AN: Hey everyone. It's Alvor going first this time. I ended up having a… brain fart? A brain fart. I was reading an older fic that I really liked, plus having a discussion about Eastern European folklore (Did you know it's actually MORE than just vampires and witches!?), and this… kicked my butt.
CW: And as a good friend and co-author, I've done my best to add to this idea.
AtW: He is a very good friend, yes. As to our current release schedule, Power Grid has been started, we're planning out a oneshot for Flask, and OWIM has begun tentative discussions for the next chapter too. Unfortunately, I seem to have caught (another) bug and this one is crawling through my brain. So we may be a bit stuck for a little while.
CW: So for now, on with the show!
Chapter 1 - Per Aspera, ad Sepulchrum
Rigor mortis took full effect within thirteen hours of death at max.
The body, normally malleable, became stiff and unbendable, often stuck in some specific position if it had the space needed to move.
Taylor Hebert, age fifteen, died with her arms raised in front of her head.
She had been stuck in a locker, her body bent and twisted into place, without enough room to breathe - never mind endure the stress that killed her. Hours later, after the sounds of people walking past faded, their footsteps giving way to whimpers and sobs and the scrabbling of broken nails against an unyielding metal door.
No one stayed with her as she died.
No one checked on her when she was missing in her classes.
No one realized she wasn't there until her father came home late from work.
Daniel Hebert called the police.
They told him to wait twenty four hours.
Tired, overworked, and only wanting to get home to her own family, the dispatcher tried to care, tried not to sigh at another girl missing in Brockton Bay. She didn't even mention what they thought had probably happened. Then the man on the phone threatened her. He was with the Dock Workers Union. To tell her supervisor that a hundred large men would be combing the city for a missing white girl in twenty minutes. And if they wouldn't help, maybe the Empire would.
Taylor Hebert, age fifteen, covered in her own vomit, rotten sludge, used tampons, body stiff, nails torns clean off, hands bleeding, rife with bug bites, stinking like Hell itself, eyes wide and glassy and dead, was found in her locker within the hour.
This lonely, forgotten child had eventually had a heart attack.
Stress killed her as she ruined her own hands and broke her doors scratching and kicking at her coffin.
When questioned on why the janitor hadn't found her during his nightly rounds, he explained he'd been robbed on his way into work and had been getting his broken arm and black eye taken care of by Panacea.
As an employee of the school system he was on the fast track for her services.
When called to identify his daughter's body, Daniel Hebert broke down. He didn't cry, but he screamed. It took four men to hold him down as he did his best to smash the door down to the viewing room when he wasn't permitted to touch her. When he was told that his daughter's body was considered toxic waste and would have to be decontaminated before she could have a funeral, he took a chunk out of one of the restraining officer's necks with his teeth.
It took ten minutes before he sagged, exhausted, in their grip. Other than the wounded man being taken for help, he had, had a strip torn off of his neck. It said something about how broken that the widower turned last surviving member of his family looked that not even in pain could the officer manage to actually be angry about what had happened to him.
After all, he'd been there when they'd pulled the girl's body out.
Eventually, Danny was shown pictures of the crime scene. He'd begged and pleaded and eventually they let him see what she'd looked like.
That was when he finally cried.
Danny stared down at the cup of tea before him. Thirty minutes ago it had been steaming. It would have been warm and good and helped with his bruised jaw.
Somehow, the cops hadn't broken anything when they held him down. But he had been violent, unhinged even, almost like his own father used to be. He didn't blame them for keeping him in check. Truthfully, he was glad they did. It meant he had time to vent, to get the first burst of anger out of his system. And then his tears.
They'd been angry and scared and bitter things born of refusal at first.
But his Taylor was dead.
And it was his fault.
Just as surely as if he'd taken the .45 in his hands and put it to her head.
He'd thought about that, a lot really, killing himself that is. He'd put the gun to his head once. Flicked the safety off, chambered around, considered not doing what he was planning on doing.
But then he saw her face. The horror and terror and she begged for him to save her. And there wasn't a god damned thing in the world that Daniel Hebert could do. He couldn't save his wife, he couldn't save his daughter, he couldn't help himself. But he could get revenge. Looking down, feeling the weight and heft of his gun, he smiled.
