tampered | (no subject)

When; Friday, April 18th
Rating; R for blood
Characters; Eden Mac Cionaoith

eiremagic and John Constantine

lullabyoflondon
Summary; Eden decided enough is enough. John's coming back whether he likes it or not.
Log;

Eden hated magic.

It was a waste of time; a waste of energy, and it served almost no purpose at all. But sometimes, even she had to admit that it was the only solution. It resonated in her blood, bitter and powerful. She was her father's equal - more than that, truly.

She opened the little bag of bandages. John's blood, demon tainted. She could feel power in it, but more importantly, she felt the anchor in it. That was the secret, really; blood always returned to the source. She had calculated this for days - to find John, not the demon whose blood infected his. That was easy enough. If there was anything that Eden was a master of, was blood.

She traced out the heavy lines of her equation, watching them shimmer wetly, the cut on her finger throbbing. She could feel the corrosive reaction in her gut. Every line, precise, done ten times in chalk before she even thought of doing it in her blood, before she even considered adding power. She turned them. There were no words, no focus; she was past that level. Words did nothing.

The reaction was the same; like a hole in her stomach, her lungs began to collapse. The human body wasn't designed to wield the power. Her sacrifice was always herself. She would never imagine using anyone else. She refused to be her father's daughter.

She found John in London; reached through, dropped the anchor on him. It was up to the idiot to feel her back.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Pure and honest blood?" He smirked, back to the cocky bastard again. "Fuck me, I'm lucky I haven't swollen up and died already."

He was on his way to the shower already when he saw her reaching for her bag, and there he stopped. "Cassidy ought to be out a while longer, right? You can stay a bit if you want."

She nodded. "But it's useless, don' even think about keepin' it. I leached all the magic out to get yer sodden ass back here."

His words reached her, and she felt the remainder of her blood go straight into her face. What was she, 12? There were results, of course there were, they had just shared what could be equated to a magical orgasm and she was blushing like a schoolgirl! She sat down on the bed.

"Oh. Yeah, righ'," she added, the blood rushing in her face. "'m not blushin'," she lied. "It's just the retribution, yeh know, when the universe snaps back like a rubber band."

He regarded her with half a smile playing across his face for a moment. "Oh, yeah?" He absently reached up to rub at the back of his neck with the hand that wasn't preoccupied with his cigarette. "That shite's probably nasty--I wouldn't know. No retribution in my magic, and all that."

This much was true, but what he didn't add because he didn't like to think about it was that his magic often came with a crash. The low after the high.

There were, of course, ways to put it off...

"If you're feeling low enough, you probably ought to go," he said after a moment. "Rest up a bit, like."

He was offering her an easy out. There was, after all, no way for him to know if she really was feeling that bad.

Eden looked up at him and her stomach rolled. The universe had it in for her. She shook her head. "No, no, I'll stay," she said, curling her legs under her. "Yeh don' mind me sleepin' here, right? While yeh shower, while the universe refixes it's target on someone else."

Another moment of that ambiguous smile. Then he said, "You do what you need to, love." And he tossed his cigarette into an ashtray and headed for the shower, pulling the door half-closed behind him.

Eden watched him leave. She didn't know why she couldn't leave; she didn't know if she ever would.

She collapsed against the bed. The pillow stank; whatever. She'd shower, later.

Eden closed her eyes, and fell asleep.