Night's Omen

Prompt List

• Wedding
• Carnival
• Nightmare
• Conscience
• Monster
• Siblings
• New Year's
• Power Outage
• Point
• Strain

Napa Valley. Spring. Beautiful green hills rolled against the gracious and lush trees and the sky was a brilliant azure blue with not a cloud to mar the atmospheric ocean of forever. Birds were serenading with their sweet songs, flitting to and fro and stealing berries from the bushes that lined the party. Rows of white chairs created two seas, parted by a stiff red carpet that lead to an altar. Gauzy vanilla-coloured chiffon met with massive red bows and linked between pillars that had probably cost more to move than they were to build.

Next to her, Laura sat in a chair with a bottle of wine wedged between her legs as she tugged at the cork. Danielle reached over without a word, put the cork in her mouth, and bit into it. She spit it inelegantly over her shoulder and then handed it back to the other blonde, who said nothing. Bottle in her mouth, Laura pointed at one of the bridesmaids being attacked by a bird and laughed into the container before pulling it away from her red, wine-stained lips with a popping noise.

"Why are we here, again?" she asked, absently swiping strands of her long blonde hair away from her eyelashes. "Oh, right. Because your boyfriend is an asshole," she said bitterly. She handed the bottle to Danielle, who waved it away. Laura turned her head finally to look at the other blonde (nearly fucking identical, at that), only to realize that Danielle had two empty bottles at the base of her chair and was uncorking a third.

"Yep," she said. "Cheers." The girls tapped their bottlenecks together before dropping back the wine completely. Both of them tossed the bottles over their shoulders, not flinching even the slightest when the sound of shattering glass and a pained yell rang through the empty wedding arena.

"What time does this even start?" Danielle said, a ferocious burp exiting her mouth. She looked at Laura, eyes still mostly clear. Her lips were just as stained, though, and it was pretty sexy if it weren't for the fact that behind them was a razor sharp tongue. It was obvious that she didn't really give a flying fuck about anything having to do with why they were there except for the alcohol, made more clear by the fact that she didn't know when the wedding started: the wedding she was a guest at. Laura was just her plus one.

"I'm your fucking plus one, how the hell should I know?" she snapped. She gave her a dirty look, half-shaking her head as she reached into the massive shoulder bag at her side to pull out another bottle. After sitting in silence for a few more minutes, she sank back further into her chair. "That dress makes you look like a cow. No wonder you have no sex life."

"Your brother wants to fuck you," Danielle spat back. "I think we should keep to our own problems and drink."

They sat in silence, the bright and cheerful day buzzing around them as the wedding party rehearsed on the lawn, a mountain of bottles growing at their feet.

Nobody told Danielle anything. If they had, she might have been better prepared for the royal fucking shitstorm headed her way. As it stood, she was trying to track down answers on her own, which wasn't anything unusual. The fact that it was Halloween made it a little easier; supernaturals felt Halloween was so contrived that most of them took the night off. But, as Danielle got out of her car and walked up the path to her mother's house, something about the situation seemed different, and it made her uneasy.

She paused just before the short steps up to the porch, strongly aware that it was eerily silent. She couldn't hear anything but the cold breeze rustling the leaves around the yards, and the shaking of the trees as they swayed gently. It made the hair on the back of her neck stand up, and she instinctively reached behind her, sliding the handgun from its hidden holster at the small of her back. All of this crazy activity had made Danielle a little smarter when it came to firearms - she'd started making her own bullets, and she'd started putting firestone in them.

If anything other than her mother was on the other side of that door, it wouldn't matter if they were a fast healer. With a breath, she mentally chided herself for her nerves, and reached up to knock on the door. With the first knock, it slowly opened, and Danielle realized that that was what had put her off - the door was open. Not enough that you could really tell or really see it, but subconsciously she'd noticed the tiniest gap and that was what had started all of her apprehension in the first place. She drew her knee back to her chest and kicked the door the rest of the way open, ready to end the existence of whatever was waiting in the darkness for her.

"Danielle, it's just me, for Christ's Sake!"

