Aaron Granger (onlyforme) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2020-08-10 13:42:00 |
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Entry tags: | katherine williams, ~wren ohashi |
Fancy Lobster
Who: Wren and Katherine
What: Roadside Introduction
When: Fall 2013
Where: Route 209, Poconos, Pennsylvania
Ratings: Language, Mild Violence
If asked how her Mazda RX-8 plowed into the guardrail on route 209, Mariana Ohashi would give one of three versions of the event: that she drank herself stupid and missed the hairpin turn, that she was texting and driving, or that she cried until mascara burned her eyes and she couldn’t see the yellow road signs. While all of those things were plausible, none were true. Mariana crashed her car on purpose.
Earlier in the night, she had shown up to a mountain lodge to attend her ex’s wedding. The crumpled invitation in her hand was legitimate, but nowhere on it did it say ‘BYO handbag full of airplane-sized bottles of fireball’. Satisfying as it had been to cause a disruption, nothing had the power to ruin the best night of someone’s life quite like almost dying.
The plan unraveled, as most drunken ideations did, when her car flipped over the guardrail, her head struck the roof, and her phone was ejected from the vehicle.
Mariana slithered out the driver’s side window like an eel and landed on the soft, wet earth.
It wasn’t exactly urban. Lots of woodland, with sparsely populated areas and an attempt to exploit the surrounding natural beauty for tourism. Great expanses where wildlife of all sizes could thrive and hide. Bigfoot and werewolves, maybe… Big game for the kind of hunter who shared such a world.
Katherine Williams did. Human just wasn’t satisfying enough to push her envelope in the kind of directions she wanted. It wasn’t as if she had anything to prove to anyone else. Every so often, it was as if self-doubt crept up on her, putting the undead militant in a mood to show she was worthy of having these gifts. She didn’t like the feeling of being accused of getting lazy with immortality and seeking out something big and nasty wasn’t just a way to get rid of the competition. It was a way to know she could still walk the walk.
Maybe part of it had something to do with the way how she, herself, had been turned. Showing up on the brink of death, unknowingly being saved through undeath and, thus, being given the natural tools to enable her own retribution. It was like needing to make a statement to herself and prove she had found a niche in the world, rather than just retiring away in solitude. That she still meant something, even if only she knew it.
Call it a mid-unlife crisis, but carving a trophy from something which vexed the scientific world and was the stuff of legend, made Katherine feel like there was a point to all of this.
So, heading out empty-handed was the kind of disappointment which bristled. Hell, she’d gone to the effort of stealing that nice, cozy SUV, just big enough to strap Harry and the Hendersons on the roof of, without even eating the owner. OK, maybe the Hendersons would have to be hogtied in the back, but… The principle applied, damn it.
Now she was kind of regretting not doing that. Expediency and a desire not to attract attention had made her err on the side of caution. Could have done with something more than water, though.
And if one sort of hunt had proven uneventful, another one, heralded by the sound of metallic carnage, promised to liven things up. A vampire’s hearing amplified what was already there, triggering an instant whirl of head in the direction of what had caused it. Truthfully, she was curious. Who wouldn’t be? Leapt out of her elevated position, up in the trees, shouldered the rifle and made for where, before too long, a scent of motor oil and smoke was detected on the breeze.
And blood.
Cars didn’t blow up on impact, like in the movies. Roads would be full of explosions if that happened. It was wreckage, like so many others before it, with one occupant having crawled to marginal safety. Katherine figured on a crawl, because getting hurled out tended to get a lot messier than this.
“Talk about road-kill,” she muttered, moving cautiously to the young woman’s side. Really shouldn’t move her, in case of a broken neck, but Katherine wasn’t typically interested in saving lives. Had more curiosity if the young woman might be holding any valuables, but… Nah.
“Hey…” There was a series of finger clicks made to both ears, seeking a reaction. “Lady. You awake?”
The reaction was a jerk to wakefulness, the black-haired girl groaning, “Mmhhrrff,” and gathering her knees up under her belly. There she rested, cheek-down in the dirt, rear end in the air, in a posture often adopted by newborns. The hem of her metallic-gold dress rode up her thighs. Blood shellacked hair to her forehead.
Mariana squinted an eye. The world swirled. The pale face that had spoken to her seemed to loom close and retreat, zooming in and out of focus. “Mm!” she mumbled, “You’re movin’ too much.” The dancer’s arm unfolded like an awkward crustacean’s limb and batted at the stranger.
The ground was cozier than she’d given it credit for, she marveled. Why didn’t she sleep beside her car more often? Maybe they’d go away and leave her to it… But even in her state of inebriation and probable concussion, Mariana remembered there was something she was supposed to be doing. “H’ you seema phone?”
She was a hot mess of a thing. It reminded Katherine of lazy adolescent cats protesting at having to move from a favourite cushion. Admittedly, one which had been squirmed into a cocktail dress and a sheen of blood, which made it feel like more of a dirty alley situation. The moment that forehead turned her way, the scent of Mariana’s smeared crimson wafted up, triggering an instinctive whetting of appetite. It was like someone who hadn’t eaten all day opening an oven of freshly-made bread.
