Subspecies: Bloodpact - Chapter Three, part two

Sep 26, 2006 06:47

Subspecies: Bloodpact
Chapter 3/? (probably 8)
Author: memoriamvictus
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Radu Vladislas may prove the lesser of two evils when Michelle is forced to attempt to undo the devil's deal Rebecca has made in a bid to save her soul.
Disclaimer: It all belongs to Charles Band, Ted Nicolaou, and other wonderful people who have provided me with a great deal of entertainment; I'm just playing around.
Wordcount: 14,108
Begin at the beginning.



Bucharest, again.

A thin, penetrating drizzle hissed down on cobbles and pavement alike, the mist it brought nearly swallowing the weak light of the elderly streetlamps that dotted the road.  No well-kept, tourist-friendly thoroughfare was this; the sweet, rotten odor of moldering trash permeated the alley they had found themselves in, and though the drumming of the rain fouled her hearing, Michelle could still make out the distant sound of drunken shouts.  A ghetto, then; a place where one more lost soul gone astray would hardly be missed.  How prudent.

She shook her head to clear the water from her eyes; though she knew, intellectually, that she ought to be freezing, the only thing that bothered her was the unexpected trickle of liquid across her skin, and the increasingly chafing dampness of her clothes.  She plucked fretfully at the neckline of the simple cotton dress Becky had loaned her as she surveyed the narrow view of the road afforded by the gap between the two tall, ramshackle buildings they sheltered between.  The awful thing was that it was entirely prudent, could not dispute the sense of it; she thought of the thousands of people that went missing every day back home, totally unremarked save perhaps a scanty missing person's report filed by an uninterested police officer, perhaps a spark of irritation from their employer when they failed to appear at their job the following day.

No, the working class, the poor, the desperate, the people who would inhabit such a run-down place as this... they didn't have support networks, deep ties to the community, officials who would notice their troubles and care about them.  Lacked siblings that would cross an ocean on a day's notice simply to get them out of a jam.

And perhaps, in some ways, were better off for it.

That thought finally brought a shiver where the night's chilling moisture had failed, and she hugged herself tightly.  Radu stepped up behind her, his height shielding her from some of the rain's lash.  "Do you shrink already, when we have not even begun?"

"I..."  She shook her head.  The problem was that he was completely correct. While she was taking to slinking around inhabited areas with her supernatural abilities as aid with remarkable equanimity, she could not comes to terms with, could not even bear the thought of actually murdering a fellow--another human being, with malice and purpose aforethought, no matter how badly she might need to... the stated goal of this evening's excursion.  "I just... wonder."  Wondered how she was going to rationalize this.

For he was exactly right: up until now, it had been a game.  All she needed to do was keep him occupied until Mel managed to sort out their international arrangements and they were able to flee back to the west.  Play-acting, negotiating, stringing him along... that was all, that was as far as she'd thought.  Not what that might actually entail; not what her very life would entail were she not able to win free with the Bloodstone.  It wasn't a game any more, not here, not now, perhaps never again.  Radu had once again managed to push her to her sticking point; but this was not something she could ever afford to flinch from.  The ancient artifact might be capable of freeing her--she might be capable of securing it--but always henceforth would her continued existence require the destruction of others.  Their murder.  Their slaughter.

Gently, Radu reached out and grasped her left hand, his unnaturally long fingers urging her own to unclench from the fist it had formed; once again, she had managed to dig her nails into her palms so hard they pierced the flesh.  The ragged holes were as pale as ever without the urgent gush of scarlet she expected to accompany such wound.  She felt only the faintest flutter of pain, the feel of an unfamiliar sensation as Radu's thumb passed over the wounds, and the thick, dark fluid that passed for her circulatory system began to ooze forth.  He raised her hand to his mouth and, with a sardonically arched brow, bent to lick the blood from the heel of her palm.

She gasped at the contact; his tongue was rough, as raspy as a cat's.  For scabs, she realized numbly, as he lapped delicately at the punctures, carefully, fastidiously seeking every droplet of fluid.  Carrion eater.  She shivered, the usual revulsion mingled this time with a little awe. Whatever he truly was, he was a fully-evolved, functional creature in his own right; no mere monster of myth and legend, his demeanor and character seemed fully consistent with themselves, served necessary purposes that her analytical mind could not resist attempting to ferret out.  Though the extra joints on the fingers... she couldn't imagine what purpose they served, but they gave her something to think about, something, anything else to focus on besides the inhuman caress she was being subjected to.

For careless it surely was; his enjoyment was unmistakably evident, and he watched her carefully from the corner of his eye.  He seemed to interpret that shiver as evidence of her own pleasure; with one last, scraping swipe of his tongue, he worked his grip around to clasp her hand, rubbing her knuckles against his cheek.  "And what is it," he asked softly, "that you wonder?"  His gaze was calm and satisfied; the faintest of smiles curved the corners of his full mouth.

"I just..."  Think, Michelle; if you're ever going to have a moment of brilliance, this would be the time for it.  "This just seems so... furtive.  Common."

He paused, a moment of blank startlement quickly melting into bemusement; he seemed inclined to be indulgent as he released her hand.  "Common?  You would prefer your prey brought to you perfumed and trussed in silk ribbons?"

Boldness.  He responded best when she felt she was being the most suicidally brash.  "Of--of course not!  But this?  Skulking in alleyways, picking off the weak and the wounded, feeding on society's dregs, the trash that won't be missed?  You told me we were hunters, Radu, the most ferocious things under the moon... but this is little better than scavenging."  She squared her shoulders and raised her chin, meeting his gaze as levelly as she could.  "Are the Vladislas wolves, or jackals?"

