I have been Nerris Fan Number 1 for 7 years and nobody can take that from me /lh
FINALLY got around to drawing the new design! i actually really do like it but of course in typical me fashion i added my own little spins :) season 5 almost here!
I made this comic a few months ago for the @softandwarmzine !!!! I had a lot of fun and I fell in love with these characters so much I might even start doing a little series with them...
Soft and Warm zine, a zine dedicated to plus sized sapphics, is on leftover sales, so be on the lookout for the products and get them while you can!!!!
Pulse racing in his ears, Owen rolled up the right sleeve of his shirt to expose the scarred skin of his residual elbow and cautiously pressed it against the metal doorknob. Immediately cold electricity surged through him at the point of contact and Owen yelped, stumbling back. Definitely silver. Not just the knob, but the surrounding locking mechanism too by the looks of it.
Owen stretched out his arm, trying to shake off the lingering pain piercing through it like needles of ice. The reaction was always worse the closer it was to a full moon. During a new moon phase he could even handle Signora Rottelo’s silver and mother of pearl inlaid jewelry box with only mild discomfort. But with less than three hours until the full moon rose, touching the stuff was like handling acid.
Sweat slicking his palm, Owen worked his way through the bedroom, opening bureau drawers, checking under the mattress, feeling for any mysterious seams along the bare walls that would hint at hidden cabinets or doors, but came up empty handed. Not that he’d expect a serendipitous key to be laying around, but it would be a shame to overlook one should it exist. Someone had also gone through the trouble of emptying out his pockets, and Owen shivered at the thought of unknown hands crawling over him.
A sudden queasy ripple passed through his body and Owen groaned, bending double as bones creaked ominously and meaty bits shifted around inside of him.
What should he do? What could he do? The bedroom door was sturdy, but not impossible to break through in his current state. It’d be easy enough to avoid the silver parts, and even if not, silver burns would heal with time. But if he broke through… then what? Assumedly this was a house of some kind, which either meant more people were inside it or there was a whole neighborhood full of potential victims outside the front doors. He did still have about two and a half hours before he Changed. Enough time to run away from civilization, to seclude himself in nearby woods and minimize the damage he could do. Maybe. Or maybe he’d run out and find he was at the heart of a city, a jungle of concrete and metal and bodies pressed in on him like so much penned sheep.
If he stayed put then his captor, assumedly the woman with the soft voice, was as good as dead. So would anyone else in the house. The thought scared Owen. Such certain brutality he would commit but be unaware of doing. But there was apparently a demon to contend with, one in his captor’s service if she was to be believed…
A scream sliced through his divided thoughts and Owen’s head snapped towards the sound. The voice was familiar, a painful rasp from somewhere in the depths of the house but which Owen’s sensitive ears picked up on at the edges of his hearing. Chest tight with dread Owen rushed over and pressed his ear to the opposite wall.
“Hello,” he bellowed, trying to be heard through who knew how many layers of wooden walls and furnishings. “Hello, is someone there?” He didn’t say a name for fear of fate taking his suggestion.
A moment of silence that wasn’t really, his ears picking up on the creak of shifting floorboards, pacing footsteps, a sticky thing being put down.
Then, Owen?
“Val,” Owen yelled in surprise at his friend’s voice echoing faintly through his mind. Not who he had been expecting, and relief flooded Owen’s chest quickly followed by a different kind of fear. “Val, are you okay? Do you know what’s going on?”
There was an uncomfortable sensation of… something grasping at Owen’s mind, like a hand scrambling for purchase on a slick cliff’s edge, accompanied by a jumble of mumbled half words in Val’s voice and a sudden spike of sourceless pain in Owen’s throat, a burning thirst that made an unpleasant kinship with the pangs of the Change already tormenting his body.
“Val I- I didn’t catch that,” Owen called, pressing his ear more firmly against the wall as if that would help him better receive a psychic message.
Sorry, Val said, the word faint but giving the mental impression of being yelled through a long tunnel. I think you’re testing the limits of my range.
“Yell again, I’ll hear you!”
Ah, well, that wasn’t exactly me, Val clarified and again Owen felt that searing pain in his throat that wasn’t really his own. I’m in a room with Raquel and she’s… she’s lost a lot of blood. She tried to explain how to make a tourniquet but I fucked it up, put it in the wrong spot or something and–
Val’s voice warbled away into silence and Owen roared in distress. He’d known it was Raquel’s voice. He’d heard her scream in agony from visions enough times that the sound was etched into his memory. But now she was injured, bleeding out in a room with Val, and Owen thought of the pain in his throat that had disappeared along with Val’s projected voice and terror and sympathy clawed at his insides for what he knew Val was fighting against and what Raquel had no choice but to endure being trapped with.
“Val,” Owen bellowed, aware of the sound of footsteps fast approaching his door and the accompanying red human smell tantalizing his nose again. “Val, what’s going on? Is Raquel okay?”
