Author's Note: June 7 @unwholesomeocweek - Cannibalism. AO3 Link
Featuring a cameo by @rattenprince’s Sasha ;) Divider credit goes to him too!
After pursuing a Puttanesca top dog, Wynter and Lucien finally break down the barriers between them.
Content Warnings: Cannibalism, violence, gore, murder, homophobic language, uncle/niece incest, implied sexual content, references to Night Road, Aila mention, Chiara mention.
“Carlo Puttanesca…” It was measured and deliberate, like a beast of prey toying with its food.
He blinked open his eyes, frowning at the dim overhead lamp, his vision blurring in and out. The sound of his name was ringing in his ears. It smelled clinical and sterile in here, like the surfaces had been vigorously scrubbed with chlorine and acid. How long had he been out? What the fuck is this place? Why was it— Shit, was he upside down?
It was impossible to move, everything hurt, and his face felt bloated and numb. A shooting pain ran up his legs as he tried to wriggle free and all that slipped out of his mouth was a heavy, injured moan. He craned his neck upward and saw the silver gleam of metal hooks protruding out of his Achilles tendons, attached to the rails above.
Fuck!
It was as if a sharp spike of adrenaline had cut through the brain fog and he was wide awake and alert now.
“I’ve been waiting for this day for a very long time.”
A myriad of profiles raced through Carlo’s mind as he tried to place the accent—Southern, with a subtle yet distinct drawl, like a blend of cultural influences—and narrow down its identity. Louisianan?
Then, he saw the lone figure of a man approach him purposefully, his gaze like a cold fire, calculating and measuring his worth.
“You had it coming, but you knew that already, didn’t you?” the man taunted, his lips twisting into a nasty sneer.
Carlo squinted, trying to make out his features from the angle he was hanging at. Something about him was so familiar, but it wasn’t until his eyes swept over the rest of his body, coming upon the stump of what used to be his right arm, that he remembered.
“No, no, it can’t be!” he croaked. “We burned you to the fucking ground!”
“Naw, your men did, while you stood by and watched,” the figure hissed.
“You weren’t supposed to return, Lucey boy! You were nothing! We couldn’t find nothing!” Carlo blabbered on frantically.
“Well, Merry fuckin’ Christmas. Guess it’s your lucky night, huh?” A hideous laugh echoed across the four walls of the empty space as Lucien closed the distance, tapping Carlo’s cheek with the palm of his hand condescendingly.
At this, Carlo hurled a wad of red-coated spittle at him, jeering, “Oh, you gotta lotta learn, kiddo. The Family has a hand in everything. If you believe there ain’t some bigger fish up there involved in this, you must be kiddin’ yourself. And what makes you so sure they won’t come looking for you after you’re done with me? You think they’ll let this slide?”
Lucien eyed him dispassionately, biding his time as he circled the dangling Kindred like a shark. “’Course they will.” He smirked. “’Cause you’re just low-life scum. A fuckin’ Puttanesca.”
A frenzied rage boiled within Carlo as he seethed in fury. Before he could lash out, a woman emerged from the elongated shadows, their tendrils swirling like smoke in the air. Like greased lightning, she was over by him, driving a machete into his shoulder, the muzzle of her Nighthawk Custom cocked against the base of his skull. She carried herself with a feline grace, her expression hard as steel.
A ghastly howl pealed into the room. No matter how many times he had been stabbed in more places than he could count in the past, no matter how tough he had made his body to be with the power of the Blood, that shit always hurt like a bitch.
It was enough to stun him briefly as Lucien continued without missing a beat, “My niece is a little shy, but try her patience and you might just get the show you were looking for.”
Niece? What the fuck was this, a family reunion? How had he not noticed her in the first place, hiding within the darkness? It was a mistake to assume that Lucien had been alone. And now, he would pay its price.
As if Lucien had read his mind, he nodded. “You see, my lovely Wynter here managed to dig up quite the dirt on you, Carlo, with a favor from a Cousin, ’course.” The edges of his mouth quirked into a cruel smile. “Sasha Giovanni. Name ring a bell? Oh, and don’t you worry, he wanted to send his greetings.”
“Sasha? Why, that little brat! I swear—” He was interrupted by another scream that tore from his chest as Wynter swiveled the blade in deeper.
The crimson bloom on his shirt thickened as more blood seeped through. Sweet Jesus! What a fucking waste of Blush, Carlo cursed internally. Then again, he had no idea that the night would have resulted in such a turn of events.
Satisfied, Lucien fished out a file of what appeared to be incriminating documents from the interior of a briefcase by his side. He flipped through the pages with mock interest. “There’s more of these, but I saved the best for the occasion. Hmm, so it turns out you’ve been selling off our secrets to outsiders,” he tutted, shaking his head disapprovingly. “But what makes it a real newsworthy piece is that you’re not even one of us…”
For the first time, Carlo’s eyes darted toward Lucien’s in complete and utter fear. If he could piss in his pants right now, he would.
