Wicked Little Machines

[LostInWonderland]

Angeline/145, but looks about 20


Angeline woke up with a start in the middle of the night, like she had nearly every night for the last couple of months. The nightmares never got any better, and to make it worse, there was nobody around she could go to comfort her about it. Not anymore.


When she glanced at the clock, it was half past midnight. Late for humans to go to bed, but late for vampires to get up. Slowly, she got out of bed and stumbled her way to the dresser, pulling out some clothes and clumsily pulling them over her head and legs. On the dresser was a picture, the last one they’d taken together. She glanced at it everyday, and everyday it struck a pang in her heart. Today, however, was particularly bad, because it marked the two month anniversary of Christian’s death.


“Don’t worry,” she said, glancing at his face. She placed two fingers over the glass as if she could touch him again. “I’m going to find whoever it was who hurt you.” He’d done so much for her over the years that she owed him that. There were times she’d even convinced herself she was in love with him, and now that he was gone, she was so lonely it physically hurt. The only thing that numbed it was her dedication to finding his killer.


Downstairs she found her jacket and the car keys on the kitchen countertop. There were some things about the modern world she had a hard time adjusting to, but cars were not one of them. She felt invincible behind the wheel, and today she felt sure it would guide her in the right direction. However, a hungry vampire was not a productive vampire, and she needed to get her fix. At this time of night, it wouldn’t be hard. There were plenty of bar dwellers too out of their minds to fight her off, and all they’d have to remember in the morning were the teeth marks on their necks. They’d blame it on drinking too much, getting too crazy, and that was that.


Fifteen minutes later, with her car parked in a parking garage two blocks away, she was walking the sidewalks, trying to scope out the busiest place of the night, when a twenty-four hour diner caught her eye instead. It was the one she used to go to with Christian sometimes, and though she knew it was probably a bad idea to do it to herself, she couldn’t help but stop there instead.

Alex/23


It wasn’t easy to be a werewolf. You had to deal with a lot. There were the full moons, the anger issues, and of course, the difficulty of keeping all of it a secret. It was dangerous, too, especially in the first few months, while you tried to get a handle on all of the new emotional problems. Anything could set off the wolf inside. You became more animal than human. Alex still hadn’t gotten the hang of it.


Tonight was one of those weird nights. The stress and anxiety had gotten to him. It wasn’t even a full moon, yet something must have triggered his wolf side. One minute, he was walking down the street with human legs, the next he was running on all fours.


When he became wolf, it was like he was no longer Alex anymore. He blacked out while the animal took over. He was aware of only this; there was something, or someone, chasing him. That’s all he knew. His instincts pointed him in the direction of the forest, where he’d be provided with more cover, so there he ran. Survive. That was the only thing on his mind. He had to do whatever he had to do to survive.


Eventually, when the sound of the running behind him faded, he slowed to let his breath catch and his legs rest. His ears still listened carefully, and his eyes were still keeping a sharp look out. The silence didn’t mean his attacker was gone, it just meant they could be hiding. He tilted his nose up and sniffed the air, searching for a scent other than his own or the other creatures around him, and when he caught it, he growled.

 

[PiperAllen]

Oliver/24


Oliver sat alone at the 24-hour diner, staring down at the cup of black coffee in front of him. He wasn't paying any attention to his surroundings, something his father would be angry at him for doing. Not that it mattered what his father thought now. After all, dead men can't exactly be judgmental of their living relatives.


Oliver was worried about his sister, Clara, but he knew that calling her now might be a bad idea. He didn't want to distract her from the hunt. He had originally planned to go with her to hunt this latest wolf, but had decided not to at the last minute. He was too tired. It's not like he wasn't sleeping. In fact, if anything, he had been sleeping more lately. Clara thought he was depressed. Oliver supposed she was right. It had been almost five years since their parents murder and they were no closer to their revenge than they had been the night their parents died.


He glanced up when he heard the bell above the diner's door chimed. It wasn't Clara, just some girl. Oliver wasn't surprised, Clara had only been gone a little while. Oliver focused his attention back on the half empty cup of coffee.


"Need some more?" he heard the waitress ask. Oliver looked up and nodded slightly.


"Please," he said, watching the waitress as she refilled his cup before walking off. He leaned back in his seat, running his hand through his hair.

Clara/22


Clara ran through the forest, pieces of hair coming out of her braid and getting in her face. Tonight hadn't gone as planned, and she was beginning to get frustrated. First, Oliver had backed out of the hunt at the last minute, and then the werewolf she was hunting turned into a wolf. She wanted to finally confront him tonight, not chase him through the forest.


After a few minutes of running, Clara slowed. She wasn't even sure she was still going in the same direction as the wolf. She had become disoriented in the forest. When she heard a noise, she ducked for cover. She crouched behind some trees, not moving. She saw the wolf a second later. She wasn't him stop and rest, and heard him growl. She knew that the wolf knew she was close. She didn't move for a long moment before reaching into her black jacket and pulling out her gun. She took a deep breath and stood up, stepping closer to the wolf.


"If you move to attack me, I'll shoot you." She said threateningly. "Turn human. I need to talk to you." She instructed. She wasn't even sure if the wolf could control turning himself back human, but she was impatient and wanted answers. It had been five years, it was high time she actually learned something that would help her find her parents' killer. "I'm looking for Jackson. Tell me where I can find him."

 

[LostInWonderland]

The scent of the coffee almost knocked her off her feet as soon as she stepped inside. Panic quickly took a hold of her as she felt the loss of her friend more strongly for the second time in the short while she had been up. Her hands shook, her knees wobbled, and she fought the urge to run. She shouldn't have come here. She knew it was a bad idea. Still, she couldn't bring herself to leave.


Taking a deep breath, Angeline looked around for the booth, the one with the torn vinyl by the window, but it was taken by some man. The panic response she felt a moment ago switched to one of anger. Didn't he know that was her booth? The one she shared with Christian when they came here together? She thought, weighing out her options, before deciding that she wasn't going to let some unlucky stranger keep her from having what she'd come for. Besides, she did need her fill before she set off to do what she'd first intended to do tonight, and sometimes poor, lonely looking men were no match for her.