She stilled her finger right before she pulled the trigger back, the gun trained at the head of Tim Browning, her mother's old flame (apparently, and the father of her half-brother??) and whatever else she hadn't found out to date, she was sure. "God damnit Tim, you scared the shit out of me," she hissed at him. She slammed the gun down on the coffee table, still full of adrenaline from almost shooting him. "Why are you just sitting in Celeste's house in the dark?" she demanded.

He reached over and turned on the lamp, sitting forward and giving her a smile. "Because she was supposed to meet me for drinks, and she never showed. And word on the street is, she ditched me for that street magician, so I figured I'd come here and wait and see it for myself." He picked up a pack of cigarettes that Celeste had left on the table, and tapped one out for himself. He raised his eyebrows at Danielle as he lit it.

She held his gaze for a long second, and then nodded. "That sounds about like my mother," she said wistfully.

She walked around the coffee table and dropped down next to him. "I guess we'll wait together. I came here because I've got a lot of questions, as usual, and she's avoiding my calls. And texts. And I'm willing to bet she knew I was going to come by tonight, too," she muttered.

"Well, kid, you know your mom and I go pretty far back. Maybe I can answer some of those questions you say you have rattling around in that brain of yours," Tim offered. He sat forward, pressing the cherry of the cigarette into the glass ashtray, and blew out a puff of smoke.

Danielle considered it, but it didn't take her long to decide that of the two, Tim was least likely to lie to her about shit - especially shit Celeste hid. They'd both very obviously been in the dark about that woman's ongoings for quite some time now. "Okay, sure," she agreed. "But I really only have one question that keeps bothering me." As she spoke, she glanced over her shoulder as the ice maker in the freezer suddenly whirred to life, producing its nightly queue of cubes. "Was Richard my father, or are you?"

She turned to look at Tim just as he picked up the pistol she'd set on the table and bludgeoned her in the face with it. The last thing she remembered was Tim leaning over her as she tried to back-crawl away from him, placing a booted foot down on her chest and pressing. He felt like he weighed a thousand pounds, and he was doing a damn good job of pushing the air out of her lungs.

"I sure hope not, sweetheart," he said with a terrifyingly monstrous grin. "Or this is gonna be awkward."

He lifted his boot off her chest and swiftly kicked her in the face. Everything after that was black.

Danielle had no idea how she'd gotten here, but she was sitting in her childhood home. She was at the dinner table, but it was clear of plates; it only had the normal centerpiece on it; flowers that Richard brought Celeste every other day in a short vase, stems cut to dwarf them against the massive blooms. They were always fresh, and always fragrant. Danielle couldn't remember ever seeing them in her teen. They were only a distant memory from her childhood, and honestly she thought she'd imagined them this whole time, but sitting here now, seeing them, it seemed to unlock a hidden memory that she had no idea she'd even possessed. Something that had flickered at the base of her skull every time she'd seen a table that did offer such accoutrements.

Celeste sat across from her, but she looked different. She was younger, brighter, and smiling, and the smile was genuine, not that wry, half-smirk that the older version of her had grown so used to. She slid her hands across the table to Danielle, palms up, and Danielle automatically reached out, putting her hands in her mother's. She felt the warmth of her, and it was comforting somehow to an anxiety that Danielle felt in the background of herself.

"Dani, I'm so glad you're here," Celeste said. "I'm so sorry that we're meeting like this."

Danielle was confused. "What do you mean?" she asked, moving her head slightly.

Celeste laughed a little to a joke that Danielle wasn't privy to, and dipped her head for a moment. She looked back up, a sharp intake of breath signaling that she was about to speak, but when she opened her mouth, nothing came out. Instead, she closed it and smiled again. "Some people here really want to see you," she said finally.

The back door opened, the one that lead straight into the grass that surrounded the house, and the room that had already been well-lit by windows became flooded with sunlight. The scent of spring and fresh-cut lawns wafted into the room. Richard stood, the light at his back, a frown on his face.

"Oh, Danielle," he said softly. He shook his head, and then came to sit next to Celeste, though he didn't offer his own hands.

"Dad?" she asked, her breath nearly catching in her throat. Something was wrong, but she couldn't put her finger on what.

"Hi, baby girl," he said. "My god, you're so grown up now." His voice broke a little, and he reached out, putting a hand on his wife's shoulder. "Celeste, she looks just like you used to."

