Discover Top Posts Tagged with #whimmortal

Apr 2

TIMING: late at night, sometime before first (d)ates. LOCATION: downtown. PARTIES: @whimmortal & @vengeancedemon. SUMMARY: jenny is looking for a snack. emilio stops her from finding one. CONTENT WARNINGS: tongue horror.

Ever since the surge where Jenny had killed three gym-goers without hesitation, control had been hard to come in. As in, even harder than before, and the bar had been low already. While bags of blood somewhat tided her over, there was a continuous itch in her mouth and being that demanded she go out in search of something fresher. At least her bulk order of Axe Black Vanilla had come in, which meant she’d been spraying the disgustingly scented deodorant in a handkerchief and sniffing it to keep her from losing her mind completely.

But instincts were hard to fight and it seemed the deodorant did little when she was not yet going mad with hunger. There was no avoiding these things unless she did to herself what Owen had, and locked herself away.

So Jenny had slipped. Or maybe she had given in. She had never been very good at fighting herself, at not letting herself do what she had wanted. As a human she’d done plenty of things in excess, had been reckless and stupid in the name of her whims, and so now it was hard to be strict to herself. To tell herself to stay put and just watch the television, just sniff her stupid deodorant and hope that somehow she’d learn control the next time she met up with Metzli.

She’d gone out the door. She had put on shoes – something she’d get stuck on later, when she’d argue with herself to tell herself that she had no part in these moments of lost control – and she had let instinct guide her. She’d driven her car to a shadier part of town, not wanting to keep sewing death and despair in her own neighborhood. She had leaned her head against the steering wheel for three minutes, tops, before getting out the car and gritting her teeth.

It was dark out. That was the only time she saw the world these days: when it was dark out. Jenny looked at the way the streetlights reflected onto the watery street and found some kind of beauty in it. That was a depressing thought — that she found something so stupid pretty now, because she’d been locked in her house so much. She shook her head and started moving. It didn’t take long for her to find someone to set her sights on. It was like she had heard the heartbeat before she’d seen them, and once she did, she was walking in tandem behind them. She felt her tongue grow, saliva filling her mouth as she focused on the blood pushing through the veins. She inhaled sharply, its smell stronger than any of the others around her. She started moving faster, tongue falling out her mouth as control slipped away.

—

He didn’t like being in his apartment much, these days. In the immediate aftermath of his death, he’d found something almost like comfort in between the familiar four walls, though perhaps it had been the isolation that appealed to him more than anything else. He’d liked the quiet of it, liked knowing that he was alone in a way he’d believed (and still believed) he probably deserved to be. He’d liked, too, that no one had known to look for him there yet, that everyone whose calls and texts he’d been ignoring had been knocking on Teddy’s door instead of his. It was a selfish notion, of course, pushing all that off on someone he was also ignoring, but Emilio was a selfish man. He had been then, and he was now, too. He’d liked his apartment for the anonymity of it, liked feeling as though he could disappear within it.

But it didn’t feel that way now.

There were claw marks on the wall beside the door from the November surge, from the moment control had slipped and he’d shoved his way through the already-broken door and broken it more. There was blood staining the floorboards, and he no longer remembered where half of it came from. And there was a spot on the couch where Teagan had laid Arden’s body while Emilio went to fetch her cat that he couldn’t stop looking at. His apartment didn’t feel as safe as it had back then, didn’t feel as comforting. It was a tomb, still, but it was no longer a tomb where he was the only thing buried. It felt stifling.

So he was out. In the streets, in the dead of night, holding a stake with no idea if he actually intended to use it or if it was just there to give his hands something to do. He twirled it absently between his fingers, thoughtlessly spinning it around in a way that spoke of experience that could only come with years of practice. His mother used to hate when he did this, used to slap at his hands and scold him for treating a weapon like a toy, but Emilio had never quite been able to stop himself. (He’d been a kid, hadn’t he? Everything was a toy to a child. It was supposed to be.) There weren’t many people out at this hour, and that was a good thing. Late night crowds had thinned since the last surge; he thought Eve would probably be glad for it.

