Broken Soul

"You wanted to see me?" Dannie approached Leighton who was standing by his study's window, looking out of it. Once he heard her voice, he turned toward her with a polite smile.

"You are correct, my dear," he replied, then his eyes fell to her gown. "You're still wearing that?"

"I fell asleep in it," she told him. "I don't have anything else here."

"On the contrary, my dear, you most certainly do," he informed her. The look of confusion on her face amused him. "Darling, you know that Erick is a demon, correct?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"Do you know what he was doing these last few hours?"

"Repairing your home, it appears."

"Correct again. You see, demons have this....unique ability to make things when you need them. It can take a lot of time and magic but they can create nearly anything out of thin air with the right spells. Erick happened to rebuild the closet a few rooms down and it's full of clothes for you. Did he not tell you?"

"I guess he forgot."

"Well, now you know, Love," Leighton declared. "How did you get that dress, by the way?"

Dannie remembered. "October gave it to me."

"She created it for you because Evan asked her to."

"Speaking of demons, where's yours?" Dannie asked. "All vampires have one, right?"

"All in good time," he promised and then took her hand, guiding her to the couch in the corner of the room. "The reason I wanted to see you was to inform you of an agreement Evan and I made this morning."

"All right, what is it?" she asked after they sat down.

"We have an arrangement for our donors," he began.

Dannie picked up on the hint. "Oh. But I'm not-"

"I know," he interrupted. "You're not his donor. We've agreed that he would have Amanda and I would have you."

"Excuse me?"

"You will be my donor. Temporarily."

"And so no one asked me if I was OK with this?" Dannie asked nervously. "You both just decided to use me without my permission?"

"You're not OK with it?"

Dannie thought about it. "I... I don't know..."

"You're afraid," Leighton observed. "I promise you won't feel any pain."

The fear in her eyes wasn't hard to see. "Um..."

"You wouldn't even do this for Evan's sake?" Leighton asked and eyed her neck, brushing her hair away from it with his icy fingers. "Amanda only has so much blood."

"Can't you guys hunt?" she asked, getting chills from his cold touch.

"Yes, but there's no one around for miles," he informed her. "He needs to eat soon and so do I. You know what happens when we go without, right?"

"You lose your minds and become merciless killers," she replied, feeling her stomach knot in nervousness.

"You are correct again, my dear." He started playing with her hair, twisting it around his fingers as he gave her a half smile. "I will not force you. But I can't be held responsible for what happens if we fast. Then there might be some enforcement. It's your choice."

"Not much of a choice..." Dannie muttered, noticing her hands were shaking and sweating at the thought of him doing everything to her that Evan had done with Myra. She knew she had to help them though. She decided she'd go through with it for Evan. "I'll do it."

Leighton smiled much wider, his blue eyes glowing with delight. "Very good, love. Now," he took both of her hands in his, "look at me." She gazed into his eyes and watched as they turned green. Her eyes locked onto his as he stared at her. She couldn't move an inch. Then a sudden rush of warmth flowed through her, making her relax. Dannie felt tranquil and dizzy at the same time. It was like being stuck in a dream and you tell yourself to wake up but you can't. Her mind told herself to move and all she could do was stare at him. Leighton leaned his head down to her neck and she barely even felt his teeth puncture her skin. A moment later, he sat upright, healed her marks and released her from his trance. "There," he said, his eyes turning blue again. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"No," she replied, moving her hand over her neck where he had bitten her. He was right. It didn't hurt.

But the part she dreaded the most was next. She sat there, waiting for him to make his move. Unexpectedly, he just sat there too, watching her fidget and avoiding eye contact with him. "Are you all right?" he asked her.

"Yeah, I think so," she lied. "Go ahead, let's just get it over with. I've never done this before but-"

Leighton raised an eyebrow. "Pardon me?"

"I know what vampires do with their donors after they feed."

"And what might that be?"

"Well...you know..." She made a face and he caught on. Leighton laughed. "What? Don't you?"

"No, of course not," he snickered. "We can't be intimate with our donors."

Dannie was so lost now. "But... So you and Amanda don't...?"

"No, never. She's spelled. If I did that with her, the trance would wear off. Being that close with a donor pretty much makes the captive spell null and void. You can't have that kind of hold on someone and force them to do something like that."

"Evan, though," she tried explaining. "He and Myra... He told me he did that with his donors."

