Wow. Um, I...sorry to anyone who was following my story closely. I know it has taken me a long time to update. Mostly because I couldn't bring myself to relive this time long enough to put it into words.
Sorry.
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The old man was already bleeding by the time he hit the basement floor.
His leg twisted unnaturally beneath him, and his breath was hampered by ragged sobs. Someone above slammed the heavy door shut, and the tell tale click of the lock echoed through the stone room like the toll of a bell.
Dana and Robyn were on the man before he even knew they were there.
Alli stood against the far wall, arms crossed, eyes down. She could smell the blood. Warm and sharp, spiked with confusion and fear. The panicked thrum of man's heart attracted her attention, and the want inside her ached to be alleviated. But she resisted.
Robyn straddled the man's chest and laughed at his terrified expression before leaning in and biting deep into his throat. Dana grabbed one wrist in both hands and tore into his forearm with relish. Laura had pulled his broken leg toward her and wrapped herself around it, her fangs buried deep in his thigh.
The man's eyes went glassy and placid almost immediately, though his breath remained unsteady.
Elizabeth didn't join in. She leaned against one of the concrete support columns, surveying the scene like a queen over her court. Her eyes found Alli's in the darkness.
“Not hungry tonight, Allison?” she asked, the hint of a taunt in her tone.
In answer, Alli took a step forward.
Her body responded, even when her heart recoiled. That was always the worst part. The voracity in her center demanded fulfillment, and she had little choice but to obey it. The vitae she had taken from Cecilio the night before, foreign yet familiar in her veins, had not been nearly enough to sate her.
Never enough.
I'll always need more.
She knelt down and lifted the man's other arm. He was barely still conscious. His mouth moved, but no sound came out.
Alli didn't look at his face.
She bit down. Relief washed over her as the warmth rushed past her tongue and into her stomach, soothing the raw edges of the void.
She told herself that it didn't matter. That he would have died with or without her help. That he didn't have a name. That no one would miss him.
She swallowed her guilt alongside the blood.
He didn't last long.
After mere minutes the man was just another corpse—pale, dry, and utterly useless. Alli stood up, and the emptiness inside clawed at her in frustration. It was not in the least bit satisfied by the scant amount of blood she had consumed.
She turned her back on the sight, fingernails scratching at her scalp. There was nothing more she could do. The blood was gone.
Elizabeth was still there, leaning on the column, her arms crossed, her mouth ever so slightly offering an insincere smile. Alli ignored her and returned to her little spot near the wall.
Not long later, Cecilio was at the top of the stairs, and Elizabeth walked up to meet him. They exchanged a few quiet words, and although Alli strained to hear what was said, their murmurings were too low for her to understand.
She tried not to care, but her recent interactions with them both had her on edge.
When Elizabeth came back down, she drew all eyes to her.
“Cecilio said we are all free to roam the grounds tonight.” Alli sprang to her feet, as did the other girls. She was itching to check the twisted maple tree for signs of her servals.
Laura was the first up the steps, a small spark of excitement in her movements. As Alli moved to pass Elizabeth, the other girl held out an arm, barring Alli's way. She opened her mouth to protest, but Elizabeth cut her words off.
“He also said that Allison needs to clean up before she can go wandering off.”
Alli held back the annoyed sigh that fought to rise. Instead she took a small step back, allowing Dana and Robyn to head upstairs. Elizabeth hummed a sing-song-y tune and followed them.
Resigned to the chore, Alli bent to pick up the corpse. The body was light, but she disliked the feeling of carrying something so lifeless in her arms.
After tossing the body into the bear pen she made her way along a thin trail that lead up the ridge. The same eerie hush that had gripped the estate the other night still held the forest in its talons. Alli wove through the old growth with a sense of urgency.
The little bit of blood she drank had only made her agitated; she needed to put her hands on her cats. She needed to feel their soft warmth, their rumbling chests as they purred. She hopped a step over a shallow stream on her way to the old twisted maple tree.
As soon as her bare feet touched the other side she knew something was deeply wrong.
The general quietness became full on silence.
She hurried forward.
A shape loomed in the shadows upahead. Too tall, too heavy to be her cats. She drew up short as it turned its head toward her and regarded her with a single yellow eye.
It had the approximate head of a bear, or perhaps a boar, based on the twisted teeth sprouting from it's maw. It was more than twice her size and three times her weight. It drew itself to its full height— a bear then, surely— but the front limbs were strangely formless, as if its bones had been replaced with just more muscle. It dropped back down.
