Mer peeked out of the corner of her eye at the man who'd saved her from a worse fate as he sipped a drink from a short round glass. The drink had an unavoidable fragrant aroma, sweet yet sharp in her nose. It smelled good, and her stomach turned as she imagined it was some blood laced mess of a vampire concoction. It was brown so it could be part blood if it was all nasty. In an act worse than Judas's betrayal, her stomach grumbled in hunger. If only she hadn't been so picky about the food Rush had given her.

"Do you want one?" The vampire raised his hand to the bartender before she could sputter a hard no, and it wasn't long before the guy set a glass in front of her.

Oh dear, what had she just signed on for. This guy had to know she wasn't a vampire, and this was a vampire bar, so what exactly did he expect her to consume? She was nervous to decline after he'd saved her, and she smelled it again—still sweet but sharp like coffee almost. Did she risk taking a sip only to have him cackle about how she'd just consumed her own kind? Cannibalism was not on her bucket list.

"It's hot chocolate." The vampire chuckled lightly, taking another swallow of his.

The amusement and smile on his face didn't really resemble Mark's or Neil's at all. It was soft like Rush's smiles, but she'd been told not to trust anyone, no matter how nice they seemed.

"There's also more caffeine in it than any drink has a right to have. I used to drink it as a human, and I never kicked the habit. Might knock your socks off if you aren't used to caffeine." He nudged it toward her when she hadn't touched it.

Placing her bets that this guy wouldn't be deranged enough to save her then feed her blood, she just barely sipped it before setting it back on the counter. Warmth coursed through her with a charge of energy, and it was so much like the coffee that Paul made for her each morning that she eased into her chair with a smile.

"Thank you," Mer managed, and he nodded, drinking his hot chocolate with a strange smile plastered on his face. It wasn't like Rush's smiles, she decided as she looked again. It stretched the man's face like he was gregariously happy, unlike Rush's tepid amusement. The only question was why. Was this guy happy to have company? Or was this amusing to him before he planted her face on the bar and drank her.

"No problem. That guy disgusts me." He waved a hand to dismiss her thanks as he drank

They sat in silence for so long that she nearly knocked her hot chocolate over when he touched the side of her head and pulled her against his shoulder. He continued to wrap his arm around her neck like they were old friends, hanging it off her shoulder, and her breath stuttered.

"You're so afraid of me. You know I did you a favor." His dark eyes bored into hers just as predatorily as Neil Arc's had, and she trembled under his hold.

"You're a vampire," Mer said. There was no other reason necessary to fear him.

"Yep. Creature of darkness, savage monster, scourge of the earth, whatever." The man laughed so loudly that she was nervous he might be nuts. "And you're an adorable little mage, Dusk." That one word rolled through her mind and clicked as if it had been a key to a lock in her mind.

She had given that name to someone, and it flooded her mind with thoughts and memories that she couldn't believe she'd forgotten. The fuzzy world of her dreams that she could never quite reach cleared, and she stared at the man before her in a new light.

"Damien?" Mer exclaimed a bit too loudly, and he nodded with a smile. "You get out of your cave a lot?" Mer quipped, and he laughed lightly. She knew virtually nothing about Damien, yet after being in his mind, no matter how twisted in hunger, she couldn't help but feel safe. Suddenly the arm around her seemed less dangerous, and she wondered if he hadn't done anything wonky to her brain.

"Whenever I feel like it. You come around vampire bars often?" Damien retorted, and she paled.

"No, and I do not plan to come again. I just wanted to know what vampires were like." Mer didn't consider that Damien was a vampire until she'd already spoken, and then she felt guilty. "I'm sorry, I didn't remember you."

"Oh, it's okay. You'll forget again when you leave too. It's a protection spell I cast on myself a few decades ago. It's called a Haze spell."

"A haze?" Mer did not know much of anything about spells. So far, she couldn't even cast one, though she could spark accidental power out at Rush with expert precision.

"Yes. It shrouds the ability of people to recognize me, and its effects vary. For some, it's so strong that they can't even see my face, and for others, like you, they just forget I exist when I'm not around." Damien ran his hand gently over her hair, but it didn't feel like the way Rush touched her. There wasn't any desire in Damien's expression like when Rush pressed his fingers to her. "I hope the last time you were in my mind wasn't too... troubling."

It took Mer a second to completely recall, and she swallowed her hot chocolate with a constricted throat. She remembered the way the thick warm flow of blood had felt sliding down her throat as she lost herself in bliss. The fact that he was a living breathing human hadn't even occurred to her until he was dead, and that feeling was dulled under the disappointment that she couldn't squeeze any more blood out of him.

Troubling was not the word for it. More like disturbing and dehumanizing.