But thin crowds were not nonexistent crowds, and some people still wandered. Emilio caught sight of one now, a stumbling, drunk woman carrying heels in her hands. She was walking towards a nearby apartment building; Emilio walked parallel, pretending to look at his phone. He’d make sure she made it inside, at least.

There was a movement out of the corner of his eye. He saw something approaching the woman quickly, limbs hanging down and — no, wait. Not limbs. A tongue. Emilio grimaced, remembering his conversation with Henri. Upior. And, given the rarity of them, likely the very same upior that had taken Henri’s arm. Emilio moved towards it as quickly as his bad leg would allow, knocking it to the side before its tongue could touch the woman whose headphones made her oblivious to the whole ordeal.

—

She was not able to see the parallel in front of her. Even as it slapped her in the face, she ignored it — the woman who walked the street with her heels in her hand, losing herself in the music playing on her headphones. How often had Jenny walked like that? After a one night stand where she did not want to spend the night? After a night of dancing where melancholy had dragged her down and the tipsy haze had turned into a drunken depression? How often had she walked like that and felt unsafe, somewhere in the corner of her consciousness, and kept walking? The cold pavement underneath her feet rather than the inside of a cab? For the sake of poetry, perhaps, or for the sake of giving into a sad kind of instinct.

She had been that woman. She had been the woman she’d killed the night she had severed Henri’s arm from his body, too. Before, when she had only dreamed of vampirism, she had imagined that she might become a femme fatale of sorts. One who went after men that crossed lines, that were aware of their daunting presence and used it for their advantage. Who cut down the human predators. But that had been a fantasy from before she had killed. And that had been before instinct became stronger than ideas.

She did not go after the woman for any other reason than her smelling good. Her blood was sweet and infused with alcohol. She wore a perfume that had mingled with her sweat, making the fruity scent all the more appealing. She was easy prey, perhaps that was a thing her instinct had caught up on too.

Jenny swung her tongue to and fro. As if warming up the muscle that went unused so often, that only ever got to come out when she drank from her blood bags and tried to keep the mess minimal. Then it moved forward, intending to hook around the woman’s waist, but she missed. Something knocked her to the side, tongue swinging against a streetlight in stead and her focus redirected to the source of the knock. A man. That could work, too.

—

The upior’s tongue hit a streetlight, and its attention turned towards Emilio as the woman continued on her way. She didn’t know of the threat, still, wasn’t hurrying to get away from it. He didn’t know if this was a good thing or a bad one. On one hand, it meant she wasn’t making a quick exit that might save her even if the upior took Emilio out of commission. On the other, it meant he wouldn’t have to call Eve and tell her someone out there had seen an upior and gotten away at the end of the night. (Eve, he thought, should stay far away from this one. He could only imagine how it’d weigh on her, given the Henri of it all.)

For now, though, he could not focus on the woman and her slow, unknowing escape. He needed to put all of his attention on the beast in front of him, lest he, too, end up with one less limb. (Or without a head. That was a messy option to consider, too.)

The upior turned to him, and he recognized it — recognized her. He’d already deduced that it was likely the same one who’d attacked Henri, but seeing her face now confirmed it. Jenny, the girl he’d argued with in an elevator, the girl he’d lectured about vampirism when he was much more newly undead himself, the girl who had died a slow and painful death because no one knew how to help her, the girl who tore Henri’s arm from his body and left him for dead. He thought of what it felt like to die, alone and afraid. He thought of himself in that dumpster, and how Jenny must have felt something similar wherever she’d been when the infection finally took her. And he thought of Eve, too. He thought of the way she’d looked when the text came through to announce Henri’s survival, of how she’d looked so much smaller than he’d ever seen her before. He thought of Henri, who told him it did not matter that he was undead because he was decent.

He thought of the way Henri thought Jenny decent, too.

He balanced himself on his good leg, trading his stake for a rosary and a vial of holy water. He would not kill the upior. Not unless Henri asked him to, not unless he said that that was what he wanted. If Henri thought Jenny deserved a second chance, what could Emilio do but give her one? He was a creature born of vengeance, but what right did he have to deny someone else’s willingness to forgive if that was what they chose? Henri did not want Jenny dead, and so Emilio would not kill her. He’d find another way, even if he was a little uncertain about it.