Right there, sitting across from him, was her corpse. She smiled at him. It was one of those wan, thin smiles. The lies she told him to keep him from worrying. There were chunks of vomit running down one side of her mouth. Black streaks across her cheek. Bloody smudges and crumbles of things that made his throat clench with disgust to imagine touching his baby girl. He could see the fear and horror in her eyes, hear the whimper in the back of her throat, but she still lied to him.
Told him she was ok.
Smiled at him.
Because he was a fuck up. He was pathetic fucking sack of shit that couldn't get his shit together to protect his daughter! And for far, far too long he'd sat by and wallowed in his own guilt while his daughter was tortured.
Reading those journals hadn't hurt.
Couldn't, really.
After all, he knew how they ended. But they did make him hate. Himself, Emma Barnes, Madison Clements, and Sophia Hess. Four people that deserved to die. Maybe the teachers too, if he could get them. Blackwell, that sallow cunt, had it coming too.
Alexander had been the one to take them to the police. He, Kurt, and Lacey had been over, worried about him. Lacey had been the one to find him reading them. Bent over in the dark of his Taylor's room, sitting on her bed, shaking with rage. There was a good chance that if the other men weren't around he'd have gone off and killed them then and there.
Instead, they convince him to take it to the police.
There was a moment when he almost gave in, almost believed them. Then he remembered the apathy of the dispatcher. So he lied. Made copies of everything, let them handle things, and called the police.
Before, they'd been letting him cool off before searching his Taylor's room. It had only been about twelve hours and they were worried about setting him off - and Danny causing an incident with the gangs if he was pushed too far. After they tore it apart from top to bottom, gently, politely, with him watching them and glaring from behind his glasses the entire time, they left. Somehow, there had been even more of course.
Multiple, school issued email accounts filled with vilest abuse teenagers could inflict on each with letters and words.
In the end his friends had read the copies of what he found. They went to great lengths assuring him it wasn't his fault. But they were lying to him too. Just like his Taylor. Trying to help him and pick him up and carry him and make sure he could face tomorrow and told him how his Taylor would want him to live.
They were right, of course.
She would want him to live.
Want him to heal.
To move on, even.
His Taylor was a sweet girl like that. Better than him, better than this fucking Goddamned shithole of a city deserved. And better than any of those stupid, stupid children deserved to have ever known.
But that was ok.
Sometimes parents had to do things for their children that the child didn't like.
And he was her father.
It was his job to protect her.
And he was such a lazy, pathetic, weak failure that he couldn't do that.
So he would do what was right.
"It's gonna be ok baby. I'll see you soon. I promise."
That was a lie too, like his smile. He knew he was going to go to Hell. Because he was already there and that was what he deserved. The throbbing in his chest, an ache that felt like something wrong was crawling around inside of him.
He deserved this.
"I promise."
The cold tea was awful. Almost sickly sweet, cloying in his mouth. But he drank it. Drank it and drank it and drank it until it was gone. Then he set his gun down. He pulled out a brush and oil and set to work. There were a few things he needed to do. And this was stop one.
'I was always good with plans. Now, do I move fast or slow? What means I get all three? Try and wait until I can get them all once? Would I be noticed stalking them? Yeah. But would anyone care? Probably not. But Emma would know who I am. And I can't afford to take chances. Meaning I need their schedules. Blackwell could help in that and-"
Eyes closed, he tried to catch his Taylor's voice. She was whispering in his ear. Begging him not to do this. Telling him he didn't have to. That she loved and forgave him.
"I know baby girl. But Daddy's gotta handle this. Alan's a coward but he'll shield his pet bitch. Maybe throw the other two under the bus, but he'll do what he can to protect her. I won't let them get away. I promise, baby. I promise."
Taylor remembered.
She remembered the putrid stink of unspeakable waste as she sank in the muck.
She remembered the cold, hard touch of steel on her back as she tried to force her way out.
She remembered the ring of her own screams as she called for help, beating her hands against the closed door until they bled and broke, all the while her world grew darker and dimmer. Before eventually being silenced.
Taylor remembered dying.
And then… she opened her eyes.
Blinking sightlessly as her body felt like it had been covered in lead, the teenager could do nothing but breath soundlessly as she tried and failed to regain her bearings. Though it was too dark to see. Air caught in her throat, a choking, cloying thing as collapsed lungs failed to inflate.
