Darkness. Blindness. Blood. The words rolled around in Mer's mind of repeat, ideas rather than the words themself. Overwhelming darkness, a cage without light, trapped underground like a fox in its den, its escape buried by earth and a rock. A predator hungering for blood, yet cut off from the world, blind to what was going on outside. Blind to seeing one that he so craved to meet, a remnant of his past and yet his future. His? Whoever these thoughts were, they weren't hers, but where was she?

Moisture rolled down stone walls, the drip of water echoing through the cavernous rooms of a cave. No light made its way into the dungeon of hard rock, yet she could make out stalactites around her, rocks strewn on the ground, and the walls of the rounded enclosure like it was daytime. The musky sent of mold and algae filled the stale unmoving air. There was nowhere for a fresh breeze to make its way into the cave with no visible exit.

Was she stuck here? Why was she so calm if she was locked in, and why did her chest hurt? It felt like her ribs were curling in on her organs, stabbing them and opening wounds she couldn't reach to bandage. Hungry. So hungry. Blood. She wanted blood.

Don't scream. Don't scream.

"Who are you?" A male voice asked from nowhere, and that scream stuck in her throat. "You keep coming here, but I don't know who you are."

Keep coming here? So, this wasn't the first time? Where was here? And who was this guy?

Mer thought about responding, but she had no idea of where or what she was. The body she was in didn't feel like hers somehow, like she was a floating consciousness in a void, detached from physical form yet trapped within a vessel of someone else's making. Perhaps this was what it felt like to be a robot, but she didn't feel very mechanical. Just hungry. So Hungry. She wanted blood. Sweet sweet blood.

Something was wrong with her.

This guy might be able to help, but she got the feeling that he'd just drain her dry if he caught her. The hunger consuming her was so immense that the cave around her was wavering into a mush. What was left of the mind she could feel was dwindling to a rabid beast desperate for sustenance. The kind that flowed through her veins.

"You're afraid of me?" He seemed confused. "I am not coming to your mind. You are coming to mine."

Mer was in his mind? That explained the out of body experience as well as why she couldn't turn her head or control what she was doing. What she was seeing must be through this man's eyes, as well as what she was feeling. Hunger and pain. Yearning and despair. This guy felt truly miserable.

"The first few times you came to me, I thought you were an infiltrator of some kind. When I realized you were alive, I tried to reach back and touch you, but your soul recoiled, screaming, and fleeing. We are incompatible, it seems, a vampire and a human sharing a mind."

The man sounded kind, his voice even and gentle, and his mind emerged from the mush of hunger for brief fondness as he spoke of her. It didn't seem like he was lying in wait to eat her, but who was he and why was her mind reaching into his?

"You're a vampire," Mer said, her thoughts forming into words that he could hear within his mind. Mention of what he was flooded the uncontrollable desire for blood through her, and she ached to sink her fangs into something. His fangs? Holy hell, she was losing herself here.

"Yes. You are not one of my kind. I can feel your repulsion." He paused abruptly. "Are you okay?"

"Okay? I'm okay. Why?"

"Your mind is quite sedated, as you are sleeping, but beneath it, I can feel fear, and not of me."

Oh... When had that been? What had she been doing prior to sleeping? It was hard for her to remember anything. Even her own name and existence was like a thick fog she had to clear away and reach into. This man's existence overlapped hers, suppressing it until she couldn't much feel her as much as him.

"I'm okay, really," Mer said as much as she knew, which was nothing.

"I see. Do you have a name?"

"Why would I give you my name when you're practically losing your mind with blood thirst? So you can hunt me down to quench your thirst?"

"That is unnecessary." The man's gentle tone dismissed her worries, the emotions running with his thoughts so peaceful despite the excruciating pain in his chest each time he drew breath to speak. "I eat on a regular basis, but it's approaching my time to feed. I am calm because I am used to it, however someone like you might not understand how unrelenting the pull to blood can be. You can feel the pain, so you understand that it is much worse than a human starving. This is only the beginning of the decline."

Mer thought about it but still didn't give her name. "Are you a prisoner?" Mer asked instead. The man looked around the cave to allow her a better view, but it was no different than the rest, cold hard stone, darkness, and solitude, with no exit from the annoyingly dripping walls.

"Yes, but at my own request. I can leave if I desire. I need only ask." This man felt so content about his confinement, patient even as hunger ate away at his mind. It was calculating, like he measured his time and endured the pain until the moment of release when he could set his fangs upon his prey.

Not someone she wanted to give her name to willy-nilly.

"Yeah, I'm definitely not telling you my name," Mer said, pulling her mind away from him. It was strange feeling herself settled into his being, like his brain was a cushy chair for her soul.

"That is okay. I'm not going to pester you. It's... interesting to have company. I'm not accustomed to it, so I enjoy your presence, named or not. Is there anything I can call you which is not your name?"

Something to call her? Like the way mages had alternative names. What should she call herself?

"How about Dusk?" Mer posited hesitantly. That word held meaning to her that she could not identify when her existence was held hidden beyond the veil of his mind.

"That sounds fantastic." Enjoyment fluttered through her mind briefly, dulled by the raging hunger for blood. "I need no pretext. My name is Damien. If you ever need help, call my name. I'll be happy to help you, Dusk."

Help her? A vampire.

"You wouldn't want to help me," Mer said, at the least remembering the rift between vampires and mages. The hostility, the hatred, the viciousness of it all.

"Sure, I would." The man laughed lightly. "Call me. Anytime. Dusk."