"You're in my booth," she said, walking over to the table. "But... I suppose I wouldn't mind sharing. If you'd let me that is. May I?" she asked him, but sat down before he could answer anyway. It felt just like she remembered it, and for a second she didn't know whether to smile at the memory, or cry. If would have been perfect if the spot across from her was not taken by a stranger.


She reached for a menu and flipped it open, though she didn't know why she bothered. She always got the same thing; a giant stack of bluberry pancakes. Either that or pie. She may need blood to survive, but it didn't mean she couldn't enjoy the taste of human food.


"I'm Angeline, by the way," she said. Maybe if she tried hard enough she could pretend at least for a little while that everything was normal.

Alex let out some more growls as he backed away his pursuer. His wolf mind couldn't quite comprehend what was happening other than that she was somehow the enemy and he had to defend himself against her. His eyes never left her face, but he could see the glint of the moon on the gun she'd pull. Though not himself, and not fully able to understand as an animal, the human part recognized that it meant danger.


Whenever he went wolf, it was like somebody pulled a blindfold over him. He ceased to remember who he was before the shift. All actions were instinctual. Thoughts came in the form of emotions. He was fully wired to attack her right now, but she was also taking a defensive stance. It was possible that she didn't really mean to harm him, only to protect herself. But then why was she following him? He could hear the sounds coming from her mouth, but the words fell flat on his ears. All but one.


Jackson. At the sound of the name, Alex's growling ceased for a moment as his golden eyes widened. Jackson. He knew who Jackson was, and in his mind he could picture the sinister smile on a human face, the glare of his matching wolf eyes. Suddenly Alex's anger flared. Since he was not able to understand what the girl was asking of him, his instincts told him that she had a connection to Jackson, which automatically made her his enemy. It was time to fight or take flight, but he had never had much control over his temper.


No longer even thinking of the gun, Alex made a move. He leaped up off his hind legs, claws out, straight at the girl.

 

[PiperAllen]

Oliver looked up when he heard somebody talking to him, raising an eyebrow at the girl who sat down across from him. "Uh... sorry?" he said when she accused him of stealing her booth. When she sat down without waiting for him to say something else, his eyes narrowed slightly. Not that he was feeling particularly hostile towards the stranger or anything, he was just more used to ignoring strangers completely. Plus, he was a little concerned about Clara, so he was pretty preoccupied at the moment. "No, go ahead." He said, motioning towards the seat the girl was already sitting in in a slightly sarcastic manner.


"I'm Oliver." He said with a slight smile when Angeline introduced herself. "Nice to meet you." He said. He figured that he should take his mind off of his little sister, or he would drive himself crazy worrying about her. This stranger in front of him might just be the perfect distraction. "This place has pretty good pancakes." he said, attempting to spark a conversation. He had eaten here a few times during his stay in this particular city, for two reasons. He liked this diner, and he couldn't be bothered with finding more places to eat. He always had trouble finding his way around new cities, so he preferred to find a few places and stick with them. He took a drink of his coffee, leaning back in his seat. "Although I suppose it's a bit early for breakfast, seeing as it's not even one AM."


Oliver's eyes narrowed slightly, watching Angeline. "Rough night?" He asked


Clara


Clara watched the wolf uneasily, biting her lower lip. When the wolf jumped at her, she took a quick couple of steps back before pulling the trigger on her gun. The bullet got the wolf in the shoulder. Clara didn't move for a moment, glancing behinds her. She hoped that nobody had heard the shot. Although she knew that the wound she had just inflected would prevent the wolf from hurting her, it wouldn't prevent him from giving up information on Jackson. She didn't need somebody to hear the shot, call the police, and ruin her interrogation.


"If I shoot again, it's fatal. Got it?" She asked, lowering the gun so it was pointed at the ground. She said 'if' she shot again, but the correct word would be 'when.' She always killed the werewolves when she was done questioning them. She was a hunter, after all, and the fewer living werewolves around, the better. She owed that much to her parents. She didn't think that just catching their killer was enough to avenge them, despite that being her main focus.


She tucked the gun into the back waistband of her pants and crouched down cautiously. If she had to, she could still grab the gun fast enough to save her life. "Watch that you don't bleed to death." She said, inspecting the werewolf in front of her.

 

[LostInWonderland]

"It's never too early for breakfast," Angeline said, debating what sounded good in her head. She could have laughed at his statement, even, because it was actually pretty late for her to be having breakfast, but she didn't. Finally she settled on the pie, and caught the attention of the waitress. She placed her order than leaned back in her seat, looking at the man in front of her closely for the first time. He was looking at her with suspicion, but she figured it had more to do with her abrupt entrance than anything else. That kind of thing tended to blow over a lot better when they were drunk, but since she had opted out of the bar scene for the night...


"Do I look like I had a rough night?" she asked him. She hadn't bothered looking in the mirror at all. Contrary to popular vampire lore, she could see herself just fine, only lately she hadn't much cared for her appearance. "If I do, it's probably because I have. Men are so selfish sometimes... no offense."


The waitress came back with her pie, and she unraveled her napkin. "One minute they're by your side," she said, stabbing the crust with a fork, "The next they disappear without a trace. I just don't get how somebody can just do that kind of a thing to another person." The pie tasted like heaven, but it was tainted by the bitterness she felt.

Alex heard the gun fire before he felt the sting of the bullet. He let out a yelp as he fell to the ground, landing on the shoulder opposite to the gun wound. He tried to move, but was paralyzed with pain. The sound of the girl's voice was muddled as his brain tried to make sense of the situation. Getting shot would surely confuse most people, but when you combined getting shot with the sudden unexpected nausea that came with the shift, it was bad.


