glory and gore

During the night shift there was only one guard at Ophelia’s door, too easy to slip past with a simple distraction and her newfound stealth. They were getting used to her lack of presence, but there were still times when she remained invisible.

She had considered her options for a total of ten minutes, and despite the commotion that her unauthorized field trip would cause, the possible benefits outweighed any repercussions. A lot had happened recently and not doing anything—not being allowed to—could drive even the soulless crazy. In her own particular way.

Breaking out wasn’t easy or fast, but she had more patience than ever before. After all, she was doing it for humanity’s sake. No one was harmed; she simply waited for the right moment to evade security. And by dawn, she was all the way in Onyx Peak, about to cross the bridge that brought her closer to her objective. The morning fog matched her veiled eyes, covering the stone like a cool blanket. It was hard to see anything, but as she silently walked forward, a the back of a figure became more discernible.

“Excuse me,” she asked behind them, as if her voice came out of nowhere, “which way to the Dominion?”

It wasn’t often that mortal girls like this one stumbled directly into the wolf’s den, foolish enough to think places like this were safe. There was no safe place in a world crowded with demons and creatures of the night, all of them ravenous for innocent blood.

The tip of Liliana’s tongue swept a drop of crimson off the corner of her lips, as her midnight eyes dragged slowly over the human.

"You won’t last a second in there, baby." A dare, everything that crossed Liliana’s lips sounded like one.

Akemi raised his eyebrows at the woman asking for the drink he was making. "It's already for you." He said as he finished making it -- garnishing the rim with a swipe of orange peel and then placing it inside the glass, on top of the liquid. He slid it across the counter towards the woman. The Alpha. Some might say that first impressions were everything. Akemi agreed, to a point.

Because he didn't. Who the fuck was he?

"I make better drinks than that." she said, confidently. The men crowding her bar had never complained about a single drop she poured them. For Liliana, it was never about the money. It was about keeping the best wolves circling her turf instead of wandering into Cain’s filthy little poodle den.

She picked up the glass and brought it beneath her nose, taking a slow sniff. Vodka. Then her eyes found him again. They traced over the hollow of his cheeks, lingered on the sharp line of his jaw, before drifting lower to the movement of his throat, bobbing up and down as she watched.

"Show me what you’ve got, then."

Without taking a sip, she lowered the glass and tipped it over the bar, where it spilled into the sink. The glass followed, clinking loudly against the metal basin when she dropped it.

When Cain wasn't running his pack, the alpha could always be found within his bar, slinging shots, nursing a whiskey or performing on stage himself when the mood struck him. It always had a rowdy atmosphere of wolves, the scent of blood on the dirt road out front, not an uncommon thing given how many brawls broke out between wolves over the smallest of things.

But one simple rule was always followed - you didn't piss off the boss.

Although it seemed that night - one wolf in particular hadn't gotten the message. When he'd started pestering a couple of Nepenthe she-wolves that liked to enjoy the rum and juke - Cain had clocked him, sharp green eyes watching the outsider as he poured another round of drinks. As soon as the outsider had overstepped, the Alpha had struck. One hand like a steel vice around the wolf's throat, blood red eyes holding his gaze until the outsider looked away with a submissive whimper.

"I ain't gonna tell you twice. Next time I see you pesterin' my pack, thinkin' your some big dick-swingin' dog around my bar - I'll paint the road with your guts. Got it?" Cain growled, voice low, deadly.

Observing the exchange between the two, manicured hands clapped in slow applause. "You better listen to him. He isn’t fucking around," she said from where she leaned against the wall, one boot braced against the stone, arms crossed over her leather-covered chest. "He’s shit against me, but your human ass is done for if he gets his claws into your chest."

The man shook all over, trying to claw his way out of Cain’s grasp. A stupid attempt. Liliana pushed herself off the wall, having had enough of the show. Instead, she hovered over the other Alpha’s shoulder, watching the squirming man closely.