He snorted in amusement.  "Ravens, as it happens," he said, "both in arms and in truth.  I doubt that you, my pretty one, who has struggled against me so ardently, would ever be content as one of a pack, dependent on the will and whims of your betters... far, far more glorious to skim through the darkness on the winds of eternity, subject to none, far above all."  He was before her suddenly, faster than thought, close enough their chests would have brushed if they breathed, using every inch of his superior height to advantage as he gazed down at her.  "Would you bare your throat in submission?  Or would you seek the farthest bounty fate holds in its grasp?"

"Your line ruled here, once," she said steadily.  "Yet now all I hear is the whimper of a whipped dog."

She quailed, then; the complete, utter stillness of his form, frozen in perfect shock, told her that she had gone too far.  So be it, then; hopefully he was so infuriated he would kill her outright, all unwitting.

But he did not; did not move a muscle, save those required to draw breath for speech, and his tone was conversational, almost friendly when he finally spoke.  "And what, exactly, is it that you wish from this?"

Stunned in turn, Michelle paused, fumbling for the answer for a question she had never expected to be asked, that proved to be far more difficult than she had ever anticipated.  To go home, to be left alone?  No, that wasn't what he meant--he wished to know her hunting preferences, what she meant to do as a wolf that she couldn't as a jackal, and that was almost a more damning inquiry.  She didn't believe in hunting deer, never mind her fellow humans; didn't like guns, didn't approve of military service, didn't support the death penalty.

...the death penalty.

No one, no one ever deserved death--or so she had believed, until she ran afoul of the terrifying Vladislas family; she was willing to make exceptions for them, as personal and spiteful as it might be--but, given an untenable situation... a survival situation... was vigilantism not preferable to murder?  Her bite was now the most lethal injection of all.

"You ruled here, once," she repeated, hoping he would interpret the plural as flattery as she stepped away.  The uncertain shadows from the streetlights hid his expression, but he nodded cautiously.  "Not just... your own kind.  The whole area.  Everyone."

"That was a different time," he rumbled.

"But still."

"But still," he agreed.  "Did your withered old professor apprise you of this?"

"No, actually," Michelle said softly.  "Just an old peasant woman... one of the first people we--I met here.  The commoners remember your house, Radu, even if only in stories, and they recall it fondly."  She licked her lips, struggling to phrase her idea as cautiously as she could.  "The Bloodstone may have freed you from some of your needs... but not all of them, surely?  There were three of you, no?  More?"

"Given your experiences with my line, I would not think you so eager to find more of my kin."

"That's not what I'm getting at," she insisted.  "You didn't go rampaging through the villages, slaughtering as you wished, did you?  You couldn't have."

"I can, and always have, done as I wished," he replied.  "But you are in large part correct, though perhaps not as you think.  We were not sheepdogs, to feast on the leavings of the flock."

"No, of course not."  Michelle pressed on, relief at acceptance of her idea allowing her to ignore its more immediate repercussions for the moment.  "You were justice, weren't you?  No decent lord, no voivod, would permit criminals to ravage their serfs... and your family had a unique way of enforcing your will on the populace, didn't you?"

He was silent, then; no sound reached her ears but the incessant patter of the raindrops and, very distantly, the sound of far away traffic.  Unease still coiled within her; she had obviously hit a nerve when she had meant only to appeal to his vanity.  It was probably foolish to have tried.  What exactly his history was, with both the area and the rest of his family, was practically unknowable; she had been surprised not by the hatred, but by the level of bitterness with which he had discussed Stefan that first night.  Had he ever gotten along with the lineal side of his family?  How long ago might that have been?  There was no way to guess how old he himself might be, never mind determine how long some of those grudges had been carried.

"So," he said finally, so softly the breathy rasp of his voice was nearly incomprehensible.  "You think yourself able to choose who among the humans shall live, and who shall die."

"I..."  It sounded a great deal less satisfactory when put that way; she looked away, gazing out into the mostly deserted street through the haze of fog, as she struggled to frame an adequate response.  "I just... I don't see why we have to prey on innocents, Radu.  There are people out there who... bad people, Radu, who don't need any further opportunity to hurt people.  But most of these people are innocent; they haven't done anything to deserve... us."

She glanced back to see how he had taken that, and was unnerved to see that he was smiling.  "As you and your friends did not, hmm?"  He tilted his head and once more regarded her with quizzical, indulgent interest.

She inhaled deeply, once more at a loss--though concepts she took for granted sometimes seemed entirely alien to him, he was alarmingly clever in some areas, particularly when she was hoping to slip something past him.  "We're not animals, Radu, we're not monsters!" Impulsively, she reached out and seized his hand, winding his long fingers through her own and stroking his palm with her thumb in imitation of his earlier touch.  "You've... shown me that.  Things don't have to be this way.  I just... just want a chance to try."

"Hmm."  He raised her hand to his lips once more, brushing his lips against her knuckles meditatively as he pondered her words.  "You would mete out death on your own terms."  Straightening, he released her hand abruptly.  "Go, then."

"What?"

“Go.”  He flapped his hands in a dismissive gesture.  “I would see how you intend to separate the sheep from the goats.”

“I…”  She raised a hand to her throat, backing away.  “You want me to pick someone?”

“Is that not what you wished?” he asked, reasonably.  “Go.  Find someone you deem worthy of the chase.  I will haunt your trail.”

“But…” Once again, she had not thought things through and, presented with the opportunity to do things her own way, found herself at a loss.  It wasn’t exactly as if she could request a few names and addresses from the local police department; though given some of the stories she’d heard about local politics, that was a chilling, and not entirely unrealistic thought.  “It’s not that easy!  I can’t just… look at someone and tell what they’ve done!”

“Can you not?”  Grinning, he placed his hands on her shoulders and gently turned her around so that she faced the street.  “Though I am not certain what to make of any further criteria you may have.  What must they have done?”

She didn’t like the barely hidden humor in his tone, nor the closeness he maintained; he gripped her arms more tightly, leaning down to regard the scene from the same level she did.  “You know what I mean.”

“I do not, pretty one; your discourse is quite a revelation to me-what makes one man more worthy of death than another in your eyes?”