She tried to cry out, to scream, to do anything but lie there.
But she couldn't. Her arms were strapped down. And in the darkness she could feel the wall right in front of her. That every inch of her exposed skin, and she was nude, was numb and frozen and so, so, so, so, so, so cold. But there was somethinginherthraotandshecouldntscream!
Lashing out with a strength she didn't know she had, straps snapped and metal dented.
'Oh my God, this is the Locker. I'mstillinthelockerletmeoutpleasepleasepleasepleaseplease!'
Again and again she thrashed about, legs kicking, arms flailing until, finally, something gave. Kicking her feet against the wall in front of her, and she realized she was laying horizontally, she managed to slam her head against a wall with more give than the others. So she kept at it - almost shrimping in place as she managed to use her head like a battering ram and force her way out.
Eventually, with the scream of tearing metal, she managed to launch herself like a rocket from her coffin. Skidding to a stop across freezing linoleum tiles her skin pulled and something along her abdomen tore. She still couldn't see, things were almost pitch black until, groping around on the floor, she bumped into some kind of monitor. Its screen began blinking, the tiny red light illuminating what looked like a mixture between a storage room and a surgical theatre.
Still scrabbling at her throat, she managed to finally pull out a swab of cotton, part of what was choking her, but she was still choking.
Still full and empty in all the wrong ways. Like her body was light and there was something else and -
Falling to her hands and knees she vomited. It was a dark, reddish brown sludge with balls of cotton and plastic baggies half stuck in her throat. So, as the red light on the monitor flicked off again, she continued to vomit. Her back arching, her hair dragging into the mess, her entire being hunched over, nude, in a strange place, as something was drained from her. It was only now that she noticed, the clarity gained from the moment of expulsion, that the pounding pressure in her head hadn't been from slamming it into her prison.
Instead, as more and more and more fluid was emptied from her body she felt like something was draining out of her.
Eventually it stopped.
In the pitch black she was granted a pause, a moment where she shivered and tears seemed to prick at her eyes but they were great, big, sticky things. She couldn't quite cry either. So she just gagged and sobbed, the last chunks of the crap that had filled her finally being forced out. Unable to get up, she crawled back over to the monitor and bumped it again, the red light washing the world again in momentary, lingering bursts of illumination.
Looking around, her eyes were blurry but, rubbing the tacky substance away, she saw clearly for the first time in years. The colors were washed out in flashes of red but she could see.
So, with these glimpses in the dark as her guide, she crawled over to a wall. Thankfully the darkness didn't swallow her again until she was almost there. It was only a few dragging, tentative, furtive movements to find the wall.
Running her hand along it, she smeared whatever fluids were on her body against the smooth tiles and, groping, finally found the light switch.
Pressing it, the sudden buzz of recessed electrical illumination made her flinch and screw her eyes shut, the harsh brightness almost searing the jelly of her eyes. Still, a few seconds of standing there and shivering, she was still so cold, and she could blink them open. And what she saw made her whimper.
"A morgue."
Her tongue was like sandpaper, her lips cracked, and mouth grimy and gritty.
But the torn, twisted metal drawer she'd busted her way out of, one of six, and the walk in freezer labelled "Body Storage" made it clear what metal womb she'd torn her way out of. There were a number of tables, weighing stations, computers, microscopes, and other, more esoteric devices she couldn't identify. But when she saw what she wanted she whimpered.
Using the wall for support, terrified and uncaring of her nakedness at the same time, she hobbled over to a decontamination shower.
Wrenching the handle on, uncaring that the still bloody vomitus that clung to her hand painted a trail behind her and smeared across the sterile, shining metal, she cried out as the water droplets hit her, the shower's flow a raging waterfall that thundered and slammed at her ears. For a second it felt like acid cutting into her flesh. But, stumbling backwards and becoming entangled in the mesh of the shower curtain, she was partly trapped under the spray for what felt like hours.
In truth it was probably only minutes but, eventually, after sobbing in pain and thrashing about and crying and begging and pleading for her Daddy she simply lay there.
The water stopped hurting. It felt cool, then, warm, then almost scalding, but it didn't burn anymore. Instead, hiccuping, she flinched at the pain as she managed to grab at the knob.
