Beautiful War - Kings of Leon

TW - Brief mention of abuse

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I was wary as I showered, fully aware there was no lock on the door. What he had planned for today was beyond me. So unpredictable. And when I peaked around the door of the bathroom I scowled at my now clean clothes folded at the end of the bed. Ass. 

From my reflection in the mirror, the bite had almost completely healed. It was directly over Florence's bite maybe slightly bigger in the incisor's. Still, the skin was taught, and I knew it'd be a scar for life. I don't know whether I preferred Florence's or his. Hold on, I didn't prefer either of them.

I dressed quickly, slipping my boots back on and towel drying the ends of my hair; I glanced out of the window and exhaled a breath. Snow, snow and more snow. I couldn't even see Anchorage. We really were on a mountain. It wasn't really steep, the road leading down dipped and disappeared into a row of trees. I hadn't thought about running but now I knew it was not an option. 

As I tried the door of the bedroom - it was open now - I glanced at the vacant walls of the halls. No pictures, no paintings. But a smell assaulted my nostrils and prompted my stomach to rumble. Bacon. I followed the scent all the way down the stairs, past the living room I'd woken up in hours before and into a wide kitchen. A table with an open newspaper, a glass of orange juice and a plate of the full English breakfast sat ready to be devoured. I stepped in but paused as Christian came into view, placing pots and pans into a dishwasher. 

"Good morning. Your breakfast." He smiled leaning against the counter top.

I sat quickly, took a tentative taste before sprinkling salt and a bit of pepper and digging right in.

"Not worried I did anything to it?"

His voice startled me because he was suddenly seated in front of me. "Did you?" I swallowed.

"I don't have a reason to." He reassured, watching me carefully.

I ate heartily, finishing off the orange juice and wiping my mouth. But something was nagging me at the back of my head. I couldn't put my finger on what but it was something... I shook the thought away and crossed my knife and fork over one and other. "Compliments to the chef." I smiled sarcastically. "What's today's agenda? Taking me back to town?"

His lip twitched as if he were holding back a smile. "We have a lot to do today."

"I leave tomorrow." 

"I'll return you tomorrow then." 

I frowned. "Christian, I can't stay h-"

The scraping of his chair moving closer to me made me lean slightly away. "Today is all you need to get to know me." I flinched slightly as he picked up my wrist and turned it within his palms. "I shared my past with you. But I have a lot more to share."

I watched the flicker of his pupils dilate and narrowed my gaze. 

"Do you want to know more?" He murmured, his thumb brushing over the visible vein in my wrist. 

"In exchange for what?" 

His blue eyes sparkled as they met mine. "I'm... Slightly parched."

"You're full and we both know it." I hissed trying to pull my hand back but his grip tightened. 

"I may be full, but sweet Evie." He pulled me up with him. "You are a siren. Just one more taste and I give you my word. Anything you wish to know and I will tell you."

This was a joke. Christian wasn't even that bad of a guy. Either he really was a bit of a prick or he was trying to make a point...

His nose skimmed along my neck and I paused.

Or he really did like how I tasted. 

"If I say no?" I stuttered. 

"Then we don't speak today. You go back with your curiosity eating at you to know what screwed Florence up so badly."

Dammit, damn, damn him.

His scent crept up on me and I slumped my shoulders in defeat. What did I have to lose? 

Apart from my life?

"Fine." I whispered. "Just... don't mess up my t-shirt this time."

Christian chuckled. "I won't." And just like that he cupped my neck, pulled my body toward him and inserted only his fangs into base of my throat.

**  

I lost my footing and started to slip against the snow when his hand curled around my arm to stop me.

"I'm fine." I growled, yanking my arm away from him.

"You're a stubborn woman." He said under his breath.

"I'm more courteous to the men that don't bite me."

"Excuse me for being tempted." A small smile lit his face and I scowled.

I stuffed my hands in my coat pockets still expecting my phone to suddenly materialise. He'd taken it and hidden it as well as my purse and everything that identified who I was. For some reason he'd handed me my coat after dropping a few drops of his blood onto the side of an apple and making me take a bite the creative bastard. 

I didn't have a clue what he was planning by taking me out here. So I simply asked him.

"We're only taking a walk." He assured. "I'm not going to kill you, Evie."

"You're full of surprises, I could only assume." I quipped glaring and squinting at the bright white of my surroundings. 

As we walked I continued to slip and slide even in my boots and his hand would fly out to save me but stop midway. So once, maybe twice, I fell onto my butt. He'd found it amusing, to the point where he'd stifle his laughter and carry on but by the third time he grabbed my arm and sighed.

