Disclaimer: no ownership of either QAF or Doctor Who, or even Torchwood is involved.
A/N:This is cowritten between Stationary Love and myself. It is also posted on livejournal under loveronhermione.
Feast
Its prey was in sight. Gravel crunched underneath the host's feet as it crept silently behind the prey. Being stealthy and silent in the host's clumsy body was difficult at best, but with years of being a practiced hunter, it felt it had gotten skilled enough to stalk this unusually careful prey.
The prey stopped walking, its odd, two-legged humanoid figure perfectly still. Perhaps it had heard or seen something. It shook the host's head, there was a row of thick bushes between the prey and the host.
The perfect moment. The prey turned it's head and began walking again. Here was its chance. The prey would suspect nothing, at least, not until it was too late. The thrill of the hunt sang in the host's nerves and it commanded the host to be ready. The host's muscles tensed and out it sprung, wielding its ungainly host body with an animalistic agility.
Silent, still, the prey fell. Too easy. The host and prey fell in a tangle of legs and arms, gravel from the driveway beneath them digging into the flesh of the host painfully. Now the prey uttered a sound, but instead of being filled with fear as prey sounds normally were, this sound was angry, but not surprised.
Not ready for a fight, it felt the host body be thrown off by the prey. Hands gripped the host's head and bashed it against the ground. The host felt pain, but it ignored the feeling. The host did not matter now. Snarling, it fought back, the host's limbs supported by its own strength, more than any mere human could posses.
The two rolled, now the host's body was on top, pinning the prey down, holding the prey's head still in its hands. Something metal flashed in the prey's hands. A blade. There was pain for the host, a tearing pain straight thorough the gut, ripping flesh, spraying blood. It ignored the host's pain. The host did not matter now.
It withdrew its filaments and tentacles that hooked into the host's nervous system causing the long-dead body to go limp on top of the prey, effectively holding it still. It slithered out of the nose, and devoid of a host, was overtaken by instinct. It had been expecting this; this was how it always was. Base instincts would control it until it could find a new host.
What luck it had left its old host and found one right beneath it.
It forced its way up the nasal cavity of the new human host, breaking the fragile bone between the nose and brain. New sensations nearly overwhelmed it. Each host was slightly different, each a different flavor. Hunger. Soft gray flesh. It feasted, hooking tentacles and filaments into the spinal cord that would normally take orders from the brain as it ate. With each cell devoured, it absorbed a small part of what the new host had once been. Its memories, its skills.
Satiated, it used its new hosts arms to push the old body off of it. Standing, it relished in the new host body. This one was larger, more developed muscularly. The new host was older than the other, but less awkward and clumsy to move around. It's hair was shorter as well and where the old host had been female, this was male.
The hosts stomach growled with hunger and it gave no more thought to the carcass lying in the middle of the driveway. First it would have dinner, then it would rest this new host body. Then, tomorrow, it would go to work.
A/N: this prologue will make sense later on in the story, never fear!