A Big Shiny Blue Marble Ch. 54

She hates what she is, and will always want to belong somewhere. It makes keeping secrets very hard for her to do and I'm nosy and I know how to play her need to seek approval. I know when to feed her need to feel loved. She didn't want to tell me your secret but she had no choice because she's very weak as a person.

So I know what it was that you two planned to do one day soon. I've got her halfway to immortal here. I just need to feed her a little and it'll all be good. She'll be mine forever, just as you will be soon.

Don't even think about not coming back, honey. It'll be your turn soon. Just not today. I might even let her do you so that the bond becomes bittersweet between you." She smiled, "You'll never want to leave me again and all of our troubles will be over."

You ought to get going now, sweetcheeks. I doubt you'll want to watch this."

Jayne looked at Chan, whose head lolled over in her direction. The bright eyes that she loved were no longer that way, and her skin looked to be almost paper-white. The lips which had always shown Jayne love moved a little and in a moment of absolute horror to Jayne, she found that she knew what Chan was trying to communicate to her. Her lips were forming only a few words.

"I'm sorry. .... Ru .... Ru ...nn."

Jayne groaned in fear and ran out of the room.

Monnie smiled down at Chan as she turned her face up to look at her, "Now where were we, Muffin?

Oh, yeah," she smiled slowly as she opened one of the smaller arteries in her wrist, "We'd better get started, baby. You need this now."

She allowed her blood to swell out of the tear in her own skin and then she brought her hand to Chan's mouth. "Drink, baby. You know I'll always take care of you, don't you? I'll be your mother now and I'll be so much better than the one I took you from."

Chan parted her lips a little, feeling the fluid there that she knew would bring her back and give her life again. She felt her tears as she realized that even from this close up, she hated this. Her lips almost defied her will by themselves as they closed over the wound and she felt them working to suckle. But though she felt her mouth filling and even felt the tingling of what was in that blood, wanting it, and needing it to survive, she found that she still had control over her esophagus.

Monnie smiled down benevolently as she watched, waiting for the moment when the temptation of the life that she was offering would be accepted and the girl would swallow and begin to drink deeply. It was so very close to being the same thing, after all. A lust to breed and mate was not very far at all from the lust to live. Monnie was soaking wet herself in this, loving her little toy so much for it. She just needed for the last moment to pass so that she could see Chan swallow to accept her new eternal life and remain a luscious little plaything, eighteen years old forever.

Her eyebrows rose when she saw that Chan hadn't swallowed her gift yet.

"What's wrong, baby?" she asked as she lifted her arm to see if there was some problem here. She knew that she had mere moments now and she wondered if there was anything wrong.

Chan knew that she was dying. All of her worthless life, she'd found herself the victim of her easily-broken will. Time and time again, she'd found her will turned aside by her need to be accepted. Anyone who knew this about her knew that they could get her to do anything at all.

Only Jayne had been different to her. Jayne hadn't used her for anything. What that had happened between them had been freely given by the little blonde. Chan closed her eyes and opened them again after squeezing the tears from them that she no longer had the ability to wipe away herself.

She was beyond feeling faint here. She was nauseous and so very weak. But there was one thing that she absolutely knew. There was no way that she would do anything to harm the only real friend that she'd ever had in her life.

She waited until she reached the point where the darkness in her vision threatened to overwhelm her. Chan wanted no automatic reactions in her body to betray her as her will had always done. She felt her stomach kick once and so she waited for the next spasm.

As it rose in her, Chan rode it, still waiting for just another instant. When it came to her, Chan Lin, the lost little half-Chinese human -- half-Red demon opened her mouth and spit Monnie's blood into her face. As she felt the vomit rising in her gorge, she inhaled at the perfect time -- the last instant when not even Monnie's blood could bring her back, filling her lungs with the burning acidic fluid so that there was no turning from this. With her last conscious act, she sucked more bile and vomit into her lungs and coughing once weakly, she felt herself passing.

