A filthy laugh exorcises the pride that’d briefly welled in his chest. Pleased with himself for making someone who isn’t Nix or their daughters laugh, Werewolf had slackened his jaw and swayed to its beat. Now he lurches, doubled over to choke on smoke and his own saliva. The lit cigarette’s held away from him at chest-height. Joker brings a tentative hand to and from his burning, bleeding throat to alleviate how it stings. Soft green hair slips from behind his ears and puffs in and out of his mouth while Joker wheezes, leans so far forward that his stomach twists, and cringes as his involuntary laugh climbs in pitch. He’s lightheaded. One foot staggers to keep him upright.
Sokol’s training reminds the puppy to swallow his fear and scamper around the armchair to jump, slam his front paws into Joker’s thighs, and push him a few paces backward toward the seat. Werewolf trips over his own feet, but gasps and grips his throat. The wolf-hybrid puppy’s command for him to sit is ignored…for now. Sokol then resorts to pushing his head against Joker’s chest so the pressure of his weight might help him breathe.
Half-doubled over still, Werewolf stretches his jaw in a funny swing. It doesn’t dull tinnitus’ constant scream. A grey ribbon continues to lift from the cigarette he holds out at his side. Another few dry-heaves and he should be able to breathe again. Nothing is pleasant about Joker’s laugh. Tears bite the corners of his eyes. Every crease on his face exaggerates in depth. His anxious shake becomes even more pronounced.
Moroi’s teeth are much too long. Those points may just puncture his crimson maw. Was it makeup? How can he have blood to turn the skin that color if he was born dead? Sokol’s warm tongue bloops over Joker’s chin and up his throat. Inclining his chin protects the puppy from accidentally ingesting MAC Chromacake pigments while trying to soothe a Pseudobulbar Affect episode. His inhales are still too grimy. Like he’s drying to breathe through sand.
Three blurred silhouettes of ‘Tesla’ swing to two, then back to three again. Blinking doesn’t improve it. Werewolf appraises every shadow beyond the moroi as if it might take shape. He bounces his leg to try and will himself to speak. His voice has thinned. Sliding the cigarette back in his mouth only pacifies for a moment. He takes another drag, hums, then resumes bouncing his left leg. Eyes like winter oceans focus on the ceiling — its dimensions remain inscrutable. ‘Tesla’s’ open mouth feels more like a promise, too, should Joker think to contest him. A chill shunts up his spine and crashes at his nape. He wilts with it, suffers a sharper, shorter laugh, then continues his sway from foot to foot.
“I couldn’t trust my own mother…” he honeys his voice so the slightest creak or groan of the house could devour it, yet his eyes whet and prepare to strike. One of his practiced simpers offsets their caustic nature. “Or my father…” smoke shoots out his nose as his eyes abandon Tesla’s to swim through coagulated shadow, “Or my little brother…” Ashes crumble from the end of his cigarette after Joker takes another hit. He drops both his arm and the cylinder to his side. “Or Murray Franklin…” never meet your heroes, “Or doctors or social workers…” Joker wags his eyebrows, making the false pair painted on his forehead vanish behind wrinkles. “Not even God.” He takes another drag, averting his eyes. “B-but I’m supposed to take…your say-so…?! Because you like me.”
that words could not be summoned to describe the harrowing animation of tesla’s changing features was a testament to their undoing. that the suave and pleasant smile of gleaming shark’s teeth had been swallowed and replaced by a heart-shaped sneer of svelte red veneer. the count himself could neither place or name the tempest that surged within, a passionate, violent storm of remorseless savagery that at once wished to see the fleshy pianist ripped down the middle and his heart left bitten in two. that he should be so insulted . . . was he mocking dracula? MOCKING HE? that he should call them friend, lumped in with too many others and their names that he knew little. vlad was the catalyst. child of the devil brought back by a miracle of lazarus, spat from the river styx with hades clinging to his knees. A KING AMONG THEIR KIND LYCAN AND VAMPIRE ALIKE. not even god, he says. not even god could so be trusted, nor the others that had surmounted in comparison. all humans of varying kinds of evil levied from their pedestals and weighed weighed against the count? he had looked upon god with a just and mighty hate and walked backward into hell.
UGLY, VICIOUS, LICENTIOUS HUMAN KIND?! it left the mouth unhinged, not two but six great snake prongs hanging from the gum. coated in viscous strands of rotten, clinging spit and the vacuous hiss produced. deep and toneless and somehow guttural a dirge, sharp and menacing white noise pushed forth from the glands behind the teeth. ‘ you would compare what kindness i have shown you . . . what protection i have bled for you and that human woman to those filthy covetous things . . . ’
deafening, suffocating. no light could pierce the windows as that vampiric shadow grew, bleeding onto the floor and raking at the walls with a pair of visceral tendrils until the room was swathed in black. try as he might to contain the swirling vortex of uncontainable rage that spiraled deep within him, it was as though all warmth had been sucked into a vacuum and spat out of the room.
‘ selfish, savage, deceitful, stupid humans? ’ a tower in the room, his height was impregnable, talons curled tightly into white-knuckled fists held locked against his sides. now it was his turn for find the paint was cracking. that fury and unbridled passion had set forth the bloody teardrops through the pain of stress alone. biting at his lashes, vermilion water weeps and stains the marble red. each step brought him closer to the dizzy little clown, peering down the bridge of that aquiline nose until his eyes were fit to burn. the ferocious light of vengeance was so lurid in them now, filling in the sclera until every bit was red and lustrous as the moon.
‘ i let you into my home, i call you and treat you as my friend, offer you protection in ways that you cannot possibly understand . . . against the myriad of fools and make-believe vampires who would pretend to invoke MY NAME? i am he who controls the night. the son of the devil, resurrected before his kin. who was it but i who rained down terror across the invaders of my homeland? who was it but i that defied the light of god and sent forth my plague across the banks of the danube until i was a rightful king? I AM A GOD IN ALL BUT THE EYES OF CHRIST HIMSELF. i am vladislav dracula, and you . . . you would compare my favor to that of those duplicitous, sniveling human dogs? ’