"Well then, she must have stayed with him by her own free will," he guessed.

"So, she really did love him..." Dannie's heart broke for Evan how she thought about how he had lost her last night. "He thought she didn't..."

"Speaking of love," Leighton stated, "rumor has it, you and your demon friend were getting a little close this morning." Dannie's face flushed with red. Leighton grinned at the sign of her embarrassment. He thought it was adorable. "Word gets around fast in this place."

"What of it?" Dannie asked, seeing no harm in what she almost did.

"My dear, you do know what happens when you fall in love with a demon, right?"

"Sorry, no."

"Demons have no feelings like you do."

"That's a lie."

He raised an eyebrow at her again. "Is it?"

"Erick has feelings. I can see them."

"That's just what he wants you to think," Leighton said. "Those self righteous beings mimic human emotions and some get so good at it, they actually bring them to life. But, even as real as they appear, they're still false."

"So, where's yours?" Dannie inquired again.

Leighton's eyes lost a little light as he thought about her. "I lost her."

"Why? What happened?"

"I... I fell in love with her."

His words swept over Dannie as she just imagined losing Erick. The pain in Leighton's eyes made her heart ache for him.

"Don't you see, Danielle? Falling in love with a creature that can't love you back is just too tragic, too depressing. You can't tell him you love him. You shouldn't even think it when you look at him because he can see it. He's trying to get close to you and he wants to trust him. If you surrender your heart to him, you leave yourself vulnerable. He could manipulate you and take advantage of you, even steal your soul if you surrender to him."

"But, he has to protect me, he can't do that."

"Yes he can," Leighton disagreed. "He can guard you and still use you for his own benefit. And once you're no longer under his protection, you're simply his. There would be no way out of it."

"Your demon didn't do that to you, though."

"No, she didn't. Demons are only interested in human souls so she saw no use in staying with me. So she chose to leave me. I told her I loved her and then she was gone, just like that. In your case, Erick can choose to stay and use you or leave you forever. Leaving you would be against his orders so he'd have to stay. So you can't tell him you love him. Don't even kiss him. If you do, the consequences could be disastrous."

Dannie had no idea of what to think. She felt so lost and confused. She wanted to believe that Erick loved her but maybe Leighton was right. "I don't know what's worse. Telling him how I feel and letting him in or keeping everything inside and pretending that I feel nothing. I don't know if I can do this..."

"Love is never easy."

"Why did you tell me this anyway?" Dannie inquired suspiciously. "You don't even know me."

"I do know that you are an important factor regarding Evan's survival," he explained. "He is one of my business associates and his existence is vital to my plans."

"So in other words, you don't really care about me, you just want Evan's property?"

Leighton shrugged. "Basically. He is not part of our clan and we usually don't associate with vampires who are not."

"You don't really care about us at all, do you?"

"Well I wouldn't say that," he replied, remaining unelaborate. "You're still my guests and my responsibility."

"Why didn't you help us last night?" Dannie pried. "In the forest with that demon. You could have helped them save Myra."

"I had to find Amanda," he answered. "Someone had taken her as a means to distract me from helping you. I found her at the other side of the property, unconscious but unharmed."

"Are you lying?" Dannie studied his expressions closely.

"Of course I'm not," he replied coolly. "I told you, I need Evan alive. What good would it do for me if you died? Someone purposely kept me from reaching you."

"But once you get what you want, we have no reason to trust you anymore, correct?"

Leighton grinned again. "If you say so, love."

Dannie simply could not figure him out. It was difficult to tell what his exact intentions were. He seemed to so nice and polite to them that at the same time, he seemed harmless. According to Evan, the Midnite Clan helped all vampires who weren't part of the Dawne. But Dannie wondered how different the two groups really were after all. One exterminated other vampires and the other didn't care about outsiders if they weren't some kind of an asset to them. On the other hand, maybe Leighton was good like she first assumed and was just trying to fool her by acting like a typical selfish vampire. They did like to keep an intimidating reputation after all. But if this man was going to use her as a donor, she really wanted to trust him. It was just getting more difficult by the minute.

* * * * *

Erick stood watch on the balcony of Dannie's room while he waited for her to return. He saw nothing strange until he noticed the silhouette of a person standing just inside the forest tree line. Erick recognized who it was and decided to talk to her. He leaped off the balcony and was right behind her in seconds.

