18) one muse has just killed for the first time and the other more experienced muse is there to help them in the aftermath. (with micah:))
She ran. The horrible, adrenaline spiked running of the hunted. Kylar could see the prinkling between her shoulders readying for a blow in the back, the daring angle of her head to catch the quickening slap of the phantom's footfalls echoing off the rooftop cement and into the alleyway bricks behind her. He pulled out the gun, twisting the silencer onto the barrel. The chase was on.
High, night blackened buildings flashed past on either side, windows doors, neon signs, and fire escapes. People too, shouting as they dived out of the way or flattened themselves against the walls. He had no idea where she was going, what part of town they were in, but he cannot lose her. Not this time. A man stepps out of a doorway right in front of her. They almost crashed, he almost jumped down to tackle her. Ducking and flipping, she skids past and Kylar curses sharply.
Her legs must be starting to burn--and he wasn't even out of breath. Boots skidding, he braces and lines up for the shot-- sparks shooting off the wall on the other side, just short of blowing out her knee cap. "Fuck!" She charges through an archway up and to the left and the night angel sprints after her, head down, boots flying across the rooftops, skidding as he turns the same corner. A great shadowy space, dilapidated double doors clinging to their hinges having been thrown open, layers of graffiti almost completely obscuring the sign above the doorway. From what he could see up on the roof, there was a faint light inside, sparking like a busted bulb. Kylar jumps down, nimble as a cat, tucking the gun back into its holster, replacing it with a curved dagger and the short sword Curoch that manifested from the palm of his hand. He grips the weapon like the hand of a familiar friend and stalks bodly into the dark. Annabel was just beyond him, turning round slowly, breathing hard. The two of them were in the middle of a wide open area, cobweb covered chairs stacked along the walls, used water bottles and beer cans and discarded plastic baggies littering the greasy concrete floor.
He knew where they were now. There were people everywhere, bumping to house music. Servers crawling amongst the throngs, trying to make rent via tips from the rowdy clubbers. He had worked here, as a security guard, undercover for a job. Kylar stalked towards a bloodied Annabel, bent at the knee, blades shimmering against the black fire that had begun to consume and lave his arms, shoulders, and eyes. Light flickers, his head snaps to the right--
"--Micah?" The dark fire gutters as if strangled.
His chest hurt, his mouth suddenly sour. There's a coldness in his stomach, a feeling he hasn't felt for the month since he's come back. It pours out of the mangled corpse on the ground, seeping out and spreading across the floor like a low fog. Kneeling next to it, their ripped open face twisted in a foreign rage, gaped down at it, smoke still curling from the burnt hole where the sternum used to be. Bloody moths and static swarming their torn clothes, pouring out of their slobbering, disfigured maw. Beyond Micah, Kylar caught the outline of Candle in a heap against the far wall. Even draped in long shadows, he could see the faint rise and fall of her chest, the startling red of congealing blood that trailed from her temple to the floor.
The sudden slap of shoes against the concrete startles Kylar, but his dagger is already flying. By the time his eyes catch up, the dagger was lodged in the trim of the doorway next to the stage. Annabel is nowhere in sight. Before he can even curse his lapse in focus, he feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Micah’s eyes were already on him long before Kylar turned back around.
“Micah…” he tried, voice hoarse and heavy but not from the chase, “it’s okay, it’s me.” Purposefully, his movements became slow and deliberate, the Curoch gradually liquifying and slinking back into his hand, disappearing up under the sleeve of his mottled jacket. Step by step, he inched closer towards Micah, watching the glazed fury fall away, the light returning to his increasingly bewildered expression. “Micah--” he barked sharply to keep their attention, trying to keep the other from hyperventilating as realization began to come crashing down. More gently, still firmly, almost within arms length of the corpse now, “Just focus on me. Focus on my voice, nothing else. I need you to tell me you understand--can you do that? Yeah? Okay, okay good….”
Moisture squelches under his boots as he squats down on the other side of the mangled body, feels the sticky liquid rippling out, ignoring it since it could only be one thing in this concrete coffin. His gaze flicks to Candle’s prone form and back, “Micah, Candle is hurt-- no, no she’s fine,” he cuts off the wild panic before it can surge up into his stricken lover’s throat, “I can see her breathing from here, but she might have a concussion. I need you to go check on her--you need to open one of her eyes and see if it constricts against the light and then I need you to tell me if it does. Can you do that?” He watches Micah’s face, reading the emotions pushing through the shock until he gets a nod out of them. “Alright then. Go do that now and stay with her for me. I need to take care of…” he glances down, just a flick of the eyes, “of this.”
If one has never seen the transition from human to corpse, the moment the soul passes on, it is a very moving experience. If it is one you love there is a moment of grief, as if all the love you ever felt for them, every good memory sparks up, as if the soul makes this SOS for them to return. The cadaver, the corpse, the body without them is so very different. If one is responsible for the passing of that soul, it is a very different, horrific feeling. Especially when it’s the first one. As he set to grabbing the corpse under the back of the shoulders, dragging it across the room towards the stage, he remembers not the first kill, when he tied a rope secured to a stone to Rat’s neck and threw the stone off the wharf, but his first mission under Durzo Blint. He had succeeded in killing the man who robbed the Sa’Kage, but ended up fighting with an innocent woman who had walked into the room at the wrong time. He’d been fifteen at the time, barely a man, when he drove the dagger into her mouth, staked her to the floor to keep her from screaming for help. Durzo had been there, watching, always watching to make sure his prodigy didn’t fuck up his reputation, and when the woman had finally stopped twitching under Kylar, Durzo baptized Kylar in her blood. Proclaimed him a ‘real’ wetboy as he smeared coppery red onto his forehead. With a grunt, Kylar heaves the body up onto the stage, dark smears trailing up the wall onto the platform. Hopping up, he grabs the body by the ankles this time and drags it into the darkness behind the partially drawn curtains to the left of the stage. What followed was the tearing of fabric, the shuffle and thump of meat being rolled- ‘thwump...thwump… thwump!’-followed soon after the quiet pad of his boots as he came back into the meager bit of light from the caved in ceiling illuminating the center of the open dance space. He’d have to come back for it later and properly dispose of it. His fingerprints would never be found on the body and while he was back behind the stage he made damn sure neither Micah’s or Candles DNA would show up in a forensics screening should the police stumble upon it before he could finish the job. Already a mental list of the chemicals he’d need, the contacts he would be soon calling to assist with the task, were being filed away in his brain as he approached Micah and Candle.
Cautiously, he crouches down near them, but far enough away so that he could dodge should Micah still not believe he’s real. Black fire still flickering about his shoulders and arms. The slash wounds he'd received from Annabel during their brief fight before the chase close to healing entirely. “Listen to me, this is not your fault, Micah,” he wished Durzo had told him that back then, even though he knew it would have been a lie in that scenario, “something… something dark possessed that body. I can still feel its power even from over here.” A bout of nausea attempted to surface, but he quickly swallowed it down. “We need to get Candle home, okay? I can treat her there if she does have a concussion, but we have to go now. Think you can carry her?” It’s safer for them both to keep his hands free, weapons at the ready, senses fine tuned in case the night has more in store for them. “Come on, get up, we gotta move.”
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