Thirst

"Are you full and sated?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"You guess?"

"Shh...don't ruin it, you loudmouth..."

Yeah yeah fine. She had a point though. He closed his eyes and placed his cheek against the top of her head, the roughness of her braids catching against his thick stubble, almost like velcro. Her arms were wrapped tightly around his torso, face nestled against his chest as she took in his scent. "Mmm, don't go thinkin' you're somethin' yet ...just cuz you smell good." Her lips were cool against his chest as she pulled his shirt down, pressing the chilling warmth of her kiss against his clavicle, and looked up at him with begrudging sweetness.

You're so pretty...why, why do you have to be dead?

"Take care of yourself, Monroe. Seriously...don't let the wolf blood go to your head, alright?" He smirked at her, and she returned it with a smoldering smile.

"Get outta here Mizrah, go drink a bunch of water, kill and eat something." The blood-flushed beauty of her smile faltered, crossing her arms under the sport bra covering her chest...the only thing she was wearing, in fact. "I don't need you to be my blood-doll, you know. I can hunt just fine." He wondered if she ever postured like this to anyone else, and Mizrah figured it was not part of her normal behaviors...such a petty declaration wasn't necessary before him. She'd been this way for far longer than he'd been Afflicted, of course she could feed herself. He felt disturbing guilt quite suddenly; she'd called him something, a 'dealer'. Getting her hooked, and he knew what the source of her addiction was: his blood.

Seconds passed as they held each other's gaze...mortals may feel awkward in such a situation, but not for lions walking amidst the sheep; he was about to say something pithy when she stepped in, rose on her toes and interrupted him by pressing her dark lips against his. Mizrah descended into her kiss; passionate. Hard, deep, she released him and smacked his hard belly. "Go." He didn't bother with words, just fixed her with a smoldering leer that she returned before he opened the door to the motel room.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she barely whispered. He acted as if he'd not heard her, shutting the motel room door and swaggering confidently toward the elevator, thumbs hooked in his belt loops. When the car finally arrived, it was truly an effort to keep it together, and he stabbed the 'close' button fiercely until the doors closed.

THUD

The elevator shook, but thankfully didn't halt its descent as Mizrah collapsed on his back, colorful spots swimming before his vision. The musician had maintained lucidity as long as he could and longer than most of his kind could maintain under these conditions, a particular survival advantage unique to his Strain. However, the Enkindled was badly drained. She'd been considerate and only taken small amounts each time they'd met, unlike the first time when she'd nearly killed him; the problem was that when she drank from him, it wasn't just blood cells and plasma she was lapping up with that skilled, pretty tongue.

She tapped the primordial echo that thundered in his heart, the ill-omened howl at the beginning of time that warped and distorted flesh and soul; it manifested in the load of microscopic entities soaking his blood, his flesh. While they outwardly and genetically resembled Lyssavirus, it was all just a facet-manifestation of the Curse itself, excitations in that dread, multidimensional field that soaked all of reality with dynamic misfortune. Clearly, these excitations also affected the thirsty dead.

"Gotta...Hunt...Gotta...Fffffffffffuuuuck man..." Mizrah couldn't let anyone see him lying on his back like this in the elevator when it opened - someone might steal his wallet, or worse...call 911. EMTs and cops were, outside of Head-Taker Conspiracies, the last mortals any Afflicted wanted to encounter, and they couldn't always rely on Bedlam to do the work of muddling memories. Especially when paperwork was involved.

A willful thrust of his fingers up onto the metal handlebar...and they slid down the side uselessly. He flailed once again, feeling far less a deadly Night-Creature and more an up-ended turtle until, with a hiss of frustration, he willed his fingernails into talons and jabbed them into the metal. Hauling himself up carefully and almost giving in to the siren call of nausea, Yusuf made sure he was leaning casually against the elevator wall, summoning single-minded focus to stride with easy, confident charm past the welcome desk. " Shkran. Murih jida, " he thanked the trendy looking girl behind the counter in her paisley hijab. She gave him a look of mild disgust, inching away from the key card he tossed on her desk before stepping through sliding doors and into the muggy night.