"Evangeline, you are useless."

"You're the regular hero aren't you?" I grumbled back not even bothering to push his hand away. "Enough of this though. Where are we walking to? It's below zero and if I die out here I won't spontaneously wake up like you would."

"I've brought you out here to talk. Being in cooped up in the house will only mark me as the intimidating story teller. I want you to feel more open as you ask me about Florence." He released my arm. "Come, sit here." We stopped in the midst of the trees and gestured toward a large boulder of a rock. I sat as directed and faced him. "Shall we start with what you saw?"

"I saw you both in a barn." I began.

"Yes, well. We'd met earlier that month."

"And you both fell in love quickly. When did you tell her what you were?"

"When I thought that I could spend the rest of eternity with her. She told me she loved me and I told her what I was. Thinking about it now after I'd asked her if she could ever love a monster, she couldn't confirm her love fast enough for a 'Creature of The Night.'" He laughed without an ounce of humour. "She was ready from day one to turn. I was naive."

I bit my lip to contain my agreement but by the smile on his face he knew. 

"I can almost hear you say, 'yes Christian, you were a complete moron.'"

"At least one of us said it."

"Oh, you're so brave." He started to circle around a few trees as he spoke. "I cannot justify my stupidity. I've heard it day and night from my sister since the fifteenth century. She think's reminding me is a sure way for me to forget. Funny the way women work." He returned and paused near me, his eyes suddenly darkening with both anger and sadness. For a minute he didn't speak and I watched the tornado of emotions swirl around him. Such a damaged soul. Despite his smart ass remarks, unpredictable personality and his hard to argue with facade, he was still a ruined man. All because of that one woman. How could one woman cause so much pain? 

"Christian." I said softly. I hesitantly brushed my almost numb fingers against his knuckles. 

He blinked back and directed his gaze toward me. "Sorry, I was..."

"It's hard. I can't begin to understand but I have to know."

He inhaled sharply. "This part of the story isn't pretty."

"I'm prepared."

"Okay. Florence was abused mentally and physically by her uncle as a ten year old." My eyes widened. "One of her siblings tried to help her but he ended up dying in vain. The Black Plague had taken his life when she was eleven so she grew up unprotected because her other brother wasn't old enough. She finally grew to be sixteen and she'd had enough of her abusive uncle. She pushed him down a flight of stairs. Purposefully. Planned. Perfectly executed. She drugged him at dinner when her mother and father were away for some sort of debutante parent meeting. Her butler and maids were dismissed for the night. She'd led him upstairs after he believed he was too drunk to move. And all it took was one push. Her youngest brother was too young to know any better so he didn't say a word."

Holy hell. "You are shitting me." 

"Florence, at the age of sixteen murdered her own uncle."

"He was abusive." I clarified. "And she killed him."

"Without any regret. She told me with such a blank stare it almost frightened me. And when her family found out she was a vampire they went to a witch. Obviously witch hunts were common in Europe around this time but this one was unfound. Who would suspect a witch of being an actual witch?"

"Who was the witch?" 

"A woman named Savannah Snow. From what I know, she only has one living relative residing in Spain. Funnily enough, she was the woman to give me my daylight ring." His smirk was ironic. "I always suspected she hated the Huddleston's. That curse just gave me a chance to wipe out as many as I could. A shame they reproduced an awful lot before I-"

I cleared my throat.

"Off topic? Right."

"So after you turned her," I shifted on the boulder to face him. "When did she start to go a bit wayward?"

"About a year afterward. The signs were there but I tended to join her in her mad suggestions. Another year later and she met my brother. She began to disappear a lot and I'd compelled a townsman to tell me where my brother was. He said my house and obviously Florence couldn't go out during the day so I put two and two together."

"From what I saw, your sister had a hunch as well."

"I seemed to have been the only one that didn't. Seeing her in that state of undress with my brother was the last time I'd laid eyes on her. And the year after that was when I'd found out her brother was hunting at the ripe age of eighteen. By then he'd had a wife and children, I didn't want to kill him."

I leaned forward. "Did you?"

"No, I compelled him to forget." He stopped above me and shoved his hands into his coat pockets. "I compelled him to forget everything and everyone. After him, years later, his son came after me. And more so after that. After a while compelling didn't work and from what you told me of their gene mutating, I can only guess it was that. They didn't even bat an eyelid. So I started to dispose of them properly. There would be times when I wouldn't hear from a Huddleston - or later on in the 18th century a Benedict - for decades. But there would be that one curious one. The ones that wanted to end the curse."

"Where have the hunters come from usually?"