It was too cold again, then a little too warm, then, at least, just right. Putting her parched lips to the floor, throat so dry it felt like it was burning, she sucked up the water then turned her face into the spray propper to suck down huge, gulping mouthfuls.
If nothing else, it knocked most of the grit away as she spit and rinsed, even if the gnawing thirst never quite left her.
Standing up, she watched the droplets crawl across her skin with a clarity she'd never known before. Almost like her eyes zoomed in until the single droplet, frozen in time, clung to her skin and wobbled. Just as suddenly she was blinking and could see normally again. And she was truly filthy.
Scrubbing at the slightly dried flecks of whatever it was she'd expelled from her body, she finally looked down. What she saw tore a strangled scream from her already sore and aching throat.
A row of stitches, holding a large Y shaped incision closed. From the crook of her shoulders, under her nonexistent breasts, dipping down to past her navel. The flesh was pale and pasty, neither swelling nor inflammation at the cuts, like one of those really authentic models used for investigation series.
Those that looked as if they'd been carved up and hollowed out.
Heaving, Taylor felt herself grow lightheaded.
She died.
Or perhaps was still dead? How could she tell.
The morgue, the cold storage, the clean lines over her torso.
And that's when the smells hit her.
Rot delayed, whatever she'd puked up earlier. The horrific puddle of fluids was awful. Rank and foul and she could still smell it despite being so far away. So she retreated back under the spray. Now she could smell it. Water, somehow, had a smell. And it was enough to block out the rot.
Eventually she left thought.
She had too.
The stitches weren't going away, no matter how much she ran her fingers across them, and the water had turned cold.
So she stepped out, trying to ignore whatever it was she'd puked up, and stumbled over to a sink. There were no towels that she could see, but there was a paper towel dispenser so she reached over to that and opened the top and pulled out the whole stack. Dapping at her damp skin, feeling only the slightest pressure no matter how hard she tried, it wasn't until she was half way done that she glanced at her reflection.
Only to see nothing.
Glancing down at her skin, she saw the same pasty hands as before. And then, in the mirror once again, there was nothing. But a few paper towels hovering in midair, water droplets clinging to nothing, and no her.
Taylor ignored it.
Just like she ignored the damage she'd done to the metal drawer.
Just like she ignored how she'd launched herself across a room.
Just like she ignored the sudden changes in her senses.
Just like she ignored the cold and the thirst and the numbness and the stitches.
Getting dry was her priority, so that's what she focused on. Getting clean was good. Finding a wrapped plastic toothbrush and a mostly empty tube of toothpaste and going at her teeth, as difficult as that was without being able to see them, was good. Even if the toothpaste tasted like nothing and made her gag.
"Clothes next. Anything to wear."
She just kept ignoring her body and what was going on.
That would come later. For now, finding a few sets of medical scrubs in one of the unlocked cabinets she pulled one on. They were stale smelling, like they'd been locked up for too long and never aired out, and clearly meant for a man who was much larger than her.
But considering that they meant she wouldn't be able to see the massive incision cutting straight down her torso, well, she could make do.
"Ok. I'm… alive." She had to be. There were… flashes of fear and pain, of helplessness and of laughter. "Oh God." Hissing in pain, her tongue felt like it was scalded. "Wh-what… no. Deep breaths." Taylor pretended what just happened hadn't and she was getting very good at that. Checking her hair she tried to remember her Mom as hard as she could. Because right now, as the locker she had almost died in was starting to well up in her head, her hands were shaking and she felt like vomiting again.
"I'm alive. I'm a cape. This is just… I don't know." Catching herself, she stopped thinking as hard as could. "I'm a cape, I'm a cape, I'm a cape, I'm a cape, I'm a cape."
Five minutes later, shivering against a wall, she calmed down enough to actually stop repeating her mantra.
It would have to be enough.
"So. What do I do?" Looking around, she saw a computer with what looked like a phone plugged into the wall next to it. "Well. I suppose that's a start." Climbing up to slightly more steady feet, she hobbled over to the counter, feet still not working quite right, and took in the room fully for the first time.
Large, obviously, maybe fifty feet by twenty, with a definite couple other rooms. Lined up down the middle were four… workstations she guessed. Large tables with straps and guard rails, along with scales and a few electronic machines she couldn't identify. Metal shelving lined one wall with spacing every so often allowing a number of large push carts to be fit between the rows. On top of the decontamination room, there were also several large sinks, what looked like a wash basin, and just a lot of… stuff. Flasks, beakers, locked cabinets holding what might have been chemicals, going by the warning stickers, and half a dozen blue waste bins.