"I'd say she's a pretty good blend," Celeste said, looking from him and back to Danielle. "But it looks like she took my penchant for picking a fight I couldn't finish, doesn't it?"

"Hey rugrat," another voice said. Danielle released her mother's hands, whipping around in her chair at the familiar sound of Marcus' voice. She stood up, the chair making a scraping sound against the linoleum, and pushed it out of the way with her knee. Before Marcus could say another word, she grabbed him, squeezing him tightly.

"I thought you were dead," she breathed, burying her face into his chest. She could smell him; she could feel him.

He hugged her back, but pulled away after a moment, putting his hands on her shoulders. "Danielle," he said, voice hesitant. "I think you'd better sit back down."

She frowned. She supposed she thought he'd be happier to see her, but he had a strange worry behind his green eyes that she didn't like. She found it familiar, though - it was the same worry that she'd seen in her mother's eyes, and in Ash's, and perhaps most people who knew her well. That look that they were about to tell her something she wouldn't like to hear. She sat, though, being led by the arm back to her chair. Marcus sat next to her, scooting the chair so that he was more facing her. Their parents were still across from them, but they weren't smiling anymore.

"You know, I'm starting to wonder if you guys are about to tell me bad news," she said, laughing. The laugh was nervous; she didn't want it to be, but she felt a discomfort welling up at the very bottom of her chest, where she sent all of her bad feelings to die.

"Sweetie," Celeste began. Her smile faltered, and Danielle watched as she turned her head to the side, looking at Richard. "I can't," she whispered.

She tapped her fingers nervously on the table, drumming them almost as she watched them shift about, not saying something that needed to be said. She had that feeling at the back of her skull again, like a thing that she knew that she knew, but it was just on the tip of her tongue, and no matter how hard she reached back for it, she couldn't find it. It created a physical itch, and she reached back, ceasing her nervous tapping to scratch at the back of her neck. When she did, she felt something wet, and withdrew her hand quickly, almost smacking the table with it for the jerking motion she made.

There was blood on her hand. Had she cut herself. She looked up, and her father was tight-lipped and pale, a sadness on his face that she couldn't comprehend.

"Dad, what's happening?"

"Dani," Marcus said, grabbing her by the shoulder and turning her upper half to face him. "Dani, you're dead. We're all dead. If you're here, it's because..." he trailed off, looking at the blood on her hand. "What's happening?" he demanded. "That's not supposed to happen."

"What?" she barked, the sound catching in her throat. She felt like she was about to choke, and stood up again, this time knocking the chair over with her abrupt movement. Was that it? Her throat began to burn, and she opened her mouth to say something, but she only managed a gurgling sound. She fell almost immediately, but she didn't feel herself hitting the floor, only knew it was happening because she was on her side. She tried to push up, but found that her legs no longer worked, and her entire bottom half felt heavy, like it had become dead weight against her upper body.

Celeste got out of her chair and knelt down next to her. She reached out, petting Danielle's head softly, ignoring the matted blonde hair that had been dyed red with blood. "I'm so sorry, honey," she said, her voice low so only Danielle could hear. "I didn't think - I had hoped that you wouldn't be on my heels so fast. Lucifer didn't waste any time, it seems. But if you're here, it means the wards worked, and he couldn't take you." She looked over her daughter's form, seeing how it began to worsen, and swallowed. "We don't have much time. I think they're trying to bring you back," she said.

Danielle wanted to respond, but physically was unable to speak; Lucifer had slit her throat and her vocal cords with it, and so she just looked at her mother, blinking rapidly, trying to will her into hearing her questions. Was Tim her real father? Did Ash already know she was dead? Where would she go? Would she be in this state forever? Why was this happening? Who was trying to bring her back? And back to where?

"Richard, I don't know - I don't know what to do," Celeste said, rising to her knees and calling over the table for her husband. "I don't know how to stop this from happening." She looked back down at Danielle, her eyes wide with panic and fear. "Hold on baby, hold on to us," she urged.

