"I need to take a walk, I just need to think about everything. Please..."
His smile faltered, lips slipping back over his dazzling bright whites. His words stuck in his throat like oddly shaped blocks so that all he could do was nod in response. With that gesture, she turned and all but ran down the street leaving a confused and disparaged Nikolai in her wake. He dejectedly crossed over the threshold, shutting the heavy oak door behind him, before resting his forehead against the cool wood. His feeding girls were enjoying one another's company in the sitting room off to the right, and the air rang with laughter and cheaply sentimental ballads—but also with silence: a thick, watchful silence that swam beneath the noise and merriment like water under oil. His lip curled into a sneer as he stormed in the next room to greet them harshly. "Go and make yourselves presentable, stop lounging about like you have nothing better to do! We are to have very important company in a few minutes. Go, now!" he commanded, his usually lovely English purr transforming into a feral growl. They scrambled over themselves to get to the sprawling stair case, tripping over one another as they kept their fearful gazes on his fury marred face. He was taking his anger out on them, his group of living blood bags he had brought with him from every state he had taken to visiting. They weren't under compulsion, no, they were addicted to the venom of his bite. Drug addicts through and through, various attractive and very tawdrily clad females of a certain persuasion, but addicts still. The only one of them who truly required his compulsion was the woman who's house he had commandeered.
The older woman shuffled into the room with a distant, lost gaze and out of place smile, her coffee stained teeth peaking out from behind her thin lips. "Anything I can do for you dear, you seem upset?" She wasn't looking directly at him, the compelled ones never did, but rather, past him, as if something beautiful must have lied just beyond his sight. "Yes." He spoke curtly, sighing through his nose. "The girls have gone upstairs to get ready but made a mess in here, do clean it up quickly, please." She nodded obligingly and scooted about the room, tidying up the ground zero of their celebration as Nikolai strode from the room with a still ireful gate, gnashing his teeth.