The City

Humanity and others called this warren of barren concrete Home or Feeding Grounds, but for Werewolves, The City held a special significance. Despite being incredibly dangerous because of its overpopulation of aggressive food-stuff organisms, something about the place spared it the horrors of the Lunar Strain. The alien things Lunatics summoned, Outsiders that descended upon ladders of foul moonlight, could not find purchase in this place

The Curse and its accompanying burdens had, over the years, rendered him unable to properly absorb the nutrition and symbolic reinforcement of his nature from whatever the mortals ate. It was the eventual fate of all of his species to give in to Lalith's Call and solely devour the flesh of other great predators; Mizrah thought he had a couple of years at least before he got to that point, but times of competition and bloodletting between the Strains and different Therids - that is, any shape changing beast - had refined the Monster caged in his heart through brutal survival.

The stink of The City's streets pierced through the veil of his sensory filters, and he registered the stench of unwashed, chemical-soaked, deadly humanity. It would be easy to pick out one of the weak, drunk, or lost and draw them in, in a way similar to how Monroe had reeled him toward her, but Yusuf had long despised the act of devouring people.

Humans were often just as bad as your average Turnskin, each one a hateful little collection of petty wants...each ruled by a terror of being devoured by one of their own, since they were the undisputed rulers of the world and had nobody else to concern themselves with. In the Jungle, down here on the streets with the other Skinchangers, the same rules applied. As before, Mizrah had little choice but to participate in the cannibalism, or be cannibalized himself. At least he'd had like-minded Werewolves around him, once before, and it'd made night after night of violent, bloody hunts survivable...bearable. Sometimes even enjoyable, but thankfully Starvation numbed his consciousness to that loss better than any drug, or even the Vampire's Kiss.

Yusuf fell in among the crowds, and it was like throwing a stone in a river. The extremely perceptive might pick up on the way people seemed to subtly move around him, avoiding his presence the way a herd of gazelles shun a lion that isn't hunting. He had a destination in mind, only a few blocks away - despite its size, everything in the River District was within walking distance, more or less. Even if it wasn't, at night the winding, ill-planned roads had a way of drawing you along until you eventually found where you were going. The River District was an obscene feast of vice and sex, creaking on a concrete table in an ever-precarious state of near collapse; somehow, more souls ended up in its stifling embrace every year, and like a painted whore utterly drunk on herself she laughed that she could take more.

The Metropolitan Police rarely bothered with the area, and it was well understood that the relative peace - or at least enough stability for business to take place - was a result of dangerous, armed individuals willing to enforce it with hot lead. While most Werewolf packs kept their hunting grounds and expedition zones a guarded secret, there was enough abundant prey that certain areas were considered free-entry...a sort of open pantry of struggle.

Still...the food had been getting increasingly wary, and better organized. Alone, in the grips of blood-famine, he was just as likely to get killed as he was to bag dinner but...it wasn't as if he had a choice. Not if he wanted to avoid being a maneater. That's why he hopped on a crowded tram, squeezing through to a window as it moved down Water Street and made a swing to meander over the Stadtler Bridge...his stop was at the edge of the blight in a place colloquially known as The Barrows. Barrowster Heights, as it was properly known, was a spit of the industrial tombyard that had built this city. It was where residential areas and dangerous workshops, foundries and refineries had clumped together, and where old rent-control laws from the 70s made the apartment towers some of the most affordable in The City. Even with the departure of decent paying jobs to the ruins of former Communist nations and 'liberated' colonies, a lot of people still scratched a living here amidst the moldering concrete and steel.

Where there were impoverished, desperate people, there were Twitchlings. Colony. Nakhten. All were viable prey, but seeing as Mizrah was hunting alone lately, he'd have to go for whatever was weakest. Vulnerable, alone and stupid; and he'd have to be fast. Come on Yusuf...game face. You got this big guy, you haven't eaten treifa in a whole year...what would mom say? What would mom say, indeed, if she had any idea her son was like this?

The tram announcer's voice crackled over the intercom: " Stadtler Bridge and Faulk, please watch your step as you exit the tram from the rear, thank you." The message was repeated in Creole and Spanish, and sidling through masses of people that felt like hanging sides of beefby the time he'd shoved his way through the back door, before the street car chugged its way back across the bridge into more civilized territory. The tracks ended here because the roads were too pitted and marred for any semblance of public transit besides buses from the 20th century.