Danielle had no idea what was going on; she saw Richard come to Celeste's side, but she couldn't hear what anyone was saying anymore. Everything was fading. She felt something grip her, and it felt like iron to her very core. It hurt. She tried to scream, but no sound came out, and she flailed her arms uselessly, grabbing onto Richard's wrist with her right hand. Something was pulling on her aggressively, and she felt like she was caught in some event horizon, unable to escape its pull.

Don't let it take me, she cried mentally, hoping Richard could hear her. She repeated it over and over, the frantic begging. She saw he and Celeste reaching back to her, but there was so much blood so suddenly, and their grip slipped, and Danielle just... felt blown out into the vacuum of darkness.

She was weightless, but somehow heavy at the same time, floating - or was it sinking? Everything was blacker than black, like it had a depth to it that she could see. She tried to move, to navigate back to her family, to that kitchen on that warm spring day, but she couldn't, and the further she drifted, the further away the memory seemed, until she didn't know what she'd been thinking about at all.

There was nothing for a long while.

Then, of course, the nightmare began.

It was blinding pain that suddenly pulled her back into reality. She had no idea where she'd been before, but she had been quiet and peaceful, just simply existing in some comfortable nothing, but now? Now every cell in her body burned, and screamed. There was screaming all around her, like wherever she existed at the moment was only screaming, and it permeated her entire essence, pushing what was left of her mind to the very brink of madness. She felt like a sturdy piece of cloth that had become frayed, and one string had been violently pulled - and now she was unraveling, being unmade. Pain was all she knew. It was all she had ever known, it was all she would ever know. It was eternity.

She was thrust back into her body with such violent force that the mirror in the room shattered. The flames on the votive candles that the earth witch had used burned hot, and then extinguished with the sudden release of pressure, and the room was plunged into a temporary darkness before the candles reignited themselves thanks to Ash's helper.

Danielle opened her eyes. She only knew the pain and the burning, and it was still happening, but now it was not a concept, it was her reality. She didn't simply sit up; she jumped, knees drawing in as she rolled off of whatever they had laid her body on, and she went like a creature, right for a corner, where she scampered back into it on her behind, her back to the wall, protected. She put her hands over her eyes and began to scream, surprised and scared at the sound that came out of her mouth. It didn't feel like her, didn't sound like her. Whose voice is this? she thought, but it didn't matter, because it was hers now, and she was using it to scream.

"Why did you bring me back?" she was screaming, over and over. She didn't know what it meant, the words were foreign to her, some alien language. She was disoriented from the drift, from being so completely ejected from the nothing and the magic that Ash had poured into her, that her mind had become liquid for the moment. Past, present, future - none of it was linear, and the realities she knew were collapsing on top of eachother out of sequence. "Why did you bring me back!?" She could feel Ash grabbing her arms, trying to steady her, but only part of her recognized him; all other parts, the ones in control, the ones who only knew the pain he had just dealt her, recoiled.

"You should have left me," she cried, struggling against his grip. "I was with them, I was with them," she sobbed, voice still rough from the damage done to her throat that the magic had mostly knitted back together. He'd taken her arms to stop her from clawing at herself; she was already bloodied enough. He looked to Tallulah, who looked back to him, and Danielle did not see the thing that passed between them in that glance. She heard him talking to her, but could not understand what he was saying, and though she had stopped trying to claw both him and herself, she was still crying. Her face was so caked with blood that the tears did nothing to remove it, and so they rolled down the dark brown smears on her face, falling into the nothing beneath her.

She was in a fucking nightmare, and she wanted - no, she needed to wake up.

Danielle had thought that she'd known anger before. Now, well. Well. It wasn't that she was mad that Ash brought her back; on the contrary, they'd never discussed it but Danielle had never imagined herself dying, and honestly, they knew it would come up eventually. She was mad about some other things, though. She knew that he hadn't really had a choice in making her like him. Tallulah told her the damage was too far gone, and honestly, she was surprised she'd even been brought back at all. Tallulah was, too. It had taken a lot out of her, and she both wasn't sure she couldn't do it again and not keen on trying. What he had had a choice in, though, was almost committing suicide to do it. That's what pissed her off.

