Meetings and Revelations
This article is a part of Spooktober 2024 and is still a work in progress. Written for the Eye prompt."Can I help you, ma'am?" Penny asked as she peered out the screen door at the tall, olive-skinned woman standing on the porch. The woman turned, smiling brightly, but there was something distinctly...other...about her. Something predatory. The same sort of off-putting feeling that followed Darien around sometimes. "You must be Penny," she said, the obvious flavor of some kind of accent in her voice. "I'm Gnaea, Darien's sister." If she hadn't been aware of who this woman was already, she would have called her mad. This tall, olive-skinned woman with her light brown hair and dark eyes looked nothing like her wiry looking love with his pale Irish skin, dark hair, and green eyes. She was his sister by blood, Penny knew, but not in the traditional sense of the phrasing. Unlatching the screen door, Penny extended her hand towards the woman with a smile, saying, "Hello! Yes, I'm Penny, it's nice to finally meet you. Was...was Darien expecting you?" Gnaea's hand was warm as it settled in hers, the grip slightly delicate but Penny knew the delicacy was false. Vampires were strong enough to tear doors off of cars as she had seen Darien do just that the night they had cornered the Gum Pond Killer. It was more surprising that her skin was warm given that Darien always seemed to have a chill to his skin. "He wasn't," she replied as her hand fell back to her side, "though I imagine with the excitement of meeting you and this deal with the murderer, he has forgotten our usual meeting." Penny's eyebrows went up but Southern politeness took over before she could ask about what that meant. "Well, come on in. He's not here right now as he's driving back from Memphis but he should be back by this evening." Darien had told her to never allow another vampire into the house but this was his sister. Out of any of his immortal family, she had heard the most about Gnaea and how she had helped him through some big upheaval in his life during the late 1700s. As soon as Gnaea was inside of the house in the open breezeway Penny asked, "Are you staying in town?" "My current partner, Samuel, is off trying to secure us somewhere to stay in town," she replied. Smiling thinly, Gnaea continued, "He's mortal, like you, so he has an easier time of such things. I'm unfortunately old enough now that I make most mortals uneasy." "I...is it impolite for me to ask how old you are?" Laughing, Gnaea replied, "No, not at all! I'm afraid I don't know the exact date to tell you but it was roughly somewhere about 31 BC. I was a child when Emperor Octavian came to power and my father was a senator." The much older woman then looked at her and asked, "And what of you, Penny Goodwyn? Tell me about you." "I...I..." Penny stammered, her cheeks flushing, before she breathed, "My life is a drop in the bucket compared to what you've seen." Gnaea reached out to take her hands in her own then and held them, smiling as she said gently, "There is a reason I continue to take mortal lovers, dear child. Your lives are so short compared to ours but you live furiously and bright, burning stars across the bleakness of eternity. I delight in hearing what things you've seen and done, even if they seem small." Smiling, Penny nodded behind the much older woman towards the part of the house that Darien had managed to restore during his almost two years of living in Bigby Fork. He had bought an old, nearly falling down dogtrot house at the edge of town that had once been considered part of a larger nearby home when he had decided to stay in town after the Gum Pond Killer case was sorted. The breezeway had been the first thing he had repaired, enclosing either end to make it a screened in porch, and then had started restoring one side to construct a living room in the larger room and a bedroom in the smaller. Currently the other side was still half under construction, mostly because he was getting her input on what needed to be in a kitchen since the last one he had been in had been almost three centuries ago. Gnaea nodded and followed her into the living room, sitting elegantly on the couch. As Penny settled next to her, she asked, "What did you mean earlier by your usual meeting?" The older woman looked at her with concern and then asked, "Exactly how much has my brother told you about his past?" "I...the basic details," Penny replied. "That he was born in Ireland in the 1600s, he had a younger brother, his mother and a baby died when he was a child still. He's spoken of living with you after something happened but never exactly what." Gnaea sighed, hissing something under her breath in a foreign language, before saying, "This is a subject we should speak on with him present unfortunately, so forgive me, my dear. So...tell me of your life here. As I said, I enjoy knowing of the lives of mortals." She didn't want to leave it to lie there but believed the other woman. Penny also didn't want to talk about Darien behind his back given how skittish he sometimes was about his past. So they sat and she told Gnaea all about her life growing up in Bigby Fork, which the woman seemed to legitimately be interested in as she asked questions about certain things, like her older brother who had died in the war or the games she had played as a child. The hours stretched out until it was late in the evening and dark when there was the sound of a truck