Andrew Forsythe (androphagos) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2009-02-15 22:16:00 |
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It was difficult to believe that the last time Andrew was actually doing something for the Dark Army (beyond trying to stay as far away as possible from Ciara, well-meaning though she was), it was all the way back at the start of January. Of course, tonight's operation was going to be a little different from that incident -- taking out a village full of Muggles like himself (well, not completely like him, but close enough) and wizards who were hopefully not as well-trained in magical combat as the DMLE ones at the Ministry were ought to be easy enough. Of course, Andrew had never been as enthusiastic about killing and terrorising as most of the other werewolves, so he wasn't quite as excited as he would have liked to have been -- but orders were orders, and he didn't dare let down Fenrir and the others when he had nowhere else to go even under the new regime. He had been spent the last five minutes peering into the windows of various houses down one particularly quiet street, looking in particular for one that didn't seem to have any children inside; if he could avoid that at least, then he wouldn't have to spend quite as much time afterwards rationalising why it had to be done. That, and a Muggle household would be preferable for obvious reasons, such as not getting set on fire again. He finally came to one house that seemed small enough to house only two adults rather than a whole family. The first-floor windows that lead into the sitting room and kitchen, however, were locked when he tried to open them, and he wasn't at all keen to put himself through any glass again to unlock them from the inside or cause a scene by throwing rocks through. There was a tree nearby with a branch hanging near a window on the upper floor, however, so he climbed up and, to his good fortune, was able to open it and throw himself into what looked like an empty bedroom. Well, there wasn't anything he could do in here, so he ventured out onto the landing to see if he could find the house's occupants somewhere. Muggles Joshua and Caitlyn Schmidt were getting ready for bed, oblivious to the intruder sneaking through their son Timothy's open window. They rarely went into the room except to occasionally put some laundry away in his drawers, so they had no idea that he had accidentally left the latch on the window open the previous summer before he moved back to university. "Mmm, hrnny," Caitlyn muttered through a mouthfull of toothpaste. She spit into the sink and took a sip of water before trying to finish her sentence. "Honey, could you grab a roll of toilet paper or two from the hall cupboard? We're about out in here." She was glad she remembered, since Joshua insisted on buying rather rough tissues and she hated using them whenever they ran out of toilet paper and no one was around to fetch her a new roll. Joshua was a portly middle-aged man, a basketball player in his youth but now the years and the beer were catching up to him. He had recently started working out again (at his wife's insistance, who was convinced he would have heart issues at a young age if he didn't stay in shape) and now he ran lifted weights each day after dropping his teen-aged son off at school. "Sure," he called back as he slipped his pyjama shirt over his head. His slipper-clad feet were nearly noiseless on the thick carpet as he stepped out into the hallway, headed for the cupboard. It was barely a moment after he rounded the corner that he noticed the intruder. "You!" he said loudly, angry that someone would dare intrude on his home. "What are you doing in my home!?" Bloody fucking hell. Andrew knew he should have waited until he had a better idea of who was in the house before wandering out like that, and now he no longer had the element of surprise on his side. Well, there wasn't anything he could do about that now, and at least this one was going to be a fair fight, or at least as fair as a fight between a younger werewolf and an older defenceless Muggle was. 'I really don't think you would believe me if I told you,' he said, sounding perfectly pleasant and as if one of his own Muggle friends had asked him what he was doing shooting in Suffolk when he said he'd be hunting in Wiltshire that weekend. He was very much hoping that his mannerisms the other man off guard for a moment, but as he didn't want to underestimate him too much, he quickly tackled him so that he smacked his head against the wall and fell to the floor. Ripping out his throat would be the quickest way to get things done, but he tried to claw open the man's stomach instead -- the messier this looked, the more horrifying the end result would be later. "Honey, what's going on out there?" came Caitlyn's voice from the master bedroom. She had been on the toilet when she first heard her husband speaking to the unknown person in her home, and she finished up as quickly as she could (even using the tissue rather than the toilet paper her husband was supposed to bring her) and ran out of the door, not thinking once about washing her hands. When she stepped out of her bedroom she could see her husband lying on the floor with a man on top of him, and she ran over to her bed, pulling out the baseball bat from underneath. "GET OFF HIM," she screamed, running at the man - no, the boy - and swinging the bat with all her might. That was another thing he should have thought about that before deciding to rely on his teeth and claws -- even if these Muggles couldn't use magic, they still had weapons (however crude) at their disposal. Thank God for restrictive gun laws in this country, however, as it could have been worse. And thank God the woman was so damn noisy and talkative, giving Andrew enough warning to leave the man where he was (he wasn't going anywhere now that his stomach had been partly torn open) and watch what she was doing. He managed to duck in time, but only barely, and he had to do something before she tried again. From his position on the floor, he grabbed her legs and pulled her onto the floor, then wrenched the bat out of her hands with his own greater strength, breaking it in half and throwing it as far as possible from both her and the man just in case either of them went for it again. 