Take Me Home [Freyja]

[Sence]

It was unlike her to trip, but it had happened the moment she escaped the shadow realm. Her bare body connected with the cool, hard floor and she pressed her palm against the tile. It was in disbelief as she scrambled to a sitting position. Her arm moved to press against her breasts, modesty still never too far from her mind as she tried to process the scents around her, the noises. Her body shook. To anyone passing, it would appear that she was shivering from cold, but in truth the woman was frightened. She blinked once, twice. Her freehand groped at the air as she sucked in a sharp breath that was quickly exhaled the moment her lungs expanded.

Pain registered for the first time in ages, bringing tears to her golden brown eyes. ”I’m back.” She almost let out a hysterical laugh as she came to her senses. There she was in Harper Rock, sitting naked on the floor of a morgue. It was dark inside as she carefully collected herself from the ground. Her limbs ached, her side crackling at her in anger from a wound that would never heal. Brown hair fell over her shoulders in long, loose waves as she fell back to her knees. It was an action that reminded her of a baby deer that she’d once taken a picture of. She didn’t remember for the life of her were the photo was, either.

Who was there to call? There were names that she could feel on the tip of her tongue to call out for, names of people who were important to her, but when they never came, she felt tears slide down her cheeks in frustration. What had happened to her? Where was Theo? Sence looked down at her form. There were scars, long and thin covering her long legs and arms, her torso. The worse rest on her chest, on her sternum. Vaguely, she remembered the screeching of tires. A scream and the sound of shattering glass. Sence could remember the feeling of something punching her in the chest, and then nothing.

”The wilderness. We’d ended up in the wilderness.”

Her fingers touched the wound on her sternum, feeling the scar. She’d been severely injured in the crash on her way out of the town. The fae had gotten to her, claws and fangs... Sence stared off towards the door as she let her hand fall. The memory of smoke filling her lungs had them burning, a phantom haunting her as she remembered more screaming. Begging. ”My Theo...” She carefully crawled towards the nearest corner, drawing her knees up to her chest so that she could hide the best she could. The action hurt, causing her lungs to scream at her as she closed her eyes and tried to remember someone else. Anyone else.

Sence didn’t realize the telepathic message sent, a single name that crossed her mind. ”My Freyja.” She whimpered, ”Where are you, my Freyja?” “Excuse me? Miss?” A voice had her looking up, a man looking at her with an unsure expression, his pulse throbbing in his throat causing Sence to notice how unbelievably thirsty she was as her fangs extended without her realizing it. His scream echoed off of the walls as she leapt at him and sank her teeth into his throat, his hands pressing against her rib cage. Her bite becoming more forceful, the scream cutting off into a gurgle as she fed. The hot liquid pouring down her lips, trickling down her chin and leaving a path down her once tanned skin.

[Freyja]

Freyja had no idea what her name was.

Honestly, she hadn’t even bothered to try to hear her over the din of the bar. It hadn’t really mattered, she didn’t need to know her name. She was just a bit of fun, another night of mind-numbing, toe-curling, tingly spined fun, and then she’d be forgotten. She hadn’t even made it that far. The redhead had passed out sometime during the night, snoring softly as she lay half naked on the bar, her top lost someplace under a table. Her bare stomach pumped up and down with her slow, shallow breaths. Her pale, ivory flesh flecked with coppery freckles was marred only by a long line of fine white powder.

A quick lick of her lips as she watched the slow movement of the human girl’s breathing, the line moving with her all the more enticing. Freyja smirked, running the tip of her knife along the girl’s collar bone, the razor sharp blade slicing cleanly through her flesh, leaving behind it a thin red line, blood seeping from her skin. With a cruel smirk, she bathed the blade in her blood, before lifting the knife, allowing the blood to drip onto the girl’s abdomen, just beyond the thin line.

Pleased with the display, the tall Danish vampire took the tightly rolled $100 bill between her fingers, rolling it gently before she placed it against the girl’s skin. A quick inhale, and the line vanished from the girl’s flesh, pulling the bill away from her nose, she leaned down, trailing her tongue over the blood, the mingling tastes earning a low, quiet sound of pleasure. She rolled her head back and took a slow breath, reeling in the moment before she smirked, and lunged at the sleeping girl’s throat. She was dead before she had a chance to wake. It would have been pointless to leave her alive, anyhow. She was well on her way to a horrible death by alcohol poisoning.

She was doing the girl a favor. She was doing herself a favor. Now, if they ever did find her body, they’d find she died of a snapped windpipe and a vampire bite.

She drank hungrily, the girl’s limp form draped across the bar beneath her. She was nearly finished, the stream of blood flowing from her throat beginning to thin, when the voice wound its way through her head. It surprised her, her fangs snapping free of the ivory flesh and letting the head impact the bar with a loud thud. Hooded, lifeless eyes stared at the back of the bar as the girl’s leg limply slipped off the counter, swaying limply as it dangled from the bar, wrapped tightly in the denim of her jeans as Freyja looked over her shoulder, half expecting to see the source of the voice standing there, until she saw that she was alone with the fresh corpse.

She heard her again, then, and she knew that she wasn’t going crazy.

She jumped to her feet, shoving the corpse from the bar where she hit the floor like a sack of potatoes.