At the end she'd dragged herself to, where the decontamination shower was located, was more tiled wall and a set of smaller lockers. Even that similarity was enough to make her shiver, but, thankfully, they weren't the kind large enough to shove a person into.
Over, nearer where she'd woken up, was the row of pull out tables. Maybe for the bodies that were being worked on at the moment, Taylor guessed, and a huge refrigerator door. A walk in industrial cooler for body storage, something she recognized from TV. Other than the still smelling foulness she'd vomited and then smeared along the walls it was sterile, pristine, with a strong odor of cleaning chemicals that she could pick up.
"Hell of a place to wake up."
Trying the phone she hesitated for a second, not sure what number she should punch in. And then, when she decided to try nine one one, for the obvious reasons, Taylor realized something important. There was no noise. Hitting the buttons did nothing.
Unplugging the phone and then plugging it back in did nothing either. So, at that point, she just sighed.
"This is Brockton Bay. Of course the phones don't work. Why in the Good Lor-"
She flinched when her tongue was scalded again and, shaking slightly, had to stop from screaming in pain.
"Alright. You're ok. Deep breaths."
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Somehow, the motion felt good. But, something she also tried not to think too hard on, was the fact she didn't feel like she needed to do it. Let the breath out or, when she was holding it out, breath in. Denial was already a close companion and, right now, the too tall, too thin girl was holding it as close as she could.
Confronted with the fact that it was the middle of the night, she was clearly a parahuman, and standing in the middle of a rather banged up morgue, Taylor really didn't know what to do. But finding someone seemed like the best course of action. That way she could explain that she was scared when she woke up, plus they'd probably have a phone. And it wasn't like calling the police was a bad idea at this stage. After all, if she was here someone had to have pulled her out of her… locker.
Vertigo, sudden movement, a moment to realize what was rushing up at her, then darkness.
Darkness and laughter and screaming.
Eyes screwed shut, Taylor, wobbly once again, climbed back to her feet. She'd fallen over, thankfully only sliding down the wall, and took a deep, long breath. In that moment, she was glad that whatever made her body so weird meant that her feet didn't really feel any colder than the rest of her, despite being uncovered.
"Silver linings." She hiccuped.
Finding the door, sat somewhere in the far quarter of the wall she had been leaning against, she tried the knob. Thankfully, for once, luck was on her side and it was unlocked. Stepping through, she peeked down the corridor, finding it dark and empty in both directions but slightly brighter to her left. So, shrugging, she turned that way - there was nothing better she had going for her anyways.
Hilariously, she found something she both should have expected and couldn't believe hadn't heard waking up.
A uniformed security guard, with headphones securely locked on his head, was listening to unreasonably loud k-pop while playing a mobile game.
"Oh Kyu-sama, you're too cute. I'll max you right away!"
Confusion and a deep, instinctual flicker of what the fuck passed through her.
"Um, excuse me…." He didn't hear her, because of course he didn't. "Excuse me? Sir?"
Taylor reached out to touch his shoulder, causing the man to leap up and scream.
"Who the fuck are you!?"
"My name is Tay-"
He fumbled for something on the desk, half falling over as he did so, headphones finally falling to the side as he cracked his head against the wall.
"Sir, are you ok?"
She reached out to help him, suddenly seeing something red on the wall.
"Back off!"
And then her tongue darted out, tasting the air, something like the taste of a frying hamburger filling her mouth. Grease and juices and tender meat parting as she bit into the most heavenly thing she'd ever tasted. All of this, from a flick of her tongue in the air.
She took a step forward.
"Stop, now!" He was holding something blocky in his hands but that didn't matter.
She took another step forward.
"Fuuuuuuuuuuck!"
His hands jerked, there was a little pop, and then she grunted as two metal prongs hit her in the chest. And just like that, she was screaming again. Electricity wracked her body, hurting almost as much as that horrific, brutal vomiting had but not nearly enough as the water had.
Not nearly as much as the locker either.
"P-p-please! Stop!"
