Down near the waterfront, one place looks much like the next. There are hiding spaces galore, shadows thrown by concrete pylons and stacks of crates...barely visible stairs that lead down toward the edge of the silk-smooth, chemical-basted water. The old corpse of a forklift sits nearly tipped over against a pile of abandoned cargo, clearly too heavy for its rotor engine; it throws a patch of darkness such that if you stand within, you'll be able to see him but he won't be able to see you.
Your thighs rub together in the shadows, putting pressure on the throbbing sensitivity of your pleasure-node; your mouth waters for blood and flesh, but also to feel his strength and his deep, adorned thrust; You hunger,
and you will take
.
There...the engine compartment is partially torn away, a red pipe wrench stuck into its shredded depths. You pull it free with barely a sound, and it weighs heavily in your hand, a mace that will crack skulls and break spines if need be...and considering what he is, what you suspect him to be, he'll survive its blunt kiss.
He steps out onto the wharf, and where once you saw the grandiosity of a rockerboy in his home territory on stage, buoyed by the adoration of a screaming crowd...here in the silence he is at a disadvantage. The chains on his leather jacket jingle quietly, but they may as well be dinner bells / a porno-flick track to your hormone-soaked brain...he's growing closer, and your fingers tighten around the pipe wrench -
"That was cute Mizrah."
Your quarry stops in his tracks, wolf-eyes reflecting the light from a tugboat's passage as he turns to face three figures approaching him from behind.
There's Redhead, her Lynx's smile writ wide across her pretty face, green eyes sparkling with cruel, vengeful malice. She approaches him like she isn't nearly a half foot shorter, like he isn't at least fifty pounds heavier than she is...it helps that she has accomplices.
Flanking either side are...bandmates? No, you don't recognize them. People from the crowd perhaps - no, there's something wild and unhinged in their eyes, and a disdainful, feline cast. Only cats gaze with that kind of loathing.
On her left is a man bigger than Mizrah, cresting him by over four inches and broad like a truck. His hair is bright gold with black streaks, and a bristling beard covers his face. He's shirtless, pelt of blonde hair running down his chest, stopping above work jeans and boots.
On her right is a slender ebon skinned man, his head shaven clean and smooth. A pair of round glasses with blue lenses covers his face, the bent of his mouth tipped downward with disdain. The black sleeveless shirt clinging to his body leaves little to be imagined, and neither do his fitted, stylish khakis.
"I wouldn't call getting dusted 'cute', Lana," Yusuf responds cockily, crossing his arms over his chest in a way that makes the lines in his back move alluringly to your vision. "You being a sore loser, or your sugar daddy not dishing out the kibble like he used to? Gotta wonder how you pay your little troupe."
"You're right, he talks a lot," the blonde giant rumbles, his skin reddening in clearly growing irritation...taking the bait perhaps? "I'm gonna bring you his tongue...Hate," he hisses, pulling his teeth back to reveal his own sharp, inhuman teeth; his pupils are dark slits, and you swear he's growing taller.
"Hate," the panther-like man echoes, drawing around your lover's right side. You watch as his nail beds harden, crackle and bleed, revealing cat-sharp talons that pop forth from the meat. "I'll bring you his heart, Lana."
"No," she purrs with a sneer. "Let him live...but pin him down. Geld him for being a little fuckboy...I know what you did to the Prospect, Mizrah, I smell your fucking cum in her." That Lynx-smile becomes a horrible grimace.
"Hate," she hisses.
Watch. Observe. Measure his strength...is he a worthy mate outside of bed?
Unbidden thoughts roam through the dark, moist corners of your imagination as you watch it happen; seconds drawn out to terrifying, incredibly-violent minutes to your Moon-Blitzed senses.
The titan of a man rushes him like a rugby player; his body changes in a lightless burst of mercurial energies and heat, splitting skin and orange fur. Where once stood a man, three meters of swollen muscle and teeth like curved daggers bear down on the smaller, darker man. The
thing
is a twisted amalgamation of human and what looks like a saber-toothed tiger; the fell echo of an Icy Age where man knew
Fear
. The feline death-god bears down upon Mizrah before the musician has time to react...but what could
anyone
possibly do in the face of that?