“What are you doing,” his captor snapped from the other side of the door, voice no longer soft and smug. “Knock that racket off at once!”
“You have my friends,” Owen continued to bellow, and there was something cathartic in the noise. “You’ve kidnapped my friends and one of them is injured!”
A moment of hesitation, perhaps as she wondered how he’d found out about this bit of information from a locked room, before she responded coldly, “That’s none of your concern.”
Something inside of Owen snarled at her callous tone, drove him forward to pound on the door so that it shook in its frame and prompted a pig-like squeal from his captor just on the other side. The orange smell of fear mingled with the red. Was it Owen’s imagination, or were his teeth sharper as his lips pulled back over them?
“It is! And I may not know what you’re planning here, but I’m guessing it needs all of us to be alive to work. Otherwise we’d all be dead already.” Owen took in a steadying breath, let it out through clenched teeth, tried to make his voice calm and reasonable like his sister’s. Indisputable. “You need Raquel alive, at least for longer than she will be if only Val’s there to help her. Put me in the same room as them and I can help. Stabilize her until you don’t need us anymore.”
A pause wherein his captor’s heartbeat was like thunder in Owen’s keen ears. “I thought you wanted to escape your cage, beast? What happened to all the hollow words about getting away from here so you wouldn’t hurt anyone? Surely being in the same room as your friends of all people is the last thing you want.”
On cue another spasm rocked through Owen’s limbs, twisting muscles so that he had to bite back a scream. Less than two hours now. Less than two hours until everyone in this house was dead. But Raquel already had less time than that. And Owen had heard the undercurrent of panic in Val’s thoughts, felt a hint of the unbearable thirst he was enduring. They were in trouble and if Owen could help then there was no question here. And if things got bad… well, then Val would know what to do.
“If I don’t help, Raquel will be dead long before I Change,” Owen reasoned. “If I’m with her to help slow down her blood loss she at least has that much more time. And so do you for whatever you’re planning.”
Silence. The sound of fingers tapping.
“I promise not to fight back or run away,” Owen begged, forehead pressed to the cool wood of the door. “Please, please let me help them.”
More silence, every second grating on Owen’s already frayed nerves. Eventually there was a rustle of fabric, footsteps as his captor shuffled away from the door and stopped.
“I have need of you, Shuelat,” she whispered, and immediately there was a rushing sound of a high wind that came to an abrupt stop and her red human scent was joined by something smelling of orange interwoven with streaks of gold. Warm and vibrant, a living smell touched with the bitter notes of ashes from a bonfire and sun soaked sand. The same smell from right before Owen had been knocked unconscious.
“Yes, Mistress.” A clipped masculine voice. Smooth English accent in contrast to the woman’s American one.
“I want you to take the beast and put him with the others,” she said in hushed tones. A zipper being undone, something small being taken out. “If he tries anything, use all of it. There should be enough this time to keep him unconscious until the moon fully rises.”
Owen imagined a syringe of ketamine exchanging hands and shivered.
“Yes, Mistress.”
“You didn’t tell me the woman was awake,” his captor groused, and Owen recognized the critical tone of someone who made sure to maintain a healthy distance between themselves and the “help”.
“I was unaware she was, Mistress.”
“Honestly, decades of service and you still can’t think past the nose on your face,” she muttered. “After bringing the beast to the room I want you to make sure all three of them are good and secure before you collect the necromancer. Kill the woman if you need to make a show of force, but only the woman. It won’t do for all of them to be dead before she gets here.”
Owen’s heart leapt into his throat.
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Very good.” She stepped back to the door, her voice returning to its normal volume. “I’m going to open the door and have you escorted to the others’ room. If you try to escape, if any of you try to escape or fight back or do anything untoward, you will be restrained again and the woman will be killed. Assuming your vampiric friend hasn’t already done so,” she added with that same undertone of smug relish, as if the notion amused her, and Owen had to fight down the urge to claw the door open and growl in her face.
Instead he nodded, head light with relief. “Yes, yes, I promise I won’t do anything, please just let me help them.”
“Step back from the door,” she commanded and Owen complied. About a minute passed before a key slid into the lock and the knob turned, opening the door to reveal a wisp of a woman, skin flimsy as sallow onion paper and covered in fine wrinkles that puckered her mouth and eyes. She barely reached Owen’s waist yet held herself with the domineering mien of one who was used to being catered to. Snow white hair was pulled into a tight pun at the crown of her head and she was dressed in a loose fitting day dress and fuzzy cardigan in complementing shades of pink and red.
“Come out slowly, arms up,” she continued and again Owen did as instructed, hand and residual elbow raised in submission as he stepped out into a musty hallway.
