Re: [log: antique store - daniel/claire/louis]
"Put me somewhere?" it asked. It dropped the charade, then, and it was very good indeed at hiding itself when it wanted to be hidden. Other than the heat, the being under Louis skin gave off only faint impressions of being there at all. Louis didn't glow - his eyes didn't change color, and he didn't levitate off the ground. But some things could not be obscured. Daniel was sharp to notice the absence of fear, the cooling of adrenaline. It obviously enjoyed making them wonder how long it had been speaking to them, rather than Louis himself. But it dropped the accent, at least, settled the mug on the coffee table, dry as a bone. The leaves inside had gone desiccated, dry as husks in autumn and pale grey. "Am I not already put somewhere?" The accent was distinctly Irish, now, the western reaches, near the sea.
For what little it mattered, the thing did not seem keyed up to fight. It relaxed on the couch until Daniel circled nearer. When Daniel dropped it, the mug cracked and smashed in a spray of loose ceramic chunks.
It stood, arms loose at its sides as a scarecrow's. "Have your feelings been chafed?" it asked, with vague concern. "To be an animal is no insult. Surely, you are one of mine. Hunger is a speciality." It enunciated every syllable with a snap - spec-i-al-i-ty, and its eyes skittered over long teeth. It was smooth, tracing the words with all the élan Louis might have brought to the conversation. It seemed out of keeping with a god to which things were messily sacrificed, possibly borrowed from its shell. "And predators do as they must. But I do not gild what is. You can chat with her god," a gesture to the woman in the chair, "If you seek gracious words of charity."
It gave the Bellatora a long look. "An ancestor of yours once chased me from Italy." Italian. Rome, possibly, and Venice on its tongue. "I was fond of it there. The sun like butter and the people on the edges, tired of their new worship. Do you remember? Or are your kind's memories as short as your lives for your God?"
English again, to Daniel as he showed his rows of teeth. "Tell it to the dead," it said. "I go nowhere. Rip me out, if you like, with your teeth. He'd like that." A glint, and a smile. "I think he has a bit of a deathwish, when it comes to you. Do you wonder how a god tastes? I would not stop you. I will be inconvenienced, surely, if he dies, but free to find another acolyte. A willing one, this time. Perhaps his soul will go to my domain, or to the Christian God's. I hardly think he believes much in either. Perhaps it will drift and fade to nothing. But I will carry on. So tear me out, if you want me gone." It touched the tip of its chin with long fingertips, turned its head up, exposed Louis' long white neck. "If you have a taste for what's divine, I'm waiting."