“Thought so, Caitiff,” Lucien spat, his gaze consumed with a fiery hatred.
With a sinking realization, Carlo had to admit that he underestimated Sasha, that cunt, writing him off as yet another Giovanni failure who wasn’t man enough to take over his father’s business. I mean, what with their Valentino—another Puttanesca, sure, but a homo at that—siring him? It was just a pity Embrace, for Christ’s sake!
Dropping the file back into the bag, Lucien undid the top buttons of his shirt as he gestured toward Wynter, “Bring him down. Let’s bleed this pig dry.”
She smirked, a hint of wistfulness laced her voice. “Just like old times.”
“Just like old times,” he repeated the words back to her and matched her smile, as though sharing in a fond memory.
Then, the hooks were released and Carlo came tumbling down, landing on the floor of what he now identified as an abattoir with a loud thud. At warp speed, Wynter bound his arms and legs together in chains, preventing his escape. The flash of her fangs peeked out as she licked her lips, leering at him with a plain hunger that was yet unsated.
With the idea of Final Death beginning to turn into reality, Carlo resorted to a mixture of bargains and threats. “Hey, hey, look! This is all just a big misunderstanding. You want your arm back, I’ll give it to ya, easy peasy! And everything I have. Money, intel, whatever’s your poison, eh?”
In desperation, he continued shouting, “You don’t know who you’re messin’ with Lucey boy! I’m gonna hurt you so bad you’ll wish you never existed!”
But it fell on deaf ears as Lucien unsheathed his trusty Morakniv from a utility pouch along his belt and squatted down beside the Kindred. One glance at its razor sharpness was enough to silence his ramblings as they puttered to a stop.
Carlo trembled as the knife drew closer to his face. There was a shift in Lucien’s mood. It was pensive, introspective, almost as if he were in the eye of the storm. He spoke coolly, peering at his reflection in the mirror of the blade.
“You think you know death? You think you know pain? I’ve walked for acres across the bodies of foul corpses. Felt their bones crush under my feet. I was lacerated and flayed, then stitched back together like a ragdoll only for it to repeat over and over again. My ribs pulled back and exposed, like an inverted cage to house the vultures that pecked at my chest. A fistful of razor blades I was forced to swallow sliced through my gut. All for an eternal cycle, while the burning flames of hell singed my skin and flesh. So, don’t talk to me about pain as if you have lived it, you pathetic excuse of an unlife.”
As he went on, he felt an unearthly energy flow through his veins and the searing sting that accompanied it as his eyes and mouth were set ablaze in a shade of livid blue. The fire that leaped from Lucien’s orifices made Carlo’s skin crawl, having never witnessed anything like it before. Even Wynter took a step back, tightening her fingers around the grip of her handgun, swallowing the lump in her throat out of habit.
Cowering in front of Lucien, Carlo stuttered uncontrollably, “W-what the hell are you?”
A wolfish, maniacal grin crept along Lucien’s face. His immaculate set of teeth, unnaturally phosphorescent and glowing, whetted itself into fangs.
“After this, you’ll understand the true meaning of pain.”
Without further ado, Wynter shoved Carlo’s body roughly to lay flat on his back, pressing the sole of her boot against his neck. Wielding his knife, Lucien made a neat incision from the base of Carlo’s sternum to his pelvis in one stroke, carefully avoiding puncturing his innards. It was done so swiftly that Carlo didn’t feel a thing until a couple of seconds later where he let out an ear-splitting shriek.
Despite having only a single arm, Lucien worked fast, cutting deeply around the rectum before separating the rest of his skin away from wet tissue and flesh. Sprays of warm, virile blood splattered across his face and clothes, but he made no effort to wipe it off. The handle of his knife became slippery like fish.
For the entire duration, Carlo’s shrill cries and wails filled the air as he pleaded for them to “Stop! Please, please! I beg of you! Oh god, no! Please, no!”
Yet there wasn’t a flicker of mercy in either perpetrator’s glare. Instead, Wynter stamped down on his neck with even more pressure, causing him to gurgle in return. Bending over, she dipped two fingers into the open slit near his breastbone, coating them with his sanguine fluids before licking it up with her tongue.
It was only then that Lucien paused, pointing the knife in her direction as he admonished, “Uh-uh, what did I tell you about playing with your food?”
Feigning annoyance, she huffed and rolled her eyes in response. But still, she obeyed him, straightening herself up as she watched him carry on.
“Gotta keep the organs intact is all,” Lucien muttered. “I’ll finish this up soon and let you drink every last drop, babydoll, you know I would.”
