Heist

"So we planned the heist, and then after two days-"

"Wait a minute," Damien interrupted Dezzy before she could get too far ahead of herself. "That's it? No details? What sort of heist was it? How did you sneak in? Did you bribe someone?"

Dezzy waved her hand dismissively. "Minor details," she protested.

Damien stared harder. "I would like to know," he said, feeling a little bit worried. If Dezzy was so quick to gloss over it, it must have been extremely dangerous.

"I bribed a thrall or two," Dezzy admitted.

"How?" Damien asked.

"Well," Dezzy was pointedly not looking Damien in the eye now, "I do have feminine wiles, you know."

Damien grimaced. Ugh. Yeah, he hadn't wanted to know that. Sometimes he forgot that Dezzy's parentage hailed from the lust demon lineage. She wasn't exactly a succubus, considering she was half-human, but Damien had seen the way people swooned when she turned on the charm. As her brother, it was both impressive and disturbing. He understood a little bit better why she hadn't gone into detail. "Okay, so you used your feminine wiles. And then?"

"And then I met my thrall friend in the kitchen," Dezzy said. "It's the safest place to be if you don't want a vampire to notice you - that, or the servants' halls, apparently - and it also is pretty central. From there, we headed up to the residential halls." She smirked. "That was the real challenge, because we didn't want any vampires to notice me. Apparently demon blood is a pretty rare treat."

Damien grimaced. He didn't like the sound of that at all. "So how did you hide your scent?"

"Well," Dezzy looked a bit less smug, "technically, it's mostly the blood that vampires smell. And there are a few other demon-blooded thralls in the castle. So my thrall friend had me walk together with two of the other demon-blood thralls." She grinned then. "I've never seen so many of us in one place! One of them was a descendent of pride, he was so full of himself, I swear," she rolled her eyes. "He thought he was so much better than all the other thralls. He'd managed to snag himself a regular visitation with one of the highest ranking vampires, too, so I guess he had good reason to be full of himself." She frowned then, and clarified, "If, you know, you were the sort of person who thought that being regularly drained of blood was a particular honor."

Damien couldn't relate to such a sentiment. The idea of a vampire feeding on him made him queasy. "I can't imagine wanting something like that," he confessed.

"I mean, apparently it's a whole thing," Dezzy said, "being chosen for the dubious honor of being one vampire's thrall in particular is apparently a very special position."

It was like being the most special slave of all the slaves, Damien thought darkly. He didn't see how anything to do with being a thrall could be considered an honor. It just made him feel disgusted. "Good for them, I guess," he said, though his tone clearly showed his true feelings.

Dezzy chuckled a little bit, "I know, right? So anyway the pride guy was absolutely miserable to be around, but he had the strongest blood of the bunch, so we needed him there. Then there was an envy demon, but I think he had maybe a great-grandparent who'd been a demon, he was basically human. A little skinny guy, couldn't have been older than fifteen," Dezzy frowned a little. "He mostly just came along because he heard that Cain approved the operation; one of the other thralls told me he has some sort of hero-worship obsession with that guy."

Damien tried to imagine hero-worshipping a thrall, especially a high-ranked thrall in a vampire's castle, and found it impossible. What was there to admire about a person who served as a lapdog to monsters like that? It was utterly foreign to him. "So the two demon-born, you, and your thrall friend sneaked onto the residence floors," he prompted.

"Right! So we took the servant passages for the most part. But the last stretch of hallway is open to the public. That was the scary part," she added, almost as an aside. "If we'd been caught there, a vampire might have bitten me, and it would have been all over." She grimaced. "Apparently for some thralls it only takes one bite to be hooked."

Damien frowned. "I thought there was an eye thing?"

"Oh yeah, there's an eye thing too," Dezzy said. "But for some people, it's a one-and-done sort of deal. Crazy, huh?"

Damien nodded slowly. He couldn't imagine being bitten once and owing his whole life to the one who'd … marked … him.

Well. Actually…

He reached up, slipping his fingers under the shirt wrapped around his neck, feeling the nape, the place where a mate-bite would normally go. One bite at the right (or wrong) time was all it took for werewolves to mate for life. But the bond usually went both ways, in that case. From what he knew of vampires, they didn't feel any connection to their thralls the way the thralls were drawn to them. It was much more one-sided than a mate-bond.

Dezzy had a knowing look in her eyes, too, as she followed Damien's hand to where it rested. "I know," she said softly, "not quite the same, is it?"

Damien nodded again. "Yeah," he said, voice throaty with an emotion he couldn't quite place.

"Anyway!" Dezzy pointedly turne away to continue her story, "We got down the hallway without any real trouble. And then when we reached the vampire's room, not only was the door unlocked, but there were already two shirts laying on the bed waiting. So I guess the Cain guy had tried to make it as easy for us as possible," she sniggered then, adding, "that one kid was real disappointed that Cain wasn't there to do that handoff in person, though. He pouted the whole way back to the kitchen."

Damien found that he was able to grin at that, even though his emotions still felt rather mixed-up inside. "And once you made it to the kitchen," he said, "you were able to get out with no trouble?"

"Well…" Dezzy grimaced. "Not exactly?"

Damien narrowed his eyes. "Not exactly?" he echoed.

"Well, when I got to the kitchen, there was a vampire there," she said.

