s quite sure it’s because of how much he himself needs, wants, to consume.

But he’s curious. His own glass sits, untouched. And he doesn’t take his eyes off of Clover.