Original -- The Bridegroom: Episode 4.5
Title: The Bridegroom: Episode 4.5
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,519
Warnings: language, sexual situations, blasphemy, inappropriateness… oh, and CRACK
Prompt: catastrophic at pulped_fictions
Summary: In Yucca, the fake mining town Belial has populated with Bridegroom candidates, the game is thoroughly afoot. Unfortunately, Maion is in a little-no, a lot-too deep.
Author's Note: New? It's pretty much me snorting lines off of my own ego. :'D Previous Episodes: One, Two, Three, Three-anna-Half, and Four. Also: (1) extra-mega-uber ♥s to eltea for helping me excise the shitty part; (2) this segment tips the Bridegroom wordcount total over 30,000; (3) HEY, YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME ♥; (4) I've already written the first two sentences of Episode 5, although I'm afraid I can't project a posting date. XD
THE BRIDEGROOM: EPISODE 4.5
The scent henceforth known as Trouble rises from her everywhere-some critical part of Vincent’s psyche vanishes into the maelstrom of warm hands, soft mouth, skipping pulse. She shifts without unclenching her fingers, tugging hard on his hair; his shudder presses them closer together, extinguishing the last hope of any pockets of air that aspired to flourishing between them. It’s not that Vincent hadn’t noticed that Maia possesses a very lush mouth, a very elegant figure, and a very impressive talent for surprising him, but having all of those things literally shoved in his face at once has sent his head into a tailspin. This-this is a kiss. This is gasps of air stolen out of the corners of that gorgeous mouth, thumbs skimming at his cheeks, hair brushing at his jaw. This is vertiginous, and he tightens his grip on her sleeve and discovers his other hand wrapped around the curve of her hip; trying for solidity makes something else shatter in his skull. This is maddening; this is glorious; this is the flick of her kitten’s tongue against his lip; this is tilting his head and wanting to swallow her whole, to taste every square inch-
Maia twists her fingers in his hair and shifts to pull away, shifting instead to whisper into his ear. “I’m sorry,” she says. “But he trapped me, and after last time, when there weren’t any cameras, he wanted-”
Vincent’s breath rebounds against her skin; pure pomegranate Trouble, tangy and bright. Her hands are tangled in his hair, and he’s still reeling from the contact. His mouth meets her neck, and then his instincts do the rest.
The soft skin gives gently, and then his fangs break through, and the blood flows. Jesus fuck; she tastes like perfection; tout est sang et le sang est la beauté; the heat floods, pooling under his tongue, piquing every nerve towards this shining fulfillment waiting only to be drunk.
Maia whimpers, her back arching, and her fingertips feel like butterflies. He’s never going to stop. Her right hand trails down his back, and he drags her in closer, tensing, sucking faster-harder-fuller, needing, needing more-
“Oh, God,” she breathes.
Vincent concurs; he rarely feels closer to that guy than when he’s fang-deep in something this good.
“Aah-” Her right hand scrabbles at his shirt, and the other jerks helplessly, tangled in his hair; nothing tastes like this. “Nn… V…”
There’s nothing else in the world this warm, this rich, this thick; thick with flavors, thick and salty, thick and sweet; she blazes on his tongue and burns down his throat. He can’t get enough, and he never will, and he never wants to.
The fingers in his hair curl and pull, not gently-violently enough, rather, that the pain actually distracts him from the pleasure, breaking the perfect seal, and then he remembers the camera and the room and the larger universe beyond the liquid ruby pouring past his lips.
“Vincent, you asshole-let go.”
A few sentient parts of him raise red flags and pull fire alarms, and after that there’s enough general flailing in his mind that he manages to withdraw his fangs and release his grip. His knees wobble disconcertingly, and he raises the back of one hand to his mouth, though it’s shaking enough that he does more smearing than wiping away of the evidence.
The cameraman’s mouth has fallen open so widely that Vincent hopes the miserable voyeur ingests several flies as payment for his borderline-pornographic gains.
It’s difficult to look at Maia, partly because looking at her, added to smelling the blood still welling at the wounds and singing in his system, makes him want to dive on her again; and partly because she looks small, vulnerable, and slightly violated. The bite is low on the left side of her neck, and she’s raised her right hand to put pressure on it-a little too late, given that a few droplets spilled down her chest and ran betw…
Vincent needs more whiskey or a lot of fresh air, and one of these things does not require him to deal with Jamaica again.
“I’m going to look for Rosalie,” he says, sidling past Maia and the cameraman, searching his pockets for anything that would function as a handkerchief.
“What?” Maia says.