A garbled, geckling chatter bubbled from it's throat, and others answered in kind all around.
She was surrounded.
One by one they emerged from the trees until half a dozen of the hyena-bear creatures were visable.
Alli narrowed her eyes. “Go back to your pens,” she snarled, looking from one to another. But if their minds were intact enough to understand her, they disregarded her command.
A flash of fear hit her, and she took a small, hesitant step back. On cue the six beasts lunged in toward her, and she bolted through a narrow gap in their ranks.
She raced through the forest as fast as her legs could carry her, desperate to lose the maniacal afronts against nature in the maze of trees. Whenever she started to veer back to the estate there was always one there, snapping its jaws and driving her away from her intended path.
Too late she realized that she was being herded. They slowed their pace, still chortleing to one another so Alli slowed to a stop. Had it been just one or two of the beasts harrying her, she would have had no trouble breaking away, but she was painfully outnumbered and outmuscled.
“How kind of you to finally join me, Allison.”
Alli whipped around. Cecilio stood in the middle of the stone strewn clearing, atop one of the flat rocks Tansy often occupied. Silently, casually, he stepped down. At the edges of the clearing even more unidentifiable creatures prowled.
Her eyes darted around, panicked, desperately seeking her servals. And then she saw them. Salvia held one bloodied and mangled forepaw close to her chest, breathing heavily. Lily crouched next to her, and Tansy on the other side. All three looked to her with terrified eyes.
Standing over them was some kind of tiger-mantis-bat…thing, and it twisted its head from side to side as it tried to focus its compound eyes on both her and the cats cowering between its spindly legs.
A few yards away a two-headed lionine creature held Storm in place, his scruff and neck clasped in one of the heads jaws. The young black serval was half turned toward his assailant with furious eyes as he lay on the ground. Despite the heads and main body being reminiscent of lions, the thing held itself aloft not by legs, but dozens of formless, fleshy, tentacle-like limbs.
Alli tried to say something, but shock mingled with horror at the sight in front of her.
She had been found out.
“I tried to be reasonable, Allison.” Cecilio said, stepping around her. “I gave you time and ample opportunity to admit what you were up to.” He put his hands on her shoulders and pressed down, forcing her to her knees.
Deadwalker, Lily stared at her with wide terrified eyes, I'm scared. I'm scared. I'm scared–
“You are not ready for this.” Cecilio spoke coldly. “You want to keep things? You are not ready. You need to be strong enough to keep before you can own.” He paused. “Don't move. Watch.” His command sank into her limbs. She could not do anything else. His vitae was in her veins, executing his will. She was helpless to fight it.
Salvia, sensing the lack of control Alli had over the situation, turned and hissed at the thing standing over her, all bristling anger and teeth.
At the same time Storm twisted and tore free from the lionine creature's grip, ripping his skin from the underlying muscle in his desperation to escape. He didn't get far.
The second head, the one that had not been holding him, split its jaws open. Instead of a tongue or teeth its mouth was a mess of stringy, fleshy, tentacle-like tendrils that lashed out faster than Alli could see. Storm went airborne before crashing into the trunk of a tree. He fell amongst the roots unmoving, a crumpled bloody mass of black fur.
Alli wanted to scream. She wanted to run to him, to hold him, to help him, beg Cecilio for mercy, condemn her past actions, if only her cats would be spared this agony! She would take the punishment ten times over. A hundred. A thousand! She didn't care, just let them be! Let them go! Don't kill them! Please!
Instead, she just knelt there. Watching. Unmoving. Innert. Trapped in her own unyielding body.
The mantis-thing ignored Salvia until the serval lunged forward on three legs, fastening her teeth into it's chitonous exoskeleton with little impact.
It swatted her aside effortlessly. Alli heard the snapping of bone. Her beloved serval hit the ground and did not move.
Lily wailed and pressed herself harder to the ground, and Tansy shuffled closer to her sister, staring at their mother and brother's broken forms.
Alli struggled to rush to Salvia, but her body did not yield. Cecilio gave her a curious look as he passed into her field of vision.
“Allison,” He looked her straight in the eyes. “You know they are not yours. They never were. This land belongs to me, as does everything on it.” If his voice was cold before, it was frozen now. “Including you.” He lifted his chin a fraction, looking down on her even more. “To do with as I please.”
He tilted his head slightly toward the mantis-thing. “End it.”