The flaps of Carlo’s skin shedded off like a jacket. His voice had grown hoarse and there was no will left in him to fight. From his pouch, Lucien alternated between his knife and saw, cutting open the bone of the Kindred’s chest cavity before slicing away his diaphragm from the ribs.
Carlo was entering into torpor, evident from the fact that his corpse was withering, and the once fresh blood had started to darken and coagulate. Wynter released her hold on the man as Lucien reached into his chest, feeling around for the esophagus and windpipe. There, he severed them and nodded to Wynter. In perfect sync, they turned Carlo onto his side and pulled the entirety of his insides out. Like blackened, toxic sludge, it spilled across the floor.
Unable to resist any longer, Wynter descended upon what remained of the carcass and lapped at the curdled vitae oozing from its ravaged vessels. Lucien rummaged through the mushy pile, picking out each shriveled part as he scarfed them down whole. His jagged teeth ferociously tearing through sinewy tissues and muscles that had hardened in the process, the taste of it defiled and rancid.
He was debasing himself, feasting off the life force of Carlo through his vitae-rich flesh, like a monstrosity he should have surpassed at his level. What would his kind think of him if they witnessed him in such a state? A mindless zombie. A good-for-nothing dog. A chih-mei. And perhaps worse, a cannibal who ate shen akin to their own. Even so, he persisted, stuffing the organs into his mouth, forcing himself to chew and swallow them like a bitter pill, to remind himself of all the suffering it took to get him here.
Viscous juices drizzled from his chin, staining his shirt in the color of bile. The stomach, the liver, the kidney, the lungs—he had consumed them all, and in turn, the very essence that formed Carlo. At the end of it, he would scalp the bastard, collecting his head like a trophy hunter to mount in a room he kept for such curiosities. In the meantime, he just had the heart left. That rotten, throbbing thing. Lucien scrambled toward it on his good hand and knees like a rabid animal, but stopped short when he saw Wynter, having had her fill, standing before him.
By now, Carlo was no more than a lump of desiccated meat. First, field dressed like a deer, then mutilated beyond recognition. The flames that burned wildly in Lucien’s visage had dissipated, as if the brutality and savagery that ensued had worn him out, and all that lingered was the tender presence of his niece. It calmed him.
Gathering the heart in her hands, Wynter sank down to the ground and offered it to him. Hesitantly, he leaned forward, allowing her to feed him as he soaked his face in the tainted blood of the man responsible for his fate. She scooped up the pieces when they fell, gently pushing them past his lips, letting him nip and suck the flesh off her delicate fingers. The slick muscle of his tongue darted between them, swirling around the grooves of her skin. His head bobbed up and down, greedily taking in more and more, wanting to polish her hand clean. He felt so flushed and alive, if she’d been none the wiser, she might have mistaken him as human.
Wynter observed as her uncle lost control. The walls that he had put up, broken down, only to replace again, were finally crumbling. Ever since they were reunited in their second life, as he had so promised, they had been uncertain where they stood with each other. Reluctant as she was to admit, it secretly delighted her to see him like this—groveling and eating out of her hand, quite literally, and deep down, she knew she wanted more than she could have. She wanted the walls to collapse further until they were nothing but ruins in a wasteland.
Curiously, she tilted her head, probing him, “It isn’t enough, is it?”
Lucien paused, unlatching his mouth from her, leaving a pearly string of saliva in its wake. He adjusted himself rigidly, drawing back onto his haunches. She didn’t blame him for his discomfort, even though she could smell his fecund want, his need from a mile away.
Throughout their lives, their desire had been sullied with shame. Something that should be hidden away, buried into the dirt, and never spoken of again. But they had never been natural to begin with. This body she possessed, this skin bag that was hers and yet not. The mask he wore, the layers upon layers that covered him until it was difficult to find the man he had been underneath. She, Embraced into The Family. He, a cursed outcast returning from the dead. Two sides of the same coin, and still so far apart.
“I can give you more,” she reiterated.
The whole time, his eyes never left hers as he held her long gaze. At a languid pace, Wynter’s fingers trailed from button to button of her blouse, letting it fall past her shoulders before shrugging the rest of it off. With nothing else to hide, she kneeled half naked before him, her deathly pallor striking under the light.
Lucien inhaled sharply, his breath catching at his throat, yet he made no move to retreat or look away. She brought herself closer, until her upper body was a hair’s breadth away from his face, and he could only drink in the sight of her, mesmerized by her devotion.
“Baby—” His voice cracked beneath the strain, as a sea of conflicting emotions pooled in his stone blue eyes.
“Shh… eat,” she coaxed, cupping his head toward her chest. “Devour me.”
The last frays of his restraint snapped and he clamped his jaw around the soft mound of her breast, gorging on a chunk of it voraciously. Wynter’s fangs pierced her lip as she attempted to suppress a strangled cry. Hot, fat tears welled up, blurring her vision as a steady stream of blood trickled onto her uncle’s cheek.
