We returned to the base at 6 am, and half an hour later, I saw Damon's group drive into the yard. He was pleased when he came in and kissed me passionately while everyone watched. Then he unpacked his gear, but I noticed that some things were left for him to do; never mind, I can always get new weapons.
When he came in good spirits, he kissed me again, making me slightly excited; Jake grinned, and the other men's faces were amused as the great and powerful flea was kissed nice.
He said, "Are you ready so we can go? It was actually a very satisfying gig. I'll have to remember to hang around more, darling."
I said, " Yeah, that's all right. I've already had some food and coffee."
Damon very firmly directed me to the car, and I had no choice but to get in. He gave me a challenging look as he entered the driver's seat. I didn't say anything.
We then drove to the house, and Damon asked, "Does that always give you this feeling? When you do a gig on the spot?"
His eyes were sort of glowing, and he was relaxed and in a perfect mood; sometimes, when he'd come back from gigs, he'd be almost tired and worn out, but just a simple blast made him feel good.
I smiled and said, " It depends on what feeling you mean, but if you're talking about feeling like you've done something right, then yes, that feeling always comes after a successful gig. There are a couple of enzyme plants less again."
Damon grunted and said, "What actually is an enzyme plant? What's the big deal?"
Oh, when I didn't tell him, OK.
I said, " About a year ago, I got some information from one of the gigs; Sark has been researching my enzymes and found one that they used to make pharmaceuticals cheaper. I mean, a lot cheaper, and yet they sell them for a lot more, so my enzymes always give a good profit; now my enzymes don't last forever, and as you know, they always get rescued. I don't know how my enzyme helps them."
While driving, Damon looked at me sharply, grunting, "Go on, darling, tell me more."
I continued then, "Samuel doesn't think they're that important. He suspects they were just looking for digestive enzymes to use on humans. I've tried to talk, but I'm getting a lecture. I myself don't understand enough pharmacology yet to know how and why. It's an erectile dysfunction drugs, a blood pressure drug, and a cholesterol drug. Sark has been trying to find enzymes at other targets, and the plant that blew up was processing those samples. A secret facility. Well, now the financiers have a problem again when their chemicals are found in the destroyed plant."
Damon was silent and said. "Yeah, I remember they tested your enzymes; we got a big tank of them back and dripped them on you back when I sold you to the pharmaceutical company, but why doesn't Samuel believe?"
I was silent momentarily and said, "No, he just doesn't. He has told me a few times to drop the subject, so I will investigate it myself. Colin understood nothing when I said that. I can dig out the papers if you want to go through them yourself. It would be good if someone wise would at least say whether it would do any harm if the enzymes were robbed. Why do I even have them? Can I protect them, change them? I've done some research myself, so I can show you what I've found at some point, but just look at the papers and see if I'm off the mark."
Damon said calmly, "Don't worry, I can go through the papers and do some research. If Samuel doesn't want to, I'm always ready to help. Let's see what the papers say first, and then we can go from there."
We drove the rest of the way to the house in silence. Damon's eyebrows were slightly furrowed, and I knew he was already thinking about the whole enzyme thing.
We arrived at the house and I went straight to one room upstairs. I actually had the very enzyme papers here. I had nothing I'd researched about myself; this was just one folder of the information I'd got from Sark. I didn't want to seem like an idiot if there was nothing strange about it, and I was just chasing after nothing. I picked them up and took them downstairs to Damon.
"Here's the enzyme thing. These are the papers they found at the Sark facility. I've been doing some research on myself but see if there's anything in them. You can look through these now."
Damon took the papers, got into one armchair, and read through the papers with his eyebrows furrowed. I went into the shower and changed into my home clothes, a dress.
When I came down, Damon was on the phone with someone talking about my enzymes. He was talking very medical jargon, and I wasn't quite sure where I was going except that there was something in them then. I sat down in an armchair and started reading the newspaper.
Damon hung up and said, " Baby, I have to look into this stuff elsewhere; I'll be back. I'm going to see this professor and see what I can do. Don't worry, baby, when I return, we'll look at something else entirely."
Damon came up to me, wrapped his arms around me from behind, and said, " You feel it, baby; you feel how hot and hard I am already? " Fine, this guy came out. " What are we going to do when I get back? Come on, baby. Do you feel it?"
I said, " Yeah, yeah, I feel it. I don't know what we're going to do yet."
Damon took off and now took his own SUV.
He came out when the invincible gave him the papers; he let the good one read them, and when he realized he could use them to get allies, he came out. Now, he pushed the good one all the way down and was in control when the invincible came downstairs in her dress. And he was ready. He had called as soon as the invincible had gone away.