“Okay,” he said, tilting his chin upwards slightly as if to invite the upior to attack. “Let’s go, then. Come and try to take a bite of me. I don’t think the taste will agree with you, but it’s the only meal you’re going to find tonight.”

—

Sparks flew from the streetlight she’d hit, but she barely bothered to look up towards it. Sparks were not something she could consume. They were not something she could sink her teeth into or lash her tongue at with any satisfaction. All Jenny learned was not to crack her tongue against the streetlight again and to focus on what was ahead of her. The man she recognized in a far off corner in her mind — his name was Emilio, he had been an asshole to her in an elevator, he was a slayer, he had helped her. Those facts were not registered in an orderly fashion, though. The recognition in stead came to her as a wave of something negative. This was a man who conjured bad feelings. This was a man she should not hold back around.

He was talking, using the most futile of human words to a woman in a frenzy. They meant nothing to her. They were meant to provoke and perhaps that goal was reached, as her attention was solely on this opponent, and not on the ignorant woman who continued to walk away from them. Whatever Emilio was saying about how he tasted, though? It went unconsidered.

Jenny had never been too good a listener to begin with. And now, blinded with desire, she was more intent on finding out how Emilio tasted herself. Saliva dripped from her lips, onto the ground, and she moved forward. The other had clear height on her (who didn’t?), but Jenny had strength and that fifth appendage. Her tongue swept at his legs, intending to slice through fabric and skin and undo his balance. Some of his blood clung to her tongue and it moved towards her mouth, seemingly folding in on itself so she could have a taste. It was thick and tasted off, but it did little to sway her from jumping forward, pouncing onto him.

—

He’d fought upiors before. Not often — they were a rare thing, after all, not the sort of monster you ran into every day — but often enough that it felt familiar. His brother’s voice echoed in his head, tight and serious the way it always had been when he’d been passing along information to his less studious siblings. Avoid the tongue. It’s sharp, and it’s the best weapon they’ve got. Keep your distance. The teeth are a problem, too, and the strength, but the tongue is the biggest issue.

Of course, all of Edgar’s instructions tended to come with the obvious downfall: his brother’s advice hinged on the assumption that the slayer fighting the upior intended to kill it in the end. He used to advise the use of crossbows to launch wooden stakes through upiors’ hearts from a distance, used to tell Emilio to cut the tongue off if he could to leave it without an advantage to use against him. Cutting its head off is the last resort, Edgar had said once, because you have to get closer than you want to for that. But Emilio knew he couldn’t kill Jenny. Not when Henri and Rosemary and Jade had all fought so hard to keep her alive.

That didn’t mean he could let her kill him, either, of course. He cursed as that tongue shot towards him, stumbling back as sharp pain echoed through his legs. Not as bad as it could’ve been; superficial, mostly, but enough to draw blood. Blood that coated her tongue now as she dragged it back to her mouth, getting a taste of him. Emilio didn’t know how fury blood tasted to a feral vampire; he knew Henri’s blood would have been like acid on her gums, but she’d still taken his arm. He couldn’t assume anything here, couldn’t fool himself into thinking she wouldn’t take one of his limbs, or his head. He had to fight smart.

Holy water it was, then.

He yanked a vial of it from his pocket as she pounced onto him, grunting as his back hit the ground. He had a second, maybe two. He used the brief time to yank the vial open and shove it into her mouth, avoiding the sharp tongue and sharp teeth as best he could.

—

Bloodlust blinded the upior. Not only that, but rage too — she had been close to getting a proper meal, to sinking her tongue and teeth into supple flesh and devouring a person whole. But in stead there was Emilio, whose blood taste wrong for a reason Jenny did not understand (and that wasn't just because of her frenzied status) and who was putting up a fight. He did not taste like Henri. Duller in stead, maybe a little rotten. Not acidic.

Though she was a predator now, she was no fighter. She found no pleasure in the hunt, only found pleasure in the devourment. Anger was a worthy motivator, but hunger was larger and more demanding. Jenny wanted to cut through Emilio so she could return to the woman walking, whose blood had smelled sweet and promising. In her mind's eye she pictured the mess she could make, the redness that would spray from the woman once she cut an artery. In stead there was black, thick blood on her tongue and someone refusing across from her.

