Written in Her Blood (closed)

[Kaelani]

So petty, Nuria.
So petty and weak.
You are never going to be liked. You will never have happiness.
Don't you get that now?

Not until you let me in.

Kaelani stumbled up the stairs of the tavern; she had gone in the back way, through an open window in the bartender's quarters. It wouldn't be hard to find her, for she left a trail.

A trail of deceit and uncertainty.

Her blood was spread out in an uneven, sporadic line along the bar's tattered hardwood floors and up each step, leaving crimson that was smeared by a stiletto print every other few feet. The path stopped at a closed door, but anyone with two braincells could clearly see that the perpetrator of all this mess was hiding behind the barrier.

Bandage. She searched for bandage, in every cupboard and in every corner; there was none to be found, or maybe she was just looking too hard. Could it be right beneath her nose? It was doubled to be *his tattoo parlour, after all.

Bandage isn't going to sew you up, you pathetic little girl.

Air. More than she needed the will to ignore that taunting voice laid so thickly with ice, she needed air; it seemed like her lungs had collapsed in, and though vampires weren't in need of such an element, oxygen, she hiccuped violently around her choking inhalations that were to no avail. Tears were dried now, though they were still indeed visible. They left a faint line of washed makeup down once-porcelain cheeks, and it showed where she'd wiped desperately at the cooled flesh to erase the traces.

Breathing? So human. Do you not remember the fragility of human bone, Cardenas? How easily it snaps between your teeth...

But the tears had come fifteen minutes previously. Now, Kaelani Cardenas Dumont was shedding a dirt-blotched tanktop from her skin, to pull the off-white fabric about the curve of her wounded arm, tying it in a tight hold at the limb. The wound was a deep gash that laid open to reveal red, underlying tissues where the Halls' clerk had sliced through flesh with a finely sharpened knife. Where he'd used blood magick to retrace her lineage path, and take back that tie in her intricately woven bloodstreams. She had cut bridges - not just one. Many, again.

Whyfore, would one ask?

Well, she had explained it perfectly, with simple and minute detail, just hours before she commited the crime

"I am not a disposable toothbrush."

Was the idea that Kaelani had simply been a pawn in the art of war so large a stretch? Of course not. To anyone that knew every full side of the story, it would be painfully obvious that she was the pick to the lock they'd needed, and then... had no use for in later days. Or at least, to her, it seemed so.

"Wasted coins on me..." she mumbled out past chapped, peeling lips. It was a repeat of what someone had once told her.

The frame of her body fell to its side, colliding with the softer surface beneath her to create a gentle bounce in the springs, all the while her own voice replaying in her mind.

'Do you think this war was all because of me?' she had said. It was at that point that she'd begun to realize...

She was their excuse.


but

.

.

.

that was past.

And now was the time for present.

Kaelani burrowed herself beneath all the sheets and blanket that covered Jekii Astryd's not-so-large mattress, with the bends in her knees curled to press the soft curves of each calf to her thighs, and her feet arched to press flatly into the slopes of her backside. The middle of her entirety folded to press a flat abdomen to the top halves of her legs, and finally her arms crossed over her chest in an X. A set of fingers - one, two, three on her right hand - nudged to her plump, rose-coloured lips to part them, to graze against a pointed canine and molars. A bite down, a gentle tug, and skin tore before bleeding out in trickling streams down her bony knuckles. Soon, there would only be flaps of dead skin spread apart to expose ivory bone structures, elastic tendon and muscles. She would eat herself alive if no one found her; and she wasn't completely sure she wanted anyone to. Currently, Kaelani was only sure of one thing.

She threw away everything for a man who would throw her away.

The vampiress signed a proverbial contract of sorts. Written in her blood, foolishly so...

The final drops of her blood were spilled where battle had soon thereafter taken place, and even before that she had taken the Dumont essence into her body's 'life'source. No longer was she certain that the acts could be defined as "war", in its briefness and lack of complexity. There had been no struggle on L'inconnu's side - no true urge to outbeat Ace, no difficulty to fight before taking their loss.

It was simply a battle - a battle in which she was promised to be taught, to take place within. It was a miniature war upon which she turned on the ones that trusted her.


Trust is such a fickle thing, Nuria. Have I taught you nothing? So weak. Weak, weak, weak, weak...
Shut the fuck up, Meretrix.
Oh, no, no, no, Nuria. I will show you what silence is. I will show you how to sew that pretty little mouth up well...