“She’s probably just drinking herself into an amnesiac stupor in a corner somewhere like I wish I was doing,” Vincent says, “but I spoke to Kylie at the hotel, and she hadn’t seen her either. I just want to make sure she’s all right.” And to let her know that he might be able to get tasers on eBay.
Maia has gone very still, her back to him. “You could try the crew’s camp. It’s so dusty here; maybe she wanted to take a shower.”
Considering that Vincent wants to take a scaldingly hot shower to scrub off the sin every time he has so much as a conversation with Belial, that sounds pretty plausible.
“Good point,” he says. “I’ll… see you… around.”
Maia still hasn’t looked at him, which makes his entrails twist in a way that reminds him of crucifixes. “Yes,” she says.
The awkwardness makes his skin crawl, but given the off-chance that Rosalie could be in non-fictional danger, there’s no time to assuage it now. He hesitates another moment, and then he heads out into the street, the cameraman hovering behind him like a storm-cloud.
This is bad. Maion can’t even find words to describe his distress; he had to offer something, because Belial was closing in with an extremely unsettling look in his eye, and Maion had to think fast, and…
And it’s not his fault; he never meant to… It’s just… He couldn’t… He’s really not that kind of girl!
He takes a few deep breaths, thinks about puppies, and channels a bit of angel energy into healing the wounds on his neck. After a moment of wishing that Belial and his selective relationship with historicity had elected to provide packs of Ye Olde Handie-Wypes, Maion resorts to the tried-and-true strategy of licking his fingers and trying to rub the blood off of his skin. The results are mixed, but he has to get moving, because he knows-he knows where Rosalie is, and he knows that it’s not a safe place for Vincent to go alone.
This tactic has Belial written all over it, however; it’s unsafe, uncouth, clichéd, and sensational. Maion tries to keep up a mantra of unflattering adjectives throughout the short journey to the edge of town, but he doesn’t quite manage to keep his mind off of the prospect of entering the mine.
And then, of course, ineluctably, he arrives.
Maion spent the duration of the walk hoping that he’d made the thing worse in his imagination, but he hadn’t. It still looks like a portal to Hell. It still makes his breath catch and his insides clench and his better judgment bring out petitions and picket signs.
But he doesn’t have a choice. If Belial stashed Rosalie down there, the vampire hunter has had plenty of time to arrange some kind of trap for Vincent en route, and Maion will not risk losing this game when he’s already sacrificed three weeks of his time and the vast majority of his dignity. It’s all or nothing now. Not even an extraordinarily dubious mineshaft can deter him from the goal.
It can scare the bejesus out of him, but that’s a different issue. He swallows hard, straightens his not-skirt, prays for unprecedented strength, and forces his feet to carry him in.
He takes the lantern hanging within the first chamber; as it swings, the shadows veer and twirl like they’re alive, and he has to steel himself again to start along the dusty downward slope. This feels wrong, feels stupid, feels dangerous; he can hear the hum of the Earth that’s closing in around him, too tight and unfriendly, resentful of his intrusion. Every step along the incline brings him nearer to the Darkness he senses below, fractured and flung at him in smaller measure as the lantern flickers, and his footfalls echo back. The timber supports look woefully insufficient for bearing the weight of the increasing quantity of packed dirt overhead, and the air moistens and cools as he moves-the combination is unnatural and unsettling, and goosebumps prickle on his arms.
Maion didn’t take much of an interest in the gold trade when it was new-too much grit, too much corruption, too many dreams hopelessly dashed-so he can’t say for sure whether these small, square rooms off of the main mineshaft, their far walls just rough dirt spotted with pyrite, are even remotely accurate. He ducks through the timber doorways to check every one, however, although he knows where to expect to find Rosalie: as far down as he can go.
Logically speaking, it shouldn’t get darker as he descends-but then, logically speaking, he shouldn’t have touched this long string of madness with a ten-foot pole. He has already examined the very strong likelihood that logic has been eschewing this business from the beginning.
When-not if, because if is a gasp of breath too terrifying even to consider right now-he resurfaces, he intends to give Belial an earful about how much wasted effort went into hollowing out this fake mine. Surely those resources could have been directed towards something productive, like time and monetary donations to a charity… or at least a party with a bouncy house.
The lantern gutters ominously. The mine corridor seems to shrink as Maion pushes one foot in front of the other, not-skirt swishing, the silence close and dense and damp. He can do this. More importantly, he has to. Somewhere, there will be a room…
…with a chair in it. And Rosalie will be tied to that chair, looking extremely aggravated, by way of a theatrically thick length of rope, and Maion will step in and blink several times.