The pain in his shoulder was nothing compared to the pain of his insides rearranging. It was blinding pain, the kind that never got better no matter how many times you went from human to wolf, or wolf to human. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was torture. Finally, it was no longer wolf laying before Clara, but a man.


As Alex became more aware of his surroundings, and his eyes were able to focus, they settled on Clara's face. Suddenly he sat up, backing away as far as he could from the girl. He felt a pain in his shoulder, and when he looked down, he saw the wound. What happened? What was going on?


"You... you shot me!" he said, both bewildered and angry. Nobody human had ever tried to kill him before. Unless... he remembered briefly something that had happened when he was a wolf a moment before. Jackson, he heard her say in his mind, and his eyes narrowed, as he quickly rose to his feet, ignoring the pain.


"What are you? One of Jackson's lackies or something? Well you can tell Jackson, that if he wants to kill me he can come and do it himself," Alex said angrily. He took a few steps towards her, ready to defend himself if she tried anything.

 

[PiperAllen]

Oliver chuckled softly at Angeline's comment about breakfast, nodding in agreement. He frowned at what she said next about men, shrugging. "None taken." He said lightly, taking another sip of the coffee. He watched Angeline order and sat in silence, not sure what to say to her. He listened to her with interest, frowning at what she said.


"People can be pretty terrible... Monsters, even." He understood that people leaving without a goodbye was terrible. He felt bad, however, because he had done that to more than a few women in recent years. It wasn't really his fault a lot of the time, he told himself. When he and Clara got wind of a lead on a werewolf, they dropped everything and took off. There was never enough time to say goodbye to people they had met. Oliver figured that Clara understood that better than he did. She never got close to anybody in the different cities. He, however, had a habit of finding somebody new in each place.


Oliver shook his head slightly, interrupting his train of thought. "Sorry... I spaced." He said apologetically. "Just thinking about.. people leaving and leaving people and all that." he shook his head again.


Clara





Clara watched the werewolf turn with wide eyes. She was quite familiar with seeing werewolves shift, quite a few had done it during her interrogations, but it was something she never got used to. Every time she met a werewolf, she was more thankful that she wasn't one. She watched the man sit up and back away from here. Despite having been following the werewolf for quite a while, she had never been able to get a good look at his face.


"Yep." She said simply in response to the man accusing her of shooting him. "But, in my defense, you jumped at me as a wolf. Claws out and everything." She said, watching him stand up. When he accused her of working for Jackson, she raised an eyebrow. Taking a few steps back from him, she frowned, but didn't pull out her gun again.


"You do realize that you probably can't hurt me that much with a bullet in your shoulder.. right?" She said, watching him. "I'm not one of Jackson's lackies.. I'm Clara. And you're Alex.. right? I thought I caught your name a while ago, but I may have gotten it wrong." She said with a smile. It was probably best to seem friendly with this werewolf. He was injured, for one thing. It's not like he posed much of a threat. "I'm not working for Jackson, I'm trying to find him."


She paused. Based on how Alex had reacted when she mentioned Jackson when he was in wolf form, maybe Alex didn't like him. "I've been after the guy for most of the last five years. I want him dead." She said, deciding to tell the truth and hope that Alex wouldn't have anything against giving up Jackson's location.

 

[LostInWonderland]

Monsters? Well, wasn’t that ironic. If only he knew about the secrets the world hid around him, maybe he wouldn’t be so willing to talk to this strange new girl in front of him. Oliver was talking about a different kind of monster though, one that Christian wasn’t. He was the opposite of that, really. He’d been there for her always, even since before she died. It wasn’t his fault he left her behind, it was just now that he was gone, she was so lost.


She hadn’t even noticed his silence until he broke it. Angeline had been lost in her own thoughts. “It’s alright,” she said. “It’s kind of inevitable that somebody’s going to leave you, or that you’ll have to leave somebody else. I mean, we all die eventually, right?” Although that had been the point of it all, hadn’t it? In her old life she’d been determined to leave everybody behind that had ever dared to abandon her. It was supposed to be her final stand, but then Christian had turned her. After that she thought the whole point of being a vampire was that she would never have to say goodbye to the people she cared most about anymore. Of course, it wasn’t exactly how things worked out.


She stabbed at the pie again. It was half gone, but she wasn’t feeling it anymore, so she pushed the plate away, and cleared her throat. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be so depressing.”

“I’ve been through worse,” Alex said about the bullet. It did hurt, but when it was your life at risk, you took a lot of chances. It was amazing what kind of pain you put up with when your survival instincts took over. “And I can’t help what I do when I’m a wolf. If I attacked you, I probably had good reason to,” he added in his own defense.


When she mentioned his name, he definitely believed he had good reason to attack her. He’d never seen this chick before in his life, and yet, he assumed now that she’d been following him. She even knew his name, and if that wasn’t a red flag he didn’t know what else was.


He narrowed his eyes at her, wondering if it was worth it to trust her on this. If what she said was true, they shared a common enemy. If she wanted him dead, then they had that in common as well. “And you think that I would know where he is?” he asked. “Believe me, if I knew where that son of a bitch was I would have killed him by now.”

 

[PiperAllen]

"Yep." Oliver said, thinking over Angeline's comment about everybody dying. Unless you've a vampire, that is. He thought. He shrugged when Angeline apologized for being depressing.


"Nah, I'm used to depressing." He said, staring down at his mug of coffee. A family finding out that their loved one was a monster was depressing. Oliver remembered one family, he thought their last name was Bentley, who found out that their mother had died and came back as a vampire. They didn't understand what was happening to her, until Oliver and Clara showed up and killed the women. Yep, that counted as depressing.


"It's funny, people normally spill their sorrows to strangers in bars, not diners." he said, looking up at Angeline with a slight grin. He took a long drink of coffee, setting the now empty mug back on the table lightly. Leaning back in the booth, he glanced out the window for a long moment. No sign of Clara. He sighed softly, turning back to Angeline.


"So, do you live in the city or are you just passing through?" He asked her.