"The hunger of a vampire is not something a human should feel. I would have preferred you left, but you did not."

Mer couldn't find words. While it had not been her, the feelings and desires had been in her mind. It was as if she had killed the man herself.

"If it makes you feel any better, the man was a serial murderer ."

"He was what now?" Mer gaped as Damien grimaced a light smile.

With three fingers, he raising a hand to the bartender for a different drink, and a glass rolled down the counter right into Damien's hand. It looked and smelled alcoholic, and Mer wrinkled her nose as Damien took a sip before speaking again.

"I don't have control of my blood urges like more experienced vampires. I'm young, only a few decades in vampire years. Because of this, anything I bite will eventually die as I don't have the composure to stop. You felt it. It's disgusting. The way all I can think about is why the fountain has run dry." Damien sounded bitter and angry, and it had her thinking about that girl that Neil had bitten.

Had he felt poorly about being unable to stop and nearly killing the girl? If he had, he sure as hell hadn't shown it with the way he'd laughed and jeered with Mark. Damien had been human recently enough that he still liked the old drinks of his human desires, and If he had not wanted to be turned into a vampire, she could understand his outright disgust with the way he was forced to feed.

"It was definitely frightening to feel how little it mattered that what you were doing was killing a human," Mer admitted, and Damien's eyes met hers with pain in them, his open friendly smile smothered.

"Because I can't stop, I only drink from the worst of criminals. I know it's still murder, but it's the only way I can tolerate existing. My sire is agreeable enough to provide me what I want as long as I do what he tells me to."

"What were you before you were changed into a vampire?" Mer was insatiably curious, and Damien set down his drink to give her strange look. It struck her as almost longing for what she was and he could no longer have.

"Horribly unprofessional, is what I was." Damien laughed before settling on a sinister twist of his lips. "I used to scare the daylights out of my coworkers and they hated me for it. I'd put spiders in the containers of the office desks that held food, and spring loaded paper snakes in their drawers and empty coffee cups. Oh, the looks on their faces, they still make my sleep easier at night." Damien's laughter was contagious, and she found herself chuckling.

"They fired me." Damien let out an exasperated noise, but he was still smiling. "I wasn't meeting my projected quota. That job was such horrible number crunching work that I didn't mind leaving it. I spent all my free time after that focusing on my daughter, who was way cuter than you. No offense."

"None taken." Mer smiled affectionately. "You can't compete with a father's love for their daughter, I hear."

"Certainly not," Damien agreed with a wide smirk.

Sometimes she wondered what it would have been like to have her father growing up, but if he had gone insane as Rush had said, it likely would have been a disaster. Torin had loved her, but Torin had not been her biological father, so she wasn't sure if it would have been different or not.

Love was love, wasn't it?

"Is your daughter okay? I mean, it sounds like you did didn't want to become a vampire," Mer asked, knowing how much parents liked to talk about their children. Even so, she was worried the vampire that had changed him might have hurt his family.

"I didn't want to become a vampire, no, but I chose it." Damien paused, tapping the bar, and the bartender refilled his alcoholic drink. Taking a deep drink of it, he set it on the bar before looking over to her with saddened eyes. "I had a terminal illness, nothing modern medicine could heal. While I'd resigned myself to my fate of dying, running into my sire presented a different solution. There is nothing without strings though, so I'm a servant, but instead of dying from a condition I was born with, I get to live. I honestly can't tell you if it was the right choice, but I'm stuck with it."

"You didn't answer." Mer insisted nosily about his daughter, and he narrowed his eyes.

"My daughter is fine. Much more beautiful than you, but I mean she has my genes so it's to be expected you wouldn't compare."

"Oh yes, pity me and my inferior genes. We can't all compare to your level of smug superiority."

"Of course not." Damien didn't even read the slight in her words, and she ended up smiling so wide that it hurt her face.

Don't trust a vampire, no matter how kind. This was far from what Rush wanted her to learn.

"By the way," Damien said, and Mer stopped laughing to give him her undivided attention. It wasn't hard with how infectious his upbeat attitude was. "You said you were okay, but you don't look okay." Damien nudged her collar with the back of his hand, and she touched the bandages on her neck that were only concealing the wound. "I know Remus, like I know Neil and Mark. They are all pretty brutal, and I don't like the thought of you subjecting yourself to him."

"I wouldn't say I'm subjecting myself," Mer managed with a nervous smile.

"If you wanted it from me, I would kill him." Damien's dark eyes shone with the serious of the offer, and she shook her head immediately.

"I don't want Rush dead." Mer immediate refusal had one of his eyebrows punching up near his hair line with surprise.

"Are you worried he'll overhear? My haze prevents such eavesdropping."