pulling up to the house. There was the sound of feet approaching the house and then suddenly a heavy thump on the porch before the front screen door sounded like it was nearly torn off its hinges. "Pen!" Darien called out loudly, his voice angry and frightened at the same time, and she turned to face the open door. Her love appeared in the doorframe, his hands digging into the frame on either side to make the wood creak in agony, and there was something suddenly horribly feral about him. He was half-crouched, shoulders hunched, and his teeth were bared to fully show off his fangs, green eyes wild like an animal's. Rising from the couch, Penny quickly said, "Darien, I...it's okay. It's okay." His eyes darted past her towards Gnaea and something relaxed in his shoulders but not all of it. Suddenly he moved, faster than her eye could see, and then he was fully in her space, one hand firmly on her lower back as he pulled her into his lean frame. Darien's other hand delved into her hair and curled around the back of her neck, holding her still as he pressed his nose against the pulse of her throat and inhaled deeply. Penny stilled, suddenly feeling all too aware that the man she had been in a relationship with for the past two years was a predator. He growled, fangs ghosting over her skin as he pressed an open-mouthed kiss to her throat, and snarled, "I sensed a vampire was with you but didn't know it was my sister. I thought...I thought it might have been someone hunting you. Hurting you." Penny slowly raised her hands to cup his face, gently pushing him back so she could see his face. There was still something all too animal in his eyes and, for the first time, she felt like she really saw the monster lurking underneath his skin. So many of her instincts screamed that she should be afraid there in his grasp, with his teeth at her throat and the wild in his eyes. But she knew Darien O'Connell and he was no killer. "Breathe, love," she whispered, arching on her toes to slowly press a kiss against his lips. "With me," Penny added as she slowly inhaled a breathe. After a moment he followed, eyes drifting shut as he breathed slowly with her. When he reopened his eyes, there was sense in them again...and shame. Darien kissed her gently and then leaned his forehead against hers as he said, "Hello, sister. Sorry about that." "You have nothing to apologize to me for," Gnaea replied from behind Penny. "However...you should apologize to her for what you've kept hidden from her. She's stronger than you give her credit for, little brother." Darien flinched and pulled away from Penny, not quite looking her in the eyes as he nodded and murmured, "I know. I was afraid." As Penny glanced between them, confused and concerned by this exchance, his sister sighed heavily. "Tell her why I'm here, brother." Penny looked up at her lover and when he still wouldn't look at her, grabbed his face between her hands to force him to. "I won't run away from you screaming," she insisted. "Not now, not ever." He huffed a bitter laugh at that and leaned into her before saying quietly, "It's a bloody story, Pen. About a man who was and wasn't me and all the horrible things he did. And how Gnaea helped save me." Then he shook as a full-body shudder ran through him and he whispered, "I didn't want you to know that side of me." She just kissed him and said, "And I want to know all the sides of you. Even the worst ones." Darien's eyes met hers and they were just...sad. "Okay," he breathed. "It all starts the day I died..."
Timeframe: 1956
Location: Bigby Fork, Mississippi
Event: Penny Goodwyn gets to meet Gnaea Abella, Darien's bloodsister, when she abruptly shows up at his home in Bigby Fork. When Darien returns from a long trip to Memphis, TN, he only senses that an ancient vampire is with his lover and reacts on instinct to protect her, allowing Penny to really see for the first time the predator lurking under her lover's skin.
Consquences: Darien O'Connell shares the full bloody history of his past with Penny Goodwyn. While she is horrified by the revelations, she stays with him.
There are two sides to Penny Goodwyn's life and both revolve around Darien O'Connell: before she knew him and after. Before, she was just a young woman from a small Mississippi town working as a secretary. After, she knew about things that didn't seem possible and loved deeply for the first time in her life. In the end, however, the love wasn't enough. Though she married John Pittman and had a son David with him, she has continued to maintain her friendship with Darien O'Connell throughout the long years.
The daughter of a Roman senator, she and her mother were forced to sell themselves into slavery after her father was killed and his reputation ruined. That was where Ebio found her, buying her and eventually turning her into her first child. Though the pair were lovers for years, they eventually grew apart due to Ebio's bloodthirsty nature. Gnaea continued to aid her sire, however, both helping to temper her younger bloodbrother and taking him in after he regained his memories.
The third child of the vampire Ebio, he lost his memory of who he had been when he was turned in the 1660s and became little more than a killer driven by intense bloodlust. By the 1780s, he regained his memory and has since struggled to control the aftermath of his years of bloodthirsty killing and figure out a place to belong.
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