"You can't stay here, October."

"I know," she muttered, leaning against a tree as she stared at the only window to Evan's room.

"Then why are you still here?"

"I have nowhere else to go," she replied with sadness in her voice. "You know we can't go back and get reassigned. This was my only chance."

"He renounced you," he reminded her. "Even if he wanted you, you couldn't stay."

"You forget, Erick," she said, turning to face him. "Evan didn't renounce me. He forgot to say my name when he did it. So technically, I'm still his demon. But he doesn't want me..."

"You seem genuinely saddened by this," he observed, watching a tear form in her eye. "How is that possible?"

"I don't know," she shrugged. "I just feel so guilty. And I'm scared to go back there."

"But we don't feel sadness or fear or guilt," he reminded her. "Those emotions aren't real, October. You're just acting like a human would. Let those feelings go and you'll see they aren't really there."

"You're one to talk," she remarked and shot him a glare. "You're going to actually look me in the eyes and tell me that you weren't afraid last night? Afraid of that other demon? Afraid she'd kill Danielle? Afraid you'll fail, get renounced and end up back where you started?"

"Well..." he stammered, "there may have been some moments where I thought it would happen. But I wasn't afraid."

"Bullshit," October remarked. "You feel something for Danielle, I know you do. And you may be the demon of deceit but you don't always fool me."

"What ever I am feeling for that girl, it is fabricated," he disagreed. "Nothing we feel is real."

"Says who?" she asked. "The Elders? The ones who haven't even been on the earth themselves? They only observe, they have never experienced anything like we have."

"We were born from-"

"-from negative human emotions, yes, I know.

"So you must be aware that we can't have emotions ourselves. It's not possible. One feeling cannot evolve into thousands."

"Listen to yourself, Erick. That's exactly what has happened. We've lived with them so long, we can feel just like humans can. The good and the bad, it's there."

"Have you forgotten how evil you are? How evil we all are? There is no good within us."

"I will never forget that I was born from the act of a sin and that there is evil inside of me. But, there's evil in everyone. And darkness can't exist without light. Both of them exist within us."

"Since day one, we were told that we can't feel," he argued. "They made that perfectly clear."

"Yeah, and they kept reminding us. And when you're told something enough times, you start to believe it. They don't want us to accept that we have the ability to care and decide for ourselves and defy them and shun the darkness away and resist the temptations of power. We may be naturally selfish, but we still have the ability to follow human example and learn what's right and wrong."

"You really believe all of this just because one vampire broke your nonexistent heart?" he asked her. "I know you're the demon of envy. You're probably just getting envious of the humans and their emotions. Were you jealous of Myra?"

"Erick..."

"You were, weren't you?" He knew he had figured it out. "Do you think you have feelings for Evan? Is that why you're still here?"

"I told you why I'm here..."

"October," he said as kindly as he could manage, "all of this, it's all in your mind. You think it's real but it's an illusion. Envy takes its toll on you like deceit does to me."

"You practice it though, you don't feel it."

"Maybe so. But I can tell when others are lying. And you are."

"I am not!" she shouted at him. "God, Erick, why is it so hard for you to open your eyes and see past all those lies they've fed us for all these years? It's scaring you that Danielle may actually have genuine feelings for you and you're too afraid to defy the rules and just be with her. Why don't you just admit that you care about her?"

"I don't." His eyes glazed at her. They were so hollow and cold and black. There was literally no emotion behind his words.

"You're such a liar," October remarked. "She showed you compassion, didn't she? When you showed her your face?"

"She did."

"Is that something you planned, Erick? Do you have a certain motive here? Or were you acting sincere?"

"Why don't you stop worrying about me and just leave me to my business?"

"Because Danielle is my business too. Evan ordered me to look after her. I'm making sure she's actually safe here."

"It's my job to protect her too," he said.

"Then do it. And stop manipulating her."

"I'm not."

October studied his expressions and words and honestly couldn't tell if he was lying. A part of her didn't trust him. "I'm going to continue to carry out my orders whether Evan likes it or not. And if I can tell that you are misleading Danielle or find out you have intentions of harming her in any way, I promise you, there will be consequences." She took a step toward him and declared intently, showing him she wasn't afraid. "If Evan dies because of you, I'll kill you myself. And I'll make sure you never come back."