Mizrah's Ladder Ch. 13

...it wasn't supposed to go down like this, but that could have been the singular motto of your whole existence on this Earth. You'd meticulously planned everything, obsessively consumed in the scatterflash-focus of the Hunt, machine-like in your deadly advance upon the prey. You'd used all the tricks and tools he'd taught you, as well as those you'd discovered on your own; contrary to what he claimed it is indeed magic but that doesn't degrade the reality that your body had moved with the impossible grace of a dragonfly upon objects that couldn't have supported even your lithe weight. You'd doomed the Prey to solitude, ensuring that the ensorcelled killing ground you'd chosen was isolated from the Mortals' gaze...you'd even cursed the very air she breathed to escape her lungs and leave her silent, gasping, but it wasn't enough. Not even slightly.

You've never been this badly hurt before, but you're surprisingly calm about it - your body is telling you that you're going to bleed out, your mind balanced astride a slippery pole of consciousness with darkness on one side and seething doubt on the other, and it takes steel-willed effort to draw air into your lungs beneath your broken, slowly mending ribcage. Your hands are splayed on the quay's sweaty concrete with the effort of preventing yourself from falling prone before her, and you idly note how, spattered with blood, your black nail polish is now badly messed up. You can see her scuffed black boots, smell the Lucky Strike smoking between her scarred lips and halfway expect her to kick you down onto your side like a dog, but the blow never comes.

You're too stubborn, too resilient to fall into darkness so instead you allow yourself to doubt when she asks you in her smoke-scarred, merciless voice: "why do this for him? After everything he's done to you, to all of us?"

Why indeed? You've suffered for him: your back is crisscrossed with deep claw marks, your ribs and lower leg are broken and struggling to heal, and she'd ruined your nails. The events that led you to this sorry state felt like close cousins of similar the bouts of disastrous tragedy that had defined your mortal, Cursed life - Yusuf had been avoiding your calls for a day and a night, and you simply couldn't shake the idea that something was wrong. The memory plays through your mind as you force yourself to look up from the pavement -

-FLASH-

- and into his eyes, your delicate, slender fingers firmly holding his chin as you back him against the old, abandoned mall's dirty steel wall. "You cannot keep these things from me Mizrah, look at you - you're...oh my god," you breathe in far more horror than you'd wanted him to see. The state of his body, ruined and burned even as he pushed himself in pursuit of yet another monster cracks your heart down the middle. "Please, sit down and let me at least do...something, cover them up instead of just letting them bleed and smoke."

Why is he doing this? Why wouldn't he tell you this incredibly important detail, when you'd trusted him implicitly and kept nothing secret - especially given the position he'd put you in, completely reliant upon him for information? Why is he looking at you with such hostility when all you want to do is help him, protect him like he's protected you before? You know you should back off but this hostile, uncontrolled force leaves you shaken - another Werewolf, and he'd claimed they were utterly dangerous and untrustworthy as a reason for keeping you from them.

"It's not nearly the big deal you're making it into Isabel - she comes every full moon, yeah, we tangle and fight and she almost got the upper hand this time is all. I'm fine, seriously, I was even Hunting when you got me, see?" He gestures at the gigantic, bloodied bat wing, torn from the Nacthen he'd hunted with his mauled right hand. The other Accursed Being's needle-fangs had bitten off his ring and little fingers. "Babe, babe come on...you're the one we gotta worry about, this is my responsibility and so are you - "

"Stop it, just stop it please, you can't be stubborn like this!" You just cannot take anymore of his bullshit, and you keep him from pulling away, carefully taking his wrist and looking in horror at the ruin of his beautiful right hand. How would he play music like this? Your fingers stroke over the back of his palm before looking into his doom-black eyes. "Do you know what'll happen to me if you die?! Do you think I can just...go on and forget about you?!" This cannot happen again, you can't just...lose people to violence, or circumstance, or your own emotions anymore. It was supposed to be over, that's what he'd claimed - the bad luck and endless misfortune had been cashed in with the sacrifice of your Humanity, and you'd become this protean, strange entity instead.