On him now, she was getting closer to her goal. Stop her attacker and move on so she could give into her deepest desire. She wielded her tongue, ready to slice at the muscle and sinew and bones keeping his head connected to his neck, but found herself stopped.

Something was stuck down her throat. Before she could spit it out, liquid was spilling from it. Over her tongue, down her throat, spilling past her lips. It burned. Jenny hissed, backing away as her tongue retreated again. She reached into her mouth, cutting herself on the barbs as she pulled out the vial. More water dripped down her hand and she roared, furious and perhaps a tinge whiny, tossing the glass aside and hearing it turn into shards. She started wiping at her tongue, as if trying to clean it, not wanting holes to burn into it — because that was certainly how it felt.

—

The holy water was effective, though perhaps not quite to the extent he’d wished for. He’d wanted, on some level, for it to act like an instant deterrent; for the water to spill onto her tongue and morph it back into a more human shape, for her to spit the broken vial through dull teeth and murmur an apology for having lost control. Of course, he probably should have known better. It wasn’t so easy to break a monster from its frenzy. If it were, Henri would still have two arms with which to fight.

There were ways, of course. Edgar had spoken of strong scents, and Jade had mentioned something similar. He didn’t know, though, if there was only one specific scent that would work for each upior, if anything else he tried would be a lost cause. And he didn’t have anything particularly strong-smelling on him, either; there was a flask of cheap whiskey tucked into the inside pocket of his jacket, but he doubted the stench of it would be enough to knock sense into an upior. He’d have to keep up the fight and hope that, with enough knocks to the head, Jenny would come back to herself. (He’d also have to hope that this frenzy was an accidental occurrence rather than a planned feeding.)

She backed away, wiping desperately at her tongue to get rid of the burning liquid. It gave Emilio enough time to get his feet back underneath him, black blood still staining his jeans and bad knee screaming its bitter protest. He yanked another vial of holy water from his jacket, opening it and flinging it in her direction. His other hand found a rosary, and he wrapped the string around his wrist and moved towards her. If he could get her on the ground and trap her in a headlock, he could keep her jaw forced shut. Maybe that would be enough to keep her still long enough to calm down. Maybe it wouldn’t. There was really only one way to find out.

Moving forward as quickly as he could manage, Emilio went to tackle the upior to the ground, hoping he could avoid the damn tongue long enough to put his plan into action.

—

As she moved to try and get all the holy water from her tongue, Jenny cut open her hands with the barbs on her tongue, though it did not seem to stir her much. Her tolerance for pain had always been incredibly low, each and every ache a terrible thing. But that had changed since dying, as if she had then reached the most harrowing pain then and upon being reborn, had gained a new relationship with it. There was still physical suffering, but when in a state like this, it was just an obstacle to move past, rather than something that slammed her down.

The wounds on her hands would heal, but she was afraid that the acidic liquid would burn right through her most useful bodypart. Her own blood stained her tongue now, but it was nowhere near satisfying — she could sense the aftertaste of bagged blood, like the dregs of old coffee that would never sate her. Distracted by the mingling tastes of dead blood, her own blood and the holy water, she did not see the vial coming until it crashed against her, liquid leaking down her forehead. A screech left her mouth, rage and pain echoing through the street.

She met Emilio with an attempt to attack him halfway, though it was he who had started the move first. With the cross aimed at her, she could do nothing but back away in tandem with his movement, like a magnet pushed back. The irony was lost on her. Just last year, she had stolen holy water from a church and had start wearing cross necklaces hidden down her shirt. And now here she was, folding under both.

Her back slammed against the ground and if her lungs had any function, she would have had the air knocked out of her. Jenny looked at the man on top of her and moved her tongue, though it kept swishing away from the rosary every time she got close. Frustrated, she dug her nails into the softness of his sides in stead, attempting to throw him off.

—

He managed to get her on the ground, her body repelled by the rosary wrapped tightly around his wrist. He kept it aimed at her, following her tongue with it to keep the appendage from getting too close to him. It occurred to him that, from his current position, killing her would be easy. He had a stake in his pocket, and he knew exactly where to stick it. He’d done it a thousand times before. He knew which ribs to tuck it between, knew which angle to drive it in at, knew exactly how much strength it would take to get it through the chest wall and into the heart. He could do it now, and it would be instinct. She’d collapse into a puddle of blood underneath him, and she’d never hurt anyone else again.

