Thirst Ch. 09

Rockerboy thought he was the only one who could sing? Well...good thing it was Karaoke Night (now that she'd utterly charmed the sweet boy behind the counter into declaring it such, hooking her little barbs into the lips of his mind and kissing them to compliance

Both of them had long kept the Prey in their sights...that pretty girl with the smooth, long legs and the drawn, hungry gaze, drifting along with her friends; sure enough that poor, wooden boy was trying to ply her with plastic words and cheap beer but Mizrah and Monroe could tell she wasn't having it. Yusuf could smell her sweat clinging to the cheerful gold, thin fabric of her shirt, while Monroe could hear the throb of her pulse like a jazz drum above the bar's cacophony.

"What do you think it was?" Mizrah's voice broke through the rhythmic thud of the girl's heart, tracking his nails down her arm gently. She didn't pull her attention from the mark, stroking her finger over the top of his chest thoughtfully.

"Hmm, got dumped maybe. Those pretty eyes are heavy with heartbreak, don't you think?" Monroe was flicking through the song list on the bar's booze-stained little tablet, smiling when she found an old favorite, picking it to sing first. Perfect, she thought.

"Dunno. She looks scared...like she really needs a distraction from whatever's yanking on her nerves, see? Bit of sweat there, dripping down over the top of her breast..." the Lupine whispered, leaning closer provoking her to smile like a damn fool again; her facial muscles were a little sore from laughing at his jokes, leering when he strummed the strings of her lusts. Monroe did, indeed, track a droplet of sweat slowly trickling down the soft curve of her chest and brought Mizrah's hand to her lips, nibbling lightly, thoughtfully on his knuckles.

They didn't say anything for a time, simply...toying lightly with each other, admiring the lonely girl in the yellow bandanna, sitting there uneasily with her oblivious friends. After a time, her dark eyes did take them in once more; that feverish mind was perfectly susceptible to Yusuf's primal magnetism, Monroe's dark temptation. She felt it in the pinprick-heat intensity of Mizrah's stare. She could almost taste it, how Monroe's tongue peeked lightly over her canine tooth.

"Alright - this thing on - " the bartender tapped the microphone, feedback whining painfully through their hearing, and one recognized the other's discomfort with a subtle smirk. "So I was presented with a very convincing case to host karaoke tonight, uh...it's what we're doing here at Alchemy!" Scattered applause broke out through the bar, stirring golden-girl from whatever sorrowful, heated reverie occupied her mind while she stared with growing desire at the monsters in the shadows of the spotlight.

"First up tonight we got Miss Carter, give her a round!" Monroe plucked the microphone from his hand and rose from her seat, approaching the center of the bar, and they were captivated by her. The bar was gripped with quiet murmurs of interest like a bloodshot eye, at the rainbow-haired beauty whose presence bloomed amidst them like a colorfully dark, thorned flower. An unseen, crimson smoke tinged with the power of her Blood radiated outward from her..

Suddenly all eyes were upon the revolution's leader, breath catching in still-living throats as every patron in the bar breathed her in and became simultaneously hooked. Their eyes, dimmed by the rigor of life, took on some of the heightened sensitivity of the Vampire's gaze and pupils dilated to the amber seduction in her gaze; the firm roundness of her bust; the cinnamon-tinged confidence with which she flowed among them, like a viscous fluid given a woman's form. She let each patron feel her eyes pass like a paintbrush over them, a momentary glance that made them feel special, marked for a spare moment...but it was the girl with the sun-bright bandana and the smooth thighs who held the spotlight of her stare longest.

The comely young woman with the sorrowful eyes and the sweat-sheened skin shifted in her seat, which suddenly seemed at once too wide and too small for the flare of her hips; her rouge-painted lips parted with a sharp exhalation when Monroe gave her a saucy wink.

"This song," she began in a sultry tone that cut through the red smoke and past every mortal's eardrum, "is for a man I just can't quit...no matter how much trouble he causes me

Yusuf's wide, ivory-bright smile looked so natural on his roguish face, compared to the sadness she'd caused him earlier. For a moment she forgot about the Prey, and he was the only person she cared to acknowledge. The whole winding, difficult path she'd walked since meeting this man had been defined by its ecstatic, heartfelt highs as much as its hopeless, frustrated lows...she'd been among the living when she first heard this song. Never had it feel more appropriate now that she drifted through night after night, warmed never by the sun but by his primal heat.