A lot of rough neighborhoods in American cities had a sort of flat quality to them; chainlink fences torn off their hinges surrounding overgrown yards filled with trash...parks built with well-meaning tax money that soon became needle infested and dangerous. The Barrows was different; most of the buildings on this crumbling rock were at least twenty stories high, many higher than that, with entire self-contained communities inside. Most had been constructed in the early 1990s and had that blocky, segmented look; forty years of harsh oceanside weather had corroded some of the abandoned ones down to their girders. The whole place felt like a gigantic Jordan Downs, or a district-wide Cabrini-Green, but the city's architects couldn't help themselves when calling upon the original builders' French-Gothic roots.

His saunter became a careful walk as he pulled his hood up, hands in his pockets. A lot of people were just getting home from their jobs, and those who had the money crossed back over the bridge into the River District to give in to their base impulses. Those who didn't either languished here where the drugs and booze were cheap but shitty, and where a working girl was just as likely to mug her client as suck them off. His darker skin helped him fit in - an unfortunate reality down here in the Land of Traitors as much as in Yankeetown Milwaukee - but anyone from The Barrows recognize an outsider; almost nobody who didn't live here entered if they could help it.

Tonight, he went relatively unharassed, aside from being cased for a while by a rusty, dark green Yukon with tinted windows; Mizrah just kept walking, kept his eyes on the concrete and his ears open, ready for the sound of doors opening or safeties clicking...people didn't usually shoot first out here, but he wasn't keen on being rolled up on, subjected to a street interrogation. So far so good as he hung a left and followed the broken concrete ribbon to the southernmost point of the neighborhood, where the old Stadtler-Grimes Park occupied a good portion of the oceanfront.

Stadtler-Grimes Park was The City's attempt at Coney Island, although Theodore Grimes' notorious fascination with the grotesque had colored his judgment as he aligned its interests with an old executive from the defunct Paulie's Pizza Warren. The same old problems from Paulie's had come to roost at Stadtler-Grimes, with mass cases of botulism from tainted pizza sauce, mysterious disappearances of toddlers on the Cheese-King's Tunnel ride, and of course hosts of terrified, screaming children. The whole Pizza Warren franchise had actually, in fact, been a clever feeding mechanism for Skitterlings - the least fortunate of their kind. The Aspect of the Rat had robbed them of functions and habits that were prerequisites for being in proper society, and the Curse drove them to Nest in places like this; their position near the bottom of the food chain made them undesirable, if plentiful prey - the difficulty, as with all things for a Lone Wolf, was a limited set of tactics against their cunning.

Where the city's attempts at governance had failed, a community of the least fortunate had...well, 'flourished' wasn't the right word. Tents and shacks jutted like broken teeth underneath the ferris wheel; slats of wood had been nailed crudely between the ride's spokes, granting some respite from the sun for those who huddled beneath. His heightened senses were keenly aware of eyes peering outward at him suspiciously, scanning him as mark or threat...but most of the locals had come to understand that outsiders were dangerous, and usually didn't want anything to do with them. Besides, getting mugged by some mortals was the least of his concerns...these weren't his Hunting Grounds.

The peculiar, sour scent of Skitterling grew stronger as his footsteps echoed between the empty fare stalls. None of the original merchandise was there and anything saleable had been stripped down to the nails; the din of the city was strangely far here. There was the crawling, churning gnaw of the ocean, biting slowly away at the concrete levies that kept The City from falling into the Gulf. Nobody came out to harass him so...he closed his eyes and changed the structures in his ears to better listen for that telltale skitter, their chattering communication

At first...nothing but the roar of the sea, the clatter of cars and the sound of old, defunct pipes and infrastructure squeaking and rusting in the wind. Mizrah was about to drift toward another spot when, underneath the old ferris wheel, he heard voices...coming up from underneath the grating he walked upon, unsurprisingly. Mizrah played it cool, even as his instincts screamed for him to rip up the street and chase the prey down to its nest...that only worked with a pack of his own, though. So instead, the dusky musician sat down on a concrete pylon that once held some statue (cut off at its plastic, molded feet) and sparked an American Spirit, letting the smoke float draconically around his head as he listened...the telltale odor of other Turnskins reached his powerful olfactories.