“Criminals, of course!  Law-breakers… those who hurt others… unnecessarily,” she added desperately for his benefit.

“Hmm,” he murmured, directly into her ear; a soft, thrumming purr.  “And what sort?  Is a man who murders more loathsome than one who steals?” he asked softly, lips brushing the curve of her ear.  “Or an usurer?  A peddler of flesh?”

“Murderers, definitely.  Radu, I-“

“Shh.”  He pushed her rain-slick bangs away from her forehead, tucking them away from her line of vision.  “Just listen.”

She stood stock-still, waiting for him to continue; but it seemed he meant for her to observe the sounds in the environment.  She struggled for calm, carefully flexing her fingers, one by one.  She didn’t need to think about the greater ramifications, didn’t need to think about how well the mocking tenor of his questions struck home; she just needed to get through this, secure herself another night in which to maneuver for her freedom.  She forced herself to take a deep, sucking breath, forcing disused lungs into service, and nearly gagged on the few droplets of rain that came with it.

The rain.  It was comforting, almost soothing; it acted as white noise, screening her from the constant panoply of sounds and noise that assaulted her, sparing her the effort of blocking them out.  Yet if she strained, focusing her concentration on sifting through the deadening hiss, she could make out a little-no, more than that, more than she realized-of  what transpired beyond it.

“The rain, of course,” she muttered.  “Traffic.  Cars driving.  There’s someone walking… two?  Yeah, two blocks away.  And there’s so many people between here and there, I can’t really focus… I can hear televisions, radios, somebody laughing… I can only hear the high sounds, for some reason… there’s a little kid, right next door…”

“Good.”  He nuzzled her temple.  “But not… pertinent.  I ask again: can you not?”

“Can I not-“

“Shh,” he repeated, and covered her ears, pressing firmly against the sides of her head.  “Listen.”  His voice came distantly through the barrier of flesh.  Her breath hitched as his palms, hard and smooth, gripped her face, his fingers winding gently through her sopping hair.  What did he expect her to hear?  Was someone being stabbed for their wallet in the near vicinity?  Was a woman screaming in pain as her husband beat her?  There was just so much; she could barely differentiate the activities taking place in the run-down bungalow beside them.

Her temples throbbed, more from the effort than the inescapable pressure of his hands, and she struggled for calm, for stillness.  He wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t go through all this obscure effort, merely to vex her; there had to be a point to this, some lesson he meant to impart, as he had in making her track the fiddler on their last abortive hunt.  As absurd as the notion of relaxing in this situation was, she needed to assess what was going on around her and figure out what he was trying to convey to her, if for no other reason than to appease him.  It wasn’t as if he would simply permit her to go home and try again the next night; she did not want to see what would happen if he felt compelled to provide an object demonstration.

So.  She set her jaw and closed her eyes, trying to drive other concerns from her mind and focus on his quizzical instruction.  The rain pattered softly against her skin, easily dismissed.  The soaking wetness had brought out and enhanced the reek of the crowded neighborhood: rotting trash, the sour tang of spoiled milk and meat, mud, smoke, the nauseating sweetness of burning gasoline, the stony, chalky odor of wet concrete underlying it all.  And people, so many people: body odor, sweat, faint traces of perfume, soiled diapers; one woman, she presumed, that had recently passed through the alley had smelled so pungently of geraniums that Michelle thought she might be able to track her by it.  He wanted her to listen, not smell; but the odors were so pervasive she found it impossible to shut them out.  Exhaling one last uneven sigh, she forced herself to stop breathing.

Panic seized her, a wild desire to struggle, to gasp desperately for air, but she restrained herself.  Though she still drew breath out of habit, she knew that she no longer needed to, save to speak; had caught herself failing to on numerous occasions when fright and concentration had caused her attention to wander.  Even now, though her mind insisted she inhale, must inhale before the gray spots of oxygen deprivation began dancing across her vision, she was fine; no iron band of suffocation gripped her chest, and that voice that yammered a panicked demand for air grew quieter, and finally silent.

She gave herself another few seconds to adjust, marveling a little at the unnaturalness of it; there was no denying how handy this particular aspect of her condition could prove to be.  Even now, muffled though her hearing was, she was amazed at how much quieter it was; found it hard to believe just how much sound the flex of lungs and the rasp of air through nostrils and passageways created.  Could this be what he had meant for her to discover?  No, he was much more direct than that-he would have smothered her, perhaps even drowned her, until she realized her freedom from the tyranny of oxygen exchange.  She had noticed long ago that he didn’t breathe himself, unless necessary; wondered how much the lack of familiarity with the process contributed to the strange, rumbling whine of his voice.  Never mind.  Once more, she did her best to blank her thoughts, casting her limited sense of hearing as far out into the night as she was able.

Nothing at first, save the ceaseless, shrouding background of the rainfall; not even, she realized uneasily, the roaring, seashell sound she associated with having her ears covered, the magnified sound of blood rushing through vessels.  Never mind, she told herself firmly, clearing her mind and straining to listen.  But only the same sounds greeted her, the noise of a poor neighborhood in a crowded city settling itself in for the evening.  Her face contorted into a wince as a stab of pain lanced through her temples, then settled into a fierce, fiery ache, worsening the harder she strained.  She had no idea what she was listening for, no notion how to identify its source even if she did; with the agony in her head steadily increasing, she was soon going to have to admit defeat, and childish terror at Radu’s probable response to that spurred her on to one last effort.  Shaking with exertion, she squeezed her eyes tightly shut, listening, listening so carefully, trying to sift the sounds, make sense of them, find the pattern, the goal-

When it happened, realization shot through her like a thunderbolt; she gasped, her spine stiffening involuntarily as her heels scrabbled desperately for purchase on the slick cobblestones.  Quicker than thought, Radu released her head and caught her under the arms.  She braced her shoulders against his chest as she fought to get her feet under her; he chuckled raspily in her ear, a sound to match the shock of breakthrough, and he was there, as he had been that night at the inn, but a thousand times more so, ancient and dark and regal and terrifying.  She whimpered, shaking her head in a daze, and he took her gently by the elbows, setting her on her feet.