Monnie gaped at the girl. She knew what had been done and she was in disbelief. Who wouldn't want what she was offering? She pulled the limp body up to off the floor and shook if violently. But she knew that it was too late when she heard the girl's last urine begin to seep out of her onto the floor. Monnie roared in rage and threw Chan down then as she began to beat the dead body with her fist over and over.

Jayne was running now, dodging the humans who wouldn't ever listen to her when she tried to warn them. She even found a couple of Monnie's powerful demons as they crouched in a few dark corners, waiting for only the word to begin. But they hadn't been spoken to yet. Their queen always had some words for them before she turned them loose, so they waited for the feeling when they were summoned.

Jayne ran a little blindly, upset and crying over Chan -- horrified at what was going to be done to her friend and terrified that once turned, Chan might be used to hunt her. She went left instead of right, and up instead of down and before long, she found herself in about the last place that she wanted to be in this place where death and lust were about to be unleashed. She saw the door there in front of her, a little ajar as it was. An instant later, she burst in to the announcer's booth and the press gallery. By luck, it was unoccupied by the humans who lived there.

Jayne was stuck now as she watched Monnie out there on the other side of the glass, near the other side of the stadium. But she could see that something was wrong. Monnie stood already covered in blood and gore and in that second, Jayne knew that things hadn't gone Monnie's way with Chan.

She looked around a little frantically. Whenever Monnie was in one of her moods and wanted her pets near to her, she insisted on them being naked unless she told them beforehand that she wanted one of their schoolgirl dances for her. With no word from her, Jayne had gone in unclothed to avoid having to listen to Monnie's displeasure again.

Now here she was naked except for a pair of sneakers and the shit was quite obviously going to hit the fan in another moment.

She could almost feel the way that Monnie stood there trembling in her rage at being thwarted as she hung there in the darkness, calling her minions to her to set them to their joyous task.

Besides all of the other emotions roiling up in her young breast, Jayne knew that she was in a place where she'd never be able to get out of once this started and she also knew that even if she ran her life away now, she'd never make it.

Her own fear and panic had trapped her.

Monnie was plainly out of control now. Jayne doubted that she'd stop at what had happened and it was only a few words from her that would remove what protection that the little blonde had enjoyed. It had been dangerous enough before this. But if Monnie said those words, Jayne knew that there were many of those slavering beasts out there who would now seek her to tear her apart.

She looked around the room, as frightened as a hunted rabbit already. There were dark places in here, but she knew that they wouldn't hide her at all. The demons could smell her. They could feel her warmth. It was how they hunted.

In a dark corner, Bronn watched her. He'd seen her many times over the past few weeks and he knew who she was in all of this. He was looking at the terrified and shaking girl who was used by the leader for her own pleasure. He eased back farther into the corner, hidden by the darkness and safe for the moment in his disguise as one of the half-crazed lunatics who now surged form their own corners to heed their queen's call.

He hadn't come here to witness this. He'd seen enough of the carnage left afterward a few times already. He knew why this was done. The queen would summon more of them and finding themselves in a sea of their own kind, they'd calm down a little over their upset at the way that they'd been brought here and warm to the task of feeding on more human life than they'd have ever hoped to stumble across where they lived naturally -- because those humanoids in that far-off place knew that they were food and so they knew to act far more intelligently than the ones here.

It had been his search for the one that he sought to learn about that had brought him here because he felt that he was here somewhere, unknown to these ones and their vampiric leader. Bronn even knew by now at least a little of the reason why he'd been seeking for Monnie.

There was a showdown in the offing and this poor human female was about to become as fucked over and half-eaten as the rest. He knew that she didn't know the things that he knew, but he realized that she was the only human here who knew what was about to happen to her. He eased into a maintenance room silently and thought about it.

There was a window there which faced away from the stadium.