The guard didn't. Not until the taser stopped working, even as she lay there twitching, the electricity somehow still alive inside of her body.
"Don't move! Stay on the ground!"
Looking up, Taylor saw him standing above her, a handgun clearly pointed at her. And then she smelled it again.
Fatty and unhealthy and melt in your mouth good. Sin and temptation and indulgence. Like ice cream and cake and candy and hamburgers and french fries and soda and a giant, thick, fat steak.
Snarling, her mouth hurt as she tried to leap at the bright red patch of blood her eyes had zeroed in on. In the moment, she was aiming for the wall, smeared with bright red ichor, but when massive, pointed fangs flashed in her mouth that made the point moot. He screamed again and fired.
And fired and fired and fired until his weapon clicked dry.
Taylor had made it to the wall, half the bullets hitting her in motion, but taking seven or eight shots to the chest, each hammer blow smashing into her like the fist of a three hundred pound boxer suddenly deciding it belonged inside of her chest. Somehow, it only knocked her back, the pain dying off like the petals falling off a flower.
Her mouth was watering, her tongue snaked out, she snarled. Light flashed behind her eyes and everything was movement and sound.
Screaming this time she scrambled to get to her feet, fingers digging into the tiled floor.
Only for lightning to punch through her skull.
Another two metal prongs had embedded them in her body, this time biting into her cheek, and she shook and jerked as her body jerked and flinched from the current. Body seizing, but still moving forward, she had her mouth open when the guard opened up with the pepper spray.
Gagging, choking, coughing, spitting, now that the current wasn't ripping through her body again, she rose on her hind legs - and was promptly shot again.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
It was the sound that was the worst thing. Just how loud it was. And the man dumped his entire magazine into her. Being less than five feet away all fifteen rounds found an entrance into her body, several of them also finding an exit. That was enough to finally snap the red hunger loose - blood overpowered by gunpowder and burning cloth and her ears ringing like a bell, she turned and ran.
Busting through the glass was easy, like that.
There was no hesitation, no fear, no careful picking around the shards. She hit the ground face first, the security guard screaming something she couldn't make out over the sounds in her head. Scrabbling at the gravel parking lot, her jump having cleared the sidewalk, she ran, barely managing to rise from all four as rounds continued to land around her.
In her feral state she didn't even stop when first one, then two hit her, only stumbling a bit the last time when it clipped her leg.
It would be a long while before anyone noticed anything. The security guard was in shock, hands shaking as he came down from an adrenaline rush like nothing he'd ever felt before and gunshots were hardly rare in Brockton Bay. It was a shithole and the morgue was hardly a place unused to being burgled, mostly by moderately harmless junkies admittedly, but it meant the police response was slow. Fifteen minutes instead of three. It meant no one realized they had a missing body, sans a whole hell of a lot of blood, and a crazy nurse with fangs and red eyes running around the place for nearly an hour.
Alabaster snorted.
"I'm sorry, I'll get your money, I mean it, please, the restaurant is failing. The Empire doesn't pay half the time and you scare off other customers. Hookwolf came the other day and even assaulted one of them. I-"
He cracked his hand across the man's face, chuckling when the fat sack of shit he was knocking about actually cried.
"Shut up!"
The man did.
"Good. Now, we've given you an extra two weeks Jose. Where's the Empire's money? Don't you wanna do your part for the cause?"
Jose was Spanish. Like, honest to god from Spain Spanish. It was the only reason his name hadn't gotten him… expunged from Empire territory. That and he made some excellent fucking lechazo.
Running a hand through this hair, the utterly pigmentation derived man snorted when the chef flinched when the parahuman looked back over to the man's store. And more specifically, where he lived above it.
"Don't worry. We aren't like those slant eyed bastards, we don't whore out little girls." He knew the man had two daughters. "But that doesn't mean it's safe for a bunch of Moors to be running, capice?"
He knew capice was Italian. Jose knew he knew. And the fat bastard didn't say a God damned word, bleeding into his mustache from a split lip.
"I said, capice?"
Fingering his pistol, the pigmentless man raised it as if he was going to strike the weakling. Jose flinched again, tears of shame tracking down his face as he bowed his head.
"Si, Jefe. I will get you your money. And I will support the cause. The Empire eats free."
"And your taxes just went up by another five hundred bucks a week."