"...telling you man...the answers are Janet Jackson, Pink, Nikki Minaj - "

"Are you kidding me Taps? What does Minaj have to do with any of those artists? You been hangin' with that weird Fetters girl, she's putting nonsense in your head...pass me the paste, would ya?"

"Man don't go trash talking her."

"Yeah I'm like...literally right here, Jove."

They were clanking about noisily. Mizrah's ears picked up on the crackle of one of those radio stations truckers and other traveling, working folks listened to, coming over a smartphone speaker. He opened his eyes, already ringed by amber as the Change began to work its subtle magic on his body. He could smell cheap beer, and the sound of a PBR can popping open meant they'd be pounding down tall boys...one of them, at least, would need to take a piss.

The operating stand underneath the ferris wheel...it held a little metal shack that he supposed grew hellish in summer. Remaining quiet was something of a chore for a man like Yusuf, who would have preferred the loud approach to...anything, really, but without backup he couldn't rely on that. So...he had to be patient, and wait for a chance.

Yusuf carefully tried the door handle to the operator's shack - it simply came off in his grasp, and he caught it before it struck the metal platform, which would have surely sent the Prey scampering. The door scraped open unpleasantly as he tried to control it, squeezing his shoulders through and into the dusty, humid dark.

His eyes adjusted to the lightless little metal box; it stank of dust, hot metal and expired grape soda. A truly miserable little enclosure, he was already sweating by the time he slid the door shut, hunkering down with his back against the studded steel wall. Now there was nothing left to do but wait...his least favorite part. Yusuf Mizrah was not an ambush predator by predilection and lacked the patience to play this role but if he wanted to eat something that was actually satiating, he'd have to wait.

Nothing but the heat, this tiny space, and his thoughts. Without something specific to focus on, they tended to flow chaotically from one idea to the next, or sometimes they were just a jumble, crashing against each other like treacherous waters.

Monroe ...she was so pissed off at him earlier, and he knew that he wouldn't be able to disarm her every time with the heat of his passion; not without dipping into the Enkindled magnetism that was a facet of his Strain, but that was meant for Hunting, or use against others of his kind. The thought of ghosting her for her own good furtively intruded his thoughts, and he smothered and killed it. What if her weird, ghoulish kind got wind of the fact they were seeing each other and she was getting all hopped up on his blood? "I'll kill them," he mumbled like it was the obvious answer but down that road lay a short, bleak future of being hunted through the streets like a dog with silver. He had to quit her, but he just couldn't face the sober reality of his isolation.

Dad ...he hadn't spoken to his father for over two years. It wasn't as if things had ever been straightforward between them; there was too much difference, and especially after what happened to Mom the resentment was just too great. Memories of the man rose and fell vaguely; marinating lamb flank in Winter. Blowing into the shofar on Yom Kippur. Arguments over which friends he kept, arguments about his political views, about his musical tastes, about where he wanted to go to school...so much contention. Dad had no idea of the Curse that had befallen his son, he just kept on teaching and living that quiet, angry life.

Yusuf thought of other faces from his past, dredged up against his will and also because he didn't want to hold back anymore; he whispered their names to nobody in the darkness, staring ahead at the featureless metal wall. "Mikey...Sadira...Avi..." as if saying their names would somehow conjure their ghosts, and in this world of flesh-shifting monsters...demons clawing their ways down on ladders of moonlight...the walking dead...you'd think there was a chance, but nobody came. He knew where they were...they were amidst the bodies floating in the Great Lake; he belonged there, with them, face down in the water, but he'd run away after the dust settled and he was the only one left standing. He never said their names out loud to anybody, like they were fragile and to do so would damage them beyond even death.

There was nothing left of those three, not even their families...he had nothing - many, many photos but he didn't dare access that account to look at them. Mikey, Sadira and Avi had been his everything; they weren't even like, romantic or sexual or nothing, just four souls in The Jungle whose song had harmonized perfectly...and now he was the only one left howling, down here on the Gulf Coast.