“I should’ve done Pilates or something,” Rosalie says, smiling sheepishly. “Then maybe I could climb up and slide it off the back, I don’t know.” She blinks. “Are you okay? You look really… pale.”
“I’m a little claustrophobic,” Maion says, which is not a lie and which also is not helping matters. He sets the lantern down and crosses the small room to start working at the intricate knot. “Goodness, how long have you been down here?”
“It’s sort of hard to tell,” Rosalie says-remarkably cheerfully for someone tied to a chair in a fake mineshaft. “One of the crew members took me aside before filming started; we went around the back of all the buildings so no one would see.”
Maion frowns at the knot, which Rosalie seems to have tightened by struggling to free herself. “I’m afraid this isn’t a particularly heroic rescue.”
A bit of subtle angel magic solves the knot problem, and shortly Rosalie shakes off the last of the ropes, grinning broadly and stretching her arms.
“I think that’s pretty damn heroic,” she says, and then she leans forward and kisses Maion’s cheek. “And I’m going to throw a heroic tantrum if there isn’t any dinner left-what do you say we blow this joint?”
Maion thinks that turn of phrase may be tempting fate a bit.
Sadly, having a companion does nothing to soothe the panic flooding through Maion’s system and, instead, has exacerbated the fear. Maybe it’s having someone else-someone mortal, someone human, someone whose soul is more susceptible to the currents of terrible energy thrumming beneath them-to worry about as well, or maybe it’s just related to how much time he’s been down here, with that lower-than-hearing sound grating at his nerves. At the least, though, perhaps he can use Rosalie’s presence to distract himself before it wears him further down-from the point of being higher-strung than a fiddle on a skyscraper to the point of nonsense-spouting lunacy, for instance.
“How did you end up on the show?” he asks. “I mean, if it’s not too personal.” You know what it is? he doesn’t ask. Too dark. Too cold. Too deep. Can we run? Let’s run. It’s getting hard to breathe-
Rosalie sighs. “The usual, I guess. My parents really, really want me to marry somebody who has money, because I have an art degree, and they don’t think I’ll ever make enough to support myself.”
Maion tries to inscribe a mental note to have a rich patron ‘discover’ her, but his mental hand is too shaky for the mental pen to stay on the mental notepad. “Well, that’s silly.”
“Or it’s pragmatic,” Rosalie says, less than contentedly. “Anyway, as soon as my mom saw the application form on the internet, she insisted, and then when they somehow picked me, I figured… well, might as well make the best of it, right?”
“Lemonade,” Maion says faintly. Apparently the nonsense-spouting lunacy hounds him from around every corner, flitting in the thickening shadows. He swallows and raises the lantern a little, probably futilely.
He realizes that it’s the first time he’s cast much of its light on himself at Rosalie’s gasp. “What happened?” she asks of the smeared blood on his collarbones.
“Um,” Maion says. “Long story. Long, embarrassing story. I’m sure Naina will be happy to tell it later and go into great detail about how I’m such a bi…”
He stops, blinking to clear his vision, looking at the wooden support beams they’re about to pass under. His hand trembles as he lifts the lantern higher, and his heart leaps into his throat, gagging the rest of that sentence, not that it mattered. Not that anything-
“You’re not a bitch,” Rosalie says, hugging him sympathetically. “You’re my he-”
“Run,” Maion says.
Rosalie freezes. “Wh-”
Maion pitches the lantern aside and shoves her, hard. “Go!”
To her credit, she bolts towards the entrance of the mine, and Maion, wrestling with the deafening terror coursing through his feeble form, spares one glance for the break in the nearest beam. What kind of tool would tear into the wood like that, and who would have access t-
No time. He gathers up his not-skirt and starts to scramble after Rosalie.
That’s when he hears the low, low boom of the dynamite.
“Crap,” he gasps.
The world collapses into dark and dust.
The only kinds of screams Belial likes are the ones he has prompted with an overflow of his orgasmic charm. All right, and the ones that wrench from the throats of tortured sinners wrapped in intolerable flame. And natural disaster-related ones. And even horror movie ones, in the right mood. And…
Okay, never mind. The point is that he doesn’t like the rather blood-curdling specimen that breaks into his peaceful dinner at Pat’s Hotel for Patient Patricians (a name which she has not yet accepted). He also doesn’t like having to leave the delicious meal provided by his personal caterer in order to follow the rush of humanity out into the street.
Vincent has already grabbed Rosalie’s shoulders-which is a pity, because with her coated in dust but for the tear-streaks cutting down her cheeks, her hair tangled and half-undone, she’s putting the hot in hot mess, and Belial wants a bite of that before it gets cold.