Clara





Clara shrugged when Alex said he must have had a good reason to attack her. She supposed he was right. "True." she said simply. Her shoulders slumped at what Alex said about Jackson. She was growing quite tired of werewolves not being able to answer one simple question. How hard can it possibly be to find one werewolf? Very hard, apparently.


"Wonderful. Another werewolf who knows nothing. You are the fourteenth one who doesn't know anything!" She groaned. "I thought you would know where he is because he turned you." She paused for a minute.


"You clearly hate him. Why? Because he was the one who turned you?" She questioned. A werewolf she had interrogated about a month ago told her about Alex being turned by Jackson. That's how she knew to follow him. "When was the last time you saw him, and where was that?" She continued. She brushed a few stray hairs out of her face, watching Alex closely.

 

[LostInWonderland]

“Yeah, well, that was the original plan. But then I figured I’d drown my sorrows in pie and coffee rather than alcohol for the night,” Angeline said. It was way too tempting to let herself go numb with drinks and waste the night away, but she knew she’d never get anything done that way. At least when she was done here she could actually get to work.


Oliver seemed like he had his fair share of sadness about him. Angeline could read it in his expressions. He’d been wearing a similar tired, worried look earlier. Was he waiting for somebody? That would certainly get in the way of her plans. Of course, it might be weird to drink the blood of somebody you’d just opened up to. That ran the risk of making her feel guilty.


“I’ve lived here my whole life,” she answered him. The fact that she could do that as a vampire was sort of amazing, but she had Christian to thank for a lot of that. “You’re new though. I recognize most faces from around here, but I’ve never seen yours before.”

Okay, so now she knew his name and who turned him? How long had this girl been stalking him? It both equally impressed him and creeped him out. It didn’t take a lot to get Alex angered or annoyed, and so far she was doing exceptionally well at both, but it did take a lot to surprise him. And well, she was doing an exceptional job at that too.


“Fourteen?” he scoffed. He had little sympathy for other werewolves, since most of them he’d come across were not much better than Jackson was, but he had to admit that coming across Clara was not exactly something he’d wish on any of his fellow wolves. She’d already shot him. There was no telling what she’d done to others.


When she asked her questions, his eyes narrowed. “That’s personal,” he said. It was not something he liked to think about, even if he did a lot anyway. “And how do I know you’re not going to kill me once I tell you?” She could try to kill him anyway, but he wouldn’t make it easy. Even with his shoulder inured, which still hurt like hell, he was a force to be reckoned with.

 

[PiperAllen]

Oliver nodded at what Angeline said. "Ah. I've only been in town a couple of days." He informed her. "My sister and I are drifters, basically. We never stay in one place for very long." He said. Mostly because we leave after we kill everything we possibly can. He thought to himself, although he didn't hint at this to Angeline. It was better not to make people think he and Clara were serial killers, even though they kind of were. They didn't kill humans, though, so that had to make them better than the people who killed other people because they liked to. That's what Oliver told himself, anyway.


"I'm not sure how much longer I'll be around here." He said thoughtfully. He would stick around just until Clara had dealt with the werewolf she had gone after. But that could be days, for all he knew. He always let Clara do the interrogating, mostly because he couldn't stomach the torture. The killing was bad enough.


He decided to push those thoughts out of his head and returned his attention to Angeline.


Clara


"Yeah, fourteen." Clara said, frowning slightly when Alex didn't tell her anything. On one hand, she understood why he wasn't in a hurry to tell her all of his personal business. She had shot him, after all. On the other hand, the two of them obviously shared a common enemy. If she was in his position, she would probably be willing to do whatever it took to see Jackson killed, even if it meant opening up human.


"Let me tell you something about myself. I'm a woman of my word. So, if I say I won't kill you if you answer my questions, I won't kill you if you answer my questions." She said simply. "None of the other werewolves I've hunted down cooperated with me, and they ending up dying a slow, painful death. So. unless you want to share a similar fate, you'll tell me what I want to know." She said, folding her arms over her chest.


"I'm after Jackson because he killed my parents." She informed him. "My brother and I have been hunting him for the last five years and so far, the only thing we have to show for it is we're both better Hunters than we were when our parents were alive." She paused, letting out a soft sigh. "See? Now you know why I'm after the bastard. Now it's your turn to share." She said, watching him expediently.

 

[LostInWonderland]

She smiled. What a different life drifting must be like. For somebody who had all the opportunity in the world to travel, Angeline hadn't done much of that. Oliver must have seen more in his short human life than she had in her one hundred and some years. And to do all of that with his sister? She had to admit a bit of jealousy at that. Her own family hadn't proven to be much of a family in the end of everything. It was why she was where she was, after all.


"You know," Angeline said, staring down at the coffee in her hands. "I'm not sure how much longer I'll be around here either." It was toxic to hang around this place. It held many memories, some good and some bad, but once this whole quest for the killer thing ended it was probably a good time to move on and start a new life for the second time.


She sighed, looking down at the coffee in her hands. How much longer could she sit here and talk to him without compromising her mission? It was easier to do this with drunk guys, who only pretended to listen before they preceded to hit on her. It made it impossible to feel guilty about using them for food. She really should have just gone to the bar.


"Where do you think you'll go next?" she asked. It was much safer than asking him why he drifted.

That explains a lot, thought Alex as she confessed to being a hunter. He hadn't come across one in a long time, but they were all the same. The superiority complex, the need to be a hero. There were definitely some supernatural creatures out there who needed to be stopped, but not all of them were so bad. The problem was hunters never saw it that way.


Her reasoning though, was what seemed different. She was playing hero for another reason, and it made him uncomfortable, because it mirrored his own motivations in this life. He still didn't trust her not to try and kill him in the end, but he recognized an opportunity when he saw one. Besides, he thought about it, and if they found Jackson and succeeded in killing him, it would solve nearly all his problems. She'd have no reason to kill him seeing as he would cease to be a wolf.