Mer woke screaming, but she didn't know why, fumbling around in the sheets as she gasped for breath. Something terrifying had happened to her, something violating. It felt like someone had scraped out her insides and tainted them with poison before shoving them back in her skull, and she held her mouth as the urge to throw up forced bile up her throat. Why did everything feel so wrong? Like her skin had been peeled back and her essence pulled out and flung back.

Up was down, and she couldn't even sit up, the world wobbling around her. She had the vague awareness of cool hands touching her face, and she screamed as she pushed away from them, near falling off the edge of something before she was pulled back. The momentum had her head spinning like it was preparing to take off from her shoulders, a voice said her name, kind, concerned, yet vicious and cruel. Nothing made sense, and she felt her consciousness slipping as blackness claimed her mind and shuttered the world from her once more.

 Dripping of water and the moldy scent of air that needed some serious ventilation gave away that she'd fallen asleep again. What she wouldn't give for a plumber to just tighten whatever pipe was leaking off in this cave. A cave that was moving quickly in her sight and whirled as the man paced back and forth in his confinement. Man, his sitting had been a mercy compared to the dizzying mess she now suffered.

"You're back again," the man ceased moving once he sensed her, glancing around the cave more like he was giving her a view than he cared for what was around him. What she saw meant little compared to the stench in the air. It smelled like death, of perspiration and fear, of the coming end to existence, but not this man's. The scent was beyond his confines yet close enough for him to sense.

"You are curious?" he asked, and Mer dropped the foreboding reality for rationality.

There had to be a reason she was coming to this man's mind, some connection between them. Damien was his name, and he was a vampire, but she knew little else. It was so hard to remember him when she'd woken, yet now it was so easy. That was likely no coincidence. Perhaps he had some means to hide what they'd spoken of in her slumbering hours the moment she woke. But why did he need to hide their interactions? There was definitely a lot this guy wasn't telling her.

"What am I? Who am I? I can hear the questions in your mind. I feel the same curiosity toward you too but." The man paused as he picked up on footsteps in the distance. "You should leave tonight. You don't want to be here."

Why should she not be here? What was he hiding?

The footsteps ended, a screech like someone had pulled the rustiest lever in the world near deafened her, and then the whole cave shook. A circular rock rolled away to open the wall, and an aroma took her senses for a ride as her stomach leaped with anticipation. It smelled like food. A man skittered into the cave and fell on his hands as the door shut behind him with a crash, the sound not loud enough to conceal his whimper as he crawled back. Mer realized, to her horror, as the man wept and mumbled a prayer, that he was what smelled like food.

"Please leave," Damien begged, but his mind warped as his mouth salivated. "I don't have great control of myself, so I can't refrain from eating until you to go. I wish I could."

Damien stood, she stood, drawn by the promise of food, blood, and life. The meal skittered away, and that excited her, the pumping of blood in his prey's veins urging her to chase. Where did it think it was going? Mer's jaw unhinged and a growl rolled from her throat, his throat.

Who was she anymore? Their minds were so connected that everything was tangling together. So Hungry. Mer was desperate to open the man's veins, and the imperative screamed in her mind. Devour him. It clawed at her insides until she was in front of her meal and lifting the man by his short, dirty hair. He flailed and squealed so that she had to dig her fingers into his skull and push him up against one of the cave walls. There, now he wouldn't struggle as much.

Her fangs sank into his throat, and warmth flowed down onto her tongue. It was heavy and sweet, like sugared molasses, and she clutched the man harder to her body to bury her fangs in deeper. Sucking on his neck and pulling the blood into her mouth felt so good, easing the pain in her stomach and filling her with a tingling feeling of euphoria as she drank deeper. More of this. Yes, this.

Mer had no idea how long she was at the man's throat with how the feeling took her over. All she was aware of was the quick paced pulsing against her tongue as she drank. It slowed, and she drank harder, needing more, but it was coming thinner and thinner. A growl of annoyance escaped her lips as she dropped the empty husk. With the pulsing silenced, it was empty, and she ran her tongue around her lips, desperate to taste the last drops of blood. Only when those too were gone, did her mind return and she realized what she'd done.

A corpse lay at her feet, the man's eyes open in terror even in death, and she'd drained him without a single thought of remorse. The delicious euphoric drink had been a person, and she'd killed him. And it had felt wonderful. Trembling took her body and tears rushed to her eyes, though she didn't know whose they were. Hers, his, a monster's. No. No. No! No! No! 

Mer woke screaming again, but this time she was flailing so hard that someone wrapped her in the blankets to restrain her. Tears streamed down her face, and she couldn't stop jerking her eyes around the room erratically. She had no idea where the gut-wrenching horror was coming from. All of her insides felt wrong, like she was corroding from the inside out, and she wanted to rip her skin off.

Why couldn't she remember?

"Let me go," she screamed into the sheets of what had to be a bed, but again the world was spinning like it was off its access. "I can't go back there!"

Back where? Meredith had no idea what the hell she was saying, or who she was fighting. She felt that if whoever was holding her let go, she would fall into a fate worse than death, but at the same time, she couldn't stand to be confined, like they were crushing her. Those two thoughts couldn't live side by side, but she couldn't sort out which was correct.

"Please, I can't take anymore," Mer begged as she slumped back into the bed, to the one holding her, to herself, to someone she couldn't remember. "Please no more." Mer fell into moist sheets, both from the sweat beading her face and the tears dripping down her nose. Unconsciousness stole her freedom yet again, and she clutched at the sheets as a hand touched her forehead. The contact was quickly intermittent, as if the person were trembling. Was she that terrifying? The question went unanswered as she slipped under, and as she sank, she prayed for nothing but blackness.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Word Count: 2474