“Oh, God…” she whispered, rubbing her face disconsolately.  She clutched at her temples, burying her hands in her hair; the pain was gone, but the throb remained, a strange, pulsing awareness that permeated her consciousness.  “Is it…” She stopped and licked her lips, shocked at the rich, alien timbre of her own voice.  “Is it always like this for you?”

“And what is it like?”

“I…”  She licked her lips again, marveling at their texture; even dry and slightly chapped, they were remarkably sensitive, every slight pit and wrinkle in the delicate skin a wealth of information.  “I…”  She shook her head, sharply this time, and straightened; a bad idea, it developed, as the whisper of air against her skin, the welter of hundreds of droplets of rain running down her skin at the movement, the fabric of her dress brushing her, the change in perspective, proved almost overwhelming to her.

She dismissed any further effort to answer him; it was like nothing human, and no human language had ever had words to describe it.  His presence nearly drove out rational thought; however impressive or intimidating he might be in his own person, knowledge of him in this… way? …sense? …frame of reference?... was almost too much to bear.  The idea that she had ever thought to oppose such a creature, so awesome and horrifying, that such an ageless, endless thing could take interest in one such as her…

…for he did.  He was pleased with her.  He was… not happy, but pleased.  Proud.  And in the same way that she knew that, she realized he was aware of her disorientation, that her response to it was the source of his pride.  This was a delicate time in a young fledgling’s life, for many couldn’t adapt to the sudden influx of awareness, were forced to live their lives as crippled, stunted things.  There had been that young dancer in Samarkand that-

She shuddered, clenching her eyes shut and gritting her teeth against the onslaught of information.  This wasn’t any kind of telepathy she’d ever heard of; she wasn’t reading his thoughts or sensing his aura, she just… knew.  There was no rhyme or reason to it, no pattern, no choice; she simply knew how pleased he was with her-and was slavishly, shamefully grateful for it; she did not think for a second that she could have withstood his disapproval in this heightened state-the same way she knew that even now the storm clouds were worsening to the east, that a pack of dogs had savaged a cat at the end of the alley this afternoon, that the man in the top floor apartment behind them had been fired from his job this morning and was beginning to prefer the option of suicide to telling his wife about it-

--and that was what Radu had meant.  Entranced, she straightened and dropped her arms to her sides, opening her eyes and cautiously scenting the night air.  The feel of the rain and the smell of the alley melted away as she concentrated on trailing that thin thread.  Yes.  He was a machinist, a skilled laborer, but not so irreplaceable as he’d thought himself; he’d been told and told and told about his drinking, Ilya certainly wouldn’t be sympathetic in the least.  Michelle’s lips curved in a faint smile as she realized that the woman who lived in the apartment beside him might well.  She was young and frightened of just how different the big city was from how she had imagined it to be, but she’d be damned before she returned to her home village.  And there…

On and on it went, as Michelle flicked her awareness from individual to individual, drinking down small sips of their presences as she passed through their minds.  It was stunning and staggering, so many different entities, each presence different from one another, yet all essentially the same; she felt no guilt at rummaging through their minds, simply awe and wonder that she was able to do such a thing.  It was the same as it was with Radu, though in a miniscule fraction: not mind-reading, not thought transference, not smell, not exactly hearing… just knowledge, sudden and swift and supernatural.  The image that sprung to mind was a picture she’d seen once: the United States photographed from outer space, at night, the familiar geographic shape lit up with the blazing ropes and clusters of light that delineated its roads and cities.  This was like that; all the different minds glowing pinpoints in the darkness, needing only to be followed, one to the next.  Surely it would be no great trick to travel to each of them in truth, shrouded in the wings of shadow.

For as much as she reveled in the soaring dizziness of this new, unlooked for, unimagined perception, reality began to intrude, not in the expected form of Radu’s prodding, but in the dry thickness at the back of her throat.  She swallowed heavily, trying to ignore it, but it would not be denied; she’d had nothing since the tiny sip from the Bloodstone the night before, and it was catching up with her, far more rapidly than it had in the past.  Of course, she realized, remembering the dizziness and the dryness of lips that had plagued her as soon as she had opened her night-eyes, this… burns.  It’s exhausting.  If it were like this all the time, we’d rule the world.  Strangely thrilled by the thought, she grinned, baring her fangs in the uncertain light, and threw her arms wide in exhilaration as she cast about for a suitable presence.  This new awareness reassured her, almost encouraged her, in a strange way; if someone repulsed her in this state, she could have few qualms about their potential innocence or unworthiness.  She would know, to the very marrow of her bones.

There had already been minds she’d shied away from, their light sputtering, crackling, or dim; she returned to those now for a closer look, certain she would find what she sought in one of them.  Nausea tightened the tendons in her jaw as she skipped past most of them as quickly as she could; madness, the bleak, choking mire of true insanity, was hardly palatable.  Depression, loneliness, and fear could kill a man’s mind as surely as any inborn ailment; she had quite enough of those to deal with on her own.  But there was one she’d passed, almost dazzling in its intermittent brilliance, that pulsed so violently it almost seemed to shoot sparks… where?... there… he had… oh, there…

Her physical form was moving before she realized it; and even then she was uncertain whether she ran or covered the distance in a stretch of shadow.  She could feel her legs pumping, straining for distance, but there was no way she could be running this quickly; nevertheless, she had never been able to see, not quite like this, when she flowed through the night as part of its darkness.  The world was reduced to grays and blacks, frozen charcoal sketches quickly replaced, rendered in details finer than any mortal artist had ever dreamed of capturing.  Radu ghosted along behind her, black against blackness, but for the first time she was unconcerned by his overwhelming presence; it didn’t matter, nothing mattered save the blazing, guttering life ahead of her.

