Eventually, I drove back to the house. It took only three days in total and had a fucking wonderful effect. Gigs like that were the prime point of this job and gave me so fucking motivation to keep going sometimes. When I got to the house, I looked at the clock and knew it was time to eat.
I didn't feel hungry anymore these days. I had developed a routine of when to eat. In the morning and at set times. But I didn't eat because I was hungry. I don't even remember at what point the hunger had disappeared or faded. I should probably tell Samuel or Colin about this at some point.
If I had told Damon, then I might have been under very close scrutiny and observation. Still, I didn't see this as a bad thing as I remembered to eat enough. Eating was lovely because I tasted everything, and it was really enjoyable. I ate and then went to read medicine.
I just checked the dark web, and again, there were sightings of Damon in some nightclub with women, whatever. We had a great five weeks, and he proposed. He will not be perfect, and the gig, well, it was either the gig or the women. A couple of days went by. I ate, I read, I rested.
All the men were in a frenzy. Samuel was tending to the victims. Adam was still a prisoner of Bran's idiocy and Damon, well, I didn't really think too much about where the fuck he was.
I was having dinner again when the phone rang, and it was Nick.
"What's up, Nick?" I asked.
He replied, "Mimi, you are literally the savior, and from that facility, you got those vampires out of. Everyone was in my line, and from what they told me, they were developing a weapon against me, so you literally saved me. So I want to reward you, nothing else really. Are you free? I'm a bit bored, and I'm looking for painting inspiration. Would you come and model for me for a couple of hours? You can have the paintings for yourself. If it would be a small compensation for you, I would be very grateful, and yes, they were looking for weapons against vampires anyway, so a great job. I have some dresses you could find something to wear while I paint."
I thought, "I've got time," and I said, "Fine, I'm alone and free so that I can be a model; it's a whole new experience."
I went for a drive to New Orleans and got there in five hours. I spent three days as a guest of Nick's and tried on the most wonderful dresses while I was modeling.
We talked quite a bit about the flea business, and I said where Damon had been seen.
Nick said, " Do you know that Salvatore's reputation is the forever playboy? That was his nickname back in the day. He's always used women, killed them, or dumped them, and that's why some women then took revenge, held him captive, and abused him, but he never learns; he keeps on doing it; he's not that much younger than me, and I actually know nothing about his parents. Of course, Damon was, at one point, very infamous somewhere in the 1990s, or when he was doing all sorts of scientific experiments, he was a naughty scientist. "
I was quiet and wondering everything Nick was telling me about Damon. Could it be because he doesn't want the gigs when he doesn't feel I'm doing the right thing, or he'd rather be on the side of the scientists?
I drove back to the house. I didn't really know how I should take it, but this information made me more wary of Damon and my fleas. Maybe he's not the right man for fleas, as much as I would have liked to have him in them. I knew his shooting skills. He and Adam had taught me how to do it and now this revelation. I looked into it later.
I continued my research on myself. I had taken samples of my liver earlier and examined them; I had also examined the different enzymes and found one that was very different. I wondered if this was the enzyme that Sark was looking for.
I called Samuel and just asked about enzymes and got a lecture. He first described the anatomy or physiology of different enzymes in the body and then said.
" Mimi, all enzymes are unique, and each of us has our own that can't be found in anybody else. You were always drugged at the pharmaceutical place, so you can't know what enzyme they're looking for. It could be one of the digestive enzymes that you excrete in your bile. They could have tried to make it preparation for humans with problems with their pancreas or liver; there's nothing strange about it, and I don't think there's anything strange about it, so don't worry."
I said, " But I have these papers on these enzymes..."
I didn't have a chance to tell him about my investigations on my liver and my tissue samples when he cut me off and talked.
Samuel's voice was tighter, more tired. " Yeah, but believe me, they're nothing important. What's this about you not feeling hungry? That's not a good thing, and it's something that needs to be looked into."
I said, "I don't know when my huger has disappeared fully. I'm just not hungry anymore, nowhere in between."
Somebody was talking in the background, and Samuel said, " Yeah, well, we'll look into it at some point and forget about the enzymes; there's nothing weird about them."
He hung up, and I put my investigation on pause. When I emailed Colin, he again admitted that he wasn't so far along in my treatment that he understood anything about the whole enzyme thing yet. He wasn't as dismissive as Samuel was, but he couldn't help yet as he hadn't been there yet. I was too special a creature.
I continued to put the house in order, and Mimosa had a new goal: to eat. I always put a wicked helping of meat on Mimosa, and she would jump out of my head to eat, eat herself into a coma, and jump back into my head. She was not yet out of my mind for long periods of time unless she wanted to be when she had to conserve her strength, receive kill lists, do her own work, research the future, and so on.
I thought to myself a week later, when Damon was still nowhere to be seen, that, yeah, I guess it wasn't a small gig. He'd been gone for a month. I didn't think he'd gone to the ladies, and it was kind of thing. I wasn't so jealous that I'd abuse him every time he went out with a stranger. The paintings had just arrived, and I admired them. Interesting. Somehow, I didn't think I'd look as beautiful as what Nick had painted, but he had a little twist.
In the first painting, I was wearing a peach-colored dress; it had a rather open neckline covered with white lace. In this painting, there were a couple of red spots on the lace. I had a vampire bite on my neck, which was bleeding a little bit. He had made me look beautiful, and I recognized myself; he had somehow gotten my haunted expression painted into a mysterious one. It resembled somehow when I was human, and they were taking care of me back in the start.