"Is that how you assert your dominance?" Her voice was warm against his ear. "Too cowardly to fight someone your own size, baby?"

The Selcouth Alpha was feeling unwell. That was the excuse she had to use every time he sent her to attempt diplomatic relations with the unruly Revenants. Forever reminded of her connection to Liliana and her late uncle, Otsana had no other choice but follow orders. She wished it hadn’t come to this with the young Alpha, the one she’d seen grow into a fearless and terrifying werewolf.

A part of her still saw the child in Liliana, staying close to the one person who granted her the sort of safety felt only inside. Accessing it now seemed impossible, as if it had been buried so deep not a single drop of light could reach it now.

“We need to talk about the merfolk,” she started without beating around the bush. At least, they still understood each other in their dislike for pretenses. “I’m not expecting you to lend a hand with the refugees, but you need to keep your wolves in check.”

She shifted her position, arms crossed as she leaned against the closest wall. Her golden eyes fixed the Alpha as if she were one of her own, and not a mere Beta sent to deal with the devil herself. After trying to improve their pack–to–pack relationship for so long, what she was about to declare felt counterintuitive, but as things were as of late, her options were reduced to this.

“I know it sounds tempting… messing with the seabound—but if any of yours cross into Selcouth territory or my farmland, they’re dead.”

She didn’t care about those damn fish. They could rot in bloody waters for all she cared.

"They don’t get in my way, and we won’t get in theirs. It’s that damn easy, Otsana."

Did the old bitch really give that much of a shit about all that caviar? Liliana would rather spread it over buttered toast.

A heavy swallow of whiskey quenched a venomous thirst. Ruby eyes lifted, pinning the other woman in place, holding her there against the wall, mercilessly. "You’ve gone all soft for them." She sat her glass back down. "Why are you really here, hm? Because one of mine had yours by their little throats?" The red on her lips matched the one burning in her eyes. "If your pups can’t handle their nature, then they’re better off dead, baby. Haven’t you learned that by now? Pity doesn’t suit a wolf."

Walking through Werewolf territory wasn't something that scared Akemi. Really, not much created the feeling of fear. Other than, possibly, not coming out on top. Not doing enough. But that wasn't something he was currently concerned about. No. Today was a day, different than any other he'd had before. Today, he'd be meeting Montego's Alpha. She just didn't know it yet.

After some research -- and following Montego after leaving the crypt -- Akemi had discovered exactly where the pack resided. A townhome on the outskirts of Lupis. Quaint little place, really. Someone was at least taking care of the old building.

Akemi stood just outside of it, with his hands in his pockets, waiting for the Alpha to appear. He twirled a couple of magnetic metal disks in his hand -- a comfort of sorts, having his magic somewhere nearby. Not that anyone knew of what he was. No. To everyone else, other than those who he'd killed in his past, he was just a human. Some knew him as a hunter, too. None were aware of his actual talents.

He stood out in a crowd. Raven-dark hair and a scent that lingered long after he was gone. He’d followed her here, hadn’t he? Paranoia wasn’t foreign to Liliana. There were many like him, curious about what she did. They’d spoken before briefly and she was convinced he'd put on an act to appear anything but who he really was. Liliana had always been good at sniffing men like him out, the way wolves tore lambs from their herds.

This time, she didn’t have to track her pray. He’d walked straight into the wolf's mouth.

Her men tended the fire, turning slabs of meat over open flame, preparing a feast for the night. The blaze rose high, painting their guest in vibrant orange light, flickers of flame tracing the angles of his face.

Liliana was crouched near one of the cages. Inside, an untamed pup rattled against the metal. Everyone in the pack knew what the cage was for. Those who wronged her and didn’t earn immediate death were left there instead, caged and starved, for everyone to see.

Autumn's eyes trace her steps first, following her until she can turn her neck anymore, eyes tracking until her head swings around the other way, wary and on edge.