"I'm not going to tell you anything," he said, knowing that he really didn't have a guarantee that she wouldn't pull the trigger on. His only leverage now was his knowledge, which was admittedly, a little limited. "At least not until we're back in the city. You're paying to get this fixed," he shrugged his shoulder and winced at the pain. "And then we have ourselves a deal, little girl."

 

[PiperAllen]

Oliver raised an eyebrow curiously when Angeline said she probably wouldn't be around here for much longer. He wondered why, but he didn't ask. He noticed that Angeline looked a little sad, and he didn't want to risk making her feel worse by prying into her reasons for considering leaving this town. He paused at her question about where he will go next.


"No idea." He said thoughtfully. He knew that wherever he and Clara went, they would go there because Clara thought that somebody, or something, there might know something about the werewolf that killed their parents. "My sister usually decides where we go. Lately I've just been along for the ride." He told Angeline.


Oliver was getting tired of hunting. It had been five years and he and Clara weren't any closer to finding the werewolf who killed their parents. He didn't know how much longer he could do what they're doing now. He wanted to settle down somewhere, find a home. Motels and diners weren't much of a home, after all.


Clara


Clara narrowed her eyes at Alex when he still refused to tell her anything. Sounds like she would be torturing somebody tonight after all. She let out a sigh. She was tired, due to not sleeping much for the past couple of days. Stalking Alex hadn't left much time for naps. He was the second werewolf she and Oliver had hunted down in the last month, compared to one every couple of weeks. She raised an eyebrow when Alex proposed a deal.


"Well, I haven't heard that before." She said, watching him. "Do you realize that I could just torture you until you tell me what I want to know, right?" She paused for a minute, obviously weighing her options. If Alex turned into a wolf while she was interrogating him, he couldn't tell her anything even if he wanted to. If she accepted his deal, that would be putting a certain degree of trust in the man, which was something Clara wasn't very keen on doing. But she might come closer to finding Jackson if she worked with Alex. She frowned.


"You know what? Fine." She said, after a long moment of silence. "We have a deal. But just know that if you try and do anything that would compromise what I'm doing, I will not hesitate to kill you." She said, turning and beginning to walk back in the direction of her car. "Oh, and don't call me 'little girl.' "

 

[LostInWonderland]

"Well that's not fair," Angeline said. "You should be able to choose the destination for once." She had a little bit of an idea of what it was like to be strung along. Growing up she never really had much choice about anything. Her parents had been wealthy, so she had a lot of privilege, but it came at the cost of some of her personal freedoms. Her father wanted to protect the family name, and her mother supported him no matter what. even when doing so compromised her children's true happiness.


"If I get out of here," she said. "I think I'd go to Vegas. Or New Orleans, maybe. Someplace with a lot of culture." She liked the idea of nightlife in Vegas; a prime place for a vampire to hang out and have fun. New Orleans, though, had the jazz music. Just thinking about being able to dance with somebody to something that wasn't club music made her smile.


"If you go to choose, where would you go?" she asked him.

As if torture would get anything out of him, he thought. Alex had been through just about everything in the book before. He could withstand pain if he had to, and there was nothing out there he truly cared about anymore. Jackson had stripped it all away. The only thing that kept him alive these days was the will to get his revenge, and once that was over with, he wasn't really sure what he would do with his life.


"Likewise," he said when she told him not to try anything. He'd never taken a human life, but he wasn't above it if it came down to it. Being a wolf changed things. The things he'd been through these last few years had changed him. He used to be fairly happy, but now he was nothing but bitter and angry, and it definitely showed. He'd been saving up that anger for Jackson, but there was no promising it wouldn't be unleashed on whoever crossed him next.


He followed her through the woods. Now that the initial face off was over, he could take the moment to think about some of the other awkward things about their encounter. "Do you think," he asked after a few moments of silence, "That I could borrow some of your brothers clothes?" The unfortunate thing about shifting is that it completely shredded whatever you happened to be having on. It wasn't like he entirely minded that everything was out in the open, things like this had happened before, but it was different in the woods when nobody else was around. He still didn't want to parade around in public like this.

 

[PiperAllen]

Oliver struggled slightly when Angeline made a comment about him getting to pick where he went. "I do, sometimes." He said, listening to her talk about Vegas and New Orleans with a smile.


"I've been to New Orleans. My sister and I were there about a year ago. It has a lot of culture, that's for sure. Never been to Vegas though." Oliver said, smiling at the memory. Well, the memory of the music and the humans he met there, not the memory of Clara showing up at their motel room covered in werewolf blood and declaring that she knew where they needed to go next. New Orleans was a place that Oliver hadn't been so ready to leave. He paused thoughtfully at Angeline's question.


"I'm not sure, actually." He said. "I don't think I care that much about where I end up going. I mainly just care about where I'll eventually settle down." He said thoughtfully. After the seemingly never ending hunt for his parent's killer came to an end, which Oliver believed it would someday, he didn't want to continue the Hunter's lifestyle. He wanted to find somewhere he liked and stay there.


Clara


Clara walked in silence before looking at Alex when he asked about borrowing clothes. "Sure." She said. "I'm pretty sure that there are some in the back of my car." She said thoughtfully. She and Oliver always kept spare clothes around, mostly because hunting wasn't a bloodless past time. Showing up at a motel or diner, or even a gas station, covered in blood and looking a lot like serial killers wasn't the greatest thing in the world.


She fell silent then, continuing the walk to her car preoccupied by her own thoughts. Not that she was ignoring Alex, as she didn't let her guard down, she just didn't talk. When they reached her car, she went around to the trunk. Opening it up, she stuck her head inside and rummaged around for a couple of minutes. After pushing aside the numerous locked cases filled with hunting supplies.


"Alright, found them." She said, pulling out a black duffel bag. "Take whatever you need." She said, holding out the bag to Alex.

 

[LostInWonderland]

"I'm jealous," she said. All of her knowledge about other places were acquired through books or the television. It was strange. She'd never really considered travelling much. She was perfectly content in the city. At least she had been. Now it was suffocating. But she had a job to do before she could leave.