Sure, being ripped from the afterlife had been disorienting, if such a word even really fit what it felt like, but she'd gotten past it. It had taken a while for her realities to align again, where she wasn't feeling like she was standing with one foot in and one foot out of the afterlife, but she'd gotten there. After what seemed like a month or two of sleeping alone, she'd finally returned to Ash's bed, able to - really, to wake up with him next to her and not want to harm him. He had been so fucking reckless. And she was trying not to lose her shit at him, but it was probably going to happen sooner or later. She shouldn't have been so easy to read now that he was a triste, but Ash, Danielle, and Thibault all were directly from one another, and that meant that she could be read by both of them clear as day. She'd had to work very hard to try and bury her emotions, which was fucking unhealthy, but it also meant she took advantage of the way she sat right in Ash's blind spot in terms of, he wouldn't see what he didn't want to see.

Because Danielle had been repressing the inevitable conversation and onslaught of emotion that was going to come on that side of the house, she'd been focusing her attention elsewhere. Namely, all of the other manner of things that were going on in that goddamned bar. For starters, Thibault.

"You need to back off of Chloe," Danielle said, letting the door slam behind her. To his credit, Thibault didn't jump - hell, he didn't even react. He'd felt her coming, because unlike Ash, he could see how she felt.

"Oh?" he said, not even turning his head. He sat atop the picnic table, one leg drawn up, with his arm rested at his knee. He held the cigarette pinched between his fingers and was looking at the cherry, brows furrowed as he tried to determine if he'd just had a gnat fly into it. He wasn't so much about smoking dead bugs. "Why's that?"

Danielle stayed where she was for the time being, arms folded beneath the light grey cardigan she wore. "Because. First, she's an employee, and one of Ash's favourites, and mine, and we don't want her quitting when you inevitably piss her off. Second, because you're a fucking triste and you know better," she said, her voice betraying that the second bit was the part that actually infuriated her. "You can feel how she feels, and you can anticipate shit. It's just on the other side of mind-reading, Thibault, and you know it."

"Alright, Danielle, the first point I'll gladly concede to, but the second point, that's a lot of bullshit," he said, and he did turn, but only because she'd irritated him with that. "You make it sound like I'm some lech lurking in the shadows to take advantage of the girl."

"I mean," Danielle said, gesturing broadly to him.

"Is that what you think this is? Your whole two months spent as a triste, and you've got it all figured out, then?" he asked. She noticed his accent had an uptick when he was annoyed. She'd started to hear it in conversations with Ash; usually the point where he got more British than he had been the moment prior was when Ash really started to hammer on him and he'd walk away.

"You hit on everything that moves," she said, rolling her eyes.

He held up a hand. "Not everything," he reminded her. "You know I stay away from gypsies."

"Chloe's from the Volos clan, Thibault," she said flatly.

"Yes, but she's quite removed, if memory serves," he retorted. "Listen, Danielle, I don't want to do this dance with you every time you see me speak to her, so I'm going to only do it this one time, okay? Chloe is a big girl, believe me. She's quite a bit more emotionally educated than you are, that's for sure - and don't even start with me there, Cher. You are his blind spot, not mine. And I love you like a daughter because I, he, a son, but you've got far less rope than he does."

"She's also a fucking infinite food source, if memory serves," Danielle snapped.

"Danielle, don't come out here and harp on me when we both know you're really just mad at Ash," he said, flicking his cigarette into the butt can with ease. "I like Chloe, and I like talking to her, and if something changes in our dynamic, it's none of your business. Why don't you do us both a favor and go yell at him instead of trying to lecture me? It's rich that you'd even come out here making accusations of people taking advantage of others emotionally when you're the most advantageous of us all," he said, holding his hands up.

The back door banged against the wall as it opened. Ash's massive form stuck about halfway out, and by the look on his face, he'd heard that.

"You, quit trying to fuck my employees," he said harshly, pointing a finger at Thibault.

"And you. We need to talk." He made solid eye contact with her, and she felt like she'd been caught doing something she shouldn't have. God damnit. At least he hadn't pointed.

The door slammed shut again, leaving Thibault staring at Danielle, an amused expression on his face.

"Shut the fuck up," she snapped, and went inside to find Ash, who no doubt would have opinions about what he'd just heard.