"They are widespread now. A family here and there, cousins here and there, it's impossible to keep count. I guess they keep the rates for vampires down otherwise we'd be in control of humans."

I hadn't ever thought of it that way.  A family could spread further than anyone was aware. I could have cousins, second cousins in France for all I knew. The Huddleston family line could have an abnormal amount of illegitimate children for all Lewis knew. His father's brother, his fathers cousin. I could go on.

He offered me his hand and I glared at it.

"I won't... I was going to say bite but that'd be horrible."

I sent him a scornful glare before taking it and using it to pull me up. "Something about Florence's story doesn't add up. Why didn't her oh-so-loving parents do anything about the uncle?"

"Florence's fathers brother was a saint. Led the witch hunts, preached in church; even if Florence tried to tell them who would believe her? They barely listened in the first place."

"Florence was bad from the start." 

"Yes she was." He concluded. "Which now brings us to your full story, Evie. You told me little last night and I'm truly intrigued. How you and Florence came head to head because it honestly sounds like you pissed her right off." He started chuckling as we began to walk again. "This Michael, your lover," I nodded. "How did he come across her?"

I started with Michael's story which in turn intertwined with Nathaniel's. I told him how Florence had tricked them both from broken promises to suicide. I told him of my move to Canada soon-to-be three years ago and how I'd met him. And then I started on how not long after I arrived, and Michael and I had gotten serious, attacks had been mentioned on the news.

"Florence had used Nathaniel and some of her protégé's to sniff us out, tricking me, messing with my mind. She ordered Nathaniel to push me off the side of the road into a ditch to scare me. She sure as hell succeeded." I laughed thinking back to that night at Michael's. Our first kiss. "It's a long story really. But by the end of it Florence had me, Nate and Mike in a cabin and pressured me into giving Michael back..."

'Yes, I want him back. He's mine.'

The memory of her ripping her teeth into my throat caused me to flinch and sigh.

"Evie, you can stop."

I shook my head. "No, it's fine." I stopped by a tree and lay my hand against the damp bark of it. "She told me to choose between the man I loved and my best friend to die. But she came up with another idea for them to choose who dies or I became hers." I hadn't technically talked about it before, there wasn't a need to bring it up or even relive it. Bringing it up now was just digging up memories I was trying my damnedest to forget. "It all solved itself after my witch saw where we were. Michael had killed her current lover, I'd almost died and Florence ran."

"That doesn't sound like it solved itself."

I glanced at him from the corner of my eye; he was watching me carefully. "I suppose it didn't. Now she's back and she's turning Vancouver into a City of Vampires." 

His palm hesitantly touched my shoulder and spun me around. "Your definition of everything solving itself is questionable."

"Yeah, well." I cleared my throat of the lump that was forming. "She's a phenomenon only scientist's should have the pleasure of examining. But instead I'm forced to."

He allowed the silence between us and for the first time I was thankful that he just knew. The silence of the wood's was almost deafening. Snow always gave that quality of absolute silence, even as a fresh coat stumbled to the ground. Like now, it was beginning to snow. Flakes landed on the arms of my coat. I squinted at the large flakes aware now that it was starting to come down hard.

"Come, quickly or it'll be harder to see and we won't be able to get back." He once again offered me his hand and this time I didn't hesitate to take it. 

He led me back to the cabin in a fast pace walk, holding onto my hand in a vice like grip.  I sure didn't have the right clothes for that type of weather. Well I did. It was all in my hotel room.

Christian told me to 'take off my clothes,' again but this time there was no suggestive appraisal to my attire or an evil glint to his eye. I was beginning to shake in my damp jeans. He'd left me to dress in one of his long sleeve work shirts and handed me a pair of socks and track pants. And when I returned downstairs - hair dry but still shaking like a leaf - he wrapped three blankets around me and placed me in front of the lit fireplace.

"Regular hero aren't you." I said for the second time today.

"Now I know you're not here to kill me, I thought I may as well be more hospitable."

I lowered the blanket's off my shoulder so his bite was visible and said, "And this morning you thought I was here to kill you?"

His gaze ran over my neck before he ran a thumb over his beard. "That's through a fault of my own."

"Will you do it again?" I wondered pulling the blanket back over my shoulders.

He licked his lips and sat down on the ground a fair distance away from me. "I don't want to."

"But you will." I concluded. "You're full though."

"I feed for fun sometimes."

"Don't alter my judgment of you, Christian." I warned quietly staring into the flames.

His jaw visibly clenched from the corner of my eye and I turned fully toward him when he held something out. My phone.

"Call Michael. Tell him you'll meet him at the airport two hours before your flight. You're fine. You love him. Then you hang up. Do not call anyone else. Thirty-five seconds."