"Sir I can not-" Alabaster brought the gun down, cracking it against the man's face, leaving him to crumple to the ground. They heard a girl scream and his men laughed when Jose's wife pulled his children from the window.
"Now, we're gonna educate you on why you don't fuck with the Empire."
The beating that followed was harsh, but not brutal. They wanted to work the guy over, not put him into the hospital. That would mean he couldn't run his restaurant, couldn't make them their money, and then they'd have to shoot him. And Alabaster wanted his tender freakin' lamb chops for crying out loud.
"Hey, fuck off kid. Are you retarded? I said - Jesus H. Christ!"
Turning to the end of the alleyway behind the restaurant, the Empire 88's resident regenerator saw something that stopped him cold. It was a woman, or at least it looked like one if you stretched her face and pulled it up almost like a shark's smile, barefoot and in medical scrubs. Except there were a Hell of a lot of bullet holes in said scrubs and he thought he could see holes in her too. That she was filthy only exaggerated the look of "victim" she gave off.
She whispered something, her voice rasping, grasping, rough like she'd screamed until she couldn't scream anymore. At least, that's what Alabaster's mind latched onto.
"Look, get out of here. I mean it kid."
His man flashed his pistol, waving it to get the grimy woman to leave.
That, however, was a mistake, because her eyes - glowing red he finally noticed - locked onto the barrel of the gun. Her lips moved again and she stumbled forward. The beating had stopped, his men turning to look at the girl and even Alabaster found himself transfixed. It was odd, but the jerky, inhuman jerks and twitches in how she moved reminded him of something.
A gunshot, straight into the pavement, as his man fired a warning shot, this strange woman not even flinching as the ground exploded next to her.
For a long moment she stood there, just staring down the barrel of a gun.
"Jesus Christ, just leave already."
Visibly recoiling at the words, almost like she'd been slapped, she finally spoke clearly.
"Thirsty."
Her voice was dry and thin and needy. A man dying of thirst pleading with one drowning.
And that's when it clicked for him. Where he'd seen this before. What he'd seen before. Hookwolf had warned him, even taught him how to deal with these things. And he didn't have a single source of fire on him except a lighter.
"Light it up!"
It was his pistol that barked first, but his men weren't far behind, opening fire all the same. However things didn't go well. And it wasn't just because everyone but him would probably have tinnitus after this.
Firstly, the alley was narrow - he had six guys with him. He and Frank, the poor bastard out front, had a good bead on her. Or, rather, where she had been, because the fucking monster dropped to all foors and jerked to the side. This meant his line of fire was blocked and Frank was keeping the rest of the group from opening up.
The poor bastard also went down in a spray of blood, screaming his lungs out as his leg was ripped off. Cursing and swearing, Alabaster through caution to the wind and just opened up in the general direction those glowing red eyes were coming from.
Not that it stopped her from cutting off Frank's screams by smashing his head in with the fuck's severed leg while biting through his throat. And then lunging at him.
He knew he hit her at least half a dozen times as the freaked buried her fingers into his shoulders and twisted. His arms came off with the appropriately dramatic sprays of blood but it didn't slow him down, only meaning he brought his forehead down on her nose with a satisfying crunch. Blinking, confused, she ripped his throat open with her mouth and leapt off of him, bullets slamming into his body when she moved.
Not that he felt it. His power meant this was little more than an inconvenience - and that he'd have to get new clothes - as he didn't even feel a twinge. So, as four point three seconds later, his vision suddenly stopped going dark and he pulled out his second pistol and opened fire back down in the alley.
Only to be stopped dumb.
And somehow it wasn't by the she-devil currently pinning one of his men to the wall and literally ripping his torso to shreds while three other guys pumped round after round into her back.
No, it was when Rosa, Jose's wife, stepped out of the back door of the restaurant, slammed a frying pan into one of his guys's face, and then bodily pulled her husband back inside - only to slam the door shut. All in the space of about two seconds.
That was still enough time for the bitch to finish her current meal and turn to another guy, rolling across the grown to pop up, splitting him from groin to gullet, and smashing him into the last two men standing.
They died screaming, a mass of limbs and teeth and glowing red eyes. Not that he saw. The second it was clear his crew was outmatched he'd turned and ran. Booking it as hard as he could and straight towards the Medhall building. There was no way he could handle this and the only person who could was his boss and more than a little hated his guts.