But… he thought of Henri. He thought of the way he had lost so much to this upior, and still wanted to help her. He thought of Jade. He thought of how, a few years ago, she’d have killed Jenny without thinking and now, she told Emilio that they ought to give her a second chance. He thought of Owen, who’d once stood over him when he’d sat on the floor of the slayer’s living room covered in more blood than he could cope with and told him that he couldn’t kill him for spilling it. He could kill Jenny. It would be easy. But maybe easy wasn’t always good. Maybe Emilio, in the absence of his own heart, should listen to other people’s hearts instead.

The stakes stayed in his pocket, the rosary continued its dance with the upior’s deadly tongue. Rather than reaching for a more deadly weapon, Emilio used his free hand to shove upwards on the bottom of Jenny’s jaw, trying to force her mouth closed. The tongue would still be a problem, but maybe the pain of her teeth clamped around it would shake her back into a less frenzied state.

He grunted as her fingernails dug into his side, the grip sharp and bruising. It was lucky she wasn’t something a little more like him, otherwise there would have been claws to contend with. Had it been another fury beneath him, they could have sliced him open with their fingers alone, could have spilled his intestines onto the sidewalk. As it was, Jenny’s fingernails were one of the few remaining human things about her. They were uncomfortable, but Emilio lived with far worse discomforts on the daily. He pushed the feeling aside, focused on his goal instead. Disarm. Distract. Discombobulate. With enough luck, it would be enough to shake her from this state.

—

Her clawing at him was desperate, an attempt at regaining control that was almost human. Though heightened strength now resided within Jenny, it was with her tongue and her teeth that she was able to do most damage. Technique was lost on her and though her fingers were still capable of doing some kind of damage, she was only digging into flesh. She tore through some of the fabric of the other’s shirt, at least, and there was something to say for the manicure she carefully upheld that might cause some mild lacerations. Her sturdy, long almond-shaped nails were sharp enough.

But her tongue was useless, moving away from the cross as if it could sense it. And there was a hand at her jaw, pressing upwards. Her own teeth, sharp and sturdy as they were, sliced into her tongue. A noise moved past the meaty muscle, straining past the blood she was causing herself to pour. It was one of anger and pain, her own blood seeping back into her throat. It was not satiating. It was not like when she’d been on the verge of transformation and had drank her own blood with desperation. Jenny knew what good blood tasted like now. She wanted it.

What could she do to get blood now though? There were only two sources of it near her — she herself and Emilio. The human she had been hunting (that did seem to be the right term, even if she would never use it herself) was far gone now, her heartbeat as distant as the wing beat of a bird far up in the sky.

The pain of her own teeth sinking into her tongue was too much and though she tried to open her mouth wide to undo it, she failed. Jenny’s tongue retreated back into her mouth, sliding past the cross, slithering past Emilio’s and her own face. She sliced it on the way in and started struggling against the hand at her jaw, hands reaching up. No words left her mouth, her humanity still too far to get to that point — but there seemed to be something calming within her now that there were no beating hearts around.

—

It was lucky that upiors didn’t boast claws to go with their teeth and tongues. The nails digging into his skin were too blunt to go particularly deep, though they would still leave scratches that looked like echoes of clawmarks. They wouldn’t be particularly hard to explain away even to someone who knew nothing about his background as a hunter given his other leisure activities. Easy enough to pretend things like this to be the result of a rough roll in the sheets rather than whatever this was. Emilio wasn’t sure what term to assign it. Was it mercy, the fact that he did not plan for this to end with her dissolving to blood beneath him? Or was it little more than delaying the inevitable?

Whatever she’d been doing tonight, whether this hunt had been a planned event or a simple matter of someone with a clumsy grasp on control losing hold of it, it was not sustainable. Emilio could spare her tonight, Henri could say he did not want her killed for what she had done to him, but what of the next slayer that happened upon her? Or what about the next human who she happened upon? He could calm her down, could force her back into herself, could hold her still so that she would not hurt anyone tonight, but he couldn’t do the same tomorrow. He couldn’t be there next week, next month, next year. There would be other people like the woman who had obliviously retreated tonight, other people like Henri. Maybe another like Jenny, too — someone who did not die when her tongue jabbed into their flesh, but who became like her instead. Was it a good thing, keeping the stake out of her chest? Or was it just like pressing pause?