You can't see much but the monster's back. He's torn through his own clothing, shoulders broad like a gorilla's but his movements are the rapid-fire intensity of an angry cat. He rips and breaks, mauls and savages; blood pools and bones snap audibly - no way rockerboy survived that. It's over. A pity, really, since the fever still hangs over you, and you'll have to wait until they're done with him before -
crrrrRRRRACK
The leonine nightmare is still...no, convulsing. His blood-soaked hands, tipped with cat-claws that dangle bits of organ like a butcher's display, fall to his sides and twitch. You realize why when you see two similarly massive, black hands, tipped with night-dark claws digging into the blonde monster's head. His skull is twisted to the left, more than it should be; broken-necked and lame, the felid monstrosity is pulled down, thrown on his belly.
Black fur and black claws, white teeth move almost absurdly fast; you watch as a wolf-headed
demon
, seemingly spawned from rockerboy's gibbed form, snaps his jaws down into its back, digging for the spinal column. There's a shake, a snap, and finally a drawn out, mournful sound from the tiger-beast.
It took all of six seconds for your beautiful, dark-eyed, mighty-voiced musician /
prey
to become a God of Destruction; sinew-corded forearms are as thick as your thigh, and a luxuriant, black tail strikes the air as he tears something red and bony out with his teeth, letting it drop with a bloody sound.
It's not like the monster movies, filled with howling and roaring, posing and displays of aggression; by the eighth second, the panther-man had turned into something akin to an actual, enormous black jaguar and leaps on your lover-turned-demon's back. Bigger than any big cat has the right to be, its claws rip bloody lines in his flesh that close up again almost immediately; the half-man half-wolf monster thrashes and twists with a frenetic energy that reminds you of a gun being fired, rolling on the ground and leaving a trail of blood and snarls.
The two of them go pitching over the edge of the peer, landing in the water with a heavy splash. The redhead with the lynx-smile casually strides to the edge gazing down into the Gulf and from your vantage point, you watch it boil and seethe. It turns crimson, and is still before a panther's head breeches the water.
The body surfaces soon thereafter, floating in a separate direction and leaving a diverging trail of red. Mizrah, human once more, breaks the surface with a gasp, scrabbling for the concrete rebar sticking out of the wall and holding to it for dear life, choking and spitting up Gulf water.
"
Hate
," the woman hisses down at him, crossing her arms. "Fucking wolf...hopped the fuck up on something or someone's blood no doubt. Those two weren't worth the time I put into them anyway."
"
Plubhblhb, kafk...!
" he responds from down below, and you can see how he jams his clawed hands into the levy wall, hauling himself from the water with a rushing sound. "Wait...right there, you bitch. Think you're gonna ambush me and just roll off?!" She's already walking away with disdain, however...she'll be long gone by the time he gets up.
It sounds like a far greater effort than singing before a crowd, slaughtering those two cat-freaks, or seducing you away from your date; climbing up an age-corroded, weed-slimed old levy with only sharpened keratin to grip would be a challenge for any athlete - you hear him lose his grip and fall back down into the water once, nearly sliding free when a section of the wharf crumbles away but catching himself on a piece of protruding I-Beam. After some minutes, he's dragged his frame up onto the concrete.
On his hands and knees, dripping with the slurry of the Gulf of Mexico and smelling strongly of salt and ship-exhaust, you see where fresh blood vents from open wounds. There's a bloody bite mark in his neck that isn't closing fast enough, red trailing down his shoulder and over his chest; you see a mess of claw marks covering his back and ribs in straight, savage lines, and while most are slowly stitching closed of their own brutal accord, some remain open.
Mizrah straightens suddenly, forgetting about the hole in his neck as he casts his gaze about; he looks worried for once, you see the way the corners of his wide, slender-lipped mouth tug downward. Lines of stress and concern you hadn't noticed before crawl across his brow as he pushes his black hair back from his eyes. "Isabel?" he whispers your name, sharply enough that you can hear but only because you're so close.