A street corner, nondescript, bedraggled cars parked along the intersection, traffic lights blinking in confusion.

An old woman, wrapped against the rain in an engulfing shawl, pushing a rusty shopping cart and looking over her shoulder fearfully.

A horse poking its head over a battered wooden fence, half-chewed straw dangling from its lips, utterly unconcerned by its own incongruency.

Another alley, wider than the last; perhaps even a small street, though equally deserted.  Dumpsters and the burned-out hulk of a panel truck lined its sides, confusing the sharpest of eyes.  But at its end, him.

There was no sound save the pained, awkward shuffle of his steps.  She ceased her flight, catching her feet with a light stumble, spreading her arms for balance as her lips peeled back from her teeth of their own accord.  Her vision hazed even further, everything but the object of her hunt disappearing in a thick gray mist: a nondescript, youngish man, shaggy blonde hair escaping from under a flat cap, bundled up in several layers of flannel, he limped along as quickly as he could manage, seeking relief from the penetrating downpour.  Her lip curled even further in a sneer; he seemed so insignificant, so pathetic, to be responsible for the horrors he had committed; she could not as yet hold a candle to his career of atrocities.  She wondered if she should confront him; spin him around, grab his face, refuse to release him until he told her their names, their stories, his regret for what he’d done to them.  Instead, she had time only for a dim, muted corner of her mind to whimper Oh God, what am I doing? before she pounced, covering the last distance between them in one long bound.

He gave a muffled grunt as she slammed into him, more surprised than frightened; his form was slight under the layers of clothes, but even with his injured leg sturdy enough to avoid being bowled over.  She recoiled for a second at the stench that rose off him, a mélange of sweat, ground in dirt, and onions, but quickly pressed her advantage and clawed at the scarf around his neck as she wrapped her other arm around his chest, bracing her feet and holding him immobile.  He gave a startled shout, then, flailing ineffectually; but she ripped the filthy knitting from his neck and plunged her razored eyeteeth into the base of his dirty throat.

Oh.

Oh.

All pretenses to rational thought, or even consciousness, were subsumed for an unknowable stretch of time in the scalding, lustrative gush of blood.  The body sagged against her and she worried at the throat, widening the delicious wounds before withdrawing her fangs and clamping her lips around the holes. It was all she could do to keep up with the torrential flow, swallowing frantically, and even still some escaped to run down the corners of her mouth in scarlet trickles.  For a time her world collapsed into the working of her jaw, the lapping of her tongue, and that hot, revivifying rush of fluid, as insensate and single-minded as a nursing newborn.

At length, the flow slackened, but was nowhere near ceasing; she clutched the body tightly, its back pressing against her breasts, its ribs creaking a muffled protest at the renewed ardency of her grasp.  She began to return to herself slowly, by degrees, still held thoroughly rapt by the stream of life that issued from her prey.  It hadn’t been like this before, not the fiddler, not the boy, not even the Bloodstone: no cool, ancient power, no choked-down revulsion, no satiation of desperate, confused need.  This blood burned, a trail of nourishing fire that rushed down her gullet, warming her extremities, filling places she hadn’t known were empty with a soothing, fulfilling heat.  The taste was indescribable, but beyond ambrosia; not the salty, coppery tang she had expected, knowing it from previous experience, but thick, rich, and sublime.  She didn’t know why this was so-absence of the Bloodstone’s influence, her heightened state of sensitivity, the fact that she hadn’t been starving this time; but she gloried, exulted in it.  She pressed her face against its neck, firmly ignoring the sour smell of unwashed flesh that began to invade her nostrils; as long as she immersed herself in feeding, she could reject everything else, shove aside pragmatic worries and strive to drown herself in that crimson tide.

Her prey wheezed, a strangely hollow, breathy sound, and scrabbled its heels against the concrete for purchase, thrusting itself back against her.  Aggravated by what she perceived as a last, futile bid for freedom, she squeezed even harder, quickly adjusting her grip to prevent it from flailing its arms, never once parting her lips from its neck.  It wheezed again, this time managing the faint hint of a whine, and shoved itself against her breasts even harder.  A quelling growl rose in the back of her throat, but died before it could escape as she saw the reason for its renewed struggles: Radu, limned in prismatic streetlight and unspeakably ghastly, had closed the distance between them, and even now was lowering his mouth to the other side of its throat.

She froze for a moment, nonplussed, swallowing mechanically as she assessed the situation.  She felt the prey tense as she heard the fleshy, gelatinous tear of Radu’s fangs sinking into its neck; it ceased its struggles and sagged bonelessly in their conjoined embrace as if finally accepting the inevitability of its fate.  They drank together for a few heartbeats, and Michelle was distantly, giddily pleased: this was right, this was correct, sharing, yielding, partaking together... it satisfied some impulse she had not known until now she had possessed, engendered a strange, primal feeling of participating, belonging.  Yet at the same time, some small part of her protested its dismay at the ease of its dispossession: she had found it, caught it, it was hers, to share or keep as she wished; she hadn’t invited him, he hadn’t asked.

As if a savage hound had just snapped its chains, territorial rage and black, bloody fury suddenly boiled within her.  He had goaded her into this hunt, forced her into this pursuit, relentlessly pushed her into the chase, and now that she had succeeded he would not even allow her to feed in peace, meant to mantle her and intrude on her prey?  He who presumed to call himself her master also presumed to steal her sustenance?  No.  No, no, a thousand times no.