“Sence…”

It was such a rare thing, that someone she cared about ever returned. So many of them vanished beyond the veil and never returned… she had begun to doubt that it was even possible, that their immortality was all a lie. This… was so completely unexpected, she had to collect herself, before she realized that the woman couldn’t hear her. She didn’t have a way to speak to her, to know where she would be. She wouldn’t have her phone, wouldn’t have… anything. The thought struck her that the woman would be naked and alone.

E-mail.

She couldn’t text the woman’s phone, but she could use her power to receive emails… surely…

She pulled out her own phone, fingers flying across the screen as she typed out an email to the woman, her email address still there in her memory.

To: SimpleandSweet@crownet.net
From: GlittersaurusRex@crownet.net

Sence, it’s Freyja. Sence, I heard you… if you get this, then please, tell me where you are.
[/i]

[Sence]

"How long has it been since I was here again?"

The thought went through her mind, but she didn't have an answer for it as she sank her fangs deeper into the young man's throat. She could taste the fear in his bloodstream, feel the increased panic slowly beginning to slip from his system. She'd lasted almost three years without taking a life only to fail at the desperate need. Despite this, she felt no guilt. She didn't feel bad about what she had done. Was it because of what she had dealt with in that terrible place? The constant need to have her guard up? The snarling, twisted spirits in the realm whom had been lost to the darkness? She'd been torn into countless times.

Felt part of her spirit be ripped away by claws.

The memory had her dropping the man who fell with a heavy thud. A drop of crimson blood trickled down from her chin, creating a path down her neck and stopped short of her collarbone. Hell had never been a thought to Sence's mind, her family had been religious to some extent, but they had never gone to church except on holidays and funerals. But the shadow realm? The shadow realm was certainly a piece of Hell, whether it was personal or not.

Her hands shook as she knelt down beside the young man. He wore a lab coat that was open, the woman's fingertips pulling at the cloth. It would be much bigger than she was, but it would work for now. She wrapped the lab coat close around her small frame, shivering as she left the body despite the warm puddle underneath her feet as blood left the wound and pooled against the tile. Footprints lead to the desk that she headed towards, her attention falling on the report that the man seemed to have been working on.

"2017..."

Sence blinked away a few tears. How could it have been so long? Her mind connected to her email, searching for something. There was a notification. Some relief floated through her as she answered, "La morgue." directly into the woman's mind. Her amber eyes lifted as she took in her surroundings. She could smell the formaldehyde. She had been in there only once before and the words said next went into her mind without thought, "It is still cold here." She shivered, pulling the lab coat tighter.

[Freyja]

The morgue.

Freyja knew exactly where that place was. She knew exactly how cold it could be, and she hated that anyone she cared about would be down there in that sterile hole in the ground, half frozen to death and alone. Much less someone like Sence, who had always been so quiet and, frankly, undeserving of that sort of welcome home.

She felt for her keys in the pocket of her jeans as she moved in a quick, brisk pace toward the coat check room of the bar, pulling her phone from her back pocket as she moved with a quick, precise step. Without looking where she was going, she navigated the empty, closed establishment, and focused on her phone as she typed out a message to Bexley, telling her to clean up the mess at the Parlor. The girl would know, and would get it done. She’d proven useful in handling a lot of the… grittier jobs that needed doing. The other ladies were too… girly to handle the deep ****.

Bexley knew how to lace up her boots and get the job done.

As she texted, she slid into the coat check and grabbed her jacket, before she paused and glanced around the room. It was mostly empty, a few articles of clothing hanging here and there, lost or forgotten as they were checked in, or someone brought them back to the check thinking it was some kind of lost and found. Pearl thought it was her private Goodwill, and often took the liberty of relieving the coat check of items left unclaimed. Not like it mattered, more often than not nobody ever returned for the more embarrassing items.

Somewhere, a girl had lost a dress, leaving in what Frey could only imagine was some sort of long coat, if she’d been drunk enough to leave a whole dress behind. There were bags that had been left with changes of clothes, jewelry of every variety, shoes, cell phones, keys, even a small collection of wallets. It was outrageous, the sort of things people would leave unclaimed ever again out of sheer humiliation.

Freyja collected a purse, and stuffed a warm looking sweater dress and a pair of black leggings into the bag, and hefted a long, heavy coat over her shoulder as well, letting the soft leather brush against her cheek as she took a breath. It’d been a long time since she’d seen the woman. It surprised her that she was the one that Sence would reach out to, but, then again, they had been close before she’d left for Denmark. For home.

Perhaps it was for the best that she was the one to get her. Little remained of the group that they had known together, most of them drifting apart until they didn’t speak at all anymore. New faces were cropping up in her life all the time, faces she would be glad to share with a woman that had drifted through a hellscape that Freyja had only known in nightmares and accounts from her sire, a long time ago.

Freyja was in a position to breathe life into a world that Sence had left for dead. That made her smile.

She clenched her fingers in the leather of the coat as she turned to rush for her car. Her fingers flew across the glass screen of her phone without her so much as looking as she tossed the things in the back seat.


To: SimpleandSweet@crownet.net
From: GlittersaurusRex@crownet.net

I will be there as quickly as I can. I'm not far, just outside of town. I won't be but a few minutes. Don't worry, I have clothes.

The morgue wasn’t very far, and she was pulling on the cold, steel handle of the old brick building before she’d realized that she’d even left the Parlor.