Then he sees the soft curls of dust-smoke rising from the general area of the mine, and he realizes that it was the proximity to Earthen destruction that made his inner being quiver with joy, not the food. He’ll have to fire this caterer, too. Ah, well.
In the meantime, he tears a camera out of the hands of the nearest lackey-ignoring the several-fingers-breaking scream, which is also pretty pleasant, now that he thinks about it-and races after Vincent, who has taken off towards the mine at a vampire’s sprint.
There’s a lot of digging after that. More specifically, Vincent does a lot of digging; Belial mostly just yawns a couple times and futzes with the settings on the camera, glad it got the night-vision upgrade, since that makes all of the dirt as clear as… dirt.
Distantly, he can hear some of the other girls clamoring around the entrance, but no one braves the evidently unsafe conditions to help Vincent paw through the rubble, grim-faced in the dark.
It’s strange-Belial tends to revel in the Worst Possible Scenario game for the pure, sadistic joy of it, but he hadn’t anticipated that anyone would go this far. Clearly, there’s some merit to Maion’s vampire-hunter theory, and it almost got him/her/Belial-and-his-libido-don’t-give-a-damn killed. In principle, he likes the concept of a plot twist, but the fact of the matter is that someone is trying to take control of his show, and that is unacceptable.
So is the lack of results.
“She’s got to be dead by now,” Belial says. “Which means she took the show with her; the insurance premiums are going to torpedo this thing.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Vincent says, and-looking past the violation of the contractual clause about verbally abusing the host-there’s something sweet here. Vincent Duval, the arrogant, affluent, prissy CEO, is excavating a filthy fake mine with his bare hands. The cold mask of preparedness on his face can’t quite hide the primal fear in his eyes, and the black ichor seeping from the cuts in his fingers has left them slick with dark, dark mud. There’s something in that, and it makes a microscopic human-ish fragment of Belial’s heart tighten a little bit.
Before he can work V-I-N-C-E-N-T into the sitting-in-a-tree song, Vincent uncovers a pale finger, followed by a pale hand. Unbelievably-except when one knows from personal experience just how impossible it is to kill a friggin’ angel-it twitches.
Vincent’s a blur. Belial is glad he invested in lusciously thick eyelashes for his preferred human shape, as he’d be in for some serious retina scratches otherwise. When the dust settles, Maia lies in the pocket of displaced earth, curled into the fetal position, hair matted, clothes torn.
Slowly, her arms unwind from around her head, and she coughs.
Belial regrets that holding the camera means he can’t clap his hands. “It’s a Christmas miracle!”
Tragically, Vincent doesn’t bother with a glare; he picks a few strands of hair out of her face and leans in to murmur, “Don’t move until the paramedics know you haven’t damaged your spine.”
“I can move my toes,” Maia says. “I think a few of my ribs gave out, though. And maybe part of my skull. And I’m going to have nightmares forever.”
Vincent doesn’t have a smartass rejoinder for that, which would be remarkable enough in itself-but then he starts smoothing her hair back a little more, tucking it behind her ear, and Belial holds in a monumental squee so that he doesn’t ruin the best episode-trailer shot in the whole of Bridegroom history.
As it turns out, Maia’s injury predictions are all spot-on-which is strange up until the point where she gives Belial a look just before the second airlift in a week. He heads over as they strap her into the stretcher, but he doesn’t get a chance to tell her to stop straining the budget with her helicopter kink; she grips his clean sleeve with her filthy fingers, and her dark eyes shut him up.
“That’s it,” she says.
He raises an eyebrow, and she sets her mouth in a thin line, tugging harder on his sleeve until he leans in close.
“That’s all I’ve got,” she says meaningfully, and then he notices that her angelic aura has faded all the way out.
Surviving the cave-in must have done it-taken the last of the celestial power she had left. Maion, six-winged seraph of lesser legend, is now essentially mortal.
Belial steps back and stays out of the way while they load her onto the helicopter and lift off, stirring up another dust cloud as they go. Then he turns, and the little human-y part of his heart goes mushy: Vincent’s standing just out of range of the helicopter blades, the wind whipping his hair against his face, with one arm around a wet-faced Rosalie, letting Kylie death-grip his free hand. He’s never looked more romantic, more noble, or more ruggedly distressed.
For all that Maion is one of those suck-up goody-two-shoes Virtue-freaks, Belial kind of owes him-her-whatever some gratitude for unintentionally making this show kick so much ass. Is there a “Sorry my nefarious plot resulted in you getting crushed and becoming powerless, and thanks for the great footage” Hallmark line, or is he going to have to bust out the glitter glue?
