The Vampire and The Butcher (Ch.5)
16+, do not read if younger. (Cw for corpses, graphic violence, murder, death, and gore)
Tags (anyone can request to be added): @kitkatlover16 @h3l1as
"How the hell do you plan to get me to The Slaughter?" I ask skeptically, watching her with disbelief. "We don't even have a way out."
Abyss didn't even respond, just grinning as xe pulled out a hair clip. She reached around the bars, picking open the lock and pushing the door open with its free hand.
I stood there slack jawed and speechless for a moment, still frozen as it walked out.
"Wha- you can't just- how did you do that!? You can't just saunter out of here!" I hurried after xer, noticing how casually she walked and put the hair clip back in place, like breaking out of a high security prison made by the most notorious criminal organization in the whole damn city was just another Tuesday. "Why aren't there any guards?" I look around the creepily empty hallway, only seeing rotting skeletons and cobwebs in the cells.
"Nobody stays behind for a Slaughter, not even guards. It's such a revered time for The Butchers it's almost sacred, guess you could say." It explained all too easily and casually. That seemed like such a stupid oversight for people who were supposedly so smart and calculated, but I wasn't complaining.
Xe took a right up concrete stairs, their metal feet clanking with each step. The firm 'thunk' of every step made me realize just how strong a being of pure metal must be. Someone like that could probably kill me without even thinking about it.
You're blushing.
What? No I'm not!
Now that I thought about it, my cheeks were a bit warm.
You always like the ones that could kill you, don't you? You've got a type.
No I don't!
I was definitely blushing now though.
Keep telling yourself that, princess.
Don't call me that!
I was distracted when Abyss and I reached the exit. Apparently we'd been underground, because surfacing revealed the staircase was just a hole in the ground that led up to the forest.
When I saw the trees I froze, my body going rigid and eyes wide. Abyss seemed to notice my unease.
"Don't worry, we're not far from the city. We should be back quickly." She started leading the way, and I kept my head down and eyes on the ground until we made it out of the woods.
Once we got back, I exhaled in relief. I'd never thought I'd be so happy to see these mundane, shitty streets, but I was now.
"How are we even supposed to find The Slaughter anyway? You're making some mighty high claims." I point out, but I doubted my own skepticism after everything I'd seen tonight.
"You'll see!" It responds with the casual cheerfulness that never failed to bewilder me. Somehow xe seemed simultaneously bubbly and ditzy, and badass and effortless, but I knew by now it was anything but stupid.
We tromped down the streets together, not bothering to check our surroundings. Well, I did at first, but xe seemed so confident and unfazed that it rubbed off. Not that she walked sloppily enough to be called 'tromping'.
Maybe ten minutes later or so we were back at the abandoned building where I'd gotten knocked out. I hesitated in the doorway, checking my surroundings in a way that was probably paranoid, but I didn't care. When I hesitated, Abyss looked back and waved me over before descending to the lower floor. My gaze fell on the small black stain of my blood on the floor, before I glanced out the entrance and windows one last time and followed.
"This is underwhelming," I point out bluntly. The Butchers' supposed base just looked like a normal basement, a plain hall of concrete lined with numbered doors. Maybe the numbered doors were weird.
"What'd you expect? An elaborate gothic hideaway?" Abyss jokes lightly, unlocking the door with a mechanism on its wrist too quickly for me to see what it was.
"Kinda..." I mumble, scuffing my shoe against the ground and glaring at the wall like it was its fault I'd been disappointed.
I almost collided into xer when she abruptly stopped in front of me, and I looked up to see we were in some kind of planning room. There was a large wooden table, except there were no chairs around it, and the only other thing in the room were maps and scrawls of a language I didn't know pinned to the walls. It looked more like a teenager's messy collage of geography notes than the top secret plans of an infamous crime group.
Just when I was about to ask if this was really the right place, a quiet masculine voice mumbling interrupted me. I stared in confusion when I realized the voice was coming from Abyss. It didn't sound like her at all. It was like xer voice had suddenly been replaced with someone else's. It wasn't even the same language anymore, she was probably mumbling in the language of the writings she was mulling over on the wall.
I wasn't usually one to stay quiet, but it felt disrespectful not to, like I was witnessing something personal right now, even if I couldn't understand why. The new voice sounded so low and calm, it was almost soothing.