With a vicious, bestial snarl she released its body, sidestepped, and sprang at him, leaping forward as it crumpled into a tangled heap of limbs.  Radu stumbled back a few steps, surprised by the sudden force of her assault, and as he reached up to grasp her biceps she seized the lapels of his long woolen coat, shoving him backwards once more.  She had no idea what she truly meant to do--even startled, he seemed a thousand times faster than she--but she would be damned if she would let him get away with this unchallenged; she could score him, slash him, something to show that she was not easy pickings.  Her arms were tangled in his grip, but she bulled forward once more; one arm wrapped around her waist as his shoulders slammed against the side of the stone building, and she bared her teeth in a bloody rictus, lunging forward--

--and somehow they were kissing, lips sealed against loss of contact, and that was good, that was fine.  She sought his mouth as hungrily as she had the prey’s throat, lost in a welter of sensations: the taste of its blood on his tongue, the rough abrasion on her soft flesh, the shocking, liquid iciness of his lips against her own, suffused with stolen heat.  He pulled her tightly against his body as he slouched against the wall to level their heights, legs splayed to keep their bodies close, and she whimpered in surprise at the needle-like sting of pain as her lower lip snagged on one of his outer fangs, opening a thin, bloody weal.  He shuddered as he reached up to cup her cheek, his other hand pressing into the small of her back as he carefully lapped at the wound, scrape and scratch, searching for that commingling of essences.

She whimpered again and buried her hands in his hair, pulling his head down to resume their kiss. He responded eagerly, his lips firm and rough, heedless of the smeared blood as he stroked her cheek, her jaw, the curve of her ear, his talons sharp and ticklish.  His mouth was unbelievably cold, soothing and quenching after the almost unbearable heat of the prey’s neck, and she sought it gladly, searchingly.  He turned his head, gripping her jaw to keep her still as she attempted to move with him, and slowly, deliberately drew his tongue along one of her delicately pointed fangs.

Her hands clenched around fistfuls of his hair as the taste hit her, dragging his mouth even more forcefully against hers as she drank from him.  She remembered this taste, would never, ever forget it; even in the depths of her self-loathing and hatred, weakened and sickened by a rapidly rising dawn, she had been unable to resist its lure. Her rapturous, greedy reaction to it had caused her to vow her eternal hatred of him; she had been unable to understand how something so loathsome and inhuman had been able to command such a response from her, so she had cursed him and cursed it for her inability to accept it.  Yet she thought she understood, now, having seen what she’d seen and felt what she’d felt this wild, unpredictable night: his blood was dark, thick and ancient with centuries of power, ferocity, magic and dominance that suffused her with its gifts with every droplet; no fey construct of sorcery and artifice like the Bloodstone, this was real, the quintessence that only ages of survival and conquest could create.  Never in a dozen lifetimes would she have been able to experience something like this had he not been willing to grant it to her, and she sought it ravenously, desperately, reveling in the reflection of dark glory.

She whined piteously when he pulled away, so caught up in the rapture of taste and touch she felt bereft as its loss, but he only moved to nuzzle her temple.  Reaching back with one hand, he swept his long, dark hair away from his neck with a brush of spidery fingers and raised his saturnine jaw, using his other to guide her head to the pale column of his exposed throat.  Almost shocked, she rested her cheek against him for a moment, but the pressure at the back of her skull urged her on.  She kissed him experimentally, once, twice, three times, lightly on the place where his pulse would have beat; he sighed, lightly kneading the base of her neck as his other hand returned to clasp her waist.  She caught a fold of leathery skin between her flat incisors, nipping gently to determine its elasticity, then cut into him roughly, savagely sinking her fangs home.

Radu shuddered against her, claws puncturing her flank as his hand flexed convulsively, but the pain of the wounds was obscured in the simple, mindless pleasure of biting, the tactile bliss of pressure against her gums.  She chewed gently, heedless of the unnecessary ripping of his flesh, marveling at the strange sensation of his skin jumping against her mouth as his throat hitched in a gasp; but no spurt of revivifying blood greeted her attentions.  Slowly, savoring every movement, she withdrew her teeth from the holes she’d pierced with them, eliciting another shiver from him as she lingered to run her tongue along the ragged wounds she’d rent in him; then, unable to restrain herself any longer, she clamped her lips around the tooth marks and began to suck, steadily and inexorably, lapping eagerly at the tattered lesions.

They both moaned as the first flow of liquid hit her tongue, cool, thick, and viscous.  His hand slid from her neck to cup the base of her skull, pressing her against his throat, but she needed no further urging; her jaw worked mechanically, teasing as much of the precious vitality from him as she could.  He trembled in her arms, his knees beginning to buckle, so she leaned against him, helping to pin him to the wall with her own weight.  He turned his head awkwardly, resting his chin against the top of her head and whispering something to her, his voice low and lustful, but the words were lost to her as anything other than the purring vibration she felt through his throat.  It didn’t matter; nothing mattered except that taste, that sense, that steady, enervating ebb of cool, inexorable strength.

He raised his hand to stroke her back, his claws trailing lightly against the thin fabric of her dress, the sensation nearly overwhelming in her excited, heightened state.  She had no sense of time, of place, of surroundings; only of Radu and the precious gift he gave her.  She wondered, distantly, if she could kill him like this, drain him as dry as a mortal man, and found the idea inspired not lust or vengeance but fear; for even if she could manage such a feat, she would never again be able to experience this ecstatic communion, this unholy bond.  Disturbed, she threw herself into her ministrations with renewed vigor, grateful for the fact that he seemed willing to let her continue for as long as she liked; she abandoned all thought of anything save him, his blood, the pale imitation of his majesty that it imparted to her.

At length he raised an unsteady hand to stroke her hair, and spoke again, solemn and tender, but she was insensate to any reason.  He slid his hands down her sides to cup her flanks, gently pushing her away, but she whimpered in protest, burying her face against his neck and pressing herself closer, crushing her breasts against his narrow chest.  “Enough,” he rasped, tired and distinct. “You must finish him.”