Why is he looking at you like this? All you're doing is trying to protect him, so why does he snatch his hand from yours, pushing you gently away as he takes the Nachten's arm, pacing with a noticeable limp. The corded muscle in his arms strains as he breaks the monstrous bat-wing and starts to rip it in two. "Why do you gotta do this? Make this about me, not about you like it's supposed to be? We all...got...shit," he hauls and tears with a snap and crack, blood pouring from severed, massive arteries. "And I can handle mine, and yours, just fine, but mine isn't for you." You blink with disbelief as he hands you the upper wing, and while you can't deny the warped flesh smells incredibly tempting the ridiculousness of his words is far louder than the rumble in your gut.

"Yusuf we're on the same boat and you're piloting it," you spit in disbelief, throwing the Nachten limb down - his eye twitches, as if hurt, and you realize you probably rejected him inadvertently but you just can't do this stupid dance. "You don't have to prove yourself to me, or...hide like this, I can handle it! I can handle you, okay?!"

He looks at the enormous, inhuman arm in his hand, long, spindled-fingers clenched by patagia and lets it fall gracelessly from his hands. He wavers, looks like he's going to pitch forward and you move to catch him...he's cold to the touch, not the usual incredible warmth he emits. "...gonna die before you anyway...this is just...a bad rerun isn't it."

Yusuf's words chill your blood. You push him to stand straight, shaking your head in firm denial. "Stop that. That's nonsense - "

" - I've been here before, I'm telling you. I can't stop, everyone I love just ends up as bodies in the water. I never should have dragged you on deck." He takes your hands off his shoulders, paler than they should be, and the rejection of your touch cuts to the quick.

Anger mixes with the hurt, a cyclone of dissonance in your skull. "Mizrah, why the hell are you talking this way? Are you...drunk or something? Because I can't imagine why else you'd say these cruel, ridiculous things to me."

Your Persian prince's handsome features, so expressive, so beautiful to your eyes, turn ugly with pain and something running underneath that you've never seen before...at least not directed your way. Where is he, the man who sang to you on the roof of your apartment, who helped you take revenge on one who'd wronged you, who'd taught you how to escape from the banality of your former cursed life?

You argue. The two of you bicker and bark, your first real fight and...it's bad. The back and forth is harsher than you'd care to admit, especially on your end because there were questions you'd not broached that sat like poison in your mind - why had he done this to you without your consent? Who made him God? Why had he been keeping so many secrets from you, and hadn't introduced you to another of your kind? You realize you're interrogating him mercilessly, putting his back against the wall when you stop abruptly.

A heavy quiet hangs between you two.

"Isabel...I think..." his voice is tight, it's not the open, rich baritone you love. "...I need to be alone."

Alone?! What?! "Why - Mizrah no, that's insane. This is...you're overreacting, don't you think?"

Why is he turning and walking away? Your heart is cracking in your chest, and you feel as if you've suddenly walked in on an entirely different person than the one you'd fallen so powerfully for. Words don't come as you catch up to him, reaching out a hand to grab his shoulder and stop him in his tracks. "Yusuf..." you whisper as his fingers crawl up to take your hand in his own, squeezing it gently.

For a bare moment you hope he's going to turn back, embrace you, ask to forget about all of this and let you cover up his smoking wounds but he walks away. He leaves you there, tears clawing down your cheeks and you're sure he can hear you struggling not to sob -

-FLASH-

- but the tears are hot in your eyes like the blood flowing from your many wounds. Charys hadn't been as merciless toward you as she'd treated your Mate, and she even takes a step back as you begin to force yourself into a kneeling position instead of kow-towing before her like you had...at least your belly hadn't touched the ground. You don't answer her question, not yet.

You're good at being quietly, flatly defiant, and you turn you gaze up to meet her and her packmates...foolish to go after one when your kind stuck together like this - normally, anyway. Yusuf's absence stings in the corner of your mind which howls he should be here .