In the next painting, I was wearing a midnight blue dress. This one also had white lace and the same thing. I was more serious in this painting as I had smiled slightly in the first one. I was thin, but then again, he had made me look good, not too skinny and frail. And not that young looking; that childlikeness that I always saw in my face was nowhere to be seen in these paintings. Here I was, leader, the flea. I somehow saw from my face that.
The third, I was wearing a pure white dress, not quite a wedding dress, and again, blood spots on my neck. He had also put a pendant on me with one large red ruby hanging directly almost between my breasts. He had made me look very innocent here, and my large dark blue eyes looked almost frightened. There was an aura of innocence around me—some sort of purity. Nick had talent and a lot.
Then I had on a blood-red dress. Now, there was a trickle of blood around my neck, my skin was paler, and he had made my mouth open a little, and the tips of my fangs showed a little; my expression here was almost beastly. He had made or shown here the vampire inside me. My eyes were not dark blue but blood red, a sign of bloodlust. Here was clear and present danger coming from me.
Then I was wearing a light green dress, and I looked very challenging in this painting; my neck was bitten again, and now the bite mark was almost on my throat. Now my eyes were yellow, and somehow he had gotten Mimosa out of me; even there was my face, my expression was Mimosa's. So he had painted her too.
In the last painting, I was wearing a violet-blue dress now; my expression was about lustful, and my cleavage was made a little flushed, as were my cheeks, as if I was aroused. I was sitting somewhat almost lewdly with my legs spread and leaning back against the back of the chair. Although the dress covered my body and had a generous hem and was very covering, somehow he got a feel for this painting, and now, besides the bite marks on my throat, there was a clear wolf bite between my shoulder and neck, a mating mark. Here, he had painted the sex beast, no doubt about it.
But that vampire bite and blood, it was repeated in every painting. I thought it was quite a personal feature of the paintings. Also, when I looked through a magnifying glass on my right wrist, it was always written in tiny, "Yours, always and forever, Nicholas."
There were six paintings. Six sides of me: The vampire, Mimosa, Innocent virgin, The sex beast, The Woman, and The flea leader. All of them were pretty damn big, and I was wondering where on earth I was going to put them. I wasn't that smug, but there was something special about them, and I thought, yes, these deserve a place on a wall somewhere.
A couple of days went by, and I had left the paintings in one room to show Adam and Samuel when I was surprised to see Damon back. He was passionate, and we kissed.
I said, " Were you with strange women? I heard rumors, but don't worry, I'm not giving a lesson."
Damon laughed and said, " I was charming Iranian vampires who were going to help terrorists attack the president. These were ugly women. I didn't fuck. I was lucky I could be polite and not eat them out of sight. "
I laughed and briefly told them about my job.
Damon said, " One day, I could go on a gig with you. I don't like the idea of you being with just a human man, and I should trust to that man to keep you safe."
I said " Maybe, but Penn's a good guy, Adam can swear to it. "
Adam had gone to his room. Then I made a mistake and showed the paintings.
"Damon, come see what you think. Nick probably painted them a week ago or so. As a reward for saving those vampires and foiling their plan, isn't that blood droplet funny? I haven't figured out where to put them yet. I never thought I'd be so desirable. He got six sides out of me; see, here is a sex beast."
Damon was silent and walked calmly into the room. He looked through each painting. With a menacing glint in his eyes, he unsheathed his razor-sharp vampire claws. I could only hear tearing sounds as he mercilessly shredded each painting to shreds. He was fast. The room became a whirlwind of shredded canvas, while the air filled with the scent of paint and dust. His eyes were pitch black, and black veins were clearly visible on his face, so his vampire side was furious. The jagged remains of those six paintings were swiftly collected and callously thrown into the crackling fireplace. A rush of heat and the acrid smell of burning art engulfed the room as he set them ablaze, obliterating any trace of their existence. He didn't say a word. When the paintings were burnt, he walked out cold and didn't say a word to me. I only saw the car leave the yard. Well, I guess we wouldn't have to wait for the wedding just yet.
I stood still. So Damon's rage had been palpable, and he had been really pissed off. Well, if he left me, I mean, for good. I hadn't any idea why he had reacted like that. Nothing I could feel through our bond. It was fully closed off, and I sat in the living room and sat and thought.
I called Jarod and told him everything. Again, Jarod wondered, and he just couldn't get a grip on Damon. No way. I told him about the gigs and what had happened. Nesting was a very interesting habit to him, and it was the purring that made him think hard about things. Everything that the purring represented, well, us pretenders sometimes get stuck in our heads, so to speak.
I also told Adam and Samuel, and they just said that Damon and Nick have a very long-standing enmity almost in existence.
Samuel said, " Vampires, but now, my lady, now we will go to medbay, and we will find out why you are not hungry and where your hunger has gone."
Adam furrowed his brow and said, " What on earth? Why haven't you said anything? Well, start going with Samuel, and he can investigate you then. "
Fine. Samuel examined, poked, prodded, and took scans but couldn't find any obvious cause other than my stomach was faulty, and although he removed six stomachs, the new one always had the same problem. Something had changed my genes so that I always made a faulty stomach.
He next transplanted Adam's stomach to me, and a day later, it had the same problem as my body had changed it to my own. Samuel had his team investigate, and he was always busy at the clinics. Blood tests were all clean, and there was no reason or cause or fix, for that matter, either.
It had been three days since Damon's tantrum when Damon was talking in my head. " You won't learn then, darling. You won't learn at all. But fine. I'll teach you. This time, you will remember. You'd think a week would be enough, but nothing's enough for you, nothing. But I won't let it bother me. I'll teach. And this time, darlin, you'll learn, and you'll suffer, but first, a little taste to get you in the mood. "
And there it started again—the chase. I could feel the panic rolling over me, my heart pounding in my chest, and I just knew I was being chased.