The number he called was answered with, " Sark, who are you, and what do you want? "
He replied, "My name is Damien Salvatore; I'm actually Damon Salvatore's twin brother. I'm in the same body as him, and he doesn't know it himself. I've got these enzyme mapping results here from Mimi Springcove. She gave them to me herself or Damon, but I got to the surface. "
Sark was silent and said, " How can I help you, and how are you in the same body?"
Damien replied, " Our parents were a wizard and a witch, black, and they performed a forbidden ritual when I was dying of influenza. They put me inside Damon, and I have been trying to gain power for a thousand years, sometimes better and sometimes worse, as the love between this Damon and Mimi messes with me and weakens me, so I have always tried to intervene."
Sark said, "Interesting. I'll send you the coordinates and I'm willing to pay $20,000 for the information. I'll give you a time and place to meet."
Then he hung up the phone, called one of the professors and asked some questions about enzymes. He wanted to see if they were a weakness of the invincible. Then, he just tried to be nice to the invincible and made an excuse as he went to investigate and prepared to meet Sark.
I ate my food and got on with my flea work. I did a couple of blow-ups. I had the time off. A few days passed, and there was no word from Damon, but Sark was seen back in Arkansas.
Now Sark and I have an enmity, so I want to kill Sark, but the fleas have shown me that Sark is just a cog in an enormous machine, and we need to get Sark's contacts out and stuff. At some point, Sark will be on the kill list, but first, we need to watch his contacts and get as much information as we can.
Magnum was still on the Krycheck, and Jake had gone on gigs elsewhere. I promised to go tail because no one else could get in right away. They'd gone to five gigs in Louisiana. I could handle myself now.
I took one of our insignificant-looking cars and went to watch. I had changed my hair to brown and short. I was dressed in loose clothes and dull shoes. I had no make-up on. I walked at a slow lope; I had glasses with cameras in the lens, so I recorded everything Sark did, and then at the base, I could pass it on if there was anything strange.
He stayed in a couple of buildings for several hours, then he went to the bank as well. Then he went to a pleasant restaurant for a very healthy meal of fish and vegetables.
From what we had found out about Sark's life, he kept himself in shape, so he ate healthy but didn't do much sport or exercise. He had no social life and work was his life; we have not managed to track down his family. This was a very boring job.
When Sark came out of the restaurant, he walked into the park. After walking there for a while, clearly watching his surroundings, he went and sat on a park bench. Half an hour later, the man walked to the same bench and handed Sark a file. I watched in amazement as a familiar figure walked up in a black leather jacket, black jeans, and a white tee shirt. Shook hands with Sark.
The man was Damon, and he had just handed my enzyme file back to Sark. I recognized the file. So much for research, glad I didn't give samples or tell about it. I didn't understand why. Was it another shortage of money, or was the gentleman perhaps going to sell me back into the institution?
Oh, fuck. My rage came to the surface. I let it come. I watched as Sark took a thick envelope from his pocket and handed it to Damon. Money, I saw as he looked inside the envelope. There better be a fucking good explanation for this.
The men chatted for a while, and then Sark got up and walked away. I saw Damon start to leave, too; he stopped to talk to one woman, and I saw that the woman had a boyfriend. Damon said something to the boyfriend, got a tight grip on the woman, and held her.
The woman's boyfriend was walking like he was in a trance. There was a driveway pretty close by with big trucks going by. The man jumped right in front of the truck. She couldn't make a sound as Damon held his hand over her mouth. I watched as he dragged her aside a bit, sank his teeth into her neck, and ate her to death, but slowly, I watched her struggle the whole time.
I went back to the house, and I was shocked. Damon's behavior was fucking brutal, and he had just killed two innocent people. And he had sold that information to Sark. It already told me that the information had been fucking important to Sark when he had paid for it.
Not that the information was the only one; I had copies of it. I had got myself a photographic memory of it on top of everything else because of the fucking retrovirus in the first place, and I had gone through every page so I could rewrite it myself if I had to. But they had been taken away from Sark, and now this idiot returned them.
Damon came home the next day while I talked to Jarod about general stuff. I was actually consulting him about one of the medical financiers who didn't go to bars, didn't go to clubs, so how could I seduce him?
Damon looked at me coldly. He came into the room, snatched the phone from my hand, and slammed it against the wall.
He said, "Again, Jarod. I see the wedding will have to wait unless Jarod is the groom, or maybe Magnum."