"At least you've experienced different places," she pointed out. "It'll give you more choices for whenever you eventually decide to settle down." It was such a human concept, to settle down. One that she hadn't thought about in years. It wasn't like she could have children anymore. All the people she met were other humans. In a way she supposed living with Christian was "settling down", but their relationship never progressed past a friendship. To her the very idea of settling down implied finding somebody you wanted to spend the rest of your life with. All of that had been stripped away from her.


Angeline glanced up at the clock, noting the time. It was getting to be too late. She needed to get a move on. She looked back at Oliver. "Um... so listen. I have to go, but I'm a little nervous about walking by myself at this time of night. Would you mind walking me back to my car at all? You seem like a trustworthy person, anyway."

Alex looked into the trunk. He couldn't stop his imagination from picturing what was inside all of those trunks. This girl was dangerous, and he'd have to keep a close eye on her. There was a reason why Alex didn't do the pack thing, and Clara was a good example why. He simply just did not trust other people, and when he dragged them along with him, they always got hurt. It was better he only had himself to look out for.


"Okay..." he said, pulling some jeans and a shirt out. They looked like they'd be a bit small on him, but they would have to suffice. He managed to get into the jeans, but struggled some more with the shirt. His shoulder hurt too much. So he kept it off and decided to deal with that once they fixed up his shoulder.


When he was done he climbed into the passenger seat, just praying he didn't walk into a trap of some kind. He had no idea where she was going to take him. He was just holding onto blind faith that he could work his way out of it if something went wrong.

 

[PiperAllen]

When Angeline said she was jealous of him, Oliver shook his head slightly but didn't respond. He doubted that Angeline would still be jealous of his lifestyle if she knew the truth about the hunting, and the supernatural creatures. Not to mention the quest to bring his parents' killer to justice. He nodded thoughtfully at what Angeline said about experiencing different places.


"I've never thought about it like that. That's a good point." He said with a smile. When Angeline asked him to walk her back to her car, he nodded. "No problem." He said, standing up. He couldn't help but wonder what it must be like to worry about other humans hurting you. Not that Oliver didn't, it's just that he was always worried about humans, and werewolves, and vampires. Just having other humans to worry about seemed so simple.


Oliver heard a car pull up as he and Angeline stepped out of the diner. He thought it might be Clara, which was a relief. He had started to worry about her. Well, worry more anyway.


Clara





Clara waited while Alex got dressed, shutting the trunk and walking around to the front of the car. She got into the driver's seat and started the engine. She glanced over at Alex when he got in the car and noticed that he looked a bit nervous.


"So. you're not about to be murdered, if that's what you're thinking." She said with a slight smirk. "I'm taking you to the hospital, and then we're finding my brother. Then, once we're with my brother, you're going to tell us what we need to know about Jackson." She said as she began to drive. They reached the hospital not long after. Entering the emergency room, she used a fake ID and insurance card, informing the nurse behind the desk that her 'friend' had gotten into a fight and ending up getting shot. She waited outside while Alex got patched up, drumming her fingers on the arm rest of the chair. Once Alex's shoulder had been bandaged up, they left and made their way to the diner where Clara and Oliver had agreed to meet.


After parking her car in the parking lot behind the diner, she got out and shut her door. Sticking her hands in her jacket's pocket, she raised an eyebrow when she saw Oliver leave the diner with some girl Clara had never seen before.


"Huh." She said thoughtfully. "Wonder who that is." She said, more to herself than to Alex.

 

[LostInWonderland]

Angeline put a few dollar bills on the table before they left to pay for her food then followed Oliver out of the diner. It was a shame. He really did seem like a nice guy, and she hated to have to take advantage of him, but vampires had to eat too. Sometimes she saved everybody the trouble and just used blood bags, but her supply had run dry. She wouldn't kill him though; she never killed them.


"Hey, uh, thanks for making my night a little more bearable," she said, stopping for a second to smile at him. That part was true. She had needed to vent a little, even if he couldn't know all the dirty little details. It was just nice to have somebody listen to her. And now she'd repay him by biting him in the neck... she really should have just gone to the diner, but it was too late now.


Placing her hands on his shoulders she leaned up like she was going to kiss him on the cheek for thanks, but she stopped short when she noticed it. The smell. Vampire senses were more heightened than human senses, so she could smell him really well. That was werewolf.


Immediately she started to panic, knowing he'd sense her too. Not to mention, werewolves were the nastiest vampire hunters. If they didn't tear you to shreds, even just one bite would bring on the worst death. A permanent one at that.

The hospital visit had thankfully been a quick one, and it'd been surprisingly easy to convince the nurse that he didn't want to call the police and press charges. It was exceedingly annoying that he couldn't do anything to Clara about it, but as much as it pained him to admit, he could use a partner in crime for this. Even if she was a hunter.


With his shoulder fixed up, they finally got a move on. He wasn't really sure what he was expecting from her, but it wasn't a diner. He figured it'd be some sketchy hunter hide out they would go to. Or maybe Alex was just so used to being the isolated one that he forgot some people actually managed to get out to places at night.


He got out of the car as well. It was easy to spot the brother, since they had some family resemblance to another. However, it didn't take him long to figure out that something wasn't quite right with the girl he was with.


"Clara," he said slowly. "That girl's a vampire." The moment those words left his lips, Angeline and Alex locked eyes. He didn't wait for a response, he just acted, starting for them in a hurry.


But so did Angeline. In a single second the look in her eyes went from one of fear to one of ice. She grabbed Oliver by the collar and swung him up against the brick wall of a building. She bit into her own wrist then forced it to his mouth.


"Take one step closer to me and I'll turn him," she threatened.

 

[PiperAllen]

Oliver looked over at Angeline when she thanked him. He smiled. "Anytime." He said, raising an eyebrow when she leaned up towards him. He frowned slightly when she froze, watching her with a confused expression. His head shot up when he heard Clara yelling at him and saw her, along with somebody he had never seen before, running towards him and Angeline.