“No,” she protested, responding more to his tone than his words, loath to part from him even that little, “no, this-“

“Enough,” he repeated harshly, grasping the back of her neck.  She lunged forward, once more burying her fangs in his neck, seeking to anchor herself to him as firmly as she could.  With a low growl, he seized her by the scruff of her neck and hurled her from him.  Shocked by the sudden movement, her teeth snagging in his flesh, she spun away from him, unable to find her balance, and fell to her hands and knees on the dirty, wet pavement with a jarring thud.  Confused and stunned, she raised her head to regard him dumbly, strands of damp hair hanging in her face.  He sagged against the wall, a smug, contented smile curving his full lips, and raised a hand to cover the slight trickle that oozed from the wounds in his neck.  Stop it, you’re wasting it! she wanted to cry, but he pointed past her with his other hand, the bony index finger uncurling to show the way.  “Quickly, now.”

Uncertain as to what he was being so insistent about, she hoisted herself up right, rising unsteadily to one knee, and turned to look over her shoulder for the object of his attention.  For a moment, she could only blink stupidly as details of the world around here once more resumed prominence, the persistent patter of the rain dominating her attention as she struggled to resolve the purpose of the jumble of rags piled before her.  Rags and meat.  Rags and meat and-

--the man.  Uli Korsch.  The man who’d done all of those things to… the man she’d done all those things to… the one she’d… “Oh God,” she whispered in a high, strangled voice, and clasped her hands to her belly as she bent double, retching.

“No.”  Radu’s arms were around her, forcing her upright, yanking her head back so she stared straight upward, wide eyes stung by starlight and rainfall.  “Don’t,” he insisted as she gagged, jaws working convulsively as she choked on the thick ichor that struggled to eject itself from her system.  He grasped her throat with his free hand, stroking her esophagus roughly, forcing her to swallow, to choke it back.  Gritting her teeth, she hacked once more, shuddering, but managed to hold it down.  He released her throat, transferring his grip to her biceps.  “Finish him,” he told her urgently as he pushed her forward.  “Time grows short.”

Michelle stumbled forward as he released her, nose and throat burning as she regarded the pitiful form sprawled on the ground before her.  His chest still rose and fell, shallowly and slowly, but his throat was a bloody red ruin of shredded flesh, torn so badly little save his spine held him together.  She had no idea how he could still be alive; the damage was so severe that it was not even revolting, merely alien, utterly unlike anything she had seen before.  Pressing her fists to her mouth, she was utterly unaware of the high, keening whine that had begun to issue from her own throat as she shrank away.  Her memories were a scattered whirl of sounds, smells, sights, images, nothing she could reconcile, nothing she could make sense of.  She had done this.  She had selected this man, stalked him, hunted him, and she had done this to him.

His chest hitched as he made a gurgling, gooey sound, and she flinched, poised to flee, but Radu was still behind her.  “Now,” he snarled, shoving her forward once more, so hard that she nearly tripped over the poor, mangled carcass before her, but it was to no avail; his chest did not rise again.  Radu made a guttural noise of disgust, flinging his hands wide in frustration, and turned away from her.

“I-oh God, I-“

“You will learn to deal with the consequences of your defiance,” Radu told her acidly.  He propped himself against the wall once more, legs crossed and arms folded across his chest, lip curled in a disdainful sneer, and refused to say any more.

Consequences... She stifled another gag, raising her hand to her lips, and wiped frantically at her mouth with the back of her wrist.  The dark red stains that quickly soaked into the sleeve did little to reassure her and she quickly dropped her arms, fingers splayed, overwhelmed not by the horror of the corpse before her, but by the inescapable knowledge that she had caused this.  Not even the young man from the concert, that frightened, desperate night in the night club, had been this bad; a great deal of gore for such a small wound, but that had been due to her inexperience and hesitancy.  He might even have been able to survive it.  Not so this man.  This one had been... had been savaged, torn apart so violently it was almost impossible to tell what might have happened to him.

Not unless one knew.  As Michelle did, intimately and inexorably.

But something else tickled at the back of her mind as she stood there, frozen with revulsion and self-loathing, something even more incomprehensibly awful than the gruesome crime before her.  That young man, with his long curly locks, might have been able to survive--most certainly would have, had she summoned help, had she not fled the unacceptable fulfillment of her brutal new needs--but this one had never had a chance, not with the last trickles of blood escaping from what had one been his throat even now swirling pinkly down a crack in the pavement.  Radu had exhorted her to finish him, was aggravated and disappointed that she had not--

The grating, nasal scream cut through both her confusion and her musings with the rusty intensity of a buzz saw as the wilted figure before her thrashed, its tangled limbs straightening in a convulsion of pain.  Michelle screamed too, then, choking and gasping, as the realization of what had just come to pass sank home.

To rise again in darkness, one must die.  And so this one had, left to struggle for his last tortuous breaths in a heap on the ground as she had indulged her perverted lust; denied the mercy of a clean kill, whatever unholy change that allowed them to continue their existence had been wrought on his abused flesh, and now he struggled once more, this time to make sense of whatever new, alien cruelty had been forced upon him.  His limbs were stiff, and seemed reluctant to obey his commands as he thrust them aimlessly at the ground, striving for purchase; the tatters of skin that remained of his neck swayed and swung as his body jerked with the strenuous movements.  The hoarse, keening cry still issued from his throat, the best his ripped vocal cords and punctured trachea could manage.

“I’m so sorry,” she told him frantically, uselessly, reduced by the sight of his pathetic awakening to mindless hysteria.  “I didn’t mean for this to happen--I--I wanted to punish you, that was all, you were just supposed to die--”

“Your greeting for your new fledgling is as poor as that for your master,” Radu rumbled, his voice close in her ear, thick with disdain.  “Is he not everything you had hoped?”

She spun to face him, but only bumped her shoulder into his chest; he had departed his casual repose on the wall and once more stood behind her.  “Radu--Radu, please, please fix this,” she begged despondently.  “I didn’t mean to do this--”

“Yet you waited, pretty one; you ignored my words, and let him die.”  His bony fingers cut into her shoulders like brands as he forced her to regard the crippled efforts of the broken thing before her.  “And now he waits for you, my pretty one.”  A hand forced her head up, forced her to fix her gaze on the product of her neglect.  “The young are so often ravenous.”