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,519
Warnings: language, sexual situations, blasphemy, inappropriateness… oh, and CRACK
Prompt: catastrophic at pulped_fictions
Summary: In Yucca, the fake mining town Belial has populated with Bridegroom candidates, the game is thoroughly afoot. Unfortunately, Maion is in a little-no, a lot-too deep.
Author's Note: New? It's pretty much me snorting lines off of my own ego. :'D Previous Episodes: One, Two, Three, Three-anna-Half, and Four. Also: (1) extra-mega-uber ♥s to eltea for helping me excise the shitty part; (2) this segment tips the Bridegroom wordcount total over 30,000; (3) HEY, YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME ♥; (4) I've already written the first two sentences of Episode 5, although I'm afraid I can't project a posting date. XD
THE BRIDEGROOM: EPISODE 4.5
The scent henceforth known as Trouble rises from her everywhere-some critical part of Vincent’s psyche vanishes into the maelstrom of warm hands, soft mouth, skipping pulse. She shifts without unclenching her fingers, tugging hard on his hair; his shudder presses them closer together, extinguishing the last hope of any pockets of air that aspired to flourishing between them. It’s not that Vincent hadn’t noticed that Maia possesses a very lush mouth, a very elegant figure, and a very impressive talent for surprising him, but having all of those things literally shoved in his face at once has sent his head into a tailspin. This-this is a kiss. This is gasps of air stolen out of the corners of that gorgeous mouth, thumbs skimming at his cheeks, hair brushing at his jaw. This is vertiginous, and he tightens his grip on her sleeve and discovers his other hand wrapped around the curve of her hip; trying for solidity makes something else shatter in his skull. This is maddening; this is glorious; this is the flick of her kitten’s tongue against his lip; this is tilting his head and wanting to swallow her whole, to taste every square inch-
Maia twists her fingers in his hair and shifts to pull away, shifting instead to whisper into his ear. “I’m sorry,” she says. “But he trapped me, and after last time, when there weren’t any cameras, he wanted-”
Vincent’s breath rebounds against her skin; pure pomegranate Trouble, tangy and bright. Her hands are tangled in his hair, and he’s still reeling from the contact. His mouth meets her neck, and then his instincts do the rest.
The soft skin gives gently, and then his fangs break through, and the blood flows. Jesus fuck; she tastes like perfection; tout est sang et le sang est la beauté; the heat floods, pooling under his tongue, piquing every nerve towards this shining fulfillment waiting only to be drunk.
Maia whimpers, her back arching, and her fingertips feel like butterflies. He’s never going to stop. Her right hand trails down his back, and he drags her in closer, tensing, sucking faster-harder-fuller, needing, needing more-
“Oh, God,” she breathes.
Vincent concurs; he rarely feels closer to that guy than when he’s fang-deep in something this good.
“Aah-” Her right hand scrabbles at his shirt, and the other jerks helplessly, tangled in his hair; nothing tastes like this. “Nn… V…”
There’s nothing else in the world this warm, this rich, this thick; thick with flavors, thick and salty, thick and sweet; she blazes on his tongue and burns down his throat. He can’t get enough, and he never will, and he never wants to.
The fingers in his hair curl and pull, not gently-violently enough, rather, that the pain actually distracts him from the pleasure, breaking the perfect seal, and then he remembers the camera and the room and the larger universe beyond the liquid ruby pouring past his lips.
“Vincent, you asshole-let go.”
A few sentient parts of him raise red flags and pull fire alarms, and after that there’s enough general flailing in his mind that he manages to withdraw his fangs and release his grip. His knees wobble disconcertingly, and he raises the back of one hand to his mouth, though it’s shaking enough that he does more smearing than wiping away of the evidence.
The cameraman’s mouth has fallen open so widely that Vincent hopes the miserable voyeur ingests several flies as payment for his borderline-pornographic gains.
It’s difficult to look at Maia, partly because looking at her, added to smelling the blood still welling at the wounds and singing in his system, makes him want to dive on her again; and partly because she looks small, vulnerable, and slightly violated. The bite is low on the left side of her neck, and she’s raised her right hand to put pressure on it-a little too late, given that a few droplets spilled down her chest and ran betw…
Vincent needs more whiskey or a lot of fresh air, and one of these things does not require him to deal with Jamaica again.
“I’m going to look for Rosalie,” he says, sidling past Maia and the cameraman, searching his pockets for anything that would function as a handkerchief.
“What?” Maia says.