I stood up and let my rage show. I said, " Well, how fucking much did that Sark give for that information? Don't try to deny it. I saw your minor exchange in the park. I was fucking shadowing Sark all day, and pleasant job killing that couple in the park. Well, is my wedding present reserved for maybe a pharmaceutical plant, or are you gonna fucking sell there again sooner? Unless you've happened to fucking notice I'm fucking rich, so if you're short of money, come and ask! Otherwise, the information was not a single item. I have copies of them, and in case you didn't know, I have a photographic memory and have gone through them. You fucking imbecile gave the enemy exactly the fucking information they needed. Well, luckily, I didn't give them everything I had. I idiot thought you could be trusted. Now you can be sure I won't immediately take you on a job. You'd fucking give us away right away."
My voice was icy and furious, my rage shining from my gaze.
Damon looked at me like a piece of meat and came up to me and lifted me by the throat onto the wall so that my feet were 50 cm off the ground. His expression was cold, his voice full of contempt.
He said, "I would so like to teach you one fucking time to respect me enough not to always talk to strange men and have roughly phone sex with them. You would, baby, be such a fucking good victim for a couple of things I could do to you. And I can guarantee you wouldn't enjoy them one bit. And I don't think once would be enough. That remains to be seen, but come at me the same way again, and I guarantee you'll be sorry and good. And a couple of weeks of stabbing you with a knife would be nothing compared to what I could really do to you."
Damon smelled like a wet dog as he set me down to let me fall to the ground, panting. I stood up, kicked him full in the balls, and was fucking pleased when my blow hit.
I said, "I was fucking consulting with Jarod about a job. I'm not the fucking fuck machine in this house. You are."
He held his balls and gave me a murderous look.
I decided not to say anything more because he was looking at me like someone's investigator at the medical institute, totally without emotion or empathy. At that moment, I was just someone he could do anything to and mostly harm. This was not the darling type. This one didn't teach, this one wanted to destroy.
He stood up and said nothing as he stomped out the door. I heard the car leave, and his phone and wallet were on the tab when I entered the living room. I sat in an armchair and thought for a moment. Damon's expression was like he was just another guy, not really himself, and that's not what he looked like when he stabbed.
I called Adam first thing.
He answered almost immediately, " Well, what's up, Mimi?"
I said, "Nothing nice. Damon and I did a couple of jobs, and it went well; they were enzyme plants in Arkansas, Sark's enzyme plants, and when we came back to the house, I told Damon about the enzymes and the papers we'd got from Sark. He said he'd go through them. I just gave him the papers, the one file. He read through them. I went to take a shower, and when I came down, he had to go and talk to one professor; well, I stayed on and got on with it. I did two more gigs myself, and when that bunch in New Orleans took most of the people, and Sark was seen, I promised to follow Sark. "
Adam said, "And then what do I hear from your voice that something that good hasn't happened?"
I grunted and said, " Sark then went and sat in the park, and Damon came up to him, sold the fucking papers back to Sark, then he compelled a guy to jump in front of a truck and drank his girlfriend dry. That was yesterday. Well, today, he came to the house while I was talking to Jarod about MacNaulty and how we were going to nail him when Damon broke my phone. He accused me of having phone sex with Jarod and pulled a Magnum, too; when I told him I'd seen the whole thing, how he was selling the information, he threw me up against the wall, looked like a fucking pharmaceuticals guy, threatened to hurt me and hard... Well, I kicked him in the balls, and he left."
Adam cursed softly to himself.
I said, "I have the enzyme papers in my possession. I have copies of them, and although Samuel doesn't believe there's anything in them, I have researched myself. I have found me and Mimosa to have the exact same enzyme; as you know, Mimosa can be loose, but as I know, those enzymes are used to make medicine, but I haven't read enough pharmacology to understand the whole thing fully."
Adam was silent for a moment, and then he was talking to someone. I heard Samuel saying something in the background.
Adam said, " Now you pack up everything you've studied about yourself, everything you've got, every copy of those enzyme papers, every sample, every note, every device you have, and you drive down here to Colorado immediately. You say nothing to Damon. Got it."
I said, " Fine, it'll probably take me a couple of hours to get everything together."
Adam grunted and hung up. I then gathered up all my research. My specimen containers. I took all my dentifrices for fun with me, too. I mean poisons, every enzyme paper. I was pissed off because I knew I couldn't take Damon on gigs. He could literally sell my entire group to the cops, and I don't know if he knew any of the other pharmaceutical people.
I had been happy thinking we could have been a power couple in the fleas, a leadership couple, an alpha couple, but now that idea was scrapped. Not everything is just meant to be. I packed up my car and went for a drive to Colorado. It was a 15-hour drive, but I had time.