He didn't understand, but a sense of vulnerability took him when that long appendage landed on his forehead. A buzzing like a tight vibration radiated from that spot, small and soothing at first. It grew sharp and incessant, infecting muscles first, then bone, forcing him to close his eyes to fight the inevitable pain. That shadowy claw pierced him like a slow bullet, pushing between his brows at a slow pace.
Lonely? What did that mean, lonely in his head?
The buzzing pulsed sharply and he cried out, unable to move. His entire skull was shaking and his knees were giving out beneath him on that cobblestone road, where outlines of grey stone houses loomed nearby. The sun began to feel hot, to burn his skin again.
A sharp twist of pain in his gut brought him down at last, his hands covering the area instinctively, a jarring descent to his knees on stone. Nausea came next, threatening in the back of his throat and in the depths of his stomach. Muscles clenched and his skin burned for some reason. Building, higher and higher until he felt like he would explode under the strain and vibration and...
Release.
Pierre gasped, falling into an abyss devoid of pain and discomfort. Floating down gently now, his feet landing on solid ground after just a moment. The openness of his thoughts, exposed to the monster no longer gave him that feeling of vulnerability. There was strength again and he stood tall, staring calmly up at the featureless face of the creature.
"I can make you speak."
He didn't understand, contorting his face in his confusion. He opened his mouth to respond when he heard Damien's voice, soft and calling, anxious but without words. Pierre broke the connected to look around wildly and saw nothing, sensing his sire nearby. Then a peal of Jenella's laughter and a flooding feeling of her joy in his chest. He caught a glimpse of her perception of the first night he kissed her, see himself in her mind just before he kissed her mouth, the burst of happiness coming from her. He ached at the thought.
And then Nadia... He could feel... concern, fear, frustration clearly as if it were his own, but sensed it tethered in her instead. As if she were nearby, close enough to touch. And then that same memory as before of his face in her hands, his hands on her skin returned, but this time her voice echoed in his head. "I love you." His heart swelled and he choked on a single breath of joyous laughter. Was that what she had been thinking when he laid with her that night? How he had ached to hear it with his ears!
"She would never have to say it outloud again. I could make you hear."
Pierre closed his eyes, Finny's voice in his mind like he had imagined it a million times. Reaching out to Jenella with weak tendrils, receiving them back tenfold. How would they react to him if suddenly he could speak to them like a sire should, hear them in his heart? Would they overwhelm him? Would they embrace him? Would they teach him to manage it all?
His lips formed his agreement when Odessa's lash hit him in the face and spun him around wildly. The cobblestones caught him again as she launched another attack, pinning him down. Her psychic weight was like a press on his whole body, flattening him to the ground, her foot on his neck. Sharp things digging, burrowing, making their way in deep. Dominating him, shifting his thoughts away from the moment Nadia first thought about loving him. Little hatchets picking at the anchors of the memory, trying to pull it out of him
Erasing her from his mind. Panic set in as Nadia faded from his mental view. He grabbed for her with hands that could never reach, only to be slapped down again, every trace of Nadia altered. Nadia hated him, remember? She found him dull, remember Pierre? She grew tired of him, remember? His head ached with the memory of it all, his acceptance complete for brief seconds, free of his panic. Why would Nadia care about him? Nadia who?
Then he was rushed by several unknown vampires, sized up and attacked ferociously, a pounding in his skull. Laurent now, smoking and laughing in his ear - no, his head. And what if someone surfaced to hurt them again? Odessa's vicious attack that took out Damien... what would it do to him now? She would be free to take Nadia away from him, to change his memories of her, to conquer his love for her and wipe it from the earth.
That block was his only defense from creatures like her who offered others no respect, no privacy. Like a sieve, he could feel his anger, his annoyance, his frustration flowing out of him and into Jenella, her indignation and pain travelling electrically back to him. He could feel her think of him as she bedded another lover. He could feel her hatred of him.
Trust, comfort, connection.
Danger, invasion, manipulation.
Indecision now. How could he choose when silence was the only thing he had ever known and it had kept him safe? Kept all of them safe?
His stomach ached as Odessa faded, her boot lifting from his neck. He stood then and the creature changed, melting into the cracks between cobblestones and to slither up his leg and wrap around him like some viscous lover. Its movements on his skin brought about prickled flesh. Sensual and uncomfortable, intimate with his body, slipping beneath the clothing that kept him trapped, pulling open the fabric to trace harsh circles of his abdomen, scratching and slicing him. Invasion. The buzzing in his head began again.
"I can fix more than just this. I can fix you."
There was something in the way the creature spoke that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Pierre groaned his discomfort, doing his best to escape but unable to get away.
There's nothing wrong with me.
The world began to quiver around him, beneath him. Without his consent, his mouth was wrenched open too wide, ripping at the corners and the blackness launched itself into his mouth, down his throat. Pressure built fast, the monster pushing at the walls of his esophagus and pouring into him like hot tar. There was no crying out this time, his innards coated in black treacle. It dragged him, raking at the inner organs with claws, his abdomen worse. Fire all over again, burning from the inside this time. Then compression, squeezing him into something small, compact. He groaned, coughing on the black treacle in his throat. His stomach hummed, expanded painfully until it was like to burst. Sound filled his head like a storm, dragging him along and shaking him loose of himself.
But the squeezing and the pulling and the pressure...
There was light shining through the flesh on his abdomen, the Treacle glowing, laughing, moving beneath the skin there, tearing muscles and skin and layers of flesh he didn't want to see torn. He was going to burst open, he was sure of it.
Maybe this was Nadia's plan all along. After all he had been through, he was going to die with the Treacle coating the inside of him. He had already begun to miss her terribly...
As his skin released under the pressure, he was pulled back into his own skin. Pierre dragged in a dry gasp with his own lungs, reaching for something or someone to anchor himself to with wildly grasping hands, his skin burning all over.