“She’s probably just drinking herself into an amnesiac stupor in a corner somewhere like I wish I was doing,” Vincent says, “but I spoke to Kylie at the hotel, and she hadn’t seen her either. I just want to make sure she’s all right.” And to let her know that he might be able to get tasers on eBay.
Maia has gone very still, her back to him. “You could try the crew’s camp. It’s so dusty here; maybe she wanted to take a shower.”
Considering that Vincent wants to take a scaldingly hot shower to scrub off the sin every time he has so much as a conversation with Belial, that sounds pretty plausible.
“Good point,” he says. “I’ll… see you… around.”
Maia still hasn’t looked at him, which makes his entrails twist in a way that reminds him of crucifixes. “Yes,” she says.
The awkwardness makes his skin crawl, but given the off-chance that Rosalie could be in non-fictional danger, there’s no time to assuage it now. He hesitates another moment, and then he heads out into the street, the cameraman hovering behind him like a storm-cloud.
This is bad. Maion can’t even find words to describe his distress; he had to offer something, because Belial was closing in with an extremely unsettling look in his eye, and Maion had to think fast, and…
And it’s not his fault; he never meant to… It’s just… He couldn’t… He’s really not that kind of girl!
He takes a few deep breaths, thinks about puppies, and channels a bit of angel energy into healing the wounds on his neck. After a moment of wishing that Belial and his selective relationship with historicity had elected to provide packs of Ye Olde Handie-Wypes, Maion resorts to the tried-and-true strategy of licking his fingers and trying to rub the blood off of his skin. The results are mixed, but he has to get moving, because he knows-he knows where Rosalie is, and he knows that it’s not a safe place for Vincent to go alone.
This tactic has Belial written all over it, however; it’s unsafe, uncouth, clichéd, and sensational. Maion tries to keep up a mantra of unflattering adjectives throughout the short journey to the edge of town, but he doesn’t quite manage to keep his mind off of the prospect of entering the mine.
And then, of course, ineluctably, he arrives.
Maion spent the duration of the walk hoping that he’d made the thing worse in his imagination, but he hadn’t. It still looks like a portal to Hell. It still makes his breath catch and his insides clench and his better judgment bring out petitions and picket signs.
But he doesn’t have a choice. If Belial stashed Rosalie down there, the vampire hunter has had plenty of time to arrange some kind of trap for Vincent en route, and Maion will not risk losing this game when he’s already sacrificed three weeks of his time and the vast majority of his dignity. It’s all or nothing now. Not even an extraordinarily dubious mineshaft can deter him from the goal.
It can scare the bejesus out of him, but that’s a different issue. He swallows hard, straightens his not-skirt, prays for unprecedented strength, and forces his feet to carry him in.
He takes the lantern hanging within the first chamber; as it swings, the shadows veer and twirl like they’re alive, and he has to steel himself again to start along the dusty downward slope. This feels wrong, feels stupid, feels dangerous; he can hear the hum of the Earth that’s closing in around him, too tight and unfriendly, resentful of his intrusion. Every step along the incline brings him nearer to the Darkness he senses below, fractured and flung at him in smaller measure as the lantern flickers, and his footfalls echo back. The timber supports look woefully insufficient for bearing the weight of the increasing quantity of packed dirt overhead, and the air moistens and cools as he moves-the combination is unnatural and unsettling, and goosebumps prickle on his arms.
Maion didn’t take much of an interest in the gold trade when it was new-too much grit, too much corruption, too many dreams hopelessly dashed-so he can’t say for sure whether these small, square rooms off of the main mineshaft, their far walls just rough dirt spotted with pyrite, are even remotely accurate. He ducks through the timber doorways to check every one, however, although he knows where to expect to find Rosalie: as far down as he can go.
Logically speaking, it shouldn’t get darker as he descends-but then, logically speaking, he shouldn’t have touched this long string of madness with a ten-foot pole. He has already examined the very strong likelihood that logic has been eschewing this business from the beginning.
When-not if, because if is a gasp of breath too terrifying even to consider right now-he resurfaces, he intends to give Belial an earful about how much wasted effort went into hollowing out this fake mine. Surely those resources could have been directed towards something productive, like time and monetary donations to a charity… or at least a party with a bouncy house.
The lantern gutters ominously. The mine corridor seems to shrink as Maion pushes one foot in front of the other, not-skirt swishing, the silence close and dense and damp. He can do this. More importantly, he has to. Somewhere, there will be a room…
…with a chair in it. And Rosalie will be tied to that chair, looking extremely aggravated, by way of a theatrically thick length of rope, and Maion will step in and blink several times.