I glared down at my phone and highlighted the screen. Wow, over eighty missed calls and twenty voicemails. I scanned Kate's message, the one she sent to me just before Christian knocked me out:

'Get out right now.' And that's all she'd said. 

Helpful now isn't it?

I found Michael's number and paused. Christian would be listening to everything so I couldn't get away with anything. Even if I left the room he would still be able to hear. So I dialled and waited. It didn't even ring twice. 

"Evie?" He said desperately. 

"Hey," I murmured under my breath almost relaxed to be hearing his voice. "I'm okay. I haven't got a lot-"

"What is that bastard doing to you? I will kill him."

Christian laughed quietly in front of me and I sighed. "Michael, I'm fine I promise." 

"Where are you? I'm coming to get you, just tell me where you are and I will come. I don't care if I'm on my last breath by the time I reach you, Evie. Tell me and I will get you."

I hesitated, my heart stalling on a beat. All I had to say was a mountain cabin and they would work from that. But as I stared at Christian watching me I knew I couldn't. If he was letting me go tomorrow anyway, what was the point? 

"Twenty seconds." He said below a whisper.

I blinked and rushed the words: "I haven't got a lot of time so I wanted to tell you that I will meet you all at the airport two hours before the flight tomorrow. I'm fine, okay? I want you to stop worrying about me, all of you. I love you, Michael with everything I have. I love you so much, okay? Okay?" I prompted.

"I love you too." His voice was hoarse and I had to hold back my tears. "Don't you dare think about leaving me."

"I won't if you won't." Was my last reply before I hung up. 

Christian took the phone from my lap after a brooding moment and left me for what felt like hours. I'm glad they weren't worrying anymore. But I didn't know how the night would progress. An hour later Christian handed me a beautifully sized glass of red wine which surprised me. He sent me a small smile before disappearing back into the kitchen.

"Here,"

I jumped slightly at him standing above me with a bowl with a plate and bread. "Chicken soup, buttered bread."

A true mystery. Whether I spent a day with him or a year, I don't think I'd ever be able to understand Christian... Wait, what was his last name?

"What's your last name?" I asked him as he came back in.

"Beaumont." 

"French?"

He nodded from his seat on the couch. "Yes." 

Christian wasn't a bad guy in retrospect. He's probably done a books worth of bad things, maybe most without a reason. But it depended on who someone was to him. His enemy or his friend. I glanced at him reading his book with a glass of scotch resting on the side table. I could understand that I wasn't a friend but I sure as hell wasn't an enemy anymore. I had another question for him. I was a little afraid to ask but why the hell not?

"Would you have?" I started turning my body toward him. "Killed me?"

Christian averted his eyes away from his book to me. "You want my honest answer?"

"Sure?" I inflected at the end.

"Okay. Well, I wouldn't have killed you. Not intentionally. I'd keep you, you'd be mine to feed from, to use your body willingly of course because you would be willing. If you didn't have your flight tomorrow, I would have kept you another day, waited until the Bellevalia flower was completely gone from your system so I could do all of that." 

A dreaded feeling passed through me. This morning something was nagging at the back of my mind and now I remembered. I usually had some of the herbs Kate had made to stop compulsion in my tea. Every day. I hadn't failed. But I didn't have any today.

"To be honest I don't think I could kill you, you're too... nice to me. I don't warm up to a lot of human's nowadays. As I said before, you're different. Is that answer good enough?"

I gritted my teeth and stood aware my heart was beating at an abnormal rate. He tipped the contents of his drink down his throat as I answered quietly. "Yes." 

"Good." He stood as well with a satisfied smile, picked up my empty bowl and plate and faced me. "Would you like a refill of wine or bed?"

I scowled and spun on my heel but he grabbed my arm causing the blankets to drop to the floor. "Tomorrow, I'll talk to your friends and I'll decide whether I'll help you and release Florence."

"You're decision will be based on what? How they react to you?"

"How they react to this," He skimmed a finger over my neck. "And how they react to me yes."

We're doomed. "They won't react well."

Christian smiled. "They won't be able to do anything within the vicinity of an airport. Too many witnesses. Too many law enforcers. So we'll see. Goodnight Evie. I had a very informing day, I hope you did too."

As I walked away and up the stairs he watched me closely. So I said, "Don't forget how this will benefit you as well, Christian. You won't have to hear of Florence or the Huddlestons' or Benedicts' again. Think about that."

And I left him with that. 

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I am looking forward to writing the airport scene I can already see it in my head. Hope the stories were easy to understand they're pretty straight forward: Florence is effed up.

Don't forget to drop a comment ;)