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Post by Nina Giles on Nov 4, 2010 20:10:07 GMT -5
Nina sat on her veranda, feet up on the railing, a book in one hand and a mug of tea in the other. She was so immersed in the journal that she didn't hear the sound of a powerful engine until she saw the vehicle speeding up her driveway. Erika's yellow Bumblebee, to be exact.
She frowned and set the mug down as Erika screeched to a halt in the front of the house, halfway on the lawn, and got out. "Erika, what the hell?" Nina started, but the look of... fury? On Erika's face stopped her. She watched Erika go around to the passenger side of the car and half drag someone out, and she hurried down to the car to help. "You've brought me a half-conscious man?" she asked dubiously, getting under the man's other arm and helping Erika get him into the house.
"A little odd as gifts go, unless I really strike you as being that desperate." They set him on the couch and Nina put a hand gently under the man's chin, tilting his face up so she could get a look at him. "A very attractive half-conscious man, I might add. Who is he and what in the nine hells have you been doing to him?"
She glanced briefly at the table next to her and a bowl of warm water and a cloth appeared. She gently cleaned what smelled remarkably like dried aconitum off his face and looked at her young friend for an explanation.
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Post by Erika Mirazida on Nov 4, 2010 22:01:36 GMT -5
“Damon happened,” Erika said in barely contained fury. “He decided that Mason knew something about Katherine that he wasn’t telling and thought the best way to get the information out of him was to torture him.” She stepped back and watched Giles clean Mason up. He half opened his eyes once, then seemed to just shut down.
“And thanks to my stupid boyfriend, Damon force-fed Mason Wolfsbane, which if you know anything at all about werewolves you’ll know is like giving Vervain to a vampire. I don’t know how many times he stabbed him with a white-hot poker from the fire, but it was at least three from the time I walked in the door to the time I got to Damon.” She waited until Nina looked at her before she continued. “He was going to kill him, Giles. I barely got there in time to stop him.”
She could almost see Giles’s mind working, sorting through the hundred or so questions she must have in her mind to find the most important ones. If the circumstances hadn’t been so serious it would almost have been comical watching the myriad of expressions that crossed her features until flat out anger settled in.
“I didn’t know what else to do, I couldn’t very well take him home to Carol, and I figured he’d be safe with you. Can you help him, do you think?”
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Post by Nina Giles on Nov 4, 2010 22:25:18 GMT -5
As she typically did when she was upset, Erika was talking a mile a minute and Nina had to concentrate to completely understand what the girl was telling her. She stared at her for a moment, then looked back at the now fully unconscious man on her couch.
"Wait, you're telling me that this is Mason Lockwood?" She knelt on the floor next to the couch and studied him again. "He promised me he'd stay away from the Lockwood family. Should have known better than to trust the word of a bloody damn vampire."
She shook her head and tossed the cloth back into the bowl and unbuttoned Mason's shirt. "Thought I smelled that crap, and if it is anything like vervain, then he's not healing the way he should be." She wasn't surprised to see the ugly, oozing wounds where the overheated metal had made contact with him. She looked up at Erika and nodded briefly. "Of course you can leave him with me, and I promise I'll do whatever I can for him. I don't actually have much experience with werewolves, but I certainly have information on them. Sit with him for a minute, would you? I need to pop into the lab and the library." Without waiting for a reply, she got up and walked out of the room.
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Sir Patrise
New Member
I shall protect you for as long as you walk this Earth.
Posts: 9
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Post by Sir Patrise on Nov 4, 2010 23:03:22 GMT -5
Patrise fell into step with Nina as she strode through the corridors and into her library. She was used to his appearing and disappearing at will and was very rarely ever surprised by it anymore.
"I almost hate to ask, but are you entirely certain this is something you want to get involved with?" he asked gently. She didn't slow her pace, nor had he expected her to. "You haven't ever had contact with their kind before, I know, but can you be absolutely positive that you don't pose the same kind of threat to him that you do to the vampires?"
Now she did stop for a moment, but only to grab a book off a high shelf before she looked at him.