The tongue began its retreat, and Emilio brandished his rosary to make sure it would not get too close to him as it did so. The nails digging into his flesh he could live with, but he did not want to lose a limb as Henri had. He didn’t particularly want to lose his head and be the source of an explosion in the middle of town, either, if only because he knew it’d be a headache for Eve to cover up.

He didn’t let up his grip on her jaw, still holding it shut even as her hands moved up to meet his and claw him there, too. Of course it hurt, but Emilio was built to take this. “I can sit here all fucking day,” he muttered, jaw tight as if gritting his teeth helped him keep hers shut, too. “Might as well settle.”

—

Her hunger was born from a need for blood. She was hungry, ravenous, and though that instinct was not one easily beaten, the transformation from something human to something monstrous was ruled by the presence of blood. She had acted on instinct when she had made her way to this street, had let her hunger guide her, but it hadn’t been until she had set her sights onto that woman that her tongue had grown and her humanity had slipped. The very presence of her impossible to ignore pulse had driven her out of her puny human form and into something stronger.

But she was gone now. It was just Jenny and Emilio, her manicured fingers digging at his hands, drawing the blood that smelled rotten to her now. It would not satiate her. It would not be enjoyable the way human food could be now, even if it lacked nutrition. There was only him, his scent, the lack of something moving underneath his veins.

Ever since her transformation, she had gained what she often branded a new sense. There were times where she could visualize someone’s heart pumping blood around. She could practically see oxygen-rich blood travel through the body only to return to the heart for another pick me up. She could hear the thrum of arteries in the neck, in the thigh, in the wrist. She could sense the heart, beating a steady rhythm or even an unsteady one, depending on the situation. But there was nothing now. If she was more herself, or rather, if she was more grounded and more curious about others around her, she might have paid more attention to it.

In stead, Jenny returned to herself. Her tongue shrunk back to its usual size in her mouth. She felt like a rubber band snapped against the base of her neck, jolting her back to a mind that was more rational (though not all that rational altogether). She felt the hand pressing down at her jaw with more pressure now, as if her strength had left her along with her fury. Her hands dropped from where she’d been scratching him and attempted to push at Emilio. The man from the elevator. His scent was still bad. “Get off me,” she whined, petrified at the scene she had found herself in. She tasted no blood on her tongue, at least no human blood. She just saw him. “Get off!”

—

Slowly, something shifted. The tongue he was chasing away from his skin with his uncle’s rosary began to shrink, growing smaller and less deadly even as he continued to trail behind its path with the beads. The hands scratching at his arm with blunt, human nails grew less frenzied, less like an animal caught in a trap. The struggles against his grip were bled dry of their desperation, like the fight had seeped from the upior’s chest onto the sidewalk to disintegrate under the dull light of the streetlamp hanging above their heads.

There was a monster, or maybe there were two. There had been a victim, though Emilio did not think she had ever really been aware of either of them. She was gone now, long vanished into the dark of night none the wiser that she’d come so close to losing her life on an empty street. Tomorrow, he thought, maybe she would unconsciously take a different path home, or maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d be slaughtered just up the street by someone else, or would fall a year from now. Maybe it would still be Jenny that killed her, by some great coincidence. But tonight, that woman wouldn’t die to this upior. It felt so small in the grand scheme of things.

Jenny spoke, her voice taking on a quality utterly unfamiliar to Emilio. Whining was not the sort of thing he’d grown accustomed to. Even as a toddler, his daughter had known better than to try it, had known that hunters could not afford this sort of thing. He grit his teeth, unfairly bitter towards Jenny for not having learned the same lesson even if it wasn’t right to feel this way at all. (Nothing Emilio ever felt was right; he knew that.)

He didn’t loosen his grip just yet, didn’t quite trust her not to take off after the woman even if he understood that she hadn’t been in full control of herself when they’d fought. “If I don’t,” he said flatly, “are you going to take my arm off? Or do you only do that to people who are trying to help you?”