"I do what I've gotta. Ain't nothing more to it than that."

She turns then, watching Liliana leave her in the presence of the room. Feeling ill-at-ease, her thoughts travel over a million ways this could go wrong, and a dozen ways to get out of the room. It's paranoia, she's sure, but it's only ever paranoia until it isn't, and so she breathes out quietly when the client returns and slaps coin on the countertop.

Autumn wastes no time, her grubby fingers, knicked and scarred and worked well, slide over the coins. She runs a nail over the edge of one, pushing on it with her thumb for a moment before she bit down on one gingerly; not dross. They go into her satchel.

That dog could use a bath.

Liliana wasn’t offering that out of any sudden bloom of kindness, there was no such thing rotting in the hollow of her chest. But she wanted to see more of that nerve. That flash of teeth beneath the fear. And whether it would bare itself for her.

"Oh, I’ve got another job for you. But first, I want to know if any other wolves have hired you around here."

She wanted to know if this girl was more than just a dog — if she could be a rat “I want names. Give me that, and I’ll make sure a few more of these find their way into your pocket."

He had a feeling that anything could be classified as a distraction in Lilliana's mind as long as it wasn't focused on her and the pack. But why was she being so uptight about Aylin? Monty had warned the human to not make him choose because she wouldn't like the answer. Was Lilliana worried that he might choose Aylin? "I don't call those who warm your bed distractions."

"If they want what i have then they can fight me for it. I won't share with anyone less then me." it left room that he wouldn't deny Lillian. He was just thankful that he was sure Aylin wouldn't want his alpha.

His words rang a little too clearly in her mind, stirring thoughts she hadn’t allowed herself to touch since he’d become her closest wolf. All the ones before him were dead. Monty would fight his own brothers over a scrap of meat that wasn’t even special. A girl like any other mortal girl. "Have your fun with her, and then end it, if you don’t want my wolves coming for your throat instead of hers." Her voice cut clean, like a blade through his skin.

She rose to her feet in one smooth motion and looked down at him like he was a stray dog in her feet. "Or maybe I should kill you both."

Now that would be fun.

"If that's what you believe, you'd have one of them by your side." It wasn't luck that he was here. It's was purposeful, and maybe others wanted his position, but they wouldn't be able to compete with him. She could say what she wished, and he would endure it because he knew that if she didn't want him he'd already be gone.

Letting Liliana think Aylin was nothing more than a trophy was the safest way to go. If she knew she was more than that, it could be dangerous for Aylin. "Because you're not wrong. She's just someone I'm playing with," and he was thankful Aylin couldn't hear him lie right now. "I'll tear out their throats if they touch what is mine." It wasn't said as a threat, but as a fact. The only one he couldn't stop was Liliana.

He had to play into the fact she was his trophy, and who wouldn't want to show it off? "Fine. But I don't share."

"Maybe it’s time for a little game,” she said, with mischief in her voice. Revenant wolves loved a good challenge. "Who’s to say one of those wolves hasn’t become better than you?"

Her gaze slid away from the others, loud and drunk, and found Monty. "Distraction, baby, is just weakness wearing a pretty face."

And weakness didn’t suit any of her wolves. Whatever else he wanted to call his little plaything didn’t matter. She was a distraction, and the wrong kind. Distractions had to be eliminated. He’d cry about it for a day or two, like a child mourning a broken doll and then he’d move on.

Her eyes stayed locked on his, prying, invasive, peeling back layers until she had her fingers wrapped around his wants and needs. “Not sharing with your pack? Not very brotherly of you."

Autumn stares as fingers work it's grip on the knife to carve out the milky dull glass stare of the head as it rests limp and motionless. There's no squeamishness in her expression, no shock; instead its a look of dull recognition of the foundational violence inherent in the world.

She watches the tongue slip out of the pouch, laying dead like a slug in front of the head as it's cruelly dismantled; no longer a person, just meat. It's not the first time she's seen it, and she's long since stopped believing each time'll be the last.

