True Blood After Midnight {Let's Pick Up Where We Left Off}

[Nyx Discordia]

Kurai was just relieved that she'd finally be able to move.

"Always ready," she responded. "Where are we going to get a ride though?"  

[Nhikxter]

Nick simply escorted Kurai out of the motel and into the streets. A moment later, he spots a car parked just outside a small eatery. The driver was in the front seat eating a greasy burger. Nick then faced Kurai and said, "People these days have such an unhealthy lifestyle." He snapped his fingers and with that, the driver dies of a heart attack. "There's our ride."  

[Nyx Discordia]

"You..."

Kurai's eye twitched, but she couldn't bring herself to scold Nick. She only sighed. "I guess he was going to die anyway. But really, Nick... You just had to, didn't you..."

But she couldn't do anything about his personality, not when killing came that naturally to him as breathing. Giving in, she touched the body, turning it into smoke--that was what she could do with corpses. It helped her make a clean getaway; hey, it had been her job before. Kurai got into the passenger's seat and waited for the long ride to start.  

[Nhikxter]

Nick sat on the driver seat and stared at the dash board for a moment. "Havent driven a car in a while so.." He exhaled, shifted the gear and backed the car out of the eatery and drove to the highway and out of New Orleans.

"By the way, you have got to teach me that corpse removing trick."  

[Nyx Discordia]

"It's pretty simple," Kurai shrugged. "If it's dead, it doesn't belong here anymore. As long as you keep that in mind, you can banish it and it'll go to wherever it belongs. It's a pretty nifty trick."

A few minutes of silence accompanied them while Nick drove and Kurai gazed at the growing distance between them and New Orleans in the rearview mirror. Where were the headed off to now? Questions, questions. A little rhyme played in her head.

"Round and round she goes..." she breathed in a haunting, singsong voice. "Where she stops, nobody knows..."  

[Nhikxter]

Sometimes Kurai can be such an unpredictable and scary woman. Much like Nick, Kurai was a natural born killer with an attitude no one should ever toy with, not even Sonneillon. At times this thought makes Nick feel somewhat uncomfortable, especially now that she's just beside him. After a moment, he chuckled.

I just had sex with an psychopathic executioner.

Even so, Nick felt good about having her around. He continued to drive off with a small smile on his face.  

[Nyx Discordia]

After a long while, Kurai wanted so badly to ask one thing.

Are we there yet?

But she resisted. She felt childish enough already, and she had her dignity to worry about. What was left of it, anyway.

"So, Nick," she began, now braiding her hair idly. "Let's talk about stuff. You start."

In her mind, what she was really saying was, I'm extremely bored. Please help me entertain myself before I go on a rampage and kill everyone in the nearest car.  

[Nhikxter]

Nick thought for a while. "Okay, stuff.." He overtook a slow moving 18-wheeler truck. "What do you usually do when you have no orders?" Then he remembered Sonneillon was a bossy son of a b*tch. "Well, when that b*****d has no use for you that is."

Nick saw the exit on the highway and took it, eating over 3 lanes of cars in a matter of seconds. The road slowly turned to gravel and the buildings to grass fields. It was obvious they were no longer near civilization.  

[Nyx Discordia]

Kurai gave it some thought.

"Well... I don't really know," she admitted sheepishly. "This is the first time I'm not doing anything for him. He used to be in contact every second of the day. There wasn't a moment of rest with him around... I've never been free-willed like this before. It's kind of weird, actually, because I just realized that. I guess I have to think of what I like to do now that I have time for myself."

She nibbled on her thumb, trying to wrap her mind around it.

"Hmm, what about you? You couldn't always have been this way, if you don't mind me saying that. You must have been happy at one point, even if it was a long time ago. I've always wondered what made you the way you are."  

[Nhikxter]

Anger.

The word echoed in his mind. The reason why he became one of The Seven. Nick focused on driving as he felt his world slowly deafen and fade to white.

"I cant recall how long has it been since that day, the day I lost my humanity and my sanity."

Vivid images circled through his mind. The blood, the gore, the screams.

"My father is what most people would call 'a total *sshole'. He was always stressed and drunk. He treated everyone like sh*t, especially his own family."

Nick recalls how his father occassionally beat up his mother and himself when things dont go his way.

"My mother died that way. And he blamed me for it. He never told the cops that she was dead, and he kept me locked up in my room to starve to death."

His grip on the steering wheel tightened.

"One day, while I was trying to break through the windows, my father caught me an chased me. He started beating me up. But.. I couldnt control my hatred anymore."

Nick recalls how he took the nearby kitchen knife and brutally murdered his own father.

"I broke his arms. I stabbed his legs and broke his knee cap. He screamed in pain but I kept laughing. I then slowly skinned him alive. Then took out his eye, his tongue, his ears.."

It sometimes puts a smile on his face.