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Post by Nina Giles on Nov 5, 2010 0:04:35 GMT -5
"I... I don't know," she finally said, grabbing another three books and tucking them into one of the bags she kept in the library for carting her books around. She left the library and headed for the stairs that led to the basement and her labratory, knowing that Patrise would keep step with her.
"I have to honestly say that I rather doubt it, though. My purpose was to kill vampires. I suppose if we had been beseiged by werewolves I'd probably be toxic to them as well, but as far as I can remember, we never had one in the village. Probably because of all the vampires." She unlocked the door at the bottom of the stairs and turned on the lights, then crossed over to one of the three long lab benches, looking at the labels. "Damn, I forgot I ran out of my Allheal again. And the next batch won't be ready for at least a week."
She turned to walk out, then looked back at him. "Do I want to get involved with this?" She laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. "Do I have a choice? I can't very well tell Erika 'no, take him out of here, it's not my problem' can I? And I wouldn't anyway, you know that."
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Post by Mason Lockwood on Nov 7, 2010 11:24:45 GMT -5
Mason drifted in and out of consciousness, but his mind refused to focus on anything but the pain that drove him back into the soothing blackness. In the moments he was nearly aware of what was happening around him he wondered why his body wasn't healing, and for a few panicked seconds he wondered if this was what dying felt like. He vaguely remembered some of Damon's words, things about Katherine that he hadn't quite understood, but in his current state he simply was not capable of sorting through what had just happened to make any kind of sense of it at all.
Had Damon killed him? And if he had, was he condemned to an afterlife of eternal pain and suffering for the things he had done, the people he had hurt and the lives he had taken, even though he had been unable to control the wolf in him?
Every now and then voices floated through his drifting state of consciousness, both female. One he almost recognized, the other, accented and musical, he didn't remember ever hearing before.
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Sir Patrise
New Member
I shall protect you for as long as you walk this Earth.
Posts: 9
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Post by Sir Patrise on Nov 7, 2010 15:57:25 GMT -5
Patrise shook his head as they exited the lab and headed back upstairs. "You don't have to take on every problem that lands on your doorstep, you know." He could have said more, but didn't bother. She had always been the kind of person that took on whatever challenge came her way.
"What do you intend to do? You know he's likely under the vampire-witch's compulsion. You know how dangerous she is, who knows what ideas or actions she may have planted in his mind. She's never without a backup plan or four."
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Post by Nina Giles on Nov 7, 2010 16:05:46 GMT -5
Nina sighed deeply and shook her head. "Should have driven a stake through that bitch's heart when I had the chance a hundred years ago. My bad for not hunting her down then. Fortunately for Mason Lockwood, however, removing a compulsion is child's play for me now, I've done it so often over the years. The damage she's done to him along the way won't be so easy though. Might have to give him something else to focus on while he comes to terms with the fact that he's been manipulated by her all this time."
She thought for a moment. "I wonder if there's a way to actually remove the werewolf curse? I've never tried, of course, but this isn't your typical case of 'bitten by one and changed', this is something genetic, something tangible that I might be able to reverse..." she trailed off as they entered the sitting room and Patrise faded into nothingness. "Heal the physical and remove the compulsion first, then deal with the rest I suppose."
She set the books on a table and perched on the edge of the couch next to Mason, and looked at Erika. "How are we doing?"
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Post by Erika Mirazida on Nov 7, 2010 18:05:16 GMT -5
Erika looked up as Nina came back in and shrugged. "He's out cold. I figured it was best to just..." she grinned "...let sleeping dogs lie?" She ignored the disapproving look Nina levelled at her. "Hey, I've had to spend so much time puppy-sitting Tyler I figure I'm entitled to a few bad dog jokes, okay?"
She looked at Mason, whose face clearly reflected pain despite the fact that he wasn't conscious. "He hasn't moved, really. Who were you talking to when you came in?"
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Post by Nina Giles on Nov 7, 2010 18:19:31 GMT -5
"Nice, Erika. I would have expected a little more compassion from you, given the circumstances." She shook her head at the multiple burn marks decorating Mason's chest and stomach.
