Who: Adair and Dasha What: Tensions mounting, Tensions shown Where: the back of Carnival grounds When: Just after dusk Rating: PG-13 for mild violence
The sweet mix of cotton candy machines and fried food mixed with an under-tang of hay, mud, and animal: smells that reminded of the layered past and made humans salivate for reasons they were no longer aware of. Memories, like Pavlov's Bell, triggered want for fun, carefree times--a need stretching back centuries. They came for the mystery, they came because of lust and intrigue. They came for many reasons, but they always came. And Adair was watching, waiting for the inevitable one or two that would sustain her meager appetite.
The Carnivale's Undead proprietress was one of the least savage of those creatures housed within these tents and trailers--dangerous as she may be, her bloodlust had been curbed by decades of self-control--and self-hatred. Those who went under her fangs were relatively unharmed, always healed, left sometimes confused, but definitely much less worse for wear. In light of recent happenings on the grounds, one found in Adair's sights could count themselves lucky.
Like Ethan; nineteen, twenty years old, strapping and wiry and already buzzing thanks to the several beers in his system. He'd wandered behind the tents after the first patrons had been allowed through the gate--couldn't be bothered to use the Port-a-Johns located in the parking lot. Like usual, he hadn't even seen Adair coming before her unrelenting fingers depressed a crucial vein in his neck from behind. Three seconds, and he was out. The next, elongated canines pushed through the smooth, hot skin above the jugular. Adair cradled him in her lap, arched over his chest with an arm and the blanket of her red-gold hair.