"No, it's not that." Rush was her owner, yes, and he was confusing and dangerous, but also kind and caring in his own weird way.

"If you're fearful I'd fail and there would be repercussions, there wouldn't be. I may be young, but I'm twice Remus Shade's strength."

"Your superior genes?" Mer teased.

"Yes." The answer was short and hard. From the look in Damien's eyes he was not bluffing, nor was he being insincere in his offer. "I'm also like four times Neil and Mark's strength. Remus is strong, I'll give him that, but nothing I can't handle."

"I really don't want Rush dead. I appreciate your concern. It's more than any of the mages have offered, but I sort of... like Rush." Damien dropped his glass, and it rolled away on the bar counter, forcing the bartended to catch it with a sigh of relief when it didn't shatter on the floor.

"What do you mean by like?" Damien was looking at her as if she'd just admitted to eating her own socks, and she leaned away in her chair.

"It's not anything romantic. I just like him for who he is. What's it to you? Don't you have your own daughter to worry about?" Mer retorted, and he shrugged off his surprise and horror for a disgusted breath.

"Well, my daughter is much smarter than you, so she'd never fall for a monster like Remus Shade." Damien dropped his serious expression for a smirk. "You know I don't get to see her much anymore. My little girl is an adult now." Damien drank from a new glass the bartender had brought him. "That's the hardest for fathers, when they realize that they will no longer be idolized above all others, when their daughters fall in love for the first time." Damien smiled, though it looked sad, and his gaze whipped toward the door. "Give me the strongest drink you got, pronto," Damien said to the bartender, and the man mixed him something quickly before setting it in front of him. "Thanks. It was nice chatting, Dusk. I'll see you on the flip side." Damien downed the drink in one go and twitched before he hopped down from the bar and walked to the door.

Rush and Neil returned just as Damien had left her side, and disconcerting bloodstains marred Rush's sleeves. With a swivel of his head, he searched the room to find her still sitting at the counter, and then approached. Though he moved with haste, he strode up to her in a fashion that let her see him move for once. Touching the sides of her face, he looked directly into her eyes.

"You look okay," Rush said, and she nodded in his hands. "No one accosted you?"

"Um, no. I was just talking to Damien." Mer mumbled with embarrassment that he was being so close with all the vampire onlookers.

Rush's hands left her face to ball into fists, and he rolled back his lips to release a growl that jumped her heartrate until she realized his anger was not focused toward her.

"Damien Arc." Damien's name hissed between Rush's fangs, his calm rage exuding a calculated danger far beyond that of any outwardly aggressive vampire.

"Remus." Damien smirked at him in probably the first sinister display she had seen from him. So far, he'd been outwardly friendly and jovial toward her. What had changed?

Damien was an Arc, which she hadn't expected. Comparing his easygoing and considerate nature to Neil's brutality and viciousness made them feel so far apart, yet Damien served the vampire house that had changed him. Changing humans was taxing and difficult according to her books, and Neil seemed to have no self-control as it was, so it stood to reason that Neil's leader had changed Damien.

"Your family just can't keep their hands off of things that don't belong to them, can they?" Cool as a cucumber, Rush toned down the bite in his voice for the accusation. Though less hostile, it was just as deadly and far from Rush's normal calm.

"Whoa, whoa, I didn't touch the girl," Neil argued, keeping his distance from the both of them with Damien by the door.

"Damien is your servant. Can you not keep track of him?"

"I keep track of him just fine. Damien tell the man you didn't touch his slave," Neil insisted. That unfortunately drove Damien's smirk higher, and he laughed. Damien loved to laugh, whether sinister or upbeat, it seemed.

"Do you want me to lie?" Damien's words drew out another growl from Rush, and an annoyed twist of lips from Neil. "Your slave is undamaged," Damien said, composing himself to drop the theatrics. "I did not molest nor bite her, but I can't say my skin didn't touch her. Believe me, Remus Shade, I have little interest in anything belonging to you. I was just holding pleasant conversation. If you don't want me to talk to your slaves then tell them not to converse with me."

Damien spun around out the door after one of the rudest bows Mer had ever seen. Why bow at all if it's going to be with a sarcastic smirk and a disdainful laugh? The way Neil took off after Damien, it was clear who was wearing the pants in that servant master relationship.

"Magic is blocked in this section of the bar. Please follow me," Rush said in a low voice, indicative of his frustration.

Mer hopped down from the stool and followed him out of the inner lair of the vampires, wishing she had words that would keep him from snapping at her when they returned. Rush had told her not to talk to anyone, and the way he pulled her through the crowd and out into the frigid early morning air showed his frustration though she could not see his face. It wasn't more than a second in the darkness before Rush pulled her into his magic to take them back to his castle.

~~~~~~~~~

Word Count: 3048