Charys is a chilling presence to take in. She's tall for a woman, almost as tall as your older brother had been, and her whipcord-strong body cuts an extremely intimidating figure. Looks like she'd fit in at the kind of shows you haunted - she has high cheekbones and icy blue eyes suggesting Scandinavian descent, her pallor livened by a rosy flush. A steel ring pierces her black painted lips, set in an even frown downward at you - the cigarette smoke curls draconically around her platinum blonde head, streaked with fuschia. The loose, dark gray tank top hanging on her brawny form is a couple sizes too big, coming down over the faded cutoffs coming down to mid-thigh. You've become familiar with those black boots at face-level, kicking your teeth in before they regenerated back into place agonizingly.

"I should be asking you why you've apparently been trying to kill my packmate for the better part of a year," you challenge with cool defiance. You won't be lain low before this woman, and even though standing forces a sharp grunt of pain through your clenched fangs, you rise before her, supporting yourself on the railing at the edge of the quay.

"Hasn't told you a thing, has he." Her growl disturbs the smoke around her head as her packmates prowl the shadows around you, dark four-legged wolven shapes. You half expect her to put it out on the back of your neck but if Charys had desired to do more than beat you into submission, she hadn't acted upon it. "That's his style...withholding knowledge, keeping you hooked with half-truths and..." she invades your space by taking in your scent, sneering as you stiffen self-consciously. "Fuckboy's Marked you good, got you thirsty for his dick."

You coolly place your fingers against her collarbone and shove her back ungently, though the considerable difference in musculature serves to unsteady you on your shaky feet, and you have to keep a grasp on that railing for support. "I'm not thirsty for his dick, I care about him and don't want you to hurt him. Is that hard to understand?" ...the sex has been almost supernaturally good, 'but thirsty for his dick', you'd never say that out loud.

"Of course it isn't; again, it's what he does. I've seen it." You're good at detecting bullshit, but her shadowed azure gaze betrays no tell, no trick to indicate she is lying. "Think about it. Think about your time with him. Consider how he answers your questions...let me guess, I'm one of the first, if not the first Werewolf you've talked to that isn't him, am I wrong?"

She isn't; still, your evasive response speaks volumes of its own. "He told me you're dangerous, that you treat each other like some abusive family." The accusation draws a wry, thin smile from the other wolf and her packmates emerge from the dark to coalesce into their human form nearby.

One is a smaller woman with nut-brown skin, her short, black hair cut boyishly around her pert face. Strikingly pretty, her dark eyes nonetheless seem to stare you down from a thousand miles off, naturally red, wide lips set in a neutral expression; she may be petite but she's stone hard beneath that cherry-red silk button-up, sleeves rolled up to her smooth forearms. She must come from a warm, humid place like you - Thai, Indonesian perhaps? - given her tolerance for dark suit pants in this kind of environment. She was the one who stalked you even as you thought you'd been pulling an ambush on her packmate, watching you the entire time. Where Yusuf had recognized you as a natural ambusher, she was clearly a skilled sneak. "It's a family, wouldn't call it abusive though." Her tone is flat and unflappable, like she's seen it all and can't be surprised anymore.

The other is a tall, sleek man with teak-dark skin, his pate shaved smooth and shiny beneath the street lights. He's wearing a pair of tinted blue glasses that conceal much, but his disinterest and boredom are clear as day; this is little more than a waste of time for him, and his utter disregard for you is apparent even behind the shades. His beard is kept long, braided down to his chest, which is bare to the night air but for a dark green vest carrying a short-wave radio...and an openly worn Beretta 9mm. White and blue camo fatigues are rolled up to his calves which you notice are unusually powerful, scuffed old running shoes stained by this city's natural predation of footwear. "We shouldn't stick around," he sighs in that good ol' Louisiana boy drawl. "Make a choice Charys - we gonna drag her along, or let her loose?"

"I'm right here," you remind him dryly but he doesn't even look your way. "You're not dragging me anywhere."

"You tried to cave my skull in with a monkey wrench," Charys points out with a sinister tilt of her head, pushing a lock of blonde streaked with neon pink from her eyes. "You challenged me and failed - you don't have the right to say no." You're distinctly aware of the way that slight woman in the red shirt casually circles around behind you...trapping you between the three of them. "Your body belongs to us now - you couldn't stand up to me alone, and the three of us will compact you for transit if need be. You're a prideful type...we'll let you walk back with us if you can keep up."