"No, no threats." Autumn says, tone distant. "Just said they'd see you and your's in Hell."

The eye, struck free from it's knife-tip, hits the carving table with a slick, quiet pop of sound; a needle in an empty room. Her wolfen hearing makes it louder; she stares at the thing, pink-red, early gray of rot setting into it; not a single glint of light does it capture as it stares at her from it's wet resting place;

Autumn looks up. "I'm not from here, and I'm not smart, I don't know what Kochba is worth, but I need food and I need money, and I do my work well... whatever that's worth to you."

A smirk curved her mouth, where mischief and malice made their home behind a pair of red eyes. "I never expected much else from that coward." He couldn’t even manage a proper threat in his final moments. Pathetic.

The pieces of a dying man rotting on her floor no longer interested her. He was torn apart, finished. What held her attention now was the mutt who’d delivered the final blow, the one claiming to be good for nothing. Liliana circled the girl slowly, letting her heightened senses drink her in. She searched for what might give her answers: who she was, where she’d come from, what had made her desperate enough to take the job.

"You might not be smart, but you’'ve got balls. A stupid girl with no guts wouldn’t have gotten it done."

The courier had earned her kochba, but Liliana wondered if she was good for more.

She left the room and emptied a few gold coins from the register at the bar. They clinked together when she got back, dropping them onto the counter before leaning back to study the mutt again: "Where’d you crawl out from, mutt?"

Izara doesn't care for toppling towers. She just wants to get through every day, one at a time. A life that the Alpha had thrust upon her, and expected gratitude for.

It's hard to say anything that doesn't directly insult the woman. Harder still, to bite her tongue entirely when Liliana keeps making it difficult to have a damn drink.

"Loyalty is earned, Liliana. Not taken." She cannot force it, like she would obedience until it bleeds from her wolves. Whilst Kit's letting her heart thunder in her chest, and signing a warrant for an Alpha's wrath, she adds: "And you can stop sending Monty after me like a stray." As if she would simply listen.

It'll never be her home. Revenant are bullies, and killers. Led by the worst of them all. Kit will never share their values, or their beliefs. Liliana is talking to a wall, and threatening stone. It won't fight back, but it'll crack and crumble, until there's nothing left to spit at. Kit straightens, letting the Alpha's taunts roll off her skin.

She pushes her emptied glass towards the other wolf, and hops off the stool. Izara knows when she's pushed the limits, and maybe even pushed through them.

Izara tosses Kochba on the bar. Coins rolling aimlessly in front of the other.

"Oh, I’ve earned it, baby — the moment I made you better." Because what else had Izara ever had to live for? A pathetic refuge life; scraping by, hiding, surviving. Liliana had given her freedom to become whatever she wanted. To roam the world and take what she pleased, and be something other than a survivor.

"Now what has Cain ever done for you?" That stupid excuse for a wolf was only good for running home with his tail tucked between his legs.

Monty, on the other hand, was doing his job fucking badly, it seemed. There was a laugh behind red lips, and a look that could leave a burn where it landed. Eyes that followed a back, while it moved away from her. "How long will you keep running and hiding?" Tske the girl out of the refuge, but you couldn't rip the refuge out of the girl. "That wolf inside you will go hungry. And if you don’t feed it, it’s going to eat you from the inside.”

It wasn’t anything but the raw truth. Izara would have to swallow it down with the harshest liquor she could find, letting it scorch all the way down.

Liliana would let her go, this time.

But she made no promises for tomorrow.

What stopped those across from him? Maybe it was Liliana, but it could also be the fact that more than once Monty has granted scars upon others that were just as visible as the one that was present on his face. There was no room for weakness in this pack. It was a family ready to cannibalise itself at a moment's notice.

