Nothing - not the last sunrise she could remember, nor the furious cathart of the Pomdufond Riots in the '80s - could compare to the sheer crimson glory of Yusuf's deadly force unleashed. Where three Kindred that she'd considered a potent force had been scattered and maimed by the flying, clawed thing haunting Little Samara's territory, the Lupine was an entity of devastating physical might. The confrontation between Yusuf and the screeching, nychterid invader had lasted only moments, but those few dozen seconds of ultra-violence had seared themselves into her memories like shadow-ghosts in the afterflash of a nuclear weapon.
In its arrogance, perhaps perceiving her as easy Prey after ashing William and tearing away Cora's arm, the nameless beast of bat wings and tusks had presumed to dive-bomb her from the roof of a waterfront warehouse; but like a black painted anti-air missile Mizrah had intercepted it in its descent. Her night-brightened vision took it all in; theirs was the stuttering alacrity of diminutive creatures like insects, yet for all of their seemingly weightless movements there was power enough to tear a fire hydrant from the ground, or flip a van through the air.
He was beautiful, a three meter tall godling of destruction, cables of sinew standing out beneath his short, bristling fur. Brujah she may have been, one of those Damned naturally possessed of diabolical potency but even she knew better than to approach this bestial melee; her kind were, excepting those few Gangrel and Nosferatu whose nightly existence called for such, far too 'civilized' for this kind of struggle.
Monroe Carter, however, was well acquainted with the scatter-flash frenzy of immortal combat, when the crow-eyed parasite dwelling in her undead psyche was given control and all became a struggle between death and undeath. In this first time witnessing Yusuf's Killing Shape at work, Monroe starkly realized that had he joined in last year's violence between Lupine and Kindred, many more of her own would have met Final Death...and of course, this being Mizrah, it was a grand performance.
His opening refrain was the bear-trap percussion of his jaws closing around the bat-demon's right wing in mid-air; the exposition, a gruesome rake of his talons that freed its entrails from its belly, a contrail of guts flailing freely. His war-song developed with the stony smash of broken concrete as they hit the pier, rolling along the ground, and the Shrike's frightened screeching marked the beginning of a long-held chorus.
Where she - Monroe, the thinking, conscious thing imprisoned in this frigid flesh - saw this as an extension of her lover's macabre artistry, her Beast saw something quite different.
It projected the image of Lady Shira, screaming in mindless terror in those dagger-sharp claws, begging incoherently for mercy she'd never shown. It whispered wordless temptation to her, that here, at her fingertips, was not just a man that could slake her thirst for blood and sex.
He was a gambit card unlike any held in the hand of any Kindred in the South.
A weapon of mass destruction...and she hadn't even bound him to her will yet.
Why?
It asked, watching alongside her as the monster arched on its back, straining and choking as Yusuf's maw closed around its face, muffling its screams.
I love him,
she answered the devil in her heart, the only being she could truly be honest with.
He loves me, ain't that enough?
She asked sardonically, scoffing at herself as she watched Yusuf shake the nychterid, lifting it off the ground in a flail of snapping limbs and splattering guts.
Weak,
the Beast hissed in her mind, poisoning her with paranoia and forcing her to recall the brutal Final Deaths of Kindred who'd threatened or simply offended the Elder Dead. Just as it'd painted Lady Shira's sobbing form over the Shrike's, so too did it force Monroe to imagine herself, strapped with steel cables to a rooftop, crying hopelessly for help as the dawn's light crept toward her.
What should I do?
Monroe suppressed the bitter echoes of
Rötschreck
from even imagining such a terrifying end.
There came no answer, for she already knew. Watching Mizrah hold the ruined creature in place, tearing its head from its shoulders in his maw, she recalled how close her blood had come to his lips. The ties of Amaranth would guarantee her safety, for even with him guarding her sleeping corpse during the daylight hours, even given his unabashed and open adoration she'd come to need as dearly as the blood of the living, she had doubt.
Would he stand up to one of his own kind, in her defense?
Would his will falter in the face of Isidoro's Nightmare? Shira's Presence? Baalthazar's Dominance?