Peter Murphy's low, emotive violin and guitar were not what anyone else was expecting and only a few patrons recognized the song. None but Mizrah, however, would understand its meaning and depth, and the smile writ across his face faltered as she sang right to him.

"Calling like a distant wind,"

"Through the zero hour we'll walk,"

"We'll cut the thick and break the thin,"

"No sound to break no moment clear,"

"When all the doubts are crystal clear,"

"Crashing hard into the secret wind."

If you asked Monroe, she'd say the show was absolutely stage-worthy with her melodic alto voice like whiskey-splashed dark coffee, and the sultry command with which she pushed Yusuf back against the bar. This song was for him alone...the performance accompanying it, of course, meant to entice the lovely little saffron moth they'd followed from Alchemy to fly toward her flame; blood in the water only she could smell. She leaned close to Yusuf, her fingers dancing up from the base of his neck to his chin, then running through his Assyrian-dark hair.

"You know the way,"

"It twists and turns,"

"Changing color,"

"Spinning yarns,"

"You know the way,"

"It leaves you dry,"

"It cuts you up,"

"And takes you high,"

The microphone was inches from both of their lips when she pushed away, turning with a flourish to face the object of their mutual desire, smug at the feel of Yusuf's pinprick-heat gaze following the sway of her ass. The girl's doe-dark, sad eyes were bright and well-lured, pulled from the anonymous stew of her inner turmoil. Monroe, pinning her with her voice like a butterfly against a corkboard, hooked a single finger into the hem of her sweater - that sad sap she'd come with said something she didn't hear, fixated on Monroe's cobra-charm.

"You know the way,"

"It's painted gold,"

"Is it honey,"

"Is it gold,"

"You know the way,"

"It throws about,"

'"It takes you in,"

And spits you out,"

"Oh, cuts you up..."

When the song finished Monroe had perched herself on the edge of the table next to the girl with the sun-bandana, leaning one palm forward on the edge, looking down at her...and for the first time since they'd laid eyes upon each other, the Prey smiled. It was a sad thing, like a wilted wildflower poking through a bed of waterlogged weeds, but it was something...a hint of starlight playing across the brackish lake of her anguish. Carter leaned closer so that her braids were falling forward, tickling the other girl's shoulder, their eyes locked.

"What's your name, pretty thing?"

Her lips moved first, absent any sound; catching herself and taking a sip from her beer she recrossed her legs nervously, unable to stop staring. "Zairah. Thompson." Zairah closed her eyes and shook her head slightly, as if asking herself why did I give my last name?

"She's been having a hard night," intoned plasticboy at Zairah's side, tacky white knight stepping up oh so bravely to the Vampire amidst them. "I don't think she needs - "

" - you to tell her what you think she needs," Carter answered for him with the kind of mirthless, unsweetened smirk that scared men of greater substance away. Her other friends were watching, entranced as Monroe hooked the tips of her fingers into Zairah's, tugging her to her feet, as if inviting her to dance...although their waltz had started the moment she and Mizrah had laid eyes upon her.

"I'm actually fine," Zairah lied without skill as Monroe entangled her fingers with hers - the rawness of her touch made her wonder if she had ever touched another woman intimately, and she could see her eyes flitting curiously over to where Mizrah was reclining against the bartop.

Monroe quieted her protests with a knowing leer as she left her friends a billion miles behind at the other table, snaking their slender arms together. "You don't gotta fib babydoll. Yusuf and I knew you were hurting the moment we saw you trying to hide the frown in your heart...we're real good listeners you know."

"But..." There was a misty quality to her voice, as if contending with the fact that Monroe was speaking to her with far more familiarity than was appropriate for their just-meeting, "I don't even...know you, or him. Why would I...?"

"Don't you think, in a way, strangers are the best people to confide in?" Monroe's voice was like smooth satin threads digging into Zairah's brain-matter as she tugged her by both hands to sit down between her and Yusuf - the musician was timely, of course, a trio of beers arriving at his beckon.

