Title: Blood-Rot Candy [Part I]
Fandom: Lost Souls?
Characters: Zillah, Molochai, Twig, Raven's girls
Rating: T
Warnings: Vampires, carrion-eaters, suggestions of vore
Notes: This wouldn't leave me alone, so I started working on it while I was waiting for some stuff to render. I know I'm probably the only person still writing in this fandom, but hey, it was a fantastic book. And, yeah, I know I've used Raven's girls in other fandoms, but they're just awesomely portable like that.
Three badass vampires, questionable in taste, morality, and sense. Five immortal godlings, obsessed with shiny, sweet, and rotten. Bad, bad things are in the offing…
It was a Thursday. These things always happened on Thursdays, in New Acoma. Grandfather Raven's girls kept a corner to themselves, in the back of the club, and there they danced and squabbled, among themselves, over who would catch the shiniest candy of the night, hoop-skirts rustling and feathers fluttering, all the while.
"Caaaandy!" YikáÃsdáhà squawked, as the three blood-eaters strutted onto the dance floor. Her sisters' heads all swivelled in perfect time, to focus on the short one, his lush caramel hair brilliant against the black and red of so many of the club's patrons.
Yazhi bounced from foot to foot beside her sister, looking every inch the blackbird. "Pretty pretty heart-rot," she chattered, black lips stretching back in a tight, glittering grin.
"Waste away! Twice betray!" the other sisters chattered, merrily, ruffling their skirts and considering their prey. "Dandy candy! Life's decay!"
Yazhi hopped and pirouetted, spreading her black-feathered shawl, as she shimmied. "Shiny shiny mine!" she cawed, flashing across the floor, to drape around the little blood-eater's shoulders.
His eyebrow lifted at the flicker of oily black that settled, with a rustling sound, behind his shoulder, before the talons traced down his arms — long hooked nails, jutting from lizard-skin gloves. He could smell the sickly sweet mantle of old death in the breath beside his ear, as the flittering blackness popped its tongue.
Twig stepped back, spooked, and Molochai eyed the scene in amusement.
"Hello, candy-boy!" The words sounded less than human. If crows could talk, Zillah thought, they'd sound like this. The next crack beside his ear sounded like a beak snapping. There were, he reflected, worse things in heaven and earth than vampires, but they were few and far between, and he'd never met one — only heard tell, from drunks and dying men. Hardly reliable sources.
He'd bet his eternal life that whatever was behind him had smelled the blood on him, and wanted a share of his kills. A scavenger. Harmless, but potentially enjoyable, for a short time. Then it would become breakfast. Breakfast in bed, if he was feeling lucky — which he always was.
"Tell me," he said, tearing open the tip of his finger, on his teeth, "do I taste as good as you hoped?"
His blood sparkled and glittered, in the dark, but only to Yazhi. The candy-boy had eaten something he shouldn't, and she wondered what he'd gotten, and how. She rather hoped it was the incubus who kept stealing her toys. But, what was done was done. Her hard, slick lips closed around his fingertip.
He was used to being told that he tasted and smelled like any number of poetic things, so it was something of a shock when she lifted her mouth from his fingertip and pronounced her opinion.
"Delicious! Delicious!" she crowed. "Like a hunting hyena gone to black putrefaction. The liquid ferments like a mead, in your body, doesn't it, blood-eater?"
This time, Molochai stepped back, and Twig cackled. If Zillah's heart still beat, this girl would give him a heart attack.
"Zillah, little carrion-bird. My name is Zillah." He turned and grabbed her chin, firmly, but not unkindly. She towered over him by a good eight inches, three attributable to her boots, and her black, closed-lipped smile remained unwavering and uncanny.
"Her name is Yazhi, maggot-born," a soft, shrill voice whispered, beside his ear.
Zillah's spine stiffened. He was not accustomed to being snuck up on, least of all twice in a night. Twig stepped forward to say something, but Zillah watched him get snatched back into the shadows by another set of taloned, black-gloved hands.
"Shiny shiny mine!" came a squawk of triumph from the darkness into which Twig had been dragged.
Yazhi danced from foot to foot and pirouetted. "Nyaa! That one's mine, YikáÃsdáhÃ!"
Zillah grinned past her, at Molochai. "There's more than enough of me to go around. I don't even require your patience."
"Little candy-boy thinks he's enough for us!" YikáÃsdáhà cawed, and the giggling and squawking came from all the expected places, plus two.
Five. There were at least five of them. If Zillah's blood moved without his assistance, it would have drained from his face. He was starting to suspect he might have stepped into something slightly more interesting than he'd suspected. But, Twig and Molochai were with him, so at the worst, he'd only be responsible for three of them. He was pretty sure that three carrion-eaters were well within his capabilities.
"I want this one," one of the sisters declared, stepping out of the darkness to pinch Molochai's cheek with her talons. "He's got more meat on him. Candy's fine, but meat is better."
YikáÃsdáhà squawked in amusement, and the giggles swept through the sisters. "You always like the round-faced meat-boys, Bááshzhinii. Come get some dessert, for a change."
"I think he ate my candy, and I want it back," Bááshzhinii cawed, flicking one of Molochai's nipple rings, through his shirt.
Molochai jumped and then grinned lazily — or as lazily as he could manage. If Zillah wasn't worried, why should he be concerned, right?
The sisters chattered and cackled, among themselves, and Zillah took advantage of the distraction to step away from YikáÃsdáhÃ. He only got the one step, before Yazhi grabbed him, her lips stretching thinly back toward her ears, in an all-too-wide smile. She stroked his face with her talons, and eyed the gleaming steel hanging from his ear.
"Shiny mine!" she crowed. "Nyaa! Blood-rot candy likes me better!"
"Candy-boy says there's enough for all of us…" YikáÃsdáhà reminded her, stepping up to lick Zillah's cheek, with her oddly-dry black tongue.
[I may finish this at some point. I also may totally forget I was working on it. That happens.]