"Oliver!" He heard his sister yell. Oliver got the sudden feeling that something was very, very wrong. He looked back at Angeline just as she slammed him against the wall. His eyes widened with realization as she bit her wrist and pressed it against his mouth. This girl was a vampire.


Clara





When Alex informed Clara that the girl Oliver was with was a vampire, Clara's expression turned to one of panic. She took off towards them, yelling Oliver's name as she came closer. She froze, however, when the vampire bit her wrist and pressed it against Oliver's mouth. Clara made eye contact with her brother and felt her stomach twist up in knots. There was no way she could loose Oliver. She would have nothing left. So that's why she ran to Alex and grabbed him by the arm.


"Stop!" She exclaimed. "Don't do anything that would make her turn him." She said, staring at the werewolf with wide eyes. She knew that if there was anything more violent towards the vampire than a hunter, it was a werewolf. "Please." She realized that Alex had no reason not to attack the vampire and get Oliver turned. If anything, he should. Clara had shot him, after all. She just hoped that he wouldn't. "If you do I'll kill you." She added, dropping his arm and looked over at Oliver and the vampire again.


"If you hurt him, that will be the last thing you ever do you bitch." She spat angrily.


Oliver (again)





Oliver didn't take his eyes off of Angeline as he heard Clara. After a second of weighing his options, he grabbed Angeline by her shoulders and pushed her off of him. He spit the vampire blood out of his mouth quickly, gagging at the metallic taste. He knew that if Angeline killed him now he would be screwed, since there was vampire blood in his system.


He pulled a stake out of his jacket and held it up, watching Angeline tensely. "I don't think so." He said, narrowing his eyes at her.

 

[LostInWonderland]

Angeline gasped slightly as Oliver pushed her away. It was true that she wasn't entirely prepared for a fight. If there was one thing Christian had never taught her, it was how to best defend herself in these situations. They just simply never got into them, and if they did, it was always Christian who got them out. Everything she'd done up to now was quick thinking and leverage, but it looked like her luck was running out.


Her eyes widened as she saw Oliver pull out the stake. "You're... you're a hunter..." she said, nearly breathless. Looking over to Clara, she realized that she must be the sister. They were both hunters? But then what was a werewolf doing with hunters?


She didn't even have time to think about that though. She had to find a way to get out of here.

Alex, in the mean time, was doing some thinking of his own. Despite what Clara seemed to think of him, he had no intention of letting her brother get hurt. The only people he ever intended to harm were those who threatened him or, in the case of Jackson, those who screwed him over.


"If you kill me you miss out on information," he pointed out, right as soon the vampire got bold and came at Clara, reaching for the gun she had on her. Alex, though, stepped between them and caught her. He threw Angeline up against the wall this time, pressing close to her. His bite wasn't dangerous unless he was in wolf form, but he didn't feel too threatened by her right now. He knew exactly how to handle this situation to everybody's advantage, well except for maybe the vampire's, that didn't involve killing her.


Angeline struggled against him. She was near tears, feeling like she was going to die. This was it, she was going to die and she would never be able to revenge Christian's death. "Please," she begged. "Just let me go."


Alex ignored her and turned to Oliver. "Put the stake away. We're not going to kill her."

 

[PiperAllen]

"And you're a vampire. I guess everybody is just full of surprises." Oliver said, narrowing his eyes at Angeline. Obviously she had been planning on killing him. That, along with the fact that she was a freaking vampire, made her the enemy. When the vampire lunged at his sister, Oliver moved towards her. He would have killed her then and there, had the man who had showed up with Clara not grabbed Angeline first. Oliver narrowed his eyes at him.


"And who the hell are you to decide what we do with her?" He asked, avoiding looking at Angeline. He heard her begging, and if there was one thing he couldn't stomach one of his victims doing, it was begging for their life. It made him feel like a monster.


"Oliver, do what he says." He heard Clara say. He turned towards her with a bewildered expression.


Clara





Clara shifted from foot to foot, hoping that Oliver would just do what she said. She was clearly shocked that Alex had grabbed the vampire, but she was more shocked that he hadn't killed her. At Oliver's bewildered expression, she sighed.


"He's Alex, the werewolf." She explained. "I made a deal with him. He'll tell us what he knows about Jackson if we cooperate with him." Oliver looked like he was going to protest, so Clara shook her head slightly. "Just trust me on this, okay?" She asked, watching her brother.


After a moment of not moving, Oliver slowly tucked the stake back into his jacket. Clara looked a little relieved. She realized that they needed to know what Alex knew. In order to do that, they needed to cooperate with him. It was the only way they could come any closer to finding Jackson. Clara turned towards Alex.


"If we're not going to kill her, what exactly do you propose we do?" She asked, looking from him to the vampire.

 

[LostInWonderland]

Alex couldn't help but smirk a bit. He felt good. He felt in control of the situation for the first time since Clara had shown up, and he had a vampire pressed up against a wall, her life solely in his hands. Clara couldn't kill him because she needed the information, her brother probably wanted the same thing she did, and the vampire was outnumbered three to one. This was just how he needed it to be.


"Well for one thing," he said, "her blood is just the extra bit of insurance I need that you're not going to kill me when once I tell you what I know." If her blood was in Oliver's system, and he died, he'd be turned. There was nothing worse for a hunter than to be turned. However, that blood would work its way out in twenty-four hours. As long as the vampire was around he'd have a constant supply. "Also, I think I know who this one is. Trust me, she might have some information we need."


He loosened his grip on the vampire slightly, testing her. He felt her try to get loose, so he tightened it again and leaned in. "Look, I'll help keep you alive if you help keep me alive. Deal?"

Angeline was confused. She couldn't understand why a werewolf was telling the hunters not to kill her, let alone why he was appearing to be working with him. Shouldn't they want to kill him too? Shouldn't he be trying to kill her? And what information was he talking about? But when he leaned in and told her that he had her back so long as she'd have this, it was starting to make more sense. He was in this for his own life too.


