Thirst Ch. 13

Her Lunar-twisted, swollen Killing Shape was missing patches of auburn fur in places, whorls in her flesh knotted like thorns; she was easily taller than him by a foot, stretched out and unnatural.

In his Killing Shape, he'd be scraping at the bottom of his energy reserves with no choice but to eat something or someone later, and none to power his deadliest abilities. Her jaws split open to her ear, giving a broken screech twisted by echoes from beyond the Dark of Space

The Most Dangerous Prey of them all, his own kind but broken and reassembled into something that didn't belong.

Prey he'd once staked a reputation on Hunting down with ruthless ultra-violence.

Shamrys flew at him, tearing down and trailing white streamers of cloth as she threw herself into Yusuf, reaching out with all of her four taloned, enormous hands to rip his limbs off; rather than swerve or dip out of her way, he met her assault like a grizzly bear engaging an oncoming semi-truck. His own claws found her wrists, jaws clapping down on one shoulder with the sound of steel trap snapping shut; her blood was sickly sweet in his mouth, flesh quivering around his dagger-long fangs to close. They tumbled, flailing and tearing, biting and ripping pieces of flesh and bone from each other's protean forms.

Shamrys' free hand dug into the back of his skull, talons threatening to pierce bone into vulnerable gray matter but Mizrah was already twisting his body to escape her cold claws, her crocodile-massive mandible nearly slamming around his face. With a violent, lashing motion of his coal-furred, tightly muscled body he swung her around and released her arms, a single tensing shake of the sinews in his neck and a SNAP ripping an unnatural arm away.

Dancing back across the basement, he spat the limb onto the ground where it desiccated down to quartz-white bone. She flailed on her back, spraying gore from the bloody stump of her shoulder until the entire limb regrew with a grizzly crackle; the bone shot forth first, growing articulations and those tridactyl claws in the space of a second. She screamed in berserk agony, and through the furnace-heat of the Killing Shape he almost felt pity.

Back on her feet, she circled him with a measure of caution now, knuckle-walking like some nightmare collision of gorilla and wolf, flesh and osseous moon-stone. Meanwhile Yusuf remained still, crouched on all fours and watching her...hidden beneath a red-spattered length of cloth, his fingers curled around a metal support pole she'd knocked out of place; the moment she circled toward his left side, legs tensing once again to throw herself at him, Yusuf hefted the ugly, green-painted steel haft and bolted toward her.

Caught off guard by his ferocity, Shamrys nonetheless barely skirted around the lancing strike but wasn't quick enough to avoid her teeth being knocked across the floor when he swung it like a bat against her face. A two-handed strike broke the pole against her skull, and once again he took her off her feet by tackling her into the ground.

Even as her talons tore crimson rents in his back that closed up moments after Shamrys opened them, Mizrah's fangs found purchase in her throat once again. He bit down, her milky white eyes welling in their sockets as red poured from her neck, her mouth. She struggled mightily, cutting him frantically to little avail as Yusuf worried her against the ground.

Tearing free another gruesome mouthful of her trachea, vocal cords and other tubes, Mizrah took the opportunity and slammed knife-sharp talons into her belly. He ripped her open, pulling out handfuls of viscera that he tossed against the ceiling, the walls, his thinking mind insignificant as a goby in a storm-tossed sea.

He balled his fists and brought them down on her skull over and over, smashing her brains out and bursting her eyes. In the midst of inflicting destruction images dredged up from the trauma-wounds of his mind -

- of Sadira's black hair floating around her waterlogged body in Lake Michigan -

- of Avi's death visage, an agonized grimace at wounds she couldn't close -

- of Mikey's body, half-gnawed and defiled, lying in steaming pieces on the concrete -

Reality and sensation pierced through the Rage-Veil; dimly glancing downward, he noted Shamrys' talons sunk into his belly, past his guts, gripping his spine. Unable to break free, even in this form he spasmed and lost control of his limbs when she snapped his backbone. Immediately he lost feeling and control in his legs, in the right side of his body.

Shamrys hurled him messily to the side to land in a tangle of paralyzed limbs and guts which snaked back toward his body cavity...but the injury to his spinal cord would take time he didn't have to regenerate.

The Lunar stumbled to her feet. Her head was deformed and compressed as if someone had taken a maul to it, hanging loosely against her shoulder like she'd been hauled down from the gallows. Her chest and stomach were ripped wide open and three of her arms were bent and snapped at strange angles. A single unburst eyeball, dangling by its pulsing nerve from a socket, stared at him.

