Lucas and Morgan: The Epic Continues Forum Hunger

Morgan's knuckles tightened around her pistol, the silvered edges making her skin burn. She ignored it, her eyes and ears consumed in searching for the presence she was sure she had felt nearby. The warehouse had been cold, and rain hung suspended in the misty air, effectively dampening everything through the broken windows. It also dampened the smell, and Morgan was having an unusually difficult time tracking her intruder. Maybe she had been imagining it, maybe the solitude she had enjoyed for the past few weeks was catching up to her… a few yards away, a can skittered out from a stack of barrels. Not imagining, she thought to herself, raising her pistol higher and controlling her breathing. She strafed around the corner near the barrels, her footsteps making the lightest tapping on the puddled floor. She paused in case whatever it was moved first, preferring to be on the defensive this time, but when the silence continued she finally moved around the corner, her pistol leading. She scanned the corner, her eyes darting to inspect the darkness. Nothing. She kept her pistol up, taking a step forward to look out the open window. Maybe they jumpe-her conclusion, wrong, was interrupted, and the attack was sudden and intense. A blow to the back of the head, behind the knees, the side of her head near her ears, the spine, all were precisely and mercilessly delivered. She couldn't help but fall to the professionally met strikes, a kick rendering her onto her back. As she focused her eyes through the tears she couldn't fight, she was embarrassed to find that her attacker wasn't a single individual, but multiple, all having been in the warehouse as she had been. She had been slow, and careless, and she was going to pay for it. Her fingers were still wrapped around her gun, and despite the mob around her she tried to lift it to her nearest assailant. His tire iron hit her fingers with supernatural speed and precision. Morgan cried out when the pistol was pulled from the shattered bits of her hand, and not just because of the pain shooting through her. Her other hand shot to her belt, and other areas of her body exploded with studio remastered, color-filled pain. Soon she was still, willing to see what would happen to her. At once, all the striking stopped just as suddenly as it had begun. Morgan tried lifting her head, but the stickiness of her blood glued her hair to the concrete, and no one bothered to keep her head down. Not a single word was said, until a familiar voice cut into the silence. “I told you I'd find you.” Her sharp voice was followed by the piercing eyes and hollow cheeks that Morgan recognized. Arvante was looking over her, and if she wasn't always so stoic Morgan would've sworn she was gloating. “I didn't think it would be you, Arvante. Good to see you again.” Morgan choked out, her mouth filled with iron and copper. “Don't pretend you've missed me, Black. How long has it been, six years since you stole from me last?” If you ran a tight ship then it wouldn't have happened, Morgan thought, but couldn't get it out. She nodded instead, and did her best to look proud of it. “I can see you don't regret it.” Arvante observed. “Not even a little bit.” “Good. It will make what I'm going to do with you much more satisfying. I see you met my friends.” “Great guys.” Morgan coughed, noticing they didn't move. The leash had been tightened since she had seen Arvante last. “Indeed. What you stole from me was precious, Morgan. Unlike your normal cargo of drugs and black market goods, I needed that woman. I needed her, you knew it, and you took her from me. You can see how unforgivable that is.” “Never was one for the slaving trade.” Morgan retorted. Arvante put one stilettoed boot into Morgan's stomach. “You killed her out of spite. Slavery or not, it would have been better than what you did to her. You killed her usefulness.” As Arvante dug her heel into her body, Morgan couldn't help but spit at her. “And I'd still do it again.” Arvante leaned in, her face coming closer to Morgan's much like a snake's. “I'm not going to lash out at you this time, Black. I'm past being mad at you.” “Then why are you here?” Morgan hissed, her air all but gone. “To see your face one last time before I give it to my friends. I think it's time you stop being able to feed on other people's misfortune.” “Look really close at my smile, Arvante, because feeding off of misfortune is what I do.” “Keep smiling then.” Arvante said, taking her weight off of Morgan and stepping away. Morgan's grinned as hard as she could, her smile twisting violently into a snarl as Arvante started to back out of the circle of thugs. “I'll always be smiling against you, I'LL ALWAYS BE-” the first hit against her jaw stopped her words, the rest following like hammers at a builder's site. Morgan wished for the blackness of unconsciousness, but unlike her, the gods were not smiling that night.