“I should’ve done Pilates or something,” Rosalie says, smiling sheepishly. “Then maybe I could climb up and slide it off the back, I don’t know.” She blinks. “Are you okay? You look really… pale.”
“I’m a little claustrophobic,” Maion says, which is not a lie and which also is not helping matters. He sets the lantern down and crosses the small room to start working at the intricate knot. “Goodness, how long have you been down here?”
“It’s sort of hard to tell,” Rosalie says-remarkably cheerfully for someone tied to a chair in a fake mineshaft. “One of the crew members took me aside before filming started; we went around the back of all the buildings so no one would see.”
Maion frowns at the knot, which Rosalie seems to have tightened by struggling to free herself. “I’m afraid this isn’t a particularly heroic rescue.”
A bit of subtle angel magic solves the knot problem, and shortly Rosalie shakes off the last of the ropes, grinning broadly and stretching her arms.
“I think that’s pretty damn heroic,” she says, and then she leans forward and kisses Maion’s cheek. “And I’m going to throw a heroic tantrum if there isn’t any dinner left-what do you say we blow this joint?”
Maion thinks that turn of phrase may be tempting fate a bit.
Sadly, having a companion does nothing to soothe the panic flooding through Maion’s system and, instead, has exacerbated the fear. Maybe it’s having someone else-someone mortal, someone human, someone whose soul is more susceptible to the currents of terrible energy thrumming beneath them-to worry about as well, or maybe it’s just related to how much time he’s been down here, with that lower-than-hearing sound grating at his nerves. At the least, though, perhaps he can use Rosalie’s presence to distract himself before it wears him further down-from the point of being higher-strung than a fiddle on a skyscraper to the point of nonsense-spouting lunacy, for instance.
“How did you end up on the show?” he asks. “I mean, if it’s not too personal.” You know what it is? he doesn’t ask. Too dark. Too cold. Too deep. Can we run? Let’s run. It’s getting hard to breathe-
Rosalie sighs. “The usual, I guess. My parents really, really want me to marry somebody who has money, because I have an art degree, and they don’t think I’ll ever make enough to support myself.”
Maion tries to inscribe a mental note to have a rich patron ‘discover’ her, but his mental hand is too shaky for the mental pen to stay on the mental notepad. “Well, that’s silly.”
“Or it’s pragmatic,” Rosalie says, less than contentedly. “Anyway, as soon as my mom saw the application form on the internet, she insisted, and then when they somehow picked me, I figured… well, might as well make the best of it, right?”
“Lemonade,” Maion says faintly. Apparently the nonsense-spouting lunacy hounds him from around every corner, flitting in the thickening shadows. He swallows and raises the lantern a little, probably futilely.
He realizes that it’s the first time he’s cast much of its light on himself at Rosalie’s gasp. “What happened?” she asks of the smeared blood on his collarbones.
“Um,” Maion says. “Long story. Long, embarrassing story. I’m sure Naina will be happy to tell it later and go into great detail about how I’m such a bi…”
He stops, blinking to clear his vision, looking at the wooden support beams they’re about to pass under. His hand trembles as he lifts the lantern higher, and his heart leaps into his throat, gagging the rest of that sentence, not that it mattered. Not that anything-
“You’re not a bitch,” Rosalie says, hugging him sympathetically. “You’re my he-”
“Run,” Maion says.
Rosalie freezes. “Wh-”
Maion pitches the lantern aside and shoves her, hard. “Go!”
To her credit, she bolts towards the entrance of the mine, and Maion, wrestling with the deafening terror coursing through his feeble form, spares one glance for the break in the nearest beam. What kind of tool would tear into the wood like that, and who would have access t-
No time. He gathers up his not-skirt and starts to scramble after Rosalie.
That’s when he hears the low, low boom of the dynamite.
“Crap,” he gasps.
The world collapses into dark and dust.
The only kinds of screams Belial likes are the ones he has prompted with an overflow of his orgasmic charm. All right, and the ones that wrench from the throats of tortured sinners wrapped in intolerable flame. And natural disaster-related ones. And even horror movie ones, in the right mood. And…
Okay, never mind. The point is that he doesn’t like the rather blood-curdling specimen that breaks into his peaceful dinner at Pat’s Hotel for Patient Patricians (a name which she has not yet accepted). He also doesn’t like having to leave the delicious meal provided by his personal caterer in order to follow the rush of humanity out into the street.
Vincent has already grabbed Rosalie’s shoulders-which is a pity, because with her coated in dust but for the tear-streaks cutting down her cheeks, her hair tangled and half-undone, she’s putting the hot in hot mess, and Belial wants a bite of that before it gets cold.
