(Requiem) In the blood

[akonken.livejournal.com]

I was in the pit before knew what I was doing, the vitae still slowly dripping from Lucius' sword. My mouth was on the Prince's wound, my tongue probing it to lap at the lifeblood there, my teeth clamped to keep him in place. His blood was rich and cool, its Daeva sweetness putting me in mind of honey. The scent of him filled my lungs, got in my hair.

It wasn't enough. It never is. I turned to face Lucius. He watched almost sneeringly, but when I sank my teeth into his neck, I couldn't see his face any more. I drank. I kept drinking. There was something musky in the undertones of his vitae.

So much blood. I felt giddy, wanton.

More. I wanted more.

Morel was closest. I reached out.

Mikhail shifts slightly next to me, a barely audible creak of leather. I blink. I lean back in my chair, all casual disdain once more.

How desperately I want to kill them all. To let the world run red with their blood. To bathe in it. To gorge on it. I want to lick them clean from my fingers.

Suddenly the scent of the blood and the crush of the crowd is too much. I'm tired of the pretence, the claws, the pushing. I want to go back. I want to hear the rasp of charcoal on paper as Palamedes sketches me. I want to feel Ruth's hair as she leans in to smell me. I want to see Sheldon's fatherly smile or Io's fathomless eyes in the way I used to. I want to smell my blood - my hot tangy blood, not this slow sludge of vitae - on Markus' breath as he tells me he loves me. I want to be servile. I want to be used. I want to be alive.

I am glad Katie isn't here tonight. There is very little pity in me, and I'm using it all on myself.

"There's another Crassus," she'd said. "Still connected with the family."

I managed not to be sick on her. I made it to the toilet before all that blood I'd spent so long hunting down left me in a foetid rush. Damned stuff. As far as I could tell, nobody had even noticed I'd been gone.

Mikhail's speaking to me. My tongue, sharp and slippery as a fish's back (thanks to my Beast), answers back without my mind paying the slightest bit of attention.

The Crassus rejected me. I reject them. I hate them. They're loathsome, evil. Creating us was a vile thing to do. Programming minds, creating shells in which to put personae to suit different slavers, but leaving the soul empty so that any of these poor pseudo-beings unfortunate enough to be murdered and reanimated finds that the Beast has moored itself inside like a hermit crab, utterly impossible to differentiate from whatever vestige of "themselves" they thought they had.

I notice Lucy looking at me, jostled gently out of my hatred and terror for just a heartbeat. I smile. She knows it's for her.

If she is pretending, I shall rip her heart out an drink from it.

If she is not, I don't know what I'll do.

Comments

[lslaw.livejournal.com]

I knew there was a reason Mikhail liked her.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I really like this. You should write more long fic. I feel like there's space to really connect with Charlotte here, and she feels very intense and very real. Tis awesome.

[mionassmaster.livejournal.com]

I want to echo what Sally is saying. Charlotte feels very 3 dimensional through this writing.

[akonken.livejournal.com]

Thank you both!

[akonken.livejournal.com]

There are many, aren't there? ;)

[hadidet.livejournal.com]

<3