The transformation from a two-toned, inner-psychotic mess and into an aesthetically sinful being had begun, with liquid gold in her eyes and a single word, mumbled around suddenly mangled flesh
and rose-coloured liquid, pus and protruding, pulsing muscle.

Each syllable created a bubble from the icy breath into blood, watered down and too-long deprived of the nutrients that belonged to human flesh. On her tongue was the taste of cannibalism; sin and evil in its own right.

"Entrantes."

_Written in ^her blood

Red italics are the thoughts of Meretrix.
Yellow italics are the thoughts of Nuria.
*Jekii Astryd's

[Jekii Astryd]

His lips curled into a smirk, nose trailing along the neck of a pretty young lass he had snatched off the streets; he could feel the tension of her body tightly against his, could smell the adrenaline seeping through her pores in waves. And that was when he bit down into the soft, sensitive flesh, feeling it give way to his invasive fangs.

The taste of the blood was tangy—nothing comparable to the spicy little thing he had left at home—but he knew he needed it to survive. Jekii couldn’t survive on her blood alone, being that she, too, was vampire; however, he could drink of the vitalizing liquid just to quench his thirst for the taste of her.

Drinking this, the blood of humans, was merely a necessity.

Setting the weakened woman aside with no more than a passing glance, Jekii wandered off down the shadowed alleyway and back to the dimly lit streets in search of his next meal. One measly human wouldn’t quench the thirst that burned in his gut, burned like a wildfire that had gone unchecked for too long. He sated himself on three others before returning to the tavern.

His home.

Well, not quite his, but he was renting a room there for now.

What heralded him upon his return was, what he thought to be, promising. He could smell her outside—all over the place, to be exact. Pushing the door open, Jekii found that the scent he was following was left in a trail of blood that wound through the crowded tavern and up the stairs. Had she gone to a room? His room?

The thoughts became bittersweet as he began to think the worst. Was she injured? Was she up there bleeding out? Was it already too late?

Heavy, steel-toed boots made a loud thudding sound as he ran up the stairs, following the trail of blood and stiletto prints that led to a door. Keys jingled as if begging to be released from their pocket prison, a wish which they were soon granted as Jekii nearly ripped through his clothing to get to them and use it on the one thing separating him from his soon-to-be.

Too bad he had forgotten that it was unlocked.

Minutes. Wasted.

Pushing open the door, the smell of her—and of her blood—became overwhelmingly strong as it filled his nostrils. Were it like a pool, most likely he would have drowned in it.

It was in the corner, near his piercing and tattoo table.

It was near his drawing desk.

It trailed from his door to all of these places.

But, it stopped at his bed. This was, indeed, where she was hiding herself.

Jekii’s immediate attention came to the lump under the covers, where the smell seemed to originate. It permeated, in every sense of the word, this spot, and when he pulled back the covers, he was aghast at the sight that beheld him.

There was his beloved, his Kaelani, curled up tightly into this neat little package. Her face was streaked with tears and the remnants of smeared makeup, arm wrapped up with what was left of a dirty white tank top.

And there was blood.

Everywhere.

Her fingertips were pushed into her mouth, trails of drying blood—fresh blood pooling over the top of the drying stuff—running down her knuckles and hand. What the hell was she doing, trying to eat herself alive?!

Immediately, Jekii pulled Kaelani close to him and removed her blood soaked hand from her mouth with extreme care. The mutilation was disturbing, disturbing in a way that he’d only felt when his own brother had hurt himself because of a spat; it was the sound of regret nipping at his heels because he hadn’t gotten there sooner to ease the pain of a loved one. When he felt, he felt for those he loved—which happened to be few and far between.

“What th’ ‘ell ye doin’ t’ yerself, lass?” He whispered softly, running his fingers through the liquid form of her hair before he trailed it down over a stained cheek, as if to wipe away invisible tears. Another look at the shredded flesh of her fingers immediately put him into a state of unrest and Jekii ripped at his shirt, tore it into strips which he used to design makeshift bandages. This would have to hold until he could get her the replenishing liquid that she would need to heal.

Kaelani would need blood, but not any blood. She couldn’t drink the bagged stuff, nor could she drink from him; there was the need for blood right from a human source.

“Say summat, lass.”