Rabbit Blood

Chapter 46 - Fun On The Bayou

Leslie fell to a crouch and ran her fingers through the grass. It had been too long since she saw or felt real vegetation. Last time, it was the garden at Porn Studios, possibly fake. What was the link there, between plants and carnality? Her mind was in the wrong place to think of it.

"Where is this?" she asked, getting up.

"Louisiana," he said.

Alastor held his cane to light the way, and Leslie followed him. She found the night air to be sultry, hardly the place to cool off after an hour of dancing, and it was filled with the sounds of rushing water and unseen wildlife. The ground was semi-firm, grassy and wet. Of course it was. Her feet were still bare. Probably just as well, though: she pictured herself and Alastor crouched on a tarp in his office, chipping dried mud off their shoes with screwdrivers. It was decidedly unsexy, so she stopped.

They walked with difficulty along the bank, until there were scuffed wooden slats underfoot. She heard Alastor's shoes clopping against them.

"Is this where you bring all your girlfriends?" Leslie asked, scraping mud off her feet.

He smiled and stuck his cane in the ground. It became a makeshift lamp, casting their surroundings in brilliant red. Danger. Alastor took off his jacket and laid it on the boards.

"Make yourself comfortable."

She stared. "The place we just left was comfortable."

"But we'll be alone. No-one downstairs or upstairs, no-one to interrupt. I've been coming here for years and never been disturbed." He came to kiss her - close-mouthed, to prevent an accident as he walked them back to the spot he'd picked.

Leslie broke away for a moment to sing. "Juuust the two of us," she warbled, but got no response.

Then Alastor swung her to the side, placing her down on his jacket, with the stiff boards beneath it. Uncomfortable. Isolated. No movement, no sounds of human interference with the landscape. They were truly alone. Leslie felt a shock of fear and delight in equal measure. With a look, she told him to get down here and join her, which he did, still bathed in red like a devil. He was a devil. Lying atop her, he kept most of his weight on the elbows, and she wasn't trapped, not at all.

In the time it took to regain her strength, Alastor loosened her clothes enough to access her still-damp neck and chest, like any hooved animal to a salt deposit. He didn't care. His hands carved soft tracks in her sides and legs. No claws yet. Leslie's own hands drifted over him, and she only wished her arm-span were greater.

This continued for a while until Alastor dug a nail into her obliques, and that woke her up. Impatient, she tore her bodice down, and the skirt up, bunching it around her middle. To her surprise, Alastor did not conjure her panties into his hand; he cut them free of her body at either side, balled them up and tossed them at the lake, never to be seen again. Fine with her, so long as some frog didn't choke to death on them.

"You too," Leslie said, sitting up.

Sitting back on his haunches, Alastor waved a hand and his clothes dissolved away, landing neatly folded at the edge of the boards. This was not a trick she'd seen before. She covered her mouth, looking at him. From the waist up, he was the same, uniformly warm gray. Around Alastor's hip bones, the skin changed, turning dark, dark red, almost black in this strange light. She saw patches of white on his inner thighs... like a deer... and when she checked him for signs of disease (or perhaps horrific barbs, designed for copulatory wounding) she found none. Coloring aside, he was quite normal.

Looking up, she noticed Alastor take a swig of something from a tincture bottle, which he discarded.

"What was that?"