Hellfire

Interval Three

Lucius hurt. He burned. His throat was dry, cracked and full of the sharpest shards of glass. His fingers twisted that ring, trying to ground himself, but he was failing. A darkness was rising up in him, instinctive, predatory, and must too strong. It was consuming him.

'Lucius?' Oliver called.

Lucius' mind jerked back from the dark, even if his body didn't move an inch. Abruptly he was surrounded by the metallic aroma of blood; a smell that made his body repulsed yet incredibly thirsty at the same time.

He stood in the room that had housed the parasite, body looming and muscles tense beneath his frosted skin. He could smell the stench of the parasite, the stink of grime and sweat, but, beneath that, he detected something more pleasant. A floral smell, feminine, one that made his teeth ache and remind him of the throat his mouth had been against not long ago, that dangerous offer of hers haunting him. Susan.

'Do you sense anything in the blood?' Oliver asked, louder this time to coax a response. 'Because I don't.'

Lucius forced himself to focus on the room. He needed the distraction to stop him from going straight home and finding her.

With a flick of his gaze over the blood, he found a sample of the parasite. It was oily black, slick and congealed like sludge. He pulled it towards him, dredging it out of the flat carpet to let it mingle in the air. He gazed at it hard, inhaling its revolting scent, and willing it to share something that should be helpful. Blood that had come from a living thing always held semblance of that thing's life - impressions, memories and distant thoughts. It was difficult magic, but, since he'd been devouring Susan's blood, he found it an easy thing to achieve.

Images flashed by. A garden, full of life. A woman. Blond haired, small, smiling one moment, her skin bubbling and popping like acid the next, sunlight cascading death upon her. The images became faded over time. Darker. Bloodier. The mind of a predator's rising.

'The noble who made him is dead. Likely ended by hunters.' Lucius said slowly.

Oliver stiffened. 'So, Pendragons then. A noble wouldn't be picked off by anything less.'

The worst of the hunters. Militaristic, ruthless, and willing to do cruel and perverse thing to end the plague of immortals; cut up witches and grind them to into useful weapons, skin wolves to dress in their metallic fur, drink the blood of vampires to heal egregious wounds. Immortals and shifters weren't human. They were beasts. Things to be destroyed. The irony being that they became little more than monsters themselves.

'Likely.' The blood slipped into a bottle without fuss, caged there where it wouldn't hurt another.

With another wave of his hand, he summoned the blood of the victims and sought out anything useful. The flashes were more focused, the recent memories strong as they always were with humans. The stink of tobacco and alcohol, the dark must innards of a bar, modern and expensive in appearance. Laughter. Enjoyment. The rush of drugs. Then claws digging. Dragging. Then teeth ripped into fleshing and searing agony flourishing. Drowning terror.

'Both had been at the same bar.' Lucius said as he jerked himself free.

Oliver perked up, clearly looking for an excuse to roam the bars for a good drink and a bite. Oliver was nearly as obvious as Alistair sometimes. 'Do you want me to look about?'

'No. I'll need you to see if there's been any activity outside the territory. I didn't recognise the noble, the vision was too blurred, nor could I see if there were others.' Lucius instructed. 'Tabitha can see to the bars.'

Oliver bobbed his head, looking a little put out. 'I'll shout if I find anything.' And vanished, his body slumping into a thick swell of mist.

It was dangerous for Lucius to be alone. His mind wandered and that darkness in him grew, reaching up to drag him into nothingness, just this incessant craving for blood. Susan's blood. Her touch. That flustered pulse he'd tasted beneath her warm skin.