Who Said Turnabout Was Fair? [Anja]

[/style][style=padding: 20; font-size: 12px; background-color: #E1E4E6; text-align: justify;]She continue to press the moist rag to her neck as she crept closer to her mirror. Hesitantly, she let her fingers slide on the glass surface. Ripples of light sprung from where she had touched like tiny sprinting fae. Anja took another step closer and pressed her ear to the cold surface, letting it sink into the quicksilver.

She could hear his life, mixed with the rush of running water. The desire made her hands clench the mirror's frame, and she shut her eyes tight. No! She didn't need him. She could not feel the taste of his red heat sliding down her throat. All her other networks throughout the city to all her other hosts seemed blocked off, except for this one lonely apartment she had never notice before.

She leaned her ear away from the mirror, and then looked at it scornfully. He was out there, and this new sensation that made her breath tighten numbed her consideration for the Coven. Her fingers tickled the mirror again, and she tilted her head to the side in thought.

"Kol, why did you do that?"

kol

[/style][style=padding: 20; font-size: 12px; background-color: #E1E4E6; text-align: justify;]Her fingers continued to trail over the mirror, his voice echoing through and causing the surface to shiver. Her long, finely manicured nail slid thoughtfully over the glass, weighing his words and his tone carefully. The teasing hardly bothered her. He was always such a little a boy at heart. She remained silent, letting her palm press on the cool surface.

Suddenly, her finger lifted, and her narrowed like a crocodile whose snout was taped shut. She gave a singular, solid tap on the glass, causing the mirror Kol had come to stare into to crack.

She was a selfish and merciless creature, her heart a little box with sticking and rusty hinges. He could sit in silence, for all that mattered. Black curls failed to hide the curl of her smile. The more she paused the more delicious the memory of his blood tasted. It had been different from before. More of a bite. More of a sour spark.

Still, she stayed by the mirror, dipping her towel back into the silver bowl, and pressing it again to shivering neck, she continued to listen and watch through her broken eye.

kol

[/style][style=padding: 20; font-size: 12px; background-color: #E1E4E6; text-align: justify;]Anja wallowed in the darkness, her hand slipping down. A bitter frustration overwhelmed her. She huffed, proudly, her hand coming now to check the mark he had left on her neck. She heard his voice through the glass like a murky light. She stepped away from the mirror and walked away from it, but her mistrusting gaze flipped over her shoulder. Only the dank, cellular reflection of her room greeted her, but Anja could never see the mirror world as such. She knew it's secrets and it's metaphisical tricks.

Another deep breath, and she was behind her dark laquer coffin. Her hand musing on her neck, she reached inside and removed an old book. It was bound in black leather, the paper made of rough, delicate calfskin. It was written in latin by the monks and their innocent berries and blood. It smelled heavenly. It was her most cherished possession -- as time marched on, the world changed and chased them away with their traditions into these catacombs. She could return to what she understood. Computers, and their shiny wires, their dissection and painful electricity. People, they were so different now. Another species than the ones she was born to. And he was beyond her too. He was an enigma, a queer vampire of some new-found generation. She was the son she could not piece together. She was too old, perhaps, to ever understand.

She was about to leave the room again, and as her hand came to the elegant iron handle, a harsh rapping issued on the door. "Anja-!" came the rigid voice. "Open the door. How dare you!"

"She's inside, I can smell her."

"The treacherous wench." growled a third. Anja stepped back. The door thumped, the wood, hinges bouncing under the shock. Cement powder drifted down and a horrible cracking noise threatened her with each blow. She looked around bitterly again at the mirror.

In another moment she had stepped through the icy portal. Glass always felt cold. As she emerged in his dark and empty washroom, shivering and clutching the book to her chest, she silently crawled off of the counter. She stepped onto the floor. Emerging through the crack had stung, and cut her cheek. Placing the tip of her nail on the glass behind her, a spiderweb of cracks spread. Her breath hitched at the sound of the crunch, though it was subtle. Why had she come here? Because it was on her mind. It was all she could imagine and believe in. It was all she could see with whatever piece of her was in Valerian. Why the ghosts of her herd's portals escaped her grasp in this emergency was a mystery. It was as if he were rising above all others in her thoughts. She looked at the doorway with resignation. With slow, tentative footsteps, she approach, clutching the large book under her arm. She would find another portal, and leave this place. She must, or it would be the end of her. She could feel a piece of her missing, and she hated it. As she entered this new chamber, she noticed him so quickly. This entire world smelled like him, and an unease arrested her. He truly hadn't changed. Everything about the way he acted, the way he settled into a place he knew to be his. Emperor indeed. It was only of people at first, which was why she had never minded it before.

"Don't think you're so special," she muttered as she glanced at him, her nose lifting and her mouth tightening.

kol