#althea 002

Months of planning. Months of plotting. A compass that points to magic, what a boon. Heron wondered, and often, if her heart was really in that, because where is the fun in having your food chewed for you? In being told where to go? Where is the fun without the surprise in their eyes. That silly little set of witches crying for mercy on Graver's Isle. Lucia's eyes, wide as her face collapsed into ashy dust. That little vampire boy, eyes wide while she wrenched his fangs out of his mouth.

It hadn't been like that, in the filthy witch's jewelry shop. A stab - nothing she hadn't felt before. Heron had had vampiric fingers pierced between her ribs before. She'd been wedged into a crevice, a werewolf snapping after her.

It's funny, when she'd realized just what had been happening after Matsui's Jewelry Shop. First it was the fact that she'd recovered so quickly without the aid of vampiric blood to sip. Then it was the odd springs of ruddy hair at the scar. The night terrors. The cravings. Waking up with a mouthful of dead animal- hardly forgettable - hardly vague. And as the month wears on, so too does her patience. She skips the conclave, despite it being a golden opportunity. She skips meeting with Valka. She skips meeting with everybody, until Book needs something - that's the last... solid memory she has. Before she sees the moon climbing. Before the sweats become insurmountable. Before her bones are twisting. Teeth- no, fangs bursting from between eachother. Before there's a lightning-crack moment of terror and frenzy and she knows what it feels like to be both hunter and hunted. She follows a thousand scents, flees the cacophonous city until she's out in the quiet, and there is the scent of meat, all sorts of meat. All sorts of things to hunt, but it's one scent, something familiar in her brain that she picks up. Familiarity is a comfort. Hungry comfort. She follows it into the woods.