Re: [Diner: Atticus & Hazel] (1)
For a moment Hazel was still as the surface of a mirror. It wasn't out of fear, but the fact it had been so long since she witnessed something like this; a pure preternatural encounter. Her breath froze somewhere deep in in her lungs. The shade which had been only a wisp of a person, a shadow in the corner of her eye slowly materialized into being, rippling the atmosphere with each pulse of energy he zapped from Atticus. She knew what it was like to siphon life force, how it felt when it trickled through her body, purer than air--and shades were the anti-thesis of life. They drained, and took and they shouldn't be. He didn't look human. He looked like a demon. The bullet holes didn't even bleed because despite his body, despite a form--it was just a casing for what he was now: anger, revenge and death. And the gun? Her eyes narrowed. The gun would further fulfill that purpose.
And then there was Atticus....slumped, zapped, his skin clammy with sweat as his body tried so desperately to make up for what was forcibly stolen. Even so weak he still pulsed with vitality, a shine in the dark. The other shadows drew closer. Hungry.
Oh, hunger. Hazel knew all about that. She could get up. Leave. She should. She licked her lips feeling that craving gnaw at her very soul--could it even be called that anymore? Ravenous. It hissed in her blood. Mm. She shouldn't need to feed again so soon, but this? Oh this. It triggered the beast inside and it smelled--it smelled and smelled. Her lips curled. She stared at Atticus. It could be so easy. Just take it. Take it. It will look like an accident if you take just enough.
Never enough.
"Fuck." She whirled on the now corporal apparition and grabbed his wrist. He howled. See, beings like him didn't really focus. No. They were so consumed by the emotions they felt in death that everything replayed in their minds over and over. So maybe he wasn't seeing Hazel. Maybe he was seeing his murderer. Maybe he was seeing his death. Hazel didn't fucking care. Her eyes had seeped into ink black and crept down her cheeks like the thin veins of a spider's web. Ravenous. She smiled and grasping that dark hair of a dead man she brought his mouth close to hers--but not touching, never, ever touching--and she took. The transference sent her back rigid as the life force that currently gave him form--drifted to her--he tasted of blood, gunpowder and makeshift soil from a shallow grave. Her stomach rolled, but the hunger was famished and ate, and ate, and the rage that had been drawn so savagely over the man's temporary visage faded into something akin to alarm, but he didn't struggle because the alarm melted to understanding then acceptance. Brighter, brighter the transference as it coiled down her throat and lit her skin from within. And the man's shell? Withered down, wrinkly, drying--more--more--more--until he exploded into dust, powder falling to the ground like snow but never as pure.
Hazel stumbled back when her grip dissipated, gasping, the air in her lungs no longer frozen as she gulped and eyes seeped into white, into stormy blue, the black veins pumping away to pink cheeks and lips. The only thing on the ground? Ash of a former body and from that ash rose a light? A delicate orb. All that was left--she had eaten the rage and fury that fueled him. Now it was the core of what made him. White and fragile...and it floated up, up, up, dandelion fluff and up through the ceiling and then was gone. The other shades backed away from her. From Atticus. Away, slipping into the dark and through the walls until the dining room was completely empty save for the breathing of two people, the flickering florescent buzzing above their heads and then there was Nirvana crying in the background in time with Mabel's abrasive laugh echoing from the kitchen. Nothing had been witnessed, and those who had were long since dead and hiding.