He lapped at it before tonguing the gaping pockets of her flesh, nibbling around for scraps. Her squeals only served to arouse him as his eyes grew bloodshot and feral. In an effort to prevent her from thrashing about, he grabbed her wrists in his hand and held them down behind her back. Then, he perforated her with more bites, the marks angry and swollen.
“Tell me—” she gasped, quivering violently. “Tell me how I taste.”
“Like the fruit of Eden,” he growled.
His canines raked the side of her belly, earning him another whimper as he dug up flakes of plump tissue and skin. He savored her fullness and the spurts of sweet blood that soothed the ache in his core. “Like the heart of a rabbit trapped in a cage.”
“My lil’ rabbit,” he murmured, as his stump traced the outline of her tattoo on her ribs. He lifted his gaze, smearing rust-stained kisses all along her clavicle.
Eventually, he released his grip on her. Licking the shell of her ear, he grazed it with his teeth and whispered, “Like everything I could ever want, but not have.”
Wynter let out a breathy moan, contemplating the difference between his maiming and that of her sire’s. Where Chiara brought her a blunt, sadistic pain, Lucien delivered something more intricate, like a teacher inducting her into its many facets. It was unbearable, maybe even worse than Chiara’s Kiss, yet at the same time the most exquisite. Intimate to the point of being invasive, in the way he truly knew her. He had crawled under her skin, nesting within her flesh and bones, and deeper still. By devouring her, he had reminded them how much she was a part of him as he was of her.
She felt his caresses against her cheek, heard his troubled speech as he came to his senses. “Did I go too far, doll?” His sentiment would get the better of him, he thought, calling to mind the disapproval in his mentor’s expression.
In her weakened state, she shook her head, barely able to speak, her lips twitching into a haunting smile. In exhaustion, her eyelids drooped and she slumped onto his shoulder in a half embrace. Stroking her back, he cooed gentle praises as though he were lulling her to sleep, just like he had done so many years ago.
For a while, they sat like this in a cradle, until he uttered those two simple words, “Take me.”
Take all of me.
The hazel of her irises glimmered and she wondered for a fleeting moment if his kind could lose their soul, if they even practiced what the Kindred reviled as diablerie. Aila, the elder she had consumed, remained quiet and unmoved within her. She was on her own now.
Wynter weighed her heart out on a set of scales and knew that there was only one answer. Plunging her fangs into the meat of Lucien’s neck, she granted him the agony and torment of the Hecata Kiss in equal measure. He groaned and snarled as she drank from his pulsating wound, the blinding white pain so pure in its form he could finally see with staggering clarity.
spoilers for Hunter the parenting chapter 6, if you haven't witnessed it please fuck off
So y'all think think grimal is a changeling (troll), or will come-back a Kuei-jin (guess she could return a wraith)? none of the 3 preclude her from being the ghoul
So something I've seen a few people speculate on is whether or not the Kuei-jin will be showing up in Hunter The Parenting as a legitimate vampire group.
So I felt like throwing my 2 cents in.
So I don't think Kuei-Jin are going to be an actually vampire group in HTP.
So first off HTP as we know is a fan project and basically doing it's own thing as it primarily uses 5th edition, while pulling from other editions and taking creative liberties.
One of these creative liberties I believe is to not take the Kuei-jin seriously, but to treat them as a fake vampire group.
My reasoning???
Well first off as we know the Kuei-Jin are very much stereotypes, and did not age well. This is something that Speaker D eludes to in Gothic Horror RPGs set in your Hometown – An Intro To World Of Darkness, with the joke not asking what a Kuei-Jin.
Said video is also one where we know the team is aware some stuff in WOD has aged poorly.
From here we get to Hunter: The Parenting - Chapter 3.3 | Marckus Goes Pubbing with his Weirdo Friends (gets in a brawl). This video I believe represents not only how the Bruva Alfabusa team acknowledges the Kuei-Jin as problematic by making fun on Kuei-Jin. But also them establishing how they want us to view the Kuei-Jin in HTP. It's best summarized by what Markus said.
"Grimal, my Dad tells me LITERALLY NOTHING EVER, and yet even HE told me, UP FRONT, that the Kuei-Jin are a LARP group based out of LA who hijac concepts from like… 10 different Asian cultures and mash them up without actually knowing anything about them."
This usage of the Kuei-Jin as a joke does seem to continue in things such as Big-D telling Grimal, "Damare Kuei-Jin Shinja."
Written By Eris the Lorekeeper
My kuei-jin Mio when she was still alive vs her completely human sister.
She had been slowly dying with terminal bone cancer for many years before her death as a young woman and subsequent trip to the Yomi-Wan, the 1000 Hells.