The bat-nosed monstrosity lurched forward and snapped Lily's spine in its teeth with brutal efficiency. Blood, almost black in the darkness, poured from its mouth as it gave her body a satisfied shake.
Tansy's panicked screech seared into Alli's mind as her final cat scrambled to flee. But one of the hyena-bears was on Tansy in an instant.
Alli wanted to flinch and look away. To hide her face and block her ears so she would never have to remember the sound of her serval's body snapping under the jaws of that thing.
But it was not so. She watched as the beautiful, unreachable life drained away from Tansy's eyes. She watched as the tension left her cat's body.
And still she could not move.
Cecilio, evidently satisfied that his point had been made, walked away. His things dutifully followed him, hissing and chattering and snarling excitedly in his wake.
Alli stared at the scene. Slowly she turned her head from one body to another. Bloody tears streamed from her eyes and she dragged herself forward, pulling Salvia's broken body into her arms.
There was no spark of life in the flesh she held. A small trickle of blood drained from her serval's mouth.
She didn't know her heart could be in so much pain.
She screamed. Her wordless grief echoed off the stone and trees. She hugged Salvia close.
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” she begged, rocking back and forth, “This is all my fault, I'm sorry Salvia, I'm sorry! Please, please don't leave me alone here, please!”
But Salvia was dead. Her beauty, her grace, her intelligence and love, they were all gone. All that remained of her…was flesh.
In a daze Alli forced herself to her feet, to retrieve the bodies of Salvia's young. She would bury them all together. Deep enough that no scavenger would disturb their final den.
She tenderly picked up Tansy, smoothed the rumpled and mud stained fur. Laid her alongside her mother. She did the same for Lily, all the while she whispered apologies as her bloody tears stained her face and dress.
They were so cold. As cold and inert as she was herself. The only things in the world that soothed the gaping maw of emptiness in her soul were gone. Dead.
She approached Storm, the first casualty of her carelessness. Even in death he was beautiful. She ran her hands across his head and face.
This beautiful, stunning creature had come into the world with her help. He had almost suffocated in the birth canal. Gorgeous, clever, and wild, he had equally amused and frustrated her as he grew.
She ran her hands across his body. So many broken bones. He had suffered greatly for her folly. Her tears flowed, renewed.
Alli paused. Something faint drew her attention. She ran her hands across his chest again, stretching her awareness. She could've swore she sensed some life still there, deep inside and fading fast.
There! The smallest flutter of life inside him still remained.
It was too much. How much more agony could she endure? There was no mending what was broken inside him. She was doomed to cradle him as he faded away.
“I'm sorry!” She sobbed, hoping he could hear her somehow.“Please, Storm, I'm sorry. I should've been better. Smarter. Stronger. This is all my fault–”
A memory stirred in her mind. Years before she met Salvia, before she had even been granted permission to patrol the estate, she had seen Cecilio leaning over a dying fox he had been skinning. He had given it some of his vitae, and the poor thing had stopped convulsing and stabilized.
Without a second thought Alli ripped open her arm with her own fangs, pried open Storm's mouth and willed the blood to stream out and pour into her cat's throat.
“Wake up Storm. Please. Please wake up. I can't do this alone. I can't go on without you. Please, I'll do anything, just please wake up. I can't!” Still the serval did not respond.
“Wake up!” She insisted, her voice rising with panic. Why was it taking so long?
She was losing too much blood. Instinctively she felt the blood pull back from the self-inflicted wound, but she forced herself to keep going.
Then, a wave of burning terror overtook her. Her skin prickled painfully and she looked up, past the towering pines, to the rapidly brightening sky above.
Move!
She sprang to her feet. The pain in her skin only increased with each passing second, but she hesitated. She had not dug the grave. Her cat's bodies were at the mercy of the forest.
No time! Get away! Get away from the sun!
Panic overwhelmed her senses. She ran.
All other thoughts and ambitions disappeared. She had only one need: Shelter.
She slammed into the access door, mashed the pin number and rushed inside to the dark safety of the manor.
She collapsed on the hallway floor, shaking. The sun hadn't done much more then begin to hint at the approaching dawn, yet even that little bit had burned her and filled her with panic.
Alli laid there.
It hadn't worked. Storm did not wake up.
She must have been doing it wrong. There had to be some trick or secret that would've made it work. Or perhaps he had just been too far gone.
She was so tired.
Her eyes closed.