crimson ichor (jane volturi)

two

Volterra, Italy

2003

Khepri was quick to dispose of the body as soon as it was heavy and limp against her tiny figure. She licked her lips, having allowed herself to lap her tongue over the teeth marks on the neck, the man's blood was dulled with the alcohol he'd consumed and it made her feel buzzed, a feeling she adored.

She kept her hood up as she rejoined the party, moving along the dancing bodies, feeling their heat and feeling their euphoria leech off their skin and into the air.

A few humans smiled at the red-eyed young girl as she passed them, none catching the colour of her eyes as she did. Kephri felt unsatisfied, the slight buzz of drinking an inebriated human's blood long gone from her system, but she lived by a code of her own, no innocent humans.

Fortunately, she knew, from experience that no bad human worked alone, and because of that she would feed at least thrice more that evening.

She lowered her hood as she approached the center of the dancing party, slowly moving her body to the beat of the music, knowing that for most humans, there way she moved would be enticing enough for her to have them in her web.

With her arms all the way in the air, Kephri danced, allowing herself to fell free in that moment, allowing herself to be drenched in the pulsating emotions and auras of the humans that surrounded her.

Inside an old building that looked like a castle in Volterra, Jane and her twin brother were training, attacking each other without a care in the world, enhancing their skills and sparring techniques, even though any undead being that watched them would be seeing a sort of dance.

It was impossible not to have each other's movements, attacks and mannerisms etched in their mind, being twins had that perk, but simultaneously it wasn't that much of a treat. There was no new aspect to memorize, there was no new skill that needed testing.

It was simply a dance that was drawn in stone for them.

"Can't you two roughhouse it a little more?" Demetri, a colleague, friend and fellow undead being, called out from where he stood, looking like he was waiting for the turn of events on the fight to happen.

His skin was olive coloured and his hair was black, he stood tall at a 6'3", although not the tallest of his advanced guard group. Beside Demetri stood Felix, taller than the black-haired undead at 6'7", his skin just a chalky parlor lighter than Demetri's and his hair was also black.

The two could pass for siblings if one didn't care to look much at their complexions.

"I agree, nothing is broken yet. You two have gone soft." Felix called out, his blood-red eyes watching in amusement as the twins shot him a glare.

Most fights between the siblings rarely ended with something broken, unlike the fights between Felix and Demetri where almost nothing was left untouched, despite their fights also looking like a mere dance.

Jane returned her rouge-coloured eyes to her twin brother, narrowing them slightly as she imagined her brother in pain. Even the slightest thought of her brother in pain ached her, and it was a side of her gift that she didn't use that often.

It did work, Alec winced at the pain, which mixed with the fact that he'd been distracted allowed Jane in all of her 4'8" height to punch her brother in the gut, forcing him to stumble backwards. Giving her the win this time around.

Alec, groaning in pain, glared at his twin sister. Silently accusing her of cheating as they'd agreed to not use their powers on each other while training.

"That's our girl! Good one Jane." the two spectators hollered.

Jane smiled teasingly at her brother as a gentle breeze from an open window made her still, the scent that she'd been unfathomably attacked by whenever they were in other cities filling her nose, the music from the party just outside her home overwhelming her ears momentarily.

The scent of desert sand, blood, an assortment of desert flower oils and essential oils but the one that stuck out the most, the reason why Jane was always so paralyzed by the scent was the scent of desert roses.

The sound of her brother and their friends arguing about something fell deaf to her ears as she inhaled the scent deeply, restoring it in her mind once more.

Almost as if she'd lost control, Jane used her undead-enhanced speed to get out of her home and into the suffocating crowd, her rouge eyes scanned the crowd, attempting to locate anyone that might be new, but all she could see was red cloaks and people mushed together. It was almost nauseating to see.

The scent vanished the moment she stepped outside of the building, annoying her slightly.