"If you could lift your head up, maybe I'll be worried," Lunis said. "I could also hold you out as far away from me as I can, if that'd make you feel any better."
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
She hesitated, then nodded. If this were some other kind of fatigue, magic fatigue, spell-caused fatigue, that stupid rose stalk trick Nathanial used to pull back when she still had her coffin, she might have continued to protest. Those were non-lethal. This most definitely wasn't.
No matter how old she got, Meketaten could never find herself willing to die. At least not if the lives of others weren't directly at stake.
"Alright," she said, "but if I bite you, there's a really good chance you won't be able to do anything about it. You would probably have more blood in you than the average human, though, so I might snap out of it again before you're completely drained but then..." she trailed off, sounding more like she was talking to herself by now than to him, "...well, I'd probably have to tun you if you didn't want to DIE die, like, for real, but I don't know if you'd be okay with that. I mean, there's a lot of stuff involved that most people really don't like..."
Sorry for taking so long to pop back into this - it's taken me awhile to figure out who I wanted to use, and to read through everything you've written so far. The vending machine is definitely my favorite escapade so far.
Here's my characters. I'll probably add at least one more, but these two are my starting ones.
Leon Thorne: He appears to be in his late teens to early twenties, with short, messy blond hair and bright green eyes. He has two pointed ears. His clothing is shown in the drawing down below - it's the one to the left. The only thing not shown there is the golden locket he's wearing.
Kane Thompson: He's in his mid-teens, with long black hair and violet eyes. His hair is braided like in the picture down below. He's a little shorter than Leon, and is noticeably paler - he's almost too pale. Like Leon, he has pointed ears. He's wearing the outfit to the right in the drawing up above. The only thing not shown is the silver pendant he's wearing around his neck.
"I don't get it," Leon said, letting out a groan as he leaned back in the chair.
Kane looked away from the door. "You still can't get some of the videos to load?"
"I've tried everything," Leon complained. He rested his head in his hands. "I've even tried turning the monitors on and off, but nothing's coming up. There has to be something there, but I don't know what, and we can't leave until we do."
Kane gave the closed door one last look before joining Leon at the desk, studying the array of screens before them. "It almost seems like someone's trying to rob the mall," he said. He pulled a chair over and stared up at the screens.
"There's no one even here except us," Leon whined. "Who would do that?"
Kane thought for a moment, then gave him a pat on the shoulder. "We'll figure it out," he reassured him.
Leon leaned over, resting his head against him. "We should probably leave this room, then," he said. "If we're not seeing anything on the screens, what's the point in staying here?"
He didn't like the idea of leaving when they didn't know what was out there, but Kane knew they really didn't have any choice. "We probably should," he agreed. He looked over at Leon. "I never realized how much of a cuddler you are."
"I have to make up for lost time," Leon declared. Kane bit back a laugh; he might have looked older right now, but it was in times like this that Leon really did show who was the younger one out of the two of them.
xXx
The two left the security room and slipped out into the mall's hallways, trying - and failing - to navigate their ways to the locations that no longer had working camera feeds. "We could raid one of the stores," Leon suggested as they walked. "Then you could look human."
Kane glanced down at his necklace. "I wouldn't look like me."
"...Yeah," Leon admitted. "That's true. But we could make a game out of it. You can change your appearance, and then I could change mine so it matches yours. Like if you try on some men's clothes and you're suddenly a normal looking thirty year old, I could change my form to match it."
"I think I'd rather stick with the ears than that," Kane said, a small smile tugging at his lips. "And you could change your form now, if you want it to really match mine."
Leon stubbornly shook his head.
"Someone has to be the adult in this friendship," he loudly declared. "If we don't have one, no one's going to take us seriously."
Kane crossed his arms. "If that's the reason, I think I should be the adult," he said, the smile growing a little bigger. "After all, I wouldn't be able to take you seriously right now."
"Well," Leon said, mirroring his crossed arms, "there's a department store right over there, but you might end up looking like a dad by the time you step out of it-"
The two suddenly fell silent.
...There were people down the hallway they were coming up to.
They glanced at each other.
No words were spoken. Kane didn't entirely know what Leon was thinking, but the plan made sense the moment that Leon's form shifted to one of a sentient shadow. Green eyes peeking out from a sea of black, Leon stepped into the shadows lining the hall and crept around the corner.