Jayne looked in his direction then. She didn't see anyone there, but she did catch sight of another door and being desperate, she ran through it and collided with something out of her nightmares.

She looked up, already drawing the breath to fill her lungs for her scream when he clamped his hand over her mouth. He looked lower and rolled his eyes with a quiet groan.

Jayne's fear had overrun a lot of her body's conscious control and left to its own devices, she was pissing herself in her terror. She hung in his strong grasp, shaking and urinating helplessly. Bronn knew that this was bad now. The smell of their prey's fear in their urine was a key marker for this kind of demon to follow when it hunted, never mind what it was for his kind -- the sub-species of High Merren demon that he was underneath all of this. He lunged for a pile of human clothing and produced a soft rag.

He didn't know its purpose, though it was for swaddling a human infant since the squatters who lived here had two of them, but he clamped it over the girl's mound and held it there as she emptied her bladder, her eyes as wide as saucers as she looked up at him.

When he saw that she'd stopped, he threw the sodden thing through the door and closed it before reaching for another few to wipe her off with. At that moment, the outer door crashed in and one of the real demons pushed through with a second one behind him. If it hadn't already begun, Bronn knew by this that it was only moments away.

Bronn pushed Jayne against a dark wall and he reached into a pouch that he wore. When his hands came into view again they were as blurs and there was a buzzing sound for an instant before the first newcomer gasped loudly and groaned. The second looked around and saw Jayne then as she shook violently where she stood. He stepped forward and his body fell over to the floor in one direction and the top of his head fell off in another. The demon who had entered first straightened and inhaled to roar out his pain and rage as he tried with shaking fingers to pluck the metal pieces from where they stood embedded in his chest and face. A thin whipping sound preceded his collapse on top of the other ones' body.

With a kick, Bronn rolled the body over and he tore out the metal stars that he'd thrown. He shook them once and they went back into his pouch while he turned and reached toward the frightened human.

Jayne was almost catatonic in his grasp now, fearing almost to breathe and she found that she had to will herself to gulp in some air as she looked at something darker than everything else in here while he looked out through the window at the night sky and considered.

The glass seemed to glow then and in another moment, it sagged and ran like a thick liquid to lie in glowing puddles on the floor, beginning to start little fires where it touched anything combustible.

Looking back at her, he spoke then, the words meaning nothing to Jayne, but she did hear a sense of quiet urgency in them. He looked around and saw that the room was often used to hang up washing and he looked along the line at what was hung there. He grabbed a knapsack which had been sewn by a mother for her young girl to resemble a happy animal with legs which would flop along behind the child as she walked. Bronn flipped it open and he stuffed as many articles belonging to an even older child into it as he could for a few seconds.

That done, he pulled Jayne to him and he shook it at her, wanting her to put it on. She reached for it with trembling hands and she did as he indicated, very confused now but wearing a knapsack over her nude body. She squeaked a little as he wrapped her in a blanket roughly and hefted her to hold her against himself with one large hand as he used the other one to grab the frame of the window and step up to squeeze them through the opening. Thankfully, it was a double-wide window and they were through the hole in a second.

All that Jayne could see around her out there was a long way down. She squeaked again as his feet and legs launched them through the last of the way. Jayne waited for the fall, but it didn't happen and they were gone in slightly bobbing flight as his large wings bore her away at dizzying speed.

She was frightened again as she hung in his tight two-handed grasp now , the wind roaring past her ears. In a few seconds, they were away from the stadium and racing low through the streets, dodging wires and clotheslines which she couldn't see though he obviously could. Every time that she opened her eyes to look, she regretted it almost instantly and she closed them again after a few seconds of more terror. She found that she preferred not seeing where they were going.

Besides, it helped her to think.

In time, she began to reason a little and it surprised her, as upset as she still was. Something was very different here. She'd seen that when the demons began their feeding, there was little greed between them. If one of them was busy with one screaming human, he or she didn't try to hide the meal away at all. If a second or even a third joined in, there was no anger there. She'd often seen one of them fucking one person while a second one began to feed on the same screaming human. That was what she'd witnessed with her own eyes many times.