“Alright, Kitten Paws, hold off,” Katherine reassured, holding the waving arm by its wrist. There was a casual look around and she identified the object in question. Still intact, although its functionality could be in doubt. Retrieving it, the elder of the brunettes handed it to the younger and looked her over, taking Mariana in more fully. “Anything broken?”
The question was ignored. With a remarkable tenacity, the young woman rallied at the sight of her bejeweled case, crawling up to half sit, half lean against the mangled car. “Pbbbt…” She picked a blade of grass out of her lipstick and wiped it on the ground, free hand taking the phone in hand and mashing on the icons behind the cracked screen. Problematically, there didn’t seem to be any internet service on this side of the mountain. The device dropped into her lap.
“Mmm.” She blinked at her surroundings, dark except for the cast of her upside-down headlights on the trees and a bit of ambient light from the moon. Attention returned to the brunette kneeling in front of her, who had come out of nowhere. Maybe there had been a passing car? Lifting fingers to her face, she touched the most obvious source of pain, a gash between her eyebrow and hairline, half expecting to find bone fragments in the wound. “I’m all sticky,” she complained, fingertips smacking together as she tested the tackiness of the blood.
“Yeah… There might be some blood loss involved.” Katherine could practically feel her fangs sharpening in anticipation. She wasn’t a mass-slaughtering psychotic, but some signals could not be ignored. Mariana was placing herself on a silver platter and placing an apple in her mouth, even if she didn’t know it. The bottom line was, the woman who had found her was a predator and she was dazed, confused prey. One which had come dressed for dinner.
“Heavy blood loss,” Katherine muttered, taking the phone and pocketing it. No sense in making things easier for the authorities when the wrecked vehicle triggered an inevitable search. “C’mon… We can take my car. It’s parked a little way over.”
Mariana was hardly in any fit state to resist and the unnaturally stronger brunette scooped her up off the ground, like she was taking her off to cross the threshold of a bridal suite. “Arm around my neck. I’m not risking you snapping an ankle ‘cause you can’t walk straight,” she reasoned, making sure the rifle was still secured over her shoulder before doing so. “You got a name? A home around here?”
The human allowed herself to be hoisted, mostly because her knees were gelatin, a sign of shock she wasn’t sharp enough to identify in the moment. She put a hand to her midsection and hobbled along, legs bowing like a giraffe’s on her stiletto heels. Unbeknownst to both of them, she’d abandoned her purse, with its driver’s license and empties, in the back seat of the Mazda.
“Mariana,” she said, slurring the name beyond recognition. She snort-laughed at the second question. “Who’d wanna’ live here?” A movement caught her peripheral vision and she peered over the brunette’s shoulder, “Why d’ youuu hava gun?”
“Cultured, huh?” Something about the earlier way Mariana had loosely waved her away now gave Katherine the amusing idea of selecting her from a menu as a dish titled ‘Fancy Lobster’. Well, far be it from her to dismiss some pedigree bloodline. Maybe it would add flavour?
“I hunt things,” she replied, matter-of-factly. “Dangerous things. Sometimes dangerous people. You ever had a shit-list of names you wish you could fuck over? I get paid to do that. Sometimes they need convincing.”
There was a pothole directly ahead and Katherine steered her would-be gazelle clear of it. Briefly, it crossed her mind how this would be Mariana’s final moments. Whether her ghost would be pissed as it drifted off into the ether or would just be floating on the aftermath of an alcoholic daze. Heh...
Wouldn’t have minded even this Mariana bitching about getting her dress caught on some twigs, earlier. A she-wolf, she might be, but Katherine sometimes got lonely when out on the hunt. It made her wonder how Caroline was getting on or… God, when was the last time she had indulged in an actual conversation? With someone who was anywhere near being on the same level? Someone who understood?
Mariana might be bruised up and disheveled, but she still looked good, even after hauling herself out of some wreckage. She bet the girl went out to parties every night, could have a good time and… Guuuh! Since when did immortality get so straight and narrow?!
Chuck her in the back… Have her way with that fucking biteable neck. Fill up on Grade-A college student. Or fashion journalist or… Whatever the fuck she was. Feel good and move on. That was how this was going to go. Then, tomorrow, she’d kill something big and nasty and…
Get bored, all over, again.
Since when had she got so drowned out with monotony that one of Caroline’s giggle-fits sounded like something she’d practically drop everything to hear from, again?
Who’d wanna’ live here?
How did a damned roadside survivor make Katherine feel so out of touch with the modern world?
Maybe someone who was still in touch with it might help… And she took a renewed glance over at the hobbling, drowsy length of pity she was ushering to their death. She was a looker. Not just in the way which made her hungry, but the way which could steer her right for decades. Someone who could attract the interest she wanted and not get suspected by the kind she wouldn’t.
Maybe teaching her how to, was what Katherine needed? Not to unleash some vapid, cheerleader-type into the night, but someone whose senses, instincts and intellect, could be fine-tuned. Someone she could help to see the world like her? Someone she could connect with. Maybe learn a little from, too.