"No attachments to your life...and you know what they say; what happens in the River District floats into the Gulf," Yusuf purred as he leaned an elbow on the counter and rested his chin on his knuckles lightly, flashing Zairah that daystar-bright smile of his. If Monroe had shaken the ice-shelf of anonymity over her heart, Yusuf's ivory-toothed leer cracked it apart, exposing her core. It teemed with vulnerability and emotion, the kind that, if unreleased, putrified. "I'm Yusuf, you're already lucky enough to know Monroe, the hottest girl in the state."

The compliment softened the predator's leer on Monroe's face somewhat as she seated herself next to Zairah, trapping the girl between them as she fingered her beer glass, toying and fidgeting with what remained of the girl's judgment in a similar manner. "So who was he, and what'd he do to you?" Yusuf asked her, drawing a surprised glance as denial leapt to the forefront of her tongue, but Zairah was caught by the simultaneous sweetness and dangerous allure of his expression.

"How'd you...?" she began carefully, pulling down a little of her beer as curiosity overwhelmed the inherent discomfort of meeting particularly forward strangers.

"You got heartbreak writ like graffito all over you," Monroe's touch moved from the tips of her fingers up Zairah's arm until she could feel the tension slowly spill from her shoulders...giving in to the undeniable rush of now compared to whatever had broken her heart then . "We've all gone through it...maybe it's painted different shades, played in different keys, but heartbreak's a universal song." Despite the fact that her hunger and attention were on the pretty girl in the gold bandana, she couldn't help but notice her lover's own performance

Yusuf wasn't a subtle creature, making clear his interest as his eyes traveled up her body - at once charged like a live wire, yet steadily growing uninhibited. He swiveled on his barstool to lean his back against the counter, casually presenting a tantalizing profile view that drew Zairah's interest as much as her own. Look at me! cried the toned breastplate of his chest and stomach through his shirt; You can trust me! beckoned that disarming, gregarious wolf smile

Zairah drained a third of her drink there and pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers, splaying her other palm on the bartop. "I loved a man who said he'd be there for me, and then when I really needed him...he bailed, because he was bored of me." Yusuf and Monroe exchanged looks...there was obviously more to it than that, but the Brujah found herself fascinated by the way both of them touched her hand at the same time, their instincts honed in the same manner despite their differences.

Monroe easily picked up on the change in Zairah's pulse - faster than she recalled, given their dual influence over her...she watched with fascination as, where her fingers slid under the girl's palm, Yusuf's crawled over her knuckles, traveling the length of her digits. Zairah, for her part, was lost amidst them both, her lips lightly parted, breath coming in a slow rhythm, her sweat heavy with the perfume of her pheromones.

"You're anything but boring, pretty girl," Monroe breathed against her ear when she leaned in, smiling that violet grin, breath cool on the Prey's ear. "Both of us found you..."

"Very, very intriguing," Mizrah finished for her, guiding their hands down beneath the bar so that all three were running their fingers up her long, smooth leg. "And we've barely even touched the tip of the iceberg." His nails and hers hissed up her pretty thigh, and Monroe found it to be one of the most erotic things she'd ever heard

"It's just...I'm not...the kinda girl who, you know..." the scent of golden girl's arousal carried through her sweat, from her sweet breath, from the growing slickness of her femininity. Her words trailed off as Monroe put a finger delicately under her chin, touching the girl's other thigh.

"Maybe you should be. Just for one night...cuz you ain't boring." The vampire's words danced like a crimson helix through the girl's brain, whatever remained of her judgment cast aside like a kitten's toy.

"Neither are we, as you'll find out," Mizrah's soft purr against her other ear as his fingers slid tantalizingly underneath her skirt might as well have been the rush of a pair of bellows, glowing amber like his eyes. "Bring your mind back to your body, here between us," his fingers plucked gently at the hem of her panties up her skirt - there, a hint of a smile, a quiet 'hah' blooming from her throat, like water in a rocky brook. Monroe watched with fascination as the subtle movement caused Zairah to melt toward him like a candle near a bonfire.

That moved her in a way that wasn't entirely motivated by hunger or sexual need; to see his warmth pull another person toward him, like someone in a dark forest before a gently crackling flame...all these things about him reminded her of being alive...of when she had a soul in her body. The sensuality of his kiss, the heat of his blood flowing through her veins, the warmth of his cum against the entrance of her dead, useless womb all made her recall the fleeting kiss of her soul.

