Eternal Night

(I) Chapter 6: Demons & Monsters

Three Weeks Later

Frankie leaned back into the sofa as she skimmed over the words on the screen of her laptop for the sixth time, a fresh cigarette between her fingers. With only one more week to get as much information on this Jack Belinskaya as she could before she was supposed to interview him, her anxiety had left her already shot nerves torn to ribbons. She hadn't properly worked – at least on an assignment of this magnitude – in ages, and the dozens of smoked cigarette butts and empty whiskey bottles littered about the flat served as a damning reminder.

There was a dull ache in her head and she felt foggy, lethargic, and so goddamn insecure about everything. She hated herself for that. Normally, the woman would be feeling at least more confident at this stage, but every passing evening left her more nervous and uncharacteristically full of self-doubt.

She knew she had the skillset to get what she needed out of this man – she was her father's daughter after all, and her talents when it came to true empathy, or even straight up manipulation if that's what it ended up requiring, made her one of the best in her field.

But the depression lingered and her present state of isolation wasn't helping.

Of course, it also didn't help that she had never interviewed anyone directly blood-bound to Dracula before and she couldn't help but wonder – what if Jack was immune to her inherent gifts of trust and persuasion? What about her more unnatural talents? What would she do if he was?

Rémy had made it abundantly clear that Jack was the most critical member of the Dracul Sânge; that if she could win him over, he'd give her access to the others.

That was a level of pressure she didn't need at this state – not with everything else going on in her life.

Frankie closed the screen of the laptop before propping her feet up on the coffee table with a heavy sigh. She looked about the dimly lit flat, the silence that surrounded her oppressive.

She hadn't seen much of her brother since their spat a few weeks ago. He was sometimes around during the daylight hours, making it a point to give her space, and while she appreciated the consideration, the woman was finding the abundance of solitude more like isolation.

She couldn't seem to shake the pervasive sensation that she was a stranger in her own skin.

Frankie had been out of stasis for over a month now and still, normalcy eluded her. She lacked direction, motivation, focus, drive...

There was this nagging thought in the back of her head telling her repeatedly that she'd feel better if she actually fed instead of drowning in booze, but the flashbacks and gut-wrenching shame that followed frightened her far more than anything else did right now.

To distract from the persistent depression, she had opted to devote most of her waking hours to researching up on this Belinksaya character and what history the Veritas resources had been able to dig up. But after three weeks of studying the same face for often hours at a time, now more than ever did she need some kind of diversion.

She didn't want to stare the abyss of her future in the face anymore – not when it felt like it was finally starting to stare back at her.

She wanted to feel something other than apathy, loneliness, and crippling self-loathing.

Perhaps a trip to Carmen's was in order.

Resolute, she cleaned up her things and placed the files in a safe hidden within one of the walls, before making her way down to her bedroom to change out of her clothes and into something a little more suitable than yoga pants. Currently indifferent when it came to her appearance, she surrendered to her present ordinariness, grabbing the house keys, strapping her favorite pair of throwing knives to her back beneath her jacket, and then she was out the door.