"Then again, I also would have expected better than this from Damon. I really thought he was getting away from the whole 'pissed at the whole world and looking to extract revenge from everyone' thing. If I didn't already hate that Godforsaken woman I certainly would now." She ran her fingers through her hair and sighed.
She decided to ignore the question about who she had been talking to, since Patrise had chosen to make himself invisible upon entering the room. She never alerted anyone to his presence without his explicit consent.
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Post by Erika Mirazida on Nov 7, 2010 18:24:41 GMT -5
Erika stood up. "Well, I'll leave you to it then. I'll be around if you need anything, okay?"
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a cell phone, which she handed to Nina. "That's his, I managed to get it away from Damon before he did anything else stupid. You may want to tell Tyler or Carol something, I'm sure one or the other will wonder where he got off to."
At the door she paused and looked around the room, wondering. She was sure she had heard another voice besides Nina's, but then it was an old house, full of strange noises and probably home to one or more ghosts of the past. "See you later."
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Post by Nina Giles on Nov 7, 2010 18:31:51 GMT -5
"Thanks Erika." Nina took the cell phone and set it on the table. "I"ll do what I can for him." She barely heard Erika's reply and the sound of the front door closing.
"Now, my friend, let's see what we can do for you." She consulted one of her journals - despite what she had said to Patrise it had been a long time since she had tried to forcibly remove a vampire compulsion on someone, and since she wasn't sure if or how a werewolf might react to vervain she didn't want to try it. She moved from the couch into the chair Erika had been sitting in and curled up, tucking her feet underneath herself. She glanced over at Mason from time to time, but he was showing no signs of waking up any time soon. She also knew that Patrise was still in the room and would alert her if her guest did wake up.
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Sir Patrise
New Member
I shall protect you for as long as you walk this Earth.
Posts: 9
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Post by Sir Patrise on Nov 7, 2010 19:36:01 GMT -5
Patrise faded back into existence once Erika had departed. He had long ago given up trying to understand what drove Gianna to do the things she did. After all the years he had spent with her he had come to the conclusion that there were some things he would never understand about her.
He thought about this as he watched her poring over her old journals - grimoires some would have termed them - looking for details on the people she had helped rid themselves of a vampire compulsion over the years. Of all the mysteries that were his beloved, her unswerving attraction to Damon Salvatore remained one of the things he had never been able to understand. She was, first and foremost, a weapon forged to destroy vampires, and she had killed more than he cared to count over the years. So what was it about Damon that drew her so strongly, and was this werewolf the one who would finally free her?
"Add another mystery to the list," he thought to himself, watching the movements of the man on her couch. Human, yes, but one cursed to turn into a monster at the full moon. A man who, he mused, was the reason that she was truly irritated at Damon.
"Gianna," he spoke softly. She looked up and he looked pointedly at the couch and faded back into invisibility.
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Post by Mason Lockwood on Nov 7, 2010 21:10:07 GMT -5
Consciousness beckoned and would no longer be denied no matter how soothing and welcoming the blackness of oblivion was. He came back to himself slowly, reluctant to open his eyes as the images of what he had suffered at Damon's hands flooded his mind. He really didn't want to wake up if he was going to wake to more of the same.
The musical, accented voice spoke his name softly, and he opened his eyes, looking up at the face of an angel. Crap, he thought, I really am dead.
"Heaven or Hell?" he asked quietly, and watched her expression go from concern to confusion.
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Post by Nina Giles on Nov 7, 2010 21:22:10 GMT -5
"What?" Nina asked, surprised, then she had to laugh a little. "I'm going to hope that was a compliment rather than some odd sort of delirium," she commented, putting her hand on his uninjured shoulder to stop him from moving.
"No, luv, don't sit up." She brushed the back of her fingers against his cheek. "You are very much still alive, and you have my promise that you are absolutely safe here."
"I'm Nina Giles, Mason, and I believe I can help you, if you'll let me."
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