Even as he spoke, the man managed to roll over onto his belly and thrust a hand out towards them, his fingers grasping and searching, the endless, unceasing whine taking on a new, desperate tenor as he struggled to raise himself on one elbow.  He can’t talk, she thought with piteous horror, we’ve done this to him and he can’t even talk--

“Look,” Radu growled into her ear.  “Look, and see what reward your failure to heed has brought you.”

The man had managed to lever himself up enough that he was no longer face down in the muck, and now raised his face to them, craning his neck at an unnatural, impossible angle afforded him by the severed tendons.  His eyes were wide and uncomprehending, giving mute testimony to his fright and panic at the agonizing, inexplicable nature of his plight.  The simple panic in his gaze was too much for Michelle: she could not deal with this, could not accept it any longer; she sagged bonelessly as a gray haze washed across her vision, collapsing into Radu’s iron embrace.  “Please,” she entreated, no longer having the slightest idea of what she begged for, seeking only release from the harshness of reality, “please, master, please...”

His grip around her eased, the arm supporting her waist almost gentle.  He carefully hoisted her upright, cautiously setting her on her feet; she stumbled as he released her, but managed to retain her balance.  She scrubbed at her eyes with the back of a palm, heedless of the gore growing tacky on it, shaking her head in an attempt to dispel the throbbing dizziness.  Radu remained close behind her, as if poised to catch her in a fall, and it was a sign of how overwrought she was that she almost found that comforting; but his next words dispelled any illusion of support she might have had.  “No.  Keep it or kill it… but see to it.”

“Wh-wh-what?”

“Even now, your fledgling seeks you.”  An expansive gesture of Radu’s long, bony hand returned her attention to the pathetic wreckage reaching out for her.  “Grant it patronage, or grant it surcease; I will not permit a broken thing such as this to wander astray.”

“I-I-I can’t-“

“You must.”

Michelle slowly shook her head in stupid, numb rejection.  She hadn’t meant for any of this to happen, but caught up in the dark rapture of that new vision, it had all made so much sense: who better to prey upon than another predator, a petty, vicious little man who exploited and abused the weak?  Giving him a taste of his own medicine didn’t even seem like choosing the lesser of two evils, it had seemed right, appropriate, dying by the sword as he had chosen to live by it.  But he and his hot, pumping vitality had seemed as nothing next to the endless, ageless fount that Radu had offered, his urgings, his temptation... it had distracted her, turned her head, enough to create the misery before her that even now scrabbled to rise.

Your fledgling.  Grant it patronage.  Oh, God, this was her offspring, her child; where she had balked at committing murder, she had instead granted life, of a sort, condemned another to the bleakness of undeath.  Her squeamishness had birthed a horror greater than any she had ever dreamed of committing, but even now she could not bring herself to dispatch it, no matter how unnatural a thing it must be to make even Radu uneasy.  She had chosen not to suicide--though she had judged his crimes wicked enough to merit death, she was not certain he, or anyone, deserved to die twice.  Cautiously, fighting against muscles that screamed at her to run, she edged forward, taking a deep breath to steady herself.  She meant to offer it a hand, help it to stand up, but could not force herself to raise her arm.  It was simply--

“Tu!  Tu acolo!  Ce care merge?”

She and Radu both whipped around at the sudden shout.  At the mouth of the alley, peering through the drizzle, were a couple shrouded in heavy jackets who had paused in consternation, apparently having witnessed enough of the scene to be alarmed.  “Cine acolo?”

“Acum pecare,” Radu snapped, followed by a torrent of liquid, purring Romanian too quick for her to follow.  She startled, as surprised at his command of the language as much as by the fact that he deigned to speak to their interrogators; of course he spoke it, it was probably his native tongue.

Whatever he said to them did not have the desired effect; one of the pair, an unshaven, middle-aged man, stepped forward hesitantly.  The tone of his next words was inquisitive, but his voice had hardened, as if he realized he had caught them at something unsavory.  Inopportunely, her victim chose that moment to emit another of his high, whistling whines.  Radu hissed angrily, and the man drew himself up defensively.  He’s going to kill them, too, she thought with sinking dread.  These poor good Samaritans were going to be slaughtered for their trouble if she couldn’t think of something; but she was long since out of ideas.

Radu’s lips skinned back from his teeth as a low, feral growl rumbled from his chest; the man’s companion flinched, but neither turned to flee as Radu advanced on them.  “Meu Dumnezeu,” the man breathed as Radu drew close enough to be seen clearly, drawing out of the shadows like a nightmare given flesh.  “Politie!” he shouted to his companion.  “Vara politie!”  They both spun and pounded off into the night, their feet splashing heedlessly through the stinking puddles.

He snarled, a vicious, guttural sound of fury and frustration as he rounded on Michelle, his coat sodden enough to tangle around his long legs, but instead of tearing through the night after the fleeing witnesses, he covered the distance between himself and her victim with two great strides.  She watched in sick fascination as he bent down and grabbed the man by the hair; by the time she realized what he meant to do, it was already too late to do more than hold out an entreating hand.

Her victim’s head parted from the remnants of his neck with a wet, gristly tearing sound; she wound never forget the fact that flesh squeaked when it ripped, that spines made a cartoonish pop when their vertebrae were forcibly separated.  She whimpered as she saw gobbets of something too thick to be mistaken for raindrops fall from the stump; it looked unreal, ridiculous, a bad special effect from some third rate horror movie.  But the smell, oh God, the smell...

Radu seized ahold of her arm, roughly hauling her away from the beheaded corpse; she resisted weakly, but he quieted her struggles with a savage shake.  “I should leave you to them,” he spat as he wrapped the wings of shadow around them both, swirling through the darkness in a frantic race for home.

bloodpact, memoriamvictus, fanfic

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