You don't say anything, merely acquiesce with a forward nod of your head and watch her walk ahead of you. That guy in the vest kicks your monkey wrench over the edge of the quay to splash forlornly in the Gulf. "Don't try anything cute - you ain't got shit," he warns you. You put on a show of quietly seething with anger, even as his gaze slides dismissively off you and you palm the short, thick blade hidden up your sleeve...this, you'd planned for.

You can do this...if you just get close to her when she's not looking. It's all about timing, and -

-FLASH-

- there was no doubt that timing had always been your worst enemy in all things. Love and war, life and death, your career's misfortunes and eventual death when you'd thrown to the lions years of work and suffering under the bourgeois boot...but still you persevered. As you'd told your friend Leo, back when he still lived in Louisiana, you had little choice but to keep working, fighting, clawing your way forward and up; even when Greg had kicked you cruelly down the hill and forced you to haul yourself back up on the bones of the dead.

You would fight for him, just the same. He was being a bastard, but you could tell that something was off, something that ran deep - carrying your own scars allows you to recognize them in others. To face off against Charys you'd need something more, greater sorcery and without Mizrah to show you where to find it and how to use it, you'd have to hunt it down yourself. Suppressing your hunger, the bloody wing of the crippled Nachten had created an easy trail to follow; Mizrah's violent work had left the creature with little recourse but to shamble back to its den before the sun's ascent, feeding on whatever it could. You came upon the twisted, man-shaped bat...thing in a back alley, digging its teeth into an unfortunate stray cat and draining it dry - a simple swing of a brick to the back of its bulbous, furry head, and you'd dazed it long enough to shift into your sinuous, deadly War Shape and roll a trash-filled dumpster over it, pinning the nychterid man-beast to the concrete.

It screamed, it thrashed, it threatened and begged, its motions a chaotic rattling beneath the green dumpster. Patiently, you'd waited for it to tire itself out before levying the question, pure and simple: "how do I learn Imprecations?" It stared at you with misshapen, milky white eyes that were on the verge of blindness even in the dark. It blathered and screeched incoherently until you broke a beer bottle and threatened to cut out its tongue.

"EEEEGH! Alright alright, you really don't know?! This isn't a WOLF TRICK AAAGH ALRIGHT!" it gurgles as you casually stab it in the temple with a spurt of gore. "They're taught, and - no teacher?! No problem, just need to read instructions and learn how!"

"Instructions? Like in a manual?" you ask skeptically, wondering if this thing is feeding you false information. "You know what'll happen if I find out you're lying to me...I tasted your blood, remember? I can follow you anywhere, and my packmates will tear you and your little family apart."

"Where are they now - " you interrupt it again with another nonchalant twist of the broken bottle in its jowl, prompting a shriek. "OKAY, GGGH you fucking wolves are the worst! YES like a manual, I'll even tell you where one is if you promise to FUCK OFF and LEAVE ME ALONE!" the bat-monster screeches.

You don't know if the trade will be worth it until you actually find out if this 'manual' exists, but Werewolves clearly had a reputation among other Shifters for being implacable...and for good reason. Tracking prey was as natural as writing your name, and you'd surmised there was more to be had from other Afflicted than simply meat and marrow. "Tell me where to find it then, and if it's good I might let you regrow that ridiculous wing of yours. You'll be better sport for whoever else comes after you."

It's...a brutal, savage way to assert dominance, but the behavior is hardwired into the brain of this Lesser Accursed Being. The choice between life and death is an obvious one, especially for the simpler beasts; its almost comical how its massive ears seem to wilt in the humid inferno of the Riviera's summer heat, trash juice dripping into its patchy black fur. "M-I-N 921.555 La." It seems to be looking at you with some queer satisfaction, as if it didn't expect you to be smart enough to recognize a Dewey Decimal number. You'd hung out in the City's labyrinthine public libraries in your teenage years and were more than familiar with its content listings.