It didn't appear like she had much of another choice in the matter, so she nodded, and Alex slowly let up on her. She let out a huge, shaken breath. Her legs felt wobbly, so she leaned against the wall and folded her arms across her chest. She couldn't look at them, especially Oliver. She felt so dumb to have gotten herself in this situation.


I'm sorry, Christian, she thought. I've failed you. I let you down.

 

[PiperAllen]

Clara





"Oh, hell no." Clara said, narrowing her eyes at Alex. "See, if the bitch vampire had tried to turn me, that would be one thing. But there is no way in hell I am letting you use my brother's humanity as insurance." She said, folding her arms over her chest. She looked over at Oliver when he started talking.


"Clara, the damage has already be done. If I die in the next twenty-four hours, I'm screwed. It wouldn't matter if we cooperate with him or not." Oliver said, nodding towards Alex. Clara's mind began to race. She couldn't control what happened to Oliver until the vampire's blood was out of his system. That gave her twenty-four hours to get the information she wanted out of Alex, and figure out a way to kill both him and the vampire without Oliver being killed and turned. Wonderful.


"Fine!" Clara said, throwing her hands up. "Congratulations, wolf. You have my cooperation. For now anyway. But just know that if Oliver does it turned, the both of you will die."

Oliver let out a sigh, looking from the werewolf to the vampire with a scowl. He and Clara had really gotten themselves into quite the situation, he thought. For at least the next twenty-four hours, his fate was in the hands of a werewolf and a vampire. That was just great. He turned to Alex, ignoring Angeline completely, and frowned slightly.


"You think you know who she is?" He prompted. "She said her name was Angeline, but she might have been lying." He informed Alex. He looked at Angeline then with a scowl. "Why would she know anything about the werewolf we're after?" he asked, frowning thoughtfully.

 

[LostInWonderland]

Alex was only doing what he knew he had to do to stay alive. The deal he made with the vampire would do them both a favor, evening out the odds for both of their survivals. Two non-humans up against two hunters sounded a heck of a lot better than two hunters against one non-human. Even if Angeline was a vampire.


“The thing is, so long as you don’t try to kill me, you don’t have to worry about your brother,” he said, giving Clara an annoyed look. She did enjoy her death threats, didn’t she?


Turning back to the vampire, he listened to what Oliver said. Angeline. That confirmed who she was then, and yes, she could definitely be of some use them. He’d heard some things on his travels. Vampires usually didn’t stay in one place for long, so those that did had a bit of a legendary reputation.


“She’s not really the one we want to talk with,” Alex clarified. “It’s who she knows that’s important.”

Angeline looked up. She still had no idea what he was getting at, but if he was talking about somebody she knew she had a bad feeling he meant Christian.


“If you mean Christian,” she said, “He’s… he’s not here. He’s gone away.” She couldn’t admit that he was dead. It might give them a reason to kill her, and she really didn’t want that.

 

[PiperAllen]

Clara





Clara let out a short sigh at Alex, brushing a few stray pieces of hair out of her face. She didn't know Alex, or whether or not he kept his word. Quite frankly, she didn't trust him not to have Angeline turn Oliver just to get back at her for shooting him earlier. She looked from Alex and Angeline, raising an eyebrow when Angeline said that Christian wasn't here. Whoever the hell Christian was. "Well," she said, giving Angeline a questioning look. "Whoever and wherever Christian is, if he's the person who Alex wants to talk with, you're going to have to find him." She said sternly.


The sooner she and Oliver could get away from Alex and Angeline, the better. Clara didn't know what she would do if Oliver got turned into a vampire. A hunter couldn't live as a vampire. They couldn't become the very things that they spent their life finding and killing.

Oliver watched Angeline with a questioning expression. "Who's Christian?" He asked, pausing for a second. "Is he the guy who left you?" He asked thoughtfully. He paused for a minute, narrowing his eyes. "If he is, did he leave you.. or did you kill him?" He asked. If Angeline had ending up doing something to this Christian person, Oliver knew that asking her about it was a cruel thing to do. But he didn't care, as he was quite pissed at her at the moment.


"How do you know anything about her?" He turned towards Clara when he heard her ask a question. Oliver shrugged slightly.


"We talked, in the diner." He explained. "I was unaware at that time that she is a vampire who was planning on killing me." He said, looking over at Angeline with a scowl.

 

[LostInWonderland]

Angeline tensed up. Find him? How could they find him when he was dead? He was gone, probably killed by a hunter. Maybe even one of the two in front of her now. But if she said that, she’d surely end up dead.


When Oliver spoke, she looked up with a glare. “I didn’t-“ she started towards him, angry by what he was suggesting, but was cut off when Alex grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back. She shoved him off, and tried to calm herself down. She never had quite gotten a handle on the extreme emotions.


“I didn’t kill him,” she said. The very thought would never cross her mind. Christian saved her own life, and now it was her turn to repay his debt. Now she was starting to doubt she would even be able to do that, thanks to the stupid wolf and the hunters.


“And for the record I wouldn’t have killed you,” she added, although right now she was seriously considering if she could get away with doing it. “But I can see now that would have been a mistake on my part. You hunters think you’re so far above everybody else, but really you’re just a bunch of hateful, murdering cowards.” The venom in her voice was strong.

Alex was growing more impatient by the second. He understood that this situation was not desirable for any of them, but if they were going to get any sort of cooperation with each other, it wasn’t going to be achieved like this. They were playing Russian Roulette with their lives, seeing how far they could test each other before somebody attempted murder.


“You. Oliver, is it?” Alex asked, interrupting them. “Didn’t anybody ever teach you not to antagonize a vampire? You got her blood in your veins now, I don’t suggest you tempt her anymore.”


He turned back to Clara. “Can we get out here? We’re going to draw attention to ourselves.”