Thirst Ch. 15

"You've been saying that for a few months now," Percy pointed out acerbically - that seemed to be his role in all of this - not to deflate Yusuf, but to act as some sort of grounding element. "I'm telling you man, we need an actual agent."

"I'm an amazing agent oh ye of little faith and great girth," the guitarist countered, snatching up his ax and shredding a few twangy chords now that it was disconnected from its amp. "'Sides, our budget leaves room for exactly...hmm how much again, Dee?"

On cue she plucked the joint from between her teeth, exhaling a pungent cloud. "Could probly afford a six pack of Bud," she shrugged noncommittally. "If we sold merch - "

"In process," Yusuf stated - she knew he was lying.

" - then we'd probably be able to afford a twelve pack. Percy's right man, ya'll play and sing like you were born with strings in your fingers and a mic in your mouth, but that's what you're good for." Another lie, this time on Ariadne's part; Yusuf was capable of far more than Percy knew, or the woman she'd skinned and dumped in the swamp.

She also knew that if he really wanted to, he could be a blowout, massive star; the danger was too grave, of course, that spotlight would eventually catch his true nature. Even he wasn't foolhardy enough to expose their existence to the Herd.

"Hey come on we got fans coming out our ears, you saw it right?" Yusuf pulled his phone out and flashed it before her - looked like they'd added another ten thousand viewers in the last month, which was great for him but that wasn't what she was paying attention to...it was the message that pipped up at the top of his screen.

`bae: saw you playing, handsome, gave me the shivers, i'm waiting for you, usual spot ;)'

"Message from your boyfriend?" Ariadne quipped, repressing the urge to smile at his throat.

"Nah, nothin' like that. Percival's right here, aren't you baby," Mizrah put his arm around the thick drummer's shoulders, whose gaze was dry as the Taklamakan.

"Uh-huh. Guessing you're not joining us at Talbot for shots then," Percy stuffed his drumsticks away and slipped out of the sweat-reeking chainmail vest stretched across his brick-wall of a chest.

"Nope. Got an appointment." Mizrah slid free from his own soaked band shirt, revealing the glorious definition of his chest - she willed herself to watch his face as he toweled off.

"You ever gonna tell us who she is?" Ariadne pressed him, leaning forward with an elbow on the little joint-rolling desk, watching him with curious eyes...looking for the telltale signs of nervousness, of deceit or secret-keeping.

"Which one?" he answered with a smarmy grin...he was good too, she couldn't even tell if he was lying by any outward signals; the curse-empowered earring through her right lobe, an artifact she'd labored over herself, burned uncomfortably as it detected the way he demurred from the question.

Who is she? How is she connected to you, Yusuf Mizrah?

They schmoozed, they laughed, and for all Mizrah and Percy knew, there was not a Wolf among them wearing their bassist. When the next buzz came from the guitarist's phone they bid him farewell. She hugged Percy warmly, despite the fact that he was little more than some recently-nameless meat, and when they were gone she pulled the shadows back around her like a cloak. Interweaving the threads of unlight with her skin-suit's dreadlocks, with the fibers of her flesh, she stuck close to sweaty brick walls and pools of darkness where the streetlights didn't spread. Ariadne tailed Mizrah as she would a Sobek to its watery lair, or Colony back to its mewling companions.

The setting seemed almost unintentionally dramatic in its own way, his confident swagger leading her down to the waterfront...to the brick facade of a shitty little motel she'd known her kind to use for trapping prey. Is he Hunting? She wondered - that would be pleasing to her sense of irony but...something nagged her to wait, lying flat on her belly underneath the rusting hulk of a Mack truck long given to the elements.

"Well well well," Ariadne whispered with a growing, fanged grin when she saw Mystery Girl rise from a bench where she'd been seated, utterly unobtrusive. With a measure of voyeuristic thrill, Ariadne watched her stride toward him with the confidence and need of a lover, and to her fascination she noted his utterly...starstruck expression; quite literally, those black eyes glinted like the rural sky when he laid eyes upon her.

"Hey baby," Mizrah purred...was that love in his voice?

"Hey yourself, handsome," Mystery Girl quipped; Ariadne's mind gave a kick like a sleeping dog at the familiarity, suppressed memories struggling through the tarpit of Unknowing.

The way he touched her hips tickled at memories of nights she'd once spent with Yusuf, extremely pleasant memories she fought down as she always had. Mystery Girl, with those bird-of-prey eyes, her teak dark inked flesh, and those rainbow bright braids nuzzled her nose against his. So happy...she almost felt guilty to spy on their intimacy. Guilt, however, was a vestigial human emotion she'd long torn away, like a coyote gnawing off its foot to escape a trap.