Damien felt his heart stutter, and clutched his chest. He eyed Dezzy carefully. "You didn't get bitten!" He exclaimed, more issuing a command than asking a question.

"No, no, nothing like that," Dezzy said quickly. "It was just a bit surprising. He was pretty chill, actually. He thanked me for my help, pointed me in the direction of the quickest exit, and didn't say anything about the fact that I was carrying two of his shirts in the crook of my arm."

Damien felt like he was going to melt into the bedspread and stay there forever. "He… he was the vampire?" he croaked. "The one that you had been trying to avoid while stealing his clothes?"

Dezzy shrugged. "He had a mug of blood and seemed pretty calm about it," she said. "Honestly, I expected him to be annoyed, but he mostly seemed amused."

"He didn't know?!" Damien demanded, pleading.

"I don't know," Dezzy said, "he was kind of smirking. Maybe he knew? Maybe a thrall told him?"

Damien covered his face with his hands and groaned loudly. "I can't believe this," he said. "He knows?"

Dezzy shrugged. "I don't see what the big deal is," she said. "It's not like either of you are in a position to do anything about it."

That wasn't the point! It was embarrassing! Damien glared up through his splayed fingers at Dezzy. "You couldn't have hidden the shirts?"

"I mean, I could have," Dezzy said, "but it's not like I was expecting to see a vampire in the kitchen. Especially since my thrall friend said that regular vampires didn't hang out in there."

Damien groaned again. "This is the worst thing to ever happen to me," he said, and considered laying down and never getting out of bed again.

"It's fine, Damie," Dezzy sighed, reaching over and patting his shoulder. "Stop being so dramatic."

Damien didn't feel dramatic. He felt like maybe Dezzy was understating how bad this was. "You're telling me that a vampire now knows that I've imprinted on his scent," he explained, lifting his head to glare at her. "And you expect him to do nothing about that?"

"What's he going to do?" Dezzy asked. "Even if he's the sort that would normally take advantage, I guarantee he wouldn't want to get on mom's bad side. It's in his best interest to share his clothes and keep you as happy as possible."

Although Damien couldn't exactly argue the point, he wished he could. It felt demeaning, knowing that he was protected by mother's reputation, rather than out of anything he himself could do to scare the vampire away.

"Besides," Dezzy continued, "he wasn't angry about the shirts. So even if he didn't know why I was taking them, he was still generous enough to not complain about it." She shrugged lightly, and poked Damien's shoulder again. "Honestly? I was expecting a lot worse."

To be fair, considering the way most vampires probably would have responded to seeing their property being stolen by an outsider, Dezzy had a point. Damien grimaced. "I guess that's true," he noted. It was surprising that the vampire hadn't reacted badly to someone stealing his things. "Maybe he just wasn't recovered enough to be exerting himself?" he guessed.

Dezzy frowned slightly. "I doubt it," she said. "He seemed fully recovered to me."

Damien wanted to hit his head on the wall. "How very nice for him," he said snidely.

"Damie," Dezzy said, giving him a look. "He did probably save your life by letting me take the shirts," she pointed out.

"I know, but," Damien ran a hand through his hair, still feeling distressed by the whole situation. "It's just… Why did you tell your thrall friend the truth, anyway? Couldn't you have said anything else, instead of the truth?"

"What else was I supposed to say? There's very few reasons someone would want to get clothes that smell like a vampire, and honestly, a mate-sick werewolf is probably the least concerning reason!" Dezzy frowned at Damien, folding her arms over her chest. "Can you think of a better excuse?"

Damien already knew he couldn't, but he still didn't like it. "I just wish you hadn't said anything," he grumbled.

"Yeah, well, that wasn't an option," Dezzy said. "And anyway, you're feeling better, so it worked. I'm not sorry I had to say some embarrassing things to get you what you needed."

Tempted as he was to tell Dezzy he'd have rather died than let the vampire know what had happened to him, Damien didn't want to make her feel any worse about the situation. Even though he was embarrassed and angry about the situation, he knew Dezzy had meant well. She just didn't understand how stupid Damien felt, especially given the identity of the vampire he'd imprinted on. If he had any control over his instincts, he never would have chosen someone like that guy. The fact that the man now knew that Damien was mate-sick over him felt like a blow from which Damien would never recover.

"I still don't like it," Damien said slowly, because he had to preface his statement with that, or else he'd never find the fortitude to say it, "but thank you."

Dezzy sighed, reaching over to ruffle Damien's already-messy hair. "You're welcome," she said. "It's really not as bad as you think. Imprinting on someone is a perfectly natural reaction, and any decent person wouldn't blame you for it."

Damien made a face. A decent person wouldn't have killed his whole pack, either. He didn't trust the vampire with the knowledge Dezzy had handed him. But he also didn't want to cause more trouble, so he let it be. "I just wish it hadn't happened at all," Damien said. "I wish I'd stayed away from him. That I'd stayed in bed."

Dezzy huffed a little bit, moving her hand from the top of his head to pat his shoulder. "It can be real troublesome, the places fate sometimes takes you," she said.

"Fate? More like misfortune," Damien grumbled.

"Well, yeah," Dezzy agreed. "There are parts of anyone's fate that don't work out or make no sense. There's a bit of misfortune in every life." She grinned then. "But hopefully before long you'll be able to see the good side of fate, too."

Damien hoped so, too, because he was getting real tired of all the problems fate was throwing his way.