"The cops arrived after overhearing the noises. They thought a robber came in and did all this. But one officer had a hunch that it was me. He shouted at me, telling me that he will do anything to prove it was me."

Nick slowly had a grin in his face.

"I stabbed him with his own ballpen in the eye. I slit his throat and blood sprayed all over the room. But before the cops could enter the room, he came.."

The Reaper. The Devil. Death. All names of one being.

"Perfect. You're a work of art, my son. Let me help you grow, and take your anger out on this pitiful world."

"His bony hand extended. I took it. Then we vanished, leaving the bloody officer on the floor alone."  

[Nyx Discordia]

"I had no idea..."

Kurai stared, a little unnerved at the expression Nick now wore, though she didn't let it show. She couldn't hide the fact, however, that his tale had struck a chord and was bringing up a story of her own.

"I'm sorry for making you recall all that," she said. "I know how it makes you feel to remember an old life. It feels distant and odd, doesn't it? Like when you try to remember, you see yourself before and you notice how much you've changed."

Changed... From that innocent girl to what she was now.

"Sometimes it makes you think if it really was you all that time ago..."

The girl who had a life, a family, a name.

"It's like some surreal memory, and it's as if it isn't yours, but it has to be because it's in your mind, isn't it...?"

All the sudden screaming, pleading, destruction, panic... So long ago, but just like yesterday, really.

"And your story... It still amazes me how cruel fate is. You think everything's just fine, but then destiny steps in and ruins a family, takes away a life..."

Kurai was aware that she had started to ramble, but the words just spilled out, along with all the memories. She could hear the voices in her head as if they were shouting right next to her.

"The demon is coming!"

"It wants a sacrifice!"

"Feed her to the demon! Give the girl, or else we'll all be killed!"

"Yes, let the girl go!"

"GIVE HER TO THE DEMON NOW!"

Angry tears were forming, but Kurai brushed them away indifferently. "...that betrayal you feel when the people who are supposed to defend you give you up anyway, because they are also afraid for their own lives... They hand you straight to your own doom."

"Sweetheart, we're sorry... But we have to do this for the safety of our people... We have to give you up."

"Forgive us!"

"Forgive us..."

"But it doesn't matter, because the ends justify the means, right? Those people lived because of one sacrifice, so one girl's death wasn't in vain. She must have thought so too."

Waiting for her life to end, for the pain to stop, until that voice had loomed out of the shadows and chained her with unbreakable shackles.

"If only she really had died. But no, she didn't know that the price wasn't her life--it was her soul. Far worse than death..."

The deal that had been made. The deal she had never wanted.

"Stripped of everything. Bound to serve hell for eternity, until nothing was left of her except a puppet that doesn't remember her name."

Kurai's eyes glowed red momentarily, and her hands balled into fists; nails digging into her her palms. A fierce feeling swelled up in her chest but subsided after an instant, when she realized that she had probably revealed more than she wanted to.  

[Nhikxter]

Nick stopped the car a few feet from a cliff. He turned the engine off and spoke. "We both need some air." It was the only thing he could think of at the moment that would clear their minds off the horrible pasts they once lived in. No one wants mistakes to repeat, lives to be lost, and trusts to be broken. Out there, there are millions of lives destroyed by their own emotions, most of them begging the devil for a chance of revenge.

"If only these people knew how horrible it is to make a deal with the devil.."  

[Nyx Discordia]

"Right...?" Kurai rolled down her window and breathed in. "They really don't know what they're asking for. It's idiotic."

Another idiotic thing was that every conversation they had seemed to bring them nothing but headaches.

Always dark alleys.

Still, Kurai had never told her past to anyone until now, and it felt a bit relieving to know that someone could finally see where she was coming from and understood her. So maybe it wasn't all that bad, really.

"We can't do anything about it, though... To be honest, I'm just glad I'm here with you. We can see things from each other's point of view, so we can vent on one another. Maybe that's a good thing..."

Another quiet moment passed by, the two of them just sitting in thought.

"It's ironic how we end up together like this, given what we've been through. We're similar in the way that we're both really messed up, aren't we? Psychotic tendencies, bloody past, the whole thing. What is it people say again? Ah," Kurai paused and allowed herself a halfhearted laugh. "Birds of a feather..."  

[Nhikxter]

"Freaky, murderous, demon birds.." Nick said as he opened his door and placed his feet on the gravel below. It was calming to be out on such vast open spaces. But he knew this peace wouldnt last, just like before. Their destination still lies ahead, and more bloody roads to walk on. He was just glad to have a partner who shares the same pain with him. He faced Kurai and spoke in a low tone while extending his hand to her. "We go together all the way?"  

[Nyx Discordia]

Kurai could tell that Nick wanted her to too say it herself, even though it was already more than a fact that they were in it together. She looked deep into his eyes, trying to convey a million things that only ever came down to a few simple words. Taking his open hand. Kurai found the usual comfort there and herself hoping that he felt the same comfort too.

"All the way, always."