'I wouldn't try anything like that again if I were you,' he snarled, pinning down both of her wrists with his arms and digging his claws into them to get a better grip; her legs were kept in place with his knee while the other one pressed into her stomach. Not that she was going to have the chance anyway -- before she could say anything, he bit down on her throat, crushing the windpipe and letting the blood that burst through the open wound flow into his mouth and pool onto the floor. He still had the man to watch for (and could take his time with him once he got this one out of the way), so he quickly pulled back and ripped her throat open, spitting out the chunk of her neck onto the ground before turning around and readying himself to pounce again if necessary. "Caitlyn!" Joshua cried, his voice sounding unfamiliar to him. His face was wet with tears and he had never felt a pain quite like the burning sensation in his stomach. It hurt to talk, but he couldn't stop the noises that kept coming out of his mouth. A sound came from his wife next to him as he dragged himself the metre or so across the floor to where this insane man was doing something to his wife. He couldn't see what was going on, but he started to see blood. He reached over and tried to grab the man and pull him off his wife. He didn't have much strength, but if Joshua could just get ahold of his throat, he might have a chance. By the time the other man got close enough to grab Andrew, there wasn't enough space between them for the latter to tackle him. There was something ironic about him going for the throat after what he had just done to the man's wife, but nothing humorous about being strangled. As a werewolf, however, Andrew was still considerably stronger, and though he was gagging and sputtering from the pressure on his neck, he grabbed hold of the man's shirt and pulled him close enough to knee him as hard as he could in the open wound on his stomach. He wasn't in the best position to bite anyone if he couldn't breathe, so the best he could manage next was to use both hands to claw apart the man's face, making sure to go for the eyes and hoping he would let him go. Joshua's grip began to falter when he felt the knee going into his open stomach and he fell backward slightly, his hands still somewhat around the werewolf's neck but his hips had slipped out so he was now hanging off Andrew. He could finally see what he had done to his wife, and if his stomach had been more intact, the contents of it would have lurched and made him nauseous. Instead he just let go, in shock at the blood that was pouring out of what was left of Caitlyn's neck. Things were starting to look fuzzy for him and he realised that the werewolf was after him and suddenly he couldn't see any longer and his face was on fire, but somewhere along the line he disconnected from all of that. This must be why dying feels like, he thought, and he only wanted to reach out one more time and touch his wife. He briefly wondered if his children would be all right - that Tim could manage his tuition bills and the miracle that Katherine was late coming home this night of all nights and he wondered if he was really stretching out his arm to hold Caitlyn's hand or if it was all in his head. He must be, since he could feel her squeezing back, just like on their first date. That was his last thought. Well, that hadn't been quite as exciting of a fight as Andrew had been hoping for, but at least it didn't take him too long for him to be finished with this particular house. Just in case even his handiwork just now wasn't horrifying enough for when it was inevitably reported on -- not that ripped out throats and gouged eyes were pleasant, but they did seem rather dull by Dark Army standards -- he used his claws to rip open the man's abdomen further and pulled out ropes of intestines to throw onto the floor. The woman he left alone, however -- it seemed oddly distasteful to him to do anything further to her when she was already dead. He had intended to go downstairs now that he was done with who he thought were the only two people living in the house at the time and leave through the door at the back, but as he headed down the stairs, he heard the front door being unlocked and clicking open. Not knowing whether it was another occupant of the house he hadn't accounted for or another werewolf who had happened to find a key under the doormat (but most likely the former), he sprinted into the sitting room next to the door, crouched onto the floor, and waited to see who it was. Katherine was scared stiff - not of any werewolf threat because that was ridiculous and she didn't even dream up things that silly, but because she knew she was supposed to be home by 9:00 on a school night and here it was nearly eleven pm. She stepped inside her house slowly and quietly, rehearsing the excuses she would use when her parents noticed she was home - as they surely would. Rehearsal ran late or they all went out for a bite afterward and while plenty of people were willing to drop her