Laurel

2:40 Damon

I had done it. I hiccuped as I got up from the rug I was sprawled on. I had gotten drunk. I swayed into a sculpture I had rescued from the Library of Alexandria as it burned the first time in history. The relic had been a favorite of Alexander the Great himself, an ancient representation of a goddess of love no one remembered. She toppled from her pedestal, ancient clay hitting the marble floor with a crash and shattering to dust at my feet.

"Appropriate" I hiccuped to myself. I told the house cleaners to stay away for a month, took leave from every obligation I was personally tied to and sequestered myself. I wanted silence and peace to get over my own foolish hope. It had taken seventy-three bottles of pure grain alcohol, drunk back to back to back endlessly to finally overwhelm my nature and let me get drunk and drown in my own misery. I had been an idiot. Demons were outside of fate and couldn't have a mate. This was a law of nature, demons defied the laws of creation and nature and were ever outside their control or influence.

She had felt so right, I had loved her, more than I had ever loved anything before. If I had a soul it would have warmed for the tears she had shed for me. I was glad to know her love for me had been real, what we had shared was real at the time. I would survive. My immortality would ensure that. I just needed to bask in the depth of my despair for a while first. It had been so long since anything truly hurt me this deliciously. The agony of heartbreak, a rare emotion I hadn't experienced before. Not like this. The memory of the pleasure I had felt with her, made the pain of her absence, the loss of her from my life unbearable. The true loss this time. She wasn't mine to have. I finished another bottle, vodka this time. For variety. There was so much more I wanted to share with her. I had loved her auburn curls as they widely encircled her face, each curl catching the light at a different angle, showing the variety of highlights running through her hair. Her true self, otherworldly with her colorless hair and golden eyes. She was beyond comparison. There would only ever be her for me now, I was a ruined demon.

I was unsure how long I spent maintaining my blinding drunk when I felt the world shift again. "Laur-el?" I asked the air with a slur. I brushed it off, and went back to my despair, choosing to wallow. I wasn't sure how much time had passed when I was shaken from my stupor by my cell phone ringing. I regretted not smashing the thing when I started my decadent pity party, something I couldn't name compelled me to answer.

I fumbled the phone in my hands, before a sloppy finger swiped to answer, I again almost dropped the phone as I brought it up to my ear, "Yell-oh?" I heard my voice and regretted answering. I should have sent it to voicemail. I had never been drunk before. Not like this.

"Damon?" I knew that voice. I focused and evaporated a vast quantity of the alcohol from my system. Harsh streams of evaporating alcohol rising from my skin as coherence slowly dawned back on me. The fumes stinging my nose, and making my eyes water as the alcohol dissipated into the air.

"Delia?" I asked, feeling very confused, why would she call to gloat. She wasn't normally this unkind. "What do you want?" Could an empath be unkind without hurting themselves?

"Damon, Laurel is gone, something happened, and she's not here anymore, we were hoping maybe she went to you." Delia, her voice was shaking, she was scared. More than scared, terrified. I was still burning off the effects of several days of being heavily intoxicated but I could tell that much.

"She isn't here, I thought I felt something, an hour ago, but it wasn't coming closer to me" I said, remembering the strange sensation from earlier. How I had called out her name in my stupor.

"Farther away? But, if she's not there with you where is she?" Delia was growing more panicked, I could hear the wolf behind her, trying to comfort her, but his own voice gave away his true feelings. Everyone was panicking. "Did you really feel something?" Delia asked, her tone had changed drastically.

"I don't know Di. I haven't been sober enough to open my eyes all the way since she chose you over me." My tone was harder than I meant to be. I liked Delia, she didn't deserve this hostility. None of this was anyone's fault, I knew better, I shouldn't be this hurt. But as I listened to Delia panic over the loss of her mate, knowing that once again, Laurel had vanished, a familiar ache opened in my chest. "Delia what happened tonight?" I asked, Delia was too scared, too shaken for this to be because Laurel had vanished again. Something else had happened.

I listened in horror as Delia told me of the dinner they had been invited to, the dress from the Dragon Council that boldly indicated Laurel was supposed to be a sacrifice. The end of the dinner when the trap was sprung, Laurel had protected her mates and sent them to her fortress, and then vanished from their senses, and mine somehow. Followed by Hell raining down on the capital, I was glad they were safe for now, if hell had invaded the Fae city, and I had no idea, had heard no whisper of the plan, something very very bad was afoot. I loved humanity, the Fae, and all the decadent things they did. I had thwarted every apocalypse attempt in history in one way or another. How had I missed the signs for this one so completely?

I looked at the discarded glass bottles littering the room, the dank smell overpowering the normal wood and leather. I had missed it because I was focused on Laurel. How could I have missed something this large, and how did Laurel fit into the bigger picture. Fuck I needed to figure this mess out.

I couldn't let Laurel go. If she was in trouble, I wanted to help. I assured Delia I would do everything I could to try and locate her. The alcoholic vapors increased around me as I willed it out of my system. Once I was sober, I had a magical shower to freshen up before I changed my clothes and transported myself down to the circles of hell, to see what I could find out about what the fuck had happened tonight.

I might not be fated to Laurel, but I could do something none of her mates could. I could choose her, all on my own. I didn't need a mate bond to know I already belonged to her in every way that mattered to the gap where my soul should be. Laurel was mine, I found her before and I would find her again. I would be part of her life any way I could after that.

With a deep inhale, I threw myself down into the lower levels to start my quest. A smile with far too much teeth on my face. It had been far too long since I had gotten to enjoy proper war games.

The end of part 2 ;) Stay tuned.