- - -
Lucas reclined in the rounded booth seat, his arms stretched out over the tops like a relaxed king in his castle. On either side of him, a she-wolf nuzzled closer. The Swordfish had been his bar for a while now, although it was now called the Howler, and he liked to revel in the luxury of the place surrounded by his pack. Not that he necessarily liked all the sons of b*****s (literally), but rather the security that having the group afforded him. He still did his 'lone wolf' thing from time to time, but the advantages, including an astounding intelligence system, normally outweighed the benefits of going at it alone. And after all, it was good to be king. “I'm telling you man, the vampire ladies all want some supernatural strange. It's part of the blood lust, they just got to have it.” “Shut up, Derrick, you're full of s**t.” “It's true! I'm not saying it's bad or nothing, but those vamps have appetites.” “You just be careful before they decide that a little on the side isn't all they want a bite of.” “Psh, I can handle a little dead girl.” “A little dead girl with big teeth very close to your favorite body part.” “Guys, can we please change the subject?” said another wolf, a few seats down. “Aw, shut up Ray.” they said in unison, but followed the retort with a dose of quiet. Lucas took a note of it, but made no comment. “Tell me about movements on the other side of Angel City.” Lucas said to his second-in-command, trying to get his mind off of a certain vampire lady who certainly would think about biting, although not necessarily in such a soft spot. “Uh, that's the thing sir, there's not much to report.” the man said. “We thought they were planning something, maybe keeping a radio silence before a move, but even our informants say that the whole coven has gone hush hush. Something big happened, and no one's saying or doing anything.” Lucas thought about that, mulling over what could have happened. “What are our chances that no news is good news?” he said aloud, not expecting an answer. His second shrugged; the answer wasn't there. “Keep an eye on it. If nothing changes soon take a team in, maybe have Ray lead this one.”
“Good choice.” His second turned to make plans, but it was soon forgotten in a mist of drinking and she-wolves and midnight hunts.
- - -
Morgan lifted her head just in time to fight back the retch of blood wracking her body. She was stiff from the fetal position; the concrete was unforgiving and her muscles spasmed from being curled up for so long. None of it compared to the pain that still ripped through her. A sick yearning filled her mind, and through the dawn's light she could see the places in her hands where she had healed, and many more where she hadn't. It still screamed with pain when she put it in front of her and tried to get up, failing the first time. The second try was more ginger, painful and slow but she managed to get to her knees. To her surprise, a blind search found her pistol, the bullet still in the chamber for an attacker she never got the chance to fight against. She lifted her gun hand to the window, pulling herself up and wincing at the sunlight as she did. In the reflection, she could see Arvante's work. She tried to smile, but this time she found that she couldn't.
- - -
Now Lucas was worried. He had tried to brush the absolute silence of the vampires at first, but the lack of activity that continued for weeks and then months had him panicky. He had already made the decision to go in himself; the team he had sent had done a good job, but brought back no answers. Yes, the pack was comfortable, but not dependable. He needed to see for himself. He arranged what he needed to with his second, given a farewell kiss to the girl he left purring in his bed, and made an early departure. The silence he had heard about wasn't literal. Angel City cried the sounds of life and death every waking moment, buzzing in Lucas' ears like hornets. Underneath all that racket one could hear the bass line that was the undead. A higher tax on imports had just come up, he found, and Arvante was profiting from it on the side. All coven disputes had been uncharacteristically absent. Politics was in the corners of everyone's mouths, but no one seemed to be running against Arvante. Kill-for-hire contract work was spiking, and there weren't enough people to cover the demand for soon-to-be-dead people. Lucas was asked several times whether or not he would work security. What worried him was as much what he was hearing- Arvante was up to something, but when wasn't she- but what he wasn't hearing. He wasn't hearing about piling deaths. He wasn't hearing about suspiciously large hauls of drugs. He wasn't hearing about retaliations- it hit him with a chuckle. He wasn't hearing about Morgan. “Why is it that I don't hear about you, and suddenly the vampire community starts toeing the line for the first time?” he said to himself. Either something really big had happened because of her, he thought, or something really big had happened to her. The louder part of his brain hoped she was dead. A smaller part prayed that she wasn't.
- - -
Morgan had become even more painfully aware than she had been before of how few friends she had in this city. Really, her options even in the world weren't that good. Some couldn't be trusted to help, more couldn't be trusted to help and keep their mouths shut. Not many knew exactly what happened to her, but they could guess and keep their distance. Morgan knew that her time was limited; Arvante's punishment had been cruel, and even worse, slow. Morgan wished that the damn woman had just blown her head off and had done with it, but the hatefulness in the execution had Arvante written all over it. Almost all of Morgan's wounds had healed now: her hands had recovered first, her legs a little later. Her fingers on her right hand remained destroyed, her pistol aim all but gone. But her jaw was beyond repair. A canine hadn't made the night, and her mandible had been beaten so thoroughly that there hadn't been anything to heal. The result was a horrid looking specimen, no speech, and no way to feed. Arvante had known that she was sentencing her to an end in starvation and loneliness, and Morgan couldn't even fault her for it. The execution of it all had been spectacular. Of course the first thing Morgan did was buy her way out of it. A few surgeries later and she appeared fine, but something wasn't right. Her speech was coming back, and her hunger grew and grew, but still she couldn't feed. Morgan decided to handle this as best she could; by disappearing completely. If she couldn't solve it herself, well, then no one had to know that, did they? If she could, then what a way to rub it in Arvante's face. She prepared to leave by the next nightfall, her mind full of thirst...