He could now see that hovering just behind the elderly woman was a young man, perhaps a few years older than Owen himself, the source of the orange and gold smell. He was of a wiry build and a good deal shorter than Owen (although to be fair most people were), wearing a worn but respectable jean jacket and heavy boots, his long dark hair tied back to reveal eyes like molten gold in a chiseled, warm brown face. Heat radiated off the man in waves, and Owen’s gaze slid down to where he cradled a long syringe in one hand.
The woman tipped her head towards her companion. “He will escort you to the others and make sure you’re all settled. With force if necessary.”
Owen nodded, heart hammering against his ribcage. Raquel was running out of time and he had no intention of wasting what was left.
“Carry on then,” she demanded, waving a dismissive hand at the man. His lips pressed together into a severe line before he bowed slightly at the waist, golden eyes never wavering from the woman’s face.
“As you desire, Mistress,” he murmured before gesturing with his empty hand for Owen to walk in front of him towards one end of the hallway.
Owen quickly did as directed, noting that the woman continued on in the opposite direction. The hallway was bare, without a trace of window or decoration to break up the uniform mahogany paneling. Their footsteps kicked up a cloud of dust from the threadbare carpeting, and the general design of the vaulted ceilings and intricate baseboards put Owen in mind of the lovely Queen Anne houses the cirque would see when touring through the New England area in America. DC wasn’t all that far away from New England. Perhaps the others weren’t that far away. But that was no doubt part of the plan if the necromancer they were after was who he suspected it was…
A wet tearing noise followed by a familiar shriek reached Owen’s ears and he almost bolted toward the sound before remembering the man (Demon? He certainly had the eyes of one, but the smell was off…) with the heavy syringe behind him, his presence an oppressive heat baking into Owen’s back. His body shuddered with impatience and discomfort from the coming Change, but Owen held on as the two of them continued their silent walk through a maze of corridors.
The wet sound was getting louder and more insistent when the man came to a stop, pointing to an unassuming door like the countless others they’d passed but which Owen could smell a strong current of scent wafting out from under. Deep human red and the light gray he associated with the undead, but with faint red threads spread throughout. Raquel and Val..
“One moment,” the man said, bringing up his free hand and tracing an intricate pattern in the air before the closed door. Sparks crackled under his fingernails, trailing behind his gestures to form glowing white sigils of blue tinged flame. The gold colored scent around the man intensified as the sigiled pulsed and smaller symbols flared to life in response at the doorknob and four corners of the door. It reminded Owen of the protective wards Val maintained at the entrance of his penthouse and Owen briefly wondered what would have actually happened if he had tried to break his way out of his room before.
Something moved on the other side of the door, and Val’s voice sounded in Owen’s head once more. I don’t suppose that’s room service?
The sound was much stronger than before now that Owen was closer, and given the man’s surprised expression it wasn’t limited to Owen’s mind.
“No,” the man said stiffly. “I’m bringing over your friend to help with the woman’s injuries.”
“It’s going to be okay Val,” Owen reassured him even as another spasm twisted his guts. “Just do what he says and we’ll be able to help each other through this.”
The man’s molten gold gaze cut to Owen before dropping abruptly to the ground, a muscle jumping in his jaw. His grip on the syringe tightened.
Owen! Val’s tone swerved between relief and panic, and Owen was overcome by the sensation of his friend’s mind pressing down on his own. Owen, I’m only speaking to you now. I’m hurt, no weapons, but still able to throw down as a meat shield if nothing else. Can we rush this guy and escape? Cough once for yes, twice for no, I’ll hear you from there.
“Both of you stand back from the door,” the man instructed at the same time, unaware of the one way mental conversation going on. “If any of you try to force your way out you will be subdued, and I have been instructed to kill the woman if necessary.”
Charming, Val quipped and the man flinched. Switching back to just Owen, Val asked, voice firm, Can we take him and get Raquel out? Yes or no?
If only he could swap places with Adrienne in this moment. His sister always had a plan, always knew just what to do. Instead everything was riding on Owen this time, his mind swimming with fear and panic as the Change agonizingly consumed his body bit by bit. There were only seconds to act but Owen couldn’t think beyond getting inside the room and tending to Raquel’s wounds. Val was always up for a fight, but could he hold his own against a possible demon? Owen certainly couldn’t, and if they lost then Raquel would go from wounded to dead and none of them could fix that.
Owen coughed twice, the man distracted as he kept talking. “Do you understand?”
Yeah, Val sighed in both their heads. Yeah, I understand. No funny business.
“Yes, I understand,” Owen echoed, both relieved and guilty at his choice.
“Okay.” The man gestured Owen towards the door. “Everyone inside the room keep back, your friend is coming in. I’ll be locking the door immediately after him.”
The man tapped a finger against the doorknob. There was another gold spark then an audible click as the lock slid back. After a moment of hesitation the man reached out and turned the silver knob, making eye contact with Owen as he pulled the door open.