What had happened back there, then? Was this demon trying to carry her away to feed in a quiet place? They never did that. And what would he want the other clothes for? Why had he held out the knapsack to her?

Jayne looked up then at his face. The expression was hard to read in human terms, but it looked to her like an expression of intent concentration. He looked down at her once very briefly and she whimpered in fear then, hiding her face against his chest. She thought about how she'd come to be kept by Monnie and then she thought about her young husband and the way that he'd been sucked dry of his blood by Monnie and thrown out through a window as though he was garbage to her.

She thought of what she'd had to do in exchange for her life and the way that Chan must have died.

Her tears came then and she wept.

Bronn looked down again for a moment and saw the wet streams from her eyes. They weren't anything alike and he didn't belong here at all, but he wasn't just an unfeeling lump of flesh. He gently tried to move her forward a little and he held her face against the side of his own for a little while, wanting her to see that he didn't mean her any harm in this.

Jayne turned slowly in his grip, seeking a little more comfort and she looked up at him again. He didn't look quite so frightening to her now. He even seemed to have been trying to comfort her though she couldn't really be certain of it. Hanging upside down as she was, she needed to think any planned movement through beforehand , but she decided that she was held tightly enough to place her head against his chest near his collarbones.

What she heard there against the backdrop of the wind was a sound that the attributed to his muscles as he flapped his wings. But she knew that she was wrong after a minute and she thought that it must be his heart beating.

She hazarded a look forward and she could see that they were out over water now and sinking lower. There wasn't much moonlight but it looked to her as though they were heading for a ... a frame of some sort which seemed to rise out of the waves there in the darkness ahead. There was suddenly more of the thing to be seen, though Jayne had no idea what she was looking at as he slowed and flared to land on a wet surface while still holding her. He touched a control plate and a doorway opened to a dark passageway. They stepped into that and the door closed behind them to the sound of quiet pumps and motors. The room was suddenly lit brightly and he began to speak in unintelligible words then.

She heard another voice asking questions and the way that he replied told her that he was issuing some sort of commands as he walked, still carrying Jayne deeper into whatever this was.

"Were we pursued?" he asked the controlling systems in the High Merren tongue and he was told that there were no airborne threats noted and that nothing had followed them.

"Good," he replied as he walked, "Make our depth so that we encounter no obstacles and are too deep to be reached. Take us out to sea and set us down on a stable and calm stretch of the bottom. I need to process what I've learned .This human with me was about to be killed. I do not know what to do with her as yet, but I hope that I can glean something. She will likely require food and liquid before then, so prepare two servings, please."

The automated controller mulled this over for a moment before asking what sort of food the creature might require and he smirked then.

"Something warm, bland and harmless. As far as I know, these creatures eat much the same things as Merren do. Prepare whatever you think best, but I think that it should be something which does not still have its legs attached."

She felt the change as he walked on. He was growing smaller and there were other changes to be seen when she looked up at him. Jayne only stood about five feet, two inches and as he'd been back there in the stadium, he looked to be about eight feet tall and very ... demonic to her eyes.

She gasped as she stared at him now. She was being carried in the arms of a very human-looking male, with Oriental features who looked at her from deep brown eyes out of long black hair with a lot of concern showing through.

It was all too much for Jayne. She'd been faced with a demon who'd looked as though he was one of the ones whom she was in terror of and for good reasons. Yet he'd looked a little different then all the same and he'd sure acted differently.

What she was in fear of wasn't especially smart in any regard, being little more than highly efficient predators -- something like sharks. But this one had taken her away and brought her here -- wherever this was. She knew that he operated on a technological level far beyond her own and she struggled with it. She had no outward frame of reference, but she knew that this home that he lived in was under the water of the bay at present and she also knew that it was moving, though rather gently.