Even shivering before such uncertainty, Monroe was drawn to him. He pinned the twitching mess of broken bones and fur, spurting gore and bloody stumps beneath a clawed foot, howling his primal triumph and challenging any others who might dare to face him. Unafraid of the towering, wolven thing of fangs and eldritch, cursed might he'd become, Monroe ran her fingers through the fur covering his chest. She could hear his mighty heartbeat from halfway across the pier, and this close, thudding like a piledriver under her palms, she could practically feel it in her teeth.
For the second time Yusuf was staring at her with those wolf-demon eyes, bright and orange as smoldering coal yet little different from his human gaze. She traced the edge of his maw, dripping red, stroking his chin with her nails.
"Are you really mine?" her voice quavered with the kind of wonder and disbelief she could only remember from the first time she'd risen from death, casting aside the shackles of mortality and chained to eternal night.
Not yet.
Later, back at Mizrah's apartment
"You're too amazing for me, you know," the Brujah mused quietly in the Enkindled's embrace. She stroked his steely forearm, ringing around her slender torso and under her breasts, smiling as she mapped the groove of his flexor muscles.
"How you figure?" Mizrah's alluring baritone reminded her of the spiced, mulled wine her grandmother drank on Christmas, all cocksure and rich with confidence. He kissed her shoulder, just a hint of teeth to keep her ever on the edge of desire, even as her loins ached from the intensity of their lovemaking.
Monroe tapped the 'play again' option on her smartphone screen, the playlist they'd built together shuffling to a personal favorite of hers. "You been good to me like nobody's been good to me before Yusuf," she admitted earnestly, wondering at herself for being this...sappy. Was this really Monroe Carter, the most ruthless of her Clan, talking? "Fought me all the way through it too, tryin' to get you to give up...but you just don't surrender. Not in nothin', not love, not that Hunt of yours...Woman like me doesn't deserve this." She wondered why she said these things as the music drowned out the City's endless drone.
"You put a spell on me,"
"I'm losing my mind,"
"You better stop things,"
"It's a matter of time,"
"Before I hunt you down,"
"Grab your chin,"
"And kiss your lips,"
"You bring me back..."
"If people got what they deserved in this world, I wouldn't be Cursed and you wouldn't be Damned." She turned to lie upon her back, the colorful chaos of her bead-clasped braids scattered across his pillowcase as she watched the motions of his throat when he drank from a black Thermos, plastered with metal band stickers. "It's not the first time you've talked like that babe...you ever gonna tell me why? Not like I got any room to judge you."
There was still so much they didn't know about each other; it was the nature of creatures such as they to keep their secrets close. Normally furtive out of a need for security, in the case of Yusuf Mizrah - one of the only people she could (or at least really wanted to) trust - she still feared his judgment, that he'd see her for the con artist and liar she'd once been, or worse: for the monstrosity she'd become.
"I...did bad, stupid things, Mizrah. All the way to the end." Names of people whose hearts she'd crawled into, whose trust she'd abused all the way to their dissolution, surfaced in the murk of her memories. "I ain't gonna lie," she took his hand, the smoothness of her voice giving way to quiet notes of vulnerability nobody ever heard. "I'm worried if you find out you'll stop wanting to see me."
He touched her face in that way nobody had for lonely decades, warmth denied her since death driving away the corpse-chill that was her curse. "None of us ended up like this by being saints, Carter." Her smile became messy, melting under his soft kisses against her forehead and temple that had driven away whatever doubts she'd once had about the genuineness of his affection. "There's no pressure to dig up the past, but if you do I'll pay in kind and besides...nothing you tell me could change how I feel about you."
She so desperately wanted to believe that, and with him it was even plausible. Talking about one's mortal life was a strange taboo among the Damned, like...politics and religion at the dinner table, or more accurately personal tragedy at a party. Nobody wanted to hear it. Taking an unnecessary breath, she turned her attention to the Hunt-carved perfection of his physical form, finding comfort and focus in the hardness of his chest, the razor-blunting roughness of his stubble, idly fondling his manhood.