They disappeared inside; she followed close enough that her inhumanly sensitive hearing picked up the room number they were renting - 4L. She'd kept her distance until this moment when, blinded by their own lust, they'd made themselves vulnerable just when they thought they were safe from her.

Nobody...nothing was safe from her.

A massively overweight man with curly brown hair, coke-bottle glasses and a ridiculously thin little mustache paid her no more heed than needed to take the crumpled handful of bills needed to rent a room of her own; here, she dug her mind's teeth into the metaphysical cords of chance and yanked them into a knot, impossible syllables hissing forth improbable results. She smiled with gratitude and a hungry wolf's satisfaction as she took the keycard for room 4M and followed Mizrah's scent trail up four flights of stairs.

Ariadne barely took notice of room 4M's furnishings beyond her singular fascination with the ventilation system; some grungy, smoke-flavored doom metal was playing over a phone speaker next door, doing little to cover up the sounds of their shared passion. She could easily pick up on the scent of feminine arousal that tugged insistently at her memories; could practically taste Mystery Girl on the tip of her tongue, which drew a pink, wet path over the front of her teeth as she carefully removed the screws that held the vent closed. It yawned open for her, a spider skittering away in alarm at the massive disruption of its tiny home.

The space was, of course, far too small for her to simply crawl inside but that was no obstacle for the Behexxed, whose body knew little restriction; with the same effort that came from flexing a muscle, burying a thought, or humming a tune, her shoulders dislocated and hung at her sides, all of her joints growing unnaturally flexible; with distinctly unwolven affectation Ariadne slithered into the vent, forcing her lithe body through and upward into the ceiling.

She was provided the sort of view afforded to hidden, minute cameras, ignoring the discomfort of this tight space and barely breathing as she watched through the eye-sockets of Yusuf's dead bandmate.

It was a pleasurable sight...one that reminded her of how it felt to lie beneath his tawny, gladiator-hard body, to take his passion and strength into her; did he remember those nights with the same fondness with which he clearly enjoyed Mystery Girl? Her eyes followed the motions of his thrusting hips, the dark, curved shape of his shaft reaching deep places in his lover that only he could stimulate. She writhed and moaned beneath him, her braids spread across her pillow like the refracted rays of the moon.

"Anh, AHHmmmph...yes, don't stop, there - yes, faster, oh God kiss me Mizrah, my beautiful...crazy...fuckin'...Lupine."

...Lupine?

As much as the word made her internally cringe, it also set off great, bloody-red flags in her head - that not only was Mystery Girl in the Know, but...only one sample of the Night's Horrors used that term.

"You wanna make me cum, Carter? Fffuck...you know...you know what I want..." he guttered. Ariadne squeezed forward, practically pressing her face against the grill as she watched, taut with anticipation as the urgency, the force with which he fucked her made the bed squeak and rattle against the wall.

Carter...

"It's...what I want...too. Give it to me willingly, my beautiful, sweet man..." the 'Carter' woman's voice was a tart, cold syrup poured across the Behexxed's lips, pulled back to reveal her wet teeth as her eyes widened in something resembling horror.

Mystery Girl's lips parted, as if to give a long cry of passion, but there, in the dingy hotel, lit only by a dangling lightbulb swinging from the ceiling by the force of their lovemaking, she saw them: two curved, needle-delicate fangs projecting neatly from her gums. She sank them into Yusuf's neck at the moment of his climax, and his long, drawn out cry of passion seemed to rattle the windows.

The winsome, deep throb that pushed his copious seed into her, spilling out over the sheets; the incredible display of his back muscles tensing, his hands coming down to clench the round firmness of his lover's ass; the blood that pumped from the twin holes she stabbed into his jugular vein, down Mystery Girl's throat.

It all came together, like the clouds pulling back over a pond to reveal the truth that had been staring at her this entire time, daring her to acknowledge the way the pieces of the puzzle fit so perfectly together.

His refusal to Hunt.

Her mysterious, dark magnetism.

The subterfuge around it all.

Mystery Girl was a Vampire, one that had been feeding upon Yusuf Mizrah. The solution was crystal clear, the boundary thoroughly crossed: for the Enkindled's own sake, she would bring him into her pack, willingly or not.

As for this Carter woman...Ariadne steeled herself for the violence that would come, with ashen bone shattered and broken across the concrete.

When next rose the Crescent Moon, she and Adam would make their move.

They would drag her out into the streets, screaming her bestial screams, and they would soak her body with gasoline and burn her before turning the flames against her kin... for there can be no real affection for the Damned, and the ravening Moon-Beast is doomed to tear the world apart around them.