In a way, she envied Zairah, for though she ultimately intended to take of her, Yusuf gave her...genuine kindness behind the erotic touch and tantalizing words soaked in sex. She listened to the words he spoke into the girl's fingertips, never breaking eye-contact.

" - he wasn't worth your time if he ditched you like that...because when I look at you, I see someone with more depth than most men can countenance - "

" - don't despair, and show no fear. Live your life without regrets - "

" - we know how to treat a beautiful girl like you though...you know it too, I can see it in your eyes when I touch your thigh, when you feel her breath against the side of your neck..."

Monroe was, in truth, just as mystified and spellbound by Yusuf's glowing appeal as Zairah's undeniable beauty; the bar had filled up and they ended up standing in front of their stools. Golden-girl was leaning back against the strong, slight Vampire as Mizrah took the stage and microphone like they'd been crafted by the Gods of Rock for him alone...fascinated by the way his aphotic darkness seemed to drink in the light.

An arm was looped around their Prey, resting her chin upon her shoulder and looping a thumb through a belt loop in her skirt, and as enticing as was the winsome throb of her lifeforce through the soft ridge of her pretty jugular, she only had eyes for Yusuf Mizrah. He strode upon the stage like he was their champion, as if he'd slaughtered great beasts or triumphed in some great war against their oppressors; they were already cheering as he raised his hands like a conductor.

"This song," Yusuf began, silencing the crowd as he rose to the makeshift stage and strode across it like the corpse of a slain drake, "is for a woman I'd burn the whole world down for."

Oh, Yusuf... she felt her hand tighten around Zairah's - their shared treat understood who this song was for...she knew they were singing to one another, but suspended between them like a particle of starlight between two powerful magnets their affection and passion left her radiated, charged and wanting.

"He loves you," Zairah's high, Dixie-accented voice came as if whispered from within the petals of a daisy. "It's beautiful."

"He does not," Monroe chuckled smokily, but the idea had been implanted in her head and she'd been wondering it herself, after what he'd told her outside under the night sky. After the Persian poetry, the way he kept coming back even when she was trying so hard to push him away. "There's a lot goin' on between us, but love ain't part of it

But what if he did love her?

Had anyone loved her since her Requiem began? Nobody looked at her, spoke to her or touched her the way he did, not even before the sun had set on her life.

Leaning against a square wooden pillar, Yusuf's smile made her lower belly flutter, but it was his voice that silenced the whole bar. She'd heard him sing a few times before, and in his natural genre - death metal, of course - he was a roaring sonic force that made her feel like a palm tree in a typhoon, whipped about wonderfully. Tonight, his low voice reminded her of a dark, distilled liquor, flowing just a little heavier than wine but sweeter than brandy; ASMR flowing down Zairah's spine tingled in her lips as Monroe kissed her behind the ear, captivated.

"Way down the lane away, living for another day,"

"The aphids swarm up in the drifting haze,"

"Swim seagull in the sky towards that hollow Western Isle,"

"My envied lady holds you fast in her gaze,"

"And the sun drips down bedding heavy behind,"

"The front of your dress all shadowy lined,"

"And the droning engine throbs in time with your beating heart,"

How did he know? Had he just guessed, or had he performed some strange Werewolf magic? He'd spoken of a sight beyond sight, a sense that peered beyond what could be observed, was this how he knew that she'd listened to this as an angst-ridden, depressed teenager hoping for some hero to come and drive her away from the tragedy and banality of family life? Did he know she'd pumped this very Duran Duran song blaring on the speakers of her very first car when she made out with her very first boyfriend (whose name she'd long forgotten) in the backseat?

"No. He loves you," Zairah repeated, bringing Monroe's hand to her lips and, unable to help herself, furtively tonguing her knuckles and nipping on them, and this time the revolutionary leader wasn't able to bring herself to contradict the doe-eyed girl in her arms.

"And watching lovers part, I feel you smiling,"

"What glass splinters lie so deep in your mind?"

"To tear out from your eyes with a thought to brooding lies,"

"And I'll only watch you leave me further behind."