This, unfortunately, was the unfruitful result of his refusal to Hunt Big Game; without the arcane resonance of Metavolis burning through his chakras, he couldn't power the Wolfslaying Imprecations that would have stilted her monstrous, accelerated regeneration by sheathing his talons in killing-silver.

Helpless like a turtle flipped on its back, his atavistic brain dimly wondered what Lena might think of him, about to be torn to shreds in this miserable little basement...

A thought which was utterly unacceptable.

Digging his left claw into the wall, he pulled himself up on his limp legs, snarling a threat as she approached; precious seconds passed as his body tried to close the gap in his shattered nerves, but it wasn't enough to overcome the paralysis in his legs and other arm.

Unafraid in the face of his own undoing, Yusuf vented a roar of challenge, daring her to finish the job. His voice, already powerful enough to eschew a microphone in his human form when singing, shattered the basement windows and blew out a long disused washing machine. No defeat, no surrender, NEVER.

So loud was his cry of defiance he barely heard the distinct music of an AK-47 firing on full-auto. His motion-attuned vision tracked the 7.62mm bullets' 1,500 mile per hour flight, hammering into Shamrys' massive, mutilated torso; powerful enough to halt her advance, if not put her down, they blasted through the shattered remains of her jaw, annihilated her knee and hip, and ripped open the abdominal muscles that had started to close around ruby-red and cream-white organs.

The last bullet from Monroe's magazine - and there she was, standing whole but for rips in her shirt's midriff and unfazed, staring down her rifle's sights - gave Mizrah the seconds his body needed to reconnect his brainstem to the rest of his body.

He crossed the space between them, slammed his talons into the bullet-riddled openings Monroe had created, and heaved with every ounce of strength in his shoulders and arms, fire-bright lines of heat and accursed power running through his bulging veins.

Shamrys' throat closed enough for her to scream in a disturbingly human voice as he ripped her body in half with a wet, tearing crackle and a tide of blood. He threw the halves of her body apart from one another, her torso sliding and rolling along the ground, tangled in gore-gummed sheets.

Mizrah straightened to his full height, obelisk-tall, dark ears brushing the basement's ceiling, swinging his head to regard Monroe; though his capacity for things like joy were diminished in this shape, to see his lover girlfriend Packmate whole and...well, if not alive and breathing, conscious and gazing at him with amber-bright awe was a rush of relief

She approached him carefully, reaching a hand out to stroke through the bristly, short dark fur covering his powerful chest. "You're..." she whispered, hunting for the words as she dug her fingers in between the spaces of muscles that could flip a van, "...magnificent." The Brujah slung her rifle over her shoulders, cupping his fang-filled jaw. "A beautiful, unstoppable weapon of mass destruction."

The Shape of War steamed off his body, leaving Yusuf standing before her, shining with gore and grime in the dimly lit basement

"I knew you were alright, I knew you'd come for me Carter."

Before she could say more they both turned their attention to where a gurgle of pain and a sob of grinding, terrible sorrow rose from Shamrys' upper half...even Firstbloods couldn't heal that much damage bleeding out

Drawn by the sound of their still-living Prey, Yusuf and Monroe drifted to where she lay on her side, her tears soaking into the increasingly pale skin of her arm. Already the Vampire was ratcheting the slide of a Beretta, loading the chamber but Yusuf could hear her wet whispers.

"...so sorry baby boy...mommy is so, so sorry you're stuck in that cold place...she tried, she really did..."

Not once had Mizrah felt any malice toward Shamrys, not for the usurpation of his will nor for the pain she'd inflicted upon him. He glanced at Monroe to give him a moment as he knelt by her, pushing her hair from her face; one good eye rolled in its socket to regard him. For a spare moment she focused upon him in recognition, but then the Lunar was staring through him like he wasn't even there.

She was smiling, pink drool and froth trickling down the corner of her lip. "Tommy...? You're here with me? Baby...it worked, oh it actually worked. Please baby...please don't leave mommy again."

In spite of this near victory, of a Hunt completed and Prey felled, sorrow yawned chasm-like in his heart...remembering that night they'd spent together in tears, tangled in the morass of their own loss. Mizrah reached out and took her cold hand in his, holding them as she cried in quiet joy within the depths of her delusion.

He looked over his shoulder at Monroe, nodding stiffly.

The Vampire calmly, quietly stepped over Shamrys and pointed the gun

Two squeezes of the trigger; two flashes of orange, excoriating light, and two gunpowder-stinking explosions later, she was silent and still.

The Wolf Must Hunt.