A leg bone speared through his gut, punching through soft tissues and coming out clean the otherside. He stumbled in mid stride, slowing down for the time it took his power to heal him, and then speeding back up when he was intact once more. When he realized that it was still too late for, he screamed. Some involuntary response born in his lizard brain to the sudden, imminent attack by a predator.
This time when she hit him, she didn't tear his arms off or kill him and was done with it.
No, she pinned him to the ground, legs wrapped around his waist, and rode him to the ground. Arms crushing his spine, leaving his limbs doing little more than kicking and twitching as he tried to grab his knife. Every time his vision went dark, it suddenly reset, his spine being broken once more over and over again. A cycle, endless and almost silent except for the loud sucking noises coming from the leech attached to his neck and the scuffing of his boots against the ground.
It was a parody of a lover's embrace, her body covering his, her lips and fangs half crushing his throat and she sucked and sucked and drank and drank.
He would have thought that someone would have seen them, seen this. And even if they thought he deserved to die surely they'd have called the Police and if not them an Empire associate would call for backup. But as he looked around, he realized that, that short chase had taken them into an abandoned lot. Surrounded on all sides by a fence and barbed wire and blocked from casual view.
In his sheer, blind, unthinking panic he'd forgotten about the razor wire cutting into his skin for the time it took him to bodily push through it.
So he laid there. Twitching and immobile, incapable of moving or fighting back, staring up at the stars.
And then it started.
It was a tingle at first. A small pinprick of sensation. Almost like discomfort, something he remembered from before he got powers.
But it grew.
And grew.
And grew.
A fire, rushing through his veins, growing every time his vision returned to clarity, every time he was reset. His power was keeping him alive as the bloodsucker held him down and feasted like every one of their kind wished they could. So he tried to fight, tried to move, tried to dislodge the thing as the fire dulled.
Because he could feel it growing thick in his veins. Thick and slow and sweet like syrup. Sticky and hot and delicious. And that feeling grew. And grew. And grew. The moon passed over head, fat and full, and he watched as it crawled and crawled and crawled as he moaned and moaned and moaned.
That fire had returned, its every kiss burning him alive as ecstasy left his thoughts a pink haze, pleasure emanating from every pore in his body. Some distant part of him felt shame that he'd soiled his pants, but what was a bit of semen compared to the blood he was already soaked in? Nothing. And nothing was comparable to the pleasure crawling through him. For some reason, some stupid, idiotic, unimaginable reason, he'd been fighting to keep his voice in. But now he couldn't think of why that was anymore.
So he groaned. Low and lusty and desperate and alive. He groaned and moaned and now he twitched in ecstasy as a never ending embrace held him tighter and tighter and tighter and every four seconds he took a new coughing, hiccuping breath just he could singandsingandsing!
But all good things must come to an end.
The moon, so heavy and full, bright and pearly white in a cloudless sky, no longer danced across their torrid embrace. Now it began to slink below the horizon, almost mournful and despondent that it could no longer hear his sweet gasps and pants.
That, too, was when the embrace grew weak. Enough his spine wasn't immediately shattered.
He pulled the Woman close, holding her tight while she pawed at him and continued to lick and suck and bite - her fangs never leaving his still warm flesh.
Like that, he moaned, she whispered, they held each other for an eternity that was only a few moments.
Rays of light replaced the moonbeams and she was gone like that, a final flash and tear that slashed his throat to the bone so quickly she pulled her fangs out.
Fleeing deeper into the lot, into a tangled mess of trash and weeds and between thick tarps sat on a rusted metal skeleton - a bridal dress for a long dead tower that would never become the queen of this city - and it was like that he found her digging. She was so beautiful like that, smeared with blood and grime and dirt, impossibly strong hands cutting through soil with an impossible speed.
Utterly transfixed, he watched as her stooped posture finally straightened and she curled in the shallow grave she'd dug, shivering and hiding from the already approaching sun's rays.
"Sleep well Mistress. I'm a noctis cape, so don't worry, I don't have to rest. I'll be here for you when you wake up."
Burying her alive, with a smile fit for angels looking down on babes, he shoveled the loose stones and earth on top of her form.
If he had known her name, he'd have carved a marker for her.
If he had known her name, he'd have written it in blood.