Disclaimer: I still don't own this, sorry.

A/N: I wasn't too sure about this chapter; I've got the next three written and edited, but this one was a bit of a challenge. Any help/feedback, therefore, is welcome, as always.

Chapter 5

(They are back in the jungle, again. It makes Moira more comfortable, and more bloodthirsty; sometimes, she'll growl under her breath, imitating a wildcat. Fala, wary and less comfortable with their surroundings, likes to stop and listen to that snarl, low and soft and strangely alluring.)

Fala: Alright, Wildcat, it's all a game from now on. You see?

(Moira doesn't see, not at all. She's young, willful, and easily persuadable.)

Fala: You can do anything. You're not prey anymore.

(It was Jager who first taught her that. But she refuses to miss him, not even for a moment.

Moira nods. Fala's been saying things like this for a while. As though being older, even thousands of years older, makes her wiser. As though she knows the great secrets of the world, and Moira is not more than another impatient, insignificant fledgling. Moira has to concentrate long and hard on Fala's eyes – those dark, seductive Egyptian eyes that stop every pain – to make the anger go away.

Sometimes Fala will smear ink across her eyes until they are two symmetrical Eyes of Horus – she does it to prove that she is powerful.)

Fala: Forget your gods. See? We are the gods, now.

(And Moira agrees.

But there are some times, some times when Fala seems too much a teacher and too little a lover, and Moira will make an excuse and run for it.

One of these times, she sneaks away, comes upon her old village, still there, still alive –

They couldn't save her. Only Fala could.

So she just watches, for a day or two, a silent shadow, smirking out of the gloom; there's one boy who intrigues her, of about her age and vaguely familiar. Reading his mind casually, the way she reads Fala's eyes, she takes it all in – how he feels, what he wants, what draws him in. She morphs her form to one that's just as he'd like it. Makes a habit of sneaking away from Fala almost every day, discreetly, to see him, smile seductively, intrigue him. She doesn't even know his name.

A week of this goes by, and she chooses her moment carefully; gestures the boy forward; grabs him lightning-fast, pushes him against a tree and ties him there, scratching him with one fingernail as she does so, and rubbing it across her lips to redden them. Lights his village, no longer hers, casually aflame. The fire is a gift for Fala.

As Moira turns back toward the boy, burgundy lips uplifted in a smile, tawny flames rising in the distance, with background music of screams, her already-torn clothing rips farther, but she's far past human modesty and sees no reason to blush at this. He whimpers, confused and lost, and she gently kisses him.)

Moira: Shhhhh, it's gonna be alright. I like you.

Fala (far away, flippantly, laughing): Wildcat?

(She enters the scene, and the laughter dies abruptly on her lips.

All she can see is the blood on Moira's lips, and the mirror of it on his own; all she notices is the vampire's bare skin and the boy's bonds.)

Moira (as though nothing is wrong; maybe, to her, nothing is): The fire's for you. It was a present.

Fala: Thank you.

(The words are habitual, and she doesn't lower her eyes)

Fala: You were –

(She's not sure if she has enough proof.)

Moira: I wanted him 'cause he's so pretty. But I was gonna get rid of him when we were done, I promise.

(For once, Fala does not recognize the lie. All she hears is "I wanted him," and "when we were done," and her eyes narrow. There's the proof. She takes a deep breath, steadying herself, then leans over and punches through the trunk of a nearby young tree with her vampiric strength, sending bits of debris flying everywhere. Her knuckles begin to bleed.)

Moira: I still love you.

(Moira picks up a fragment of wood and begins to play with it, throwing it up and catching it, flipping it over and over in her shaking, honey-colored hands.)

Moira: I don't understand.

(There is a long and awkward pause, in which Fala wrestles the piece of wood from Moira's hand and flings it through the jagged gap in the wall, while the other watches, still with a puzzled expression.)

Fala: I don't understand, either.

(Shutting her eyes, Fala transforms slowly, fades and transforms. Becomes a caracal(1), solid black fur and sharp claws, with which she lunges up and scratches Moira across the bare, exposed skin just beneath her neck. A few parallel, even marks, hardly deep enough to scar, before she prowls out, and Moira, doubled over in pain and surprise, does not dare to follow.)

Moira (to herself, still mystified): It was just a, a thing, Fala, I love you, I love you –

(She shakes her head slightly to clear it, sees that Fala is nowhere near.)

Moira (very quietly): Damn.

(From behind a tree, Fala the caracal sits and watches. The form she has taken is unnatural in her surroundings, but so familiar as to almost make her nostalgic. It reminds her of Jager, and she imagines for a moment that she can smell his thick, spicy scent on the jungle's unmoving air, calling her away.)

(1) a type of African cat – usually only the tufts on their ears are black.