He hadn't expected that line of questioning to come from her mouth. His jaw visibly set. Teeth pushed against one another as tension was held in his mouth. "She'd make a terrible wolf we don't want her." Aylin was to compassionate for this pack, she wouldn't make it as a revenant

The sharp tip of her nail dug into the left side of his chest, her features settled into a disappointed grimace, half fake and half painfully real, as if he’d failed her greatest test. "You’re just like the rest of them, Monty. Isn’t that a fucking shame?"

He was playing right into her little game; the nervous crack of his jaw, that look in his eyes. She’d struck a nerve and that was both unfortunate and so much fun. "So you’re not denying it?" An eyebrow cocked. "She is a trophy on your shelf, then? You know what they’d do if they found out." The wolves who’d chewed the humanity out of themselves years ago, who saw humans as nothing but soft meat.

"Why don’t you bring her around? See what happens." A dare. Are you a pussy, Monty?

Of course not. She knew him like the back of her hand, but she couldn’t predict the answer to this one.

The shoulder check runs lightning like a overseer's lash up her spine, and she stops long enough to not topple one way or another, but the truth is she's a runt - the shortest of four siblings to begin with, and hardly the picture of stout power, and so the clip at her shoulder is strong enough that it nearly spins her, and the snarl on her face is the realest piece of any threat she offers, but it's cowed quick by the notion of picking a fight she's outnumbered in, and again, the presence of an alpha is a drag-weight on her temper, at least in the moment, and so, bitter as it is, she swallows her inflamed pride and continues to where she's meant to go.

A runt - a magickless witch become a reluctant werewolf who can't even turn outside of the moon, and her sister wants her believe she's special somehow, chosen.

She waits while Liliana examines the head in the bag, eyes scanning from the frozen look of gory peace that had settled into its features. rot's not set in just yet save for at the fringes; the cuts are clean, courtesy of the inert athame on her hip beneath the jacket and hip-length patchwork cloak. Once that knife had carried magical power, but with the bite that had taken her magic, it too had gone dead; now it's just a hunting tool.

One used to great employ, she demonstrates as she crosses the space between them, putting a hand on the head and spreading its jaw pulling a small sack-cloth parcel out of its mouth and offering it to her.

Liliana took up a knife and carved out the glassy eyes of the man who’d once stared her down. Two sets of hands held the head steady as the severed tongue slumped, wet and limp, and she snapped the jaw apart with a crack.

The sockets were empty caverns now. Two black abysses with no bottom.

On the tip of her blade balanced one of the eyes. "Give ’em to me. What did the idiot say? That his men would have my head?" A smirk on her lips. "I’ve heard that one before." Empty threats worth even less coming from a dead man’s severed tongue. She’d have all his men chopped into neat little pieces before they could even choke out her name. Scum like them had no place in her world.

She flicked a sharp nail against the eye, ping, sending it bouncing off the blade. Then she drove the knife straight into the thick skull of the bastard. It stuck, as she stepped back.

Golden eyes studied a face that mirrored her defiance, her pride. Perhaps they were more alike than either of them wanted to admit.

“Stay out of trouble,” she began, though she had no right to lecture the Revenant Alpha. Otsana prided herself on restraint and control, but everything about the woman standing before her felt like a splinter under her skin. The words left her before she could stop them. “He wouldn’t want you to. He wouldn’t want any of this.”

What you’re doing with the bar. How you’ve clawed your way to power. Us, stranged like this.

At least, she managed to keep those thoughts to herself. This time.

Liliana let her gaze slide over her, circling around her like a vulture: "He’s dead, Otsana. Or do you have dementia? If you’re still in mourning, cariño, at least wear black."

Whatever sermons the old man had about the world, he’d taken them to the grave. Why was she digging them up now?

Fuck you, Otsana.

The rubies in Liliana’s eyes burned; a reminder of the hierarchy in front of her. It didn’t matter who Otsana had been to her, or what she might’ve wanted to be. Only what she was now and that was far below her.

"Know your place, Otsana." A quiet warning.