"They're going to be at Angmar today!" Xe announces suddenly in its normal voice, turning to me with a bright smile. "Let's go!" She says before I can have much time to process what I was just told or what I just witnessed.
Before we even got inside the border, I could smell the stench of death and the sweet aroma of blood. I unconsciously started walking faster, my mouth watering and senses sharpening.
What I saw then was the most glorious, grotesque scene I'd ever laid eyes upon, and I'd seen many morbid things in my time.
It was what the humans called a "suburb", a place of streets lined with their houses, and not a single inch was spared from the massacre. Blood and guts pooled in the streets. Countless bodies mangled beyond recognition were in front of the houses, organs and innards strewn around like confetti at a party, but this was much better than a party. It was a Slaughter, the calculated killing by The Butchers of an entire Sector of the human side of the city to keep them in line, to remind them of their place, that they would always live underneath the Undead, and that there was nothing they could do about it.
Abyss grabbed the back of my shirt and yanked me behind the trees around the border, glancing ahead to make sure no one saw us.
"Don't go in through the main road, The Butchers will find and kill you! Stay on the outskirts." She hissed some sense into my ear, which I both hated and was grateful for. My instincts were going wild, every part of me itching to run out into the open with reckless abandon and kill anything in sight, my adrenaline pumping and excitement buzzing through me intensely enough to make me feel ill. It was a struggle to keep a bloodthirsty grin off my face and swallow back the saliva that kept filling my mouth.
I kept my eyes on the gory aftermath as we crept around the edges of the sector, until I heard it. A rustling in the trees. Someone was there, a human.
Abyss turned to me with silent curiosity, as if already knowing what was on my mind. I quickly fumbled through my pockets for anything to use as a weapon. It seemed the only thing that hadn't been confiscated when I was imprisoned was a slow acting lethal poison. I shoved away the thought of how morbid and intentional that had likely been as I pulled a rag from my pocket and dampened it with poison, creeping forward. I whispered to Abyss to stay behind, but xe didn't seem intent to follow me anyway, only watch.
I spotted the human not far away, a young man with a terrified look on his face, breathing heavily and feet squelching with each step on unavoidable blood soaked grass. He was the perfect picture of prey, a look of terror on his face, his only instinct to flee, no matter how stupid and useless the attempt. Slowly, carefully, every move calculated by my instincts and second nature to me, I got closer until I could strike, pouncing on him like a cat catching a mouse. He fell backward with a yelp of alarm, the impact making blood splatter up on my face. I instantly smothered his face with the cloth, and he began to wheeze and choke. I removed the cloth from his face, only now realizing I was smiling in that manic way I used to when I killed.
The poison was fast acting, I could see his face turning an unnatural green as he wheezed for air and coughed up blood. I watched with sadistic glee, pressing my knee into his diaphragm to make him wheeze again. His terrified eyes started to grow more unfocused and glaze over as he choked and gasped in his last few attempts to live before the light left his eyes.
I started to laugh, a loud, deranged sound of glee or joy or excitement, I didn't even know what or why. I just knew I hadn't felt this good in longer than a human's lifespan was even capable of lasting. For a few seconds I just knelt there over the body, laughing in glorious triumph, before finally leaning down and tearing into his neck, biting off a large chunk of skin until blood started gushing from it. I put my mouth up to it and began drinking with obscene licking and slurping sounds. I closed my eyes and savored the fresh metallic taste, warmth and victory flowing through me in equal measure.
I wasn't sure whether it had been mere seconds or whole minutes when I stood up again, a few breathless laughs leaving me as blood dripped down my chin. I wiped the blood on my mouth with the back of my hand, but it hardly did anything and only stained my hand more. When I turned I saw Abyss standing there with a faint smile of approval and maybe even admiration. Was she impressed with me?
"It's good to see you back." Xe said fondly, almost like we were old friends, almost like she knew how long it'd been since I'd done something like that despite only meeting me tonight.
I was on too much of a high to think into it, just smiling. But it was the first smile I could remember giving to someone other than Isabella that actually felt both genuine and sane.
Without a second thought, I kept going out in the open, searching for my next prey, hunting around the outskirts of the sector. After a few minutes, the sound of footsteps caught my attention, and I made my way closer.
A human kid emerged from inbetween two houses, stopping between the back of the house and tree border and locking eyes with me. They looked terrified, but it wasn't the same as before.
I couldn't kill a child.