After all, hadn’t she looked like a similar sight when she had turned up in that small town, all that time ago?
So, as Katherine nodded at the SUV parked off to one side, she told Mariana, “Get inside. Think I’ve got something in there to take the pain away,” she urged, unhooking the girl to help her inside, wanting to lay her out on the rear seats. The rifle was slung off and poked through to rest on the front passenger side seat. “Quick question… If I could wave a magic wand, you feel like you’d want to float away on a cloud, right now? Or get really cool superpowers and live forever?”
“Whaaat?” Mariana ducked into the back of the SUV and began to crawl across the seat on hands and knees, oblivious to the danger of the situation. As she laid down on the upholstery and curled into fetal position, she noticed that it smelled a bit like a family dog in there, and there was a Goldfish cracker half-crushed on the floorboard. She kicked her shoes off, wondering what panacea this woman might possess to make her head feel less like a jar of loose marbles. Maybe a couple of percs. She wasn’t opposed.
She made a pillow out of her forearm and laid her cheek on it. “Tha’s so random. Yer like, super weird.” Her free hand dangled off the bench seat. Giving limited consideration to the question of clouds and superhero powers, she returned to the question that came before it. “Oh, I know some ‘un you can kill. Brrrr-ittany Bell. She’s right up the road.”
Mariana gesticulated as if conducting an orchestra.
Well… She could always ask during the moment. Or just do it. And Katherine decided she had waited long enough, leaning a semi-crawl into the same seating area. It was something done so many times before, she couldn’t even hazard a guess. Mariana was going to be just one more addition to the kitchen menu.
Mouth opened, fangs started to bare and…
“What… Like… ‘Baby, One More Time’ Brit-... Wait...”
From would-be murderess to scrunchy-faced confusion, Katherine wasn’t the drunken one, but couldn’t help the sudden outburst of chuckling laughter. The idea of being told to go and eat Britney Spears was so… Random that she imagined the songstress undergoing another shaven-haired meltdown with a Dracula-style wig to cover her lack of follicles, rising ghoulishly from a coffin.
“Who the hell’s Brittany Bell?!”
“E’zactly,” Mariana said, wiping her mouth on her knuckle. “She’s a nobody.”
Suddenly remembering something, she wriggled onto her back, making little, “uh-ow,” sounds, and stuck two fingers into her cocktail dress, where a thick piece of paper had been folded and tucked inside her bra strap. Manicured fingers plucked it free and opened the invitation. She plastered it to Katherine’s forehead like a post-it note that might stick.
It read: ‘Join Us in Joyful Celebration of the Marriage of Brittany S. Bell and Brock L. Dickmann at…’
A full-throated giggle bubbled up from Mariana’s chest. “She lit’rally married... a dick. Oh it hurts.” She put her fingers on her rib cage and blinked, trying to focus her eyes on the console light, but the woman’s head was in the way. Hey, why was she back here again?
Katherine might be among those which had haunted the comics and cartoons of Mariana’s childhood, as terrors from beyond the grave to avoid at all costs, but the undead killer posed above her reacted to the adhesive-like plastering with a confused furrowing of brow and blinking eyes. She took it in hand, flipping over and reading it.
So, that’s why she was trussed up like this. And was nursing some kind of grudge against the bride, by the sounds of it.
Had they been an item?
“Tell you what, you can kill her, yourself… Let’s see where I put those painkillers, huh?”
Leaning inwards, more fully, Katherine took her knife and sliced a thin line across her wrist, just out of sight of the dazed Mariana’s half-unconscious gaze. It was clean, practiced and done in less than a second. Blood already trickling free and sliding down skin, as she positioned herself above the day’s… Consolation prize? No. This was going to be better. An investment.
“Put your head back… It’ll taste weird, but there’ll be a buzz to it.”
It was hardly even fair. Katherine had seen coke-heads with more self-awareness, but whatever it took, right? She pressed the open wound against Mariana’s lips, keeping the young woman’s neck arched in the process. The age-old baptism which had turned so many before her, now ready to produce a deadly orchid from the ruins of drunken failure.
And sliced a deep, engaging bite into her new companion-to-be’s throat.
Superpowers, it was…
“Mmmrrfff!” Mariana’s disgusted face, upon being coerced to accept the offering of a bodily fluid, wasn’t unlike that of many women over the years, suddenly confronted with an appendage in the backseat of a car, but before she could knock that wrist away, fangs locked onto her throat. The pain was sharp and aching. A vacuum-like suction followed as her blood was quickly devoured.
Surprisingly athletic legs thrashed and struck the door, the headrest of the front seat, one even locking around Katherine’s torso and squeezing it like a python, but it was a short fall into oblivion for a woman with a stomach full of cinnamon whisky, soft tissue injuries, and a head wound. The young dancer’s appendages went limp as she slumped into the upholstery. The world was reduced to a pinpoint of light, and then nothing, not even the hulking shape of trees beyond the windows of the SUV.
On this side of the bite there was only darkness for the high-maintenance, woman-scorned, train-wreck that was Mariana, but another one emerged on the other side:
A creature who called herself Wren.