—

Emilio held onto her, keeping her against the pavement, and funnily enough Jenny thought of her living room floor and Metzli. Was she still allowed to think back to that, when she had ripped people apart and pressed their torn apart bodies against the ground? Was there any merit in such a parallel when she was the blood-hungry one now? But even if she had no right to it, even if there was nothing about this scene where she was victim like she had been then, her body still felt tense underneath Emilio’s grip.

Perhaps if she exercised her full strength, which was quite impressive these days for someone of her stature, she could throw him off. But she did not try, in stead wriggling pathetically and looking up at him to gauge the threat. As if she wasn’t the threat. Even when he poked at the wound on Henri’s body, reminding her of a transgression that she wanted to keep as secret as she could, she did not recognize the danger she was.

She was just a young woman being held down and being chastised in a cruel way. Jenny heard another whine come from her throat. She tasted something foul on her tongue as the sound moved up and she tried to swallow it away. Whatever implications came with that she did not examine just yet.

“I don’t do that on purpose,” she exclaimed in lieu for an explanation, “I don’t — I won’t hurt you.” But she had wanted to hurt that woman, hadn’t she? Not any more, it certainly was a past want, but she had. Jenny had not wanted to rip Henri’s arm off either, but she had certainly wanted something when she’d done that. She looked over Emilio’s face, trying to get a read of the other, trying to piece together the jumbled mess of memory of the past hour. She’d left her house, she’d gotten in her car, she’d driven here, or had been driven here by bloodlust. If there was even a distance. “I won’t — just let me go! I want to go home.” She moved her hands to try and shove at Emilio once again. “Get off.”

—

She certainly seemed back to herself, identical to the version of her Emilio had not quite gotten to know in earnest before she went from being a victim to a problem. He’d only met her in person once before her death, but he recalled the online conversations; the ones he’d had with her as well as the ones he’d seen her have publicly with others. The way she spoke now seemed to align with that, and with the woman from the elevator. He had not particularly liked either version, not the one he’d seen online or the one he’d met in the elevator to Netherville, but he thought both preferable to the monster whose tongue ripped Henri’s arm from its body.

Hesitantly, he eased his weight off of her just a fraction, just to see what would happen. When her jaw did not unhinge and her tongue did not shoot out like a deadly weapon, he relaxed a little and rolled off of her. He did not put the rosary away, did not stop looking at her as if she was a bomb that might explode at any moment. He didn’t trust her, and he didn’t trust her control, either.

“Well,” he said dryly, “if you didn’t mean to, I suppose it is no harm, hm?” There was a hint of bitterness to the tone, a quiet anger he tried to swallow. It was Henri’s right to react however he chose to what had happened to him. Emilio was trying to follow his lead. It was just the kind of thing that was far easier said than done. Slowly — painfully — the fury got to his feet, looking down at his torn pantlegs with an irritated puff of air through his nostrils. “How many people you think you’ll kill on your way home?” He asked, looking back to Jenny. “Almost took one out already. Would have, if I hadn’t stopped you. So, what’s the plan? You going to keep doing this forever? You lose control, you hurt people — kill people — but you didn’t mean to, so it doesn’t matter. That it?”

—

The other moved off her and she used every inch she was given to move, pressing herself up to what was eventually a sitting position. The cross remained between them, its seemingly magnetic push still exerting some influence over her. She stared at it, remembering how she had always hidden a cross necklace somewhere in her outfit when she had still gone to clubs. Jenny hated the reminder of what she had once been. How back then, the worst Emilio had done to her was stink up an elevator and the worst she could do to him was annoy him.

She felt her hands moving to her chest, where her unbeaten heart was, and she clutched at herself as if protecting her from something that was not coming. She knew the other was a slayer, and though her track record with facing slayers was pretty good, she knew that her luck was bound to run out some day. But the slayer was getting up, towering over her, asking prodding questions. Jenny remained seated on the ground for a moment before scrambling back to stand as well.