off, they weren't going to leave the restaurant until later and she thought it would only be a few extra minutes until those minutes turned into an hour. Really, she just wanted to stay later with her friends, but now that she was home and facing impending doom from her parents and possibly being grounded for life, she was starting to regret it. She paused once she shut the door and listened. Nothing. Maybe her parents were in bed. Andrew had hoped the person who came in just now would pass by the door quickly enough for him to get a brief glance before knowing whether to jump on him or her from the back, but whoever is was seemed to be standing still at the door. He could jump out and tackle the person against the door first to be safe, though the last thing he wanted was for it to turn out to be one of the bigger and more senior werewolves who would kick his arse faster than he had done to the Muggles upstairs. There also didn't seem be anything nearby he could check a reflection in either. With that, he took a quick glance around the doorway and saw that it was a girl not much older than his younger sister would be right now. Attacking and killing someone who was both much younger than him and female bothered him, but after murdering her parents, wasn't it the most humane thing he could do now? Before she could peer into the room herself, he stepped out and grabbed her by her coat, shoving her with his body hard against the front door so that she was pinned to it. 'I'm so sorry, but I'll make this quick and easy for you if you don't struggle,' he said, snarling into her ear and sounding more predatory than he had intended. Katherine barely had time to make a sound before she found herself shoved roughly against the door. When she finally stopped moving and came to her senses, she found herself eye to eye with a man about the same age as her brother Timothy. She'd hoped at first that maybe it was one of his friends pulling a cruel joke on her, but there was no reason for one of Tim's friends to be there and this wasn't anyone she had ever seen before, and any ideas of a joke were gone the moment he opened his mouth. Her heart raced as she comprehended his words and she tensed up, a small tear forming in her eye. "No," she pleaded softly, "no please, please don't do that." Tears began to roll slowly down her cheeks. "I'm a virgin." Andrew was taken back for a moment as he realised exactly how she had interpreted what he had said to her just now. 'What? Good Lord, no!' he said, now sounding more like a posh school-boy caught doing funny things in the bushes and going pink in the face (if she could tell under the blood). 'That wasn't what I meant at all, sorry.' He kept her pushed up the wall anyway, just in case she tried to slip out and try anything against him. 'I meant you could let me snap your neck right now and get it over with, or I'd rather unfortunately have to make things harder for you.' Well, that probably wasn't any more comforting. But just to get the idea across, he pressed down the nails on one hand against her neck -- not enough to break the skin, but enough to let her know that she wasn't dealing with an ordinary intruder. "No, wait," she pleaded as his fingernail drove into her skin. That hurt, but she knew it would be nothing compared to what he was threatening. She tried to stall a bit, thinking maybe her father would come down and triumphantly rescue her, but something was wrong here - he normally caught her anytime she came home late and the house was silent. She had been dreading him catching her nearly thirty seconds ago but now she would give anything in the world to see him right now. "Wait, please," she said again, her voice breathy because her heart was racing so fast. He sounded so proper - so nice when he was apologising, he almost reminded her of Tim. "Why would you do that?" she asked, choking on her words. "I don't want to die." 'Well, it's quite complicated, actually, and I highly doubt you would believe me if I told you.' The longer he stalled, the more difficult it was becoming for him to finish her off. 'I'm so sorry, but you'll be better off this way, honestly,' he added, not entirely sure if that was to reassure her or himself, before putting a hand behind her head and breaking her neck with a sickening snap. She went limp shortly afterwards and he picked her up before she fell to the floor taking her into the sitting room and placing her on the sofa. That seemed to be the last of the duties for this particular house. Even if there were more occupants he hadn't accounted for, Andrew was happy to leave them to find the mess he had left upstairs and move on to another house himself. He headed out the back door and started towards one of the houses in what was supposed to be the quarters with wizards and witches rather than Muggles. A few trampled old posters lay on the ground here, and out of curiosity, he stopped to take a brief look at them. Several of them papers had names and 'Wanted for High Treason' scrawled across them with moving photographs of unfamiliar faces above -- unfamiliar to Andrew except for one that jumped out at him with a shock of recognition. He crouched down and pulled the poster out from under his boot -- it was definitely the wizard who used that torture curse on him during the takeover of the Ministry back in January, and now he knew that his name was also Kingsley Shacklebolt. There were, however, still several houses that had to be taken care of in the village before the Dark Army could leave, so he folded the poster and slipped it into his pocket for now before approaching the back window of the nearest house. He would take care of that unfinished business later. |