Then he sees the soft curls of dust-smoke rising from the general area of the mine, and he realizes that it was the proximity to Earthen destruction that made his inner being quiver with joy, not the food. He’ll have to fire this caterer, too. Ah, well.
In the meantime, he tears a camera out of the hands of the nearest lackey-ignoring the several-fingers-breaking scream, which is also pretty pleasant, now that he thinks about it-and races after Vincent, who has taken off towards the mine at a vampire’s sprint.
There’s a lot of digging after that. More specifically, Vincent does a lot of digging; Belial mostly just yawns a couple times and futzes with the settings on the camera, glad it got the night-vision upgrade, since that makes all of the dirt as clear as… dirt.
Distantly, he can hear some of the other girls clamoring around the entrance, but no one braves the evidently unsafe conditions to help Vincent paw through the rubble, grim-faced in the dark.
It’s strange-Belial tends to revel in the Worst Possible Scenario game for the pure, sadistic joy of it, but he hadn’t anticipated that anyone would go this far. Clearly, there’s some merit to Maion’s vampire-hunter theory, and it almost got him/her/Belial-and-his-libido-don’t-give-a-damn killed. In principle, he likes the concept of a plot twist, but the fact of the matter is that someone is trying to take control of his show, and that is unacceptable.
So is the lack of results.
“She’s got to be dead by now,” Belial says. “Which means she took the show with her; the insurance premiums are going to torpedo this thing.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Vincent says, and-looking past the violation of the contractual clause about verbally abusing the host-there’s something sweet here. Vincent Duval, the arrogant, affluent, prissy CEO, is excavating a filthy fake mine with his bare hands. The cold mask of preparedness on his face can’t quite hide the primal fear in his eyes, and the black ichor seeping from the cuts in his fingers has left them slick with dark, dark mud. There’s something in that, and it makes a microscopic human-ish fragment of Belial’s heart tighten a little bit.
Before he can work V-I-N-C-E-N-T into the sitting-in-a-tree song, Vincent uncovers a pale finger, followed by a pale hand. Unbelievably-except when one knows from personal experience just how impossible it is to kill a friggin’ angel-it twitches.
Vincent’s a blur. Belial is glad he invested in lusciously thick eyelashes for his preferred human shape, as he’d be in for some serious retina scratches otherwise. When the dust settles, Maia lies in the pocket of displaced earth, curled into the fetal position, hair matted, clothes torn.
Slowly, her arms unwind from around her head, and she coughs.
Belial regrets that holding the camera means he can’t clap his hands. “It’s a Christmas miracle!”
Tragically, Vincent doesn’t bother with a glare; he picks a few strands of hair out of her face and leans in to murmur, “Don’t move until the paramedics know you haven’t damaged your spine.”
“I can move my toes,” Maia says. “I think a few of my ribs gave out, though. And maybe part of my skull. And I’m going to have nightmares forever.”
Vincent doesn’t have a smartass rejoinder for that, which would be remarkable enough in itself-but then he starts smoothing her hair back a little more, tucking it behind her ear, and Belial holds in a monumental squee so that he doesn’t ruin the best episode-trailer shot in the whole of Bridegroom history.
As it turns out, Maia’s injury predictions are all spot-on-which is strange up until the point where she gives Belial a look just before the second airlift in a week. He heads over as they strap her into the stretcher, but he doesn’t get a chance to tell her to stop straining the budget with her helicopter kink; she grips his clean sleeve with her filthy fingers, and her dark eyes shut him up.
“That’s it,” she says.
He raises an eyebrow, and she sets her mouth in a thin line, tugging harder on his sleeve until he leans in close.
“That’s all I’ve got,” she says meaningfully, and then he notices that her angelic aura has faded all the way out.
Surviving the cave-in must have done it-taken the last of the celestial power she had left. Maion, six-winged seraph of lesser legend, is now essentially mortal.
Belial steps back and stays out of the way while they load her onto the helicopter and lift off, stirring up another dust cloud as they go. Then he turns, and the little human-y part of his heart goes mushy: Vincent’s standing just out of range of the helicopter blades, the wind whipping his hair against his face, with one arm around a wet-faced Rosalie, letting Kylie death-grip his free hand. He’s never looked more romantic, more noble, or more ruggedly distressed.
For all that Maion is one of those suck-up goody-two-shoes Virtue-freaks, Belial kind of owes him-her-whatever some gratitude for unintentionally making this show kick so much ass. Is there a “Sorry my nefarious plot resulted in you getting crushed and becoming powerless, and thanks for the great footage” Hallmark line, or is he going to have to bust out the glitter glue?