“Shut up,” she shot back pathetically, “I don’t — I am not losing control! I am fine! You … you — it’s fine, nothing ended up happening, did it?” She wanted to look over her shoulder to see where the woman was now. Whether that was to make sure she was safe or to make sure she could still follow her, she did not know. Hunger was still a mighty dominant force within her, making her want to enter that feral state where the instinct was turned into something less conflicting. Unfortunately, she was left with only the despair caused by Emilio’s questions. “What are you going to do about it? Berate me from your… your stupid moral high horse? Or…” She looked up at him, almost challenging. Her hands were still folded against her chest. “I am going to get in my car and drive home and that is it.”

—

“You’re not? So you were in control, then, when you tried to kill this woman?” He gestured to where the woman, oblivious to how close she’d become to being someone’s victim tonight, had long since vanished into the night. “You were in control when you tore my friend’s arm from his body? You want to say you’re not losing control, that means you take responsibility for the shit you’ve done. Either you’re losing control, or you’re the kind of person who kills strangers and rips people’s arms off. Which is it?” The anger wasn’t entirely fair, and he knew it. It also wasn’t directed entirely at her. Emilio remembered how he felt during the surge, when he tore people to shreds with little thought on the matter. He knew how he’d felt in Owen’s apartment, when his claws ripped a woman’s throat out so quickly that he didn’t realize it happened until it was over. He was the last person who could lecture anyone about control, and yet he thought of Henri. He thought of his friend, of how afraid he must have been. It was hard to think of anything else.

Was it wrong to question it, question her? Was it wrong to want her to face up and take accountability for it? He’d taken accountability for the woman in Owen’s apartment, had stood across from Forrest and been ready to allow him to end his life as penance. He’d told Jade what he’d done during the surge, had wanted her to hate him for it even if she’d refused to do so. Would Jenny acknowledging her own lack of control do anything for Emilio and his? He knew the answer, but he wanted it, anyway. It made him a hypocrite, but so did everything else. So did the blood he couldn’t clean from his dirty hands.

“If you keep doing what you’re doing,” he said, glancing off towards where the oblivious woman had disappeared once more, “I think you know what I’ll have to do about it.” He thought of Henri, letting the nix at the lake live. He thought of Henri, letting Jenny live. Henri was a good man; Emilio didn’t think he could say the same about himself. If it came down to it, if he had to kill Jenny to save some would-be victim, wouldn’t he do it? Wouldn’t he betray Henri by driving a stake into her chest? Wouldn’t some part of doing it feed him in the process? He knew the answer to that, too. “Go. Get in your car, and go home. Try to learn not to tear people to pieces while you’re at it.”

—

She did not want these questions. She did not want to ponder them and she certainly did not want to answer them when it was this man asking them. Control was far-sought and held onto tightly whenever she thought she had it. But some days, like today, she wanted nothing more than to give into the loss of it. And was that not what had happened tonight? She had given in, rather than fallen victim to it. She had put on her shoes before leaving her house. She had gotten into her car, put it into drive and chosen this neighborhood. Even if it was due to some underlying monstrous need, she knew that this was different from when she had killed that woman in the alley, or those men in the gym. But Jenny did not want to confess to that, to the part of her that wanted to simply give in and tear into someone. Not to herself and certainly not to Emilio.

“I — I wasn’t then, but I am now, can’t you see?” It was a poor defense, she knew it. Especially with the ghost of Henri’s arm between them, who somehow also happened to be Emilio’s friend. She wondered if there was a slayer’s club in town, where they all gossiped about all the most annoying undead around. “I’m — I have lost control but I am fine now and you need to like shut up.” She felt petulant, driven into a corner. Emilio made a threat to her life and she wondered for a moment if that was what she deserved. Objectively, probably, she deserved the same end as her sire, but Jenny wanted to live, even if living came with battling murderous instinct.

She did not argue when he told her to go. Jenny started to move backwards, eyeing Emilio carefully before turning around and running off to her car. She fast swift, swifter than she had been as a human, and for a moment she felt the urge rise to go after the woman she’d set her sights on before. But her appetite had been somewhat ruined, her mind too caught on the human complexities of murder and ripping a person to pieces. So she made her way to her blood-red car, getting in and driving off with a desperate haste, hoping to leave part of herself behind as well.

#whimmortal #jenny: who is in control?#s1 writing #wickedswriting

vengeancedemon