"Then I'll just make sure you don't bite me," Lunis said. "If you try anything, I can drop you like a sack of potatoes. It wouldn't be great, but it's something I could-"
Nubes put a claw up to his lips. The panther was about to fire back a response about how he could be as blunt as he liked, but realized Nubes was nodding his head at something behind him.
"F***," Lunis hissed, pulling himself onto his feet as Nubes did. It wasn't the best-lit hallway, but he could tell that something near one of the lights was just a little more shaded than it should've been.
They had company.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Emily's eyes landed on the shadow. She rolled them.
"Please, if you're going to attack, then do. If you want to talk, that appears to be the only thing I have the energy for at the moment, so please, skip the dramatics."
She assessed her current situation through the lens of combat. If she had to fight, her magic would work fine for a little while so long as her reflexes weren't slowed too considerably. Otherwise, she could always depend on her handy-dandy near-immorality. And, of course, there was the possibility that she would snap again under duress, in which case she might have something resembling a chance.
She just hoped these new foes -if they were foes- didn't know how to kill a vampire.
He hadn't expected that he could stay hidden forever, but he had hoped he could stay hidden long enough to get a glimpse of the people around the corner. None of them were familiar. Maybe that was why he felt a knot of dread in his stomach when he was called out, or maybe it was because some of them reminded him of a previous incident he didn't like to think about too much.
He stepped out of the shadows.
His form shifted back to the one he was using earlier - all the sentient shadow one had been that form covered in darkness. He didn't call to Kane. Kane could be the ace up his sleeve. If things went wrong, he could take the group by surprise.
"Hi," he said, speaking and giving a wave with a confidence he didn't entirely feel at the moment.
Emily waved weakly, a wave of dizziness hitting her at that moment. "Hi," she said once it had passed, "I'm Emily, from Earth and Nerdifae, in that order. Who are you?"
He seemed friendly enough at the moment, but she couldn't ignore that he choose to hide before attempting to talk. She scanned him, mostly on instinct, for signs of his species. That shadow ability of his was nothing new, but it was rare. Unfortunately, the name of the race who had it first had already been lost to time by the time Emily figured out how to world jump, but that didn't matter much. Combined with the pointed ears, she would peg this newcomer as a mut, of mixed blood not unlike Kivvien.
She just hoped that, like Kivvien, this person wasn't easily driven to violence.
"My name is Elm-" he started to answer, only to be hit in the back of the head by a gentle burst of air. He tried to keep his position and not spin around to see what Kane was doing, but then he felt it hit him again. All ignoring was forgotten as he turned back to see Kane stepping out from behind the corner.
"Why did you hit me with your magic?" Leon asked, rubbing the back of his head.
"I was trying to get your attention," Kane said. He walked over to where Leon was standing, giving the three before them a look over before turning back to Leon. "She said she was from Earth."
"...And...?" Leon uncertainly asked.
Kane stared at him for a moment. "We're from Earth."
"...Oh."
There was an awkward silence.
"...You don't have to keep looking like that."
"Oh." A second later, his form reverted to his actual one - a boy right around Kane's age. The only differences were the clothes, how pointed his ears were, and his height. His clothes had been exchanged for a hoodie, jeans and sneakers. His ears were slightly less pointy, and he was noticeably smaller than Kane.
"My name's really Leon," he said, "and this is my best friend Kane."
Nubes stood in front of Emily, crossing his arms. He didn't feel too keen about giving his name to a couple of strangers who had tried hiding from him, then lying to him. Well, one of those two strangers had, but he couldn't exactly trust the other one either. Especially if they had come from the same place as Emily had - there was always the chance that they were some of Emily's enemies. To say nothing about Kane being a better magic user than either the panther or the leopard.
The panther seemed to agree, given what he said. "That's great, but we're trying to figure out what to do with someone who could starve to death. So it'd be really need if you could help out, instead of whatever this is."
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Emily rolled her eyes and leaned over to see the newcomers around Lunis.
"If you don't mind my asking, what are you? What kind of magic are you using?" she decided to keep her tone friendly, to balance out Lunis's hostility and diffuse the tension. The last thing she needed was violence. If these guys were from Earth, there was a very good chance they knew how to kill a vampire. Everyone did. It was practically vital folklore at this point.
She just hoped Nubes and Lunis would be polite enough not to out her before she knew these people were trustworthy enough for that.
There wasn't really any harm in bringing it up here - it would have been dangerous before the mall, but none of the people here seemed to be normal. "I was using fae magic to change my form," Leon said. "I'm half human and half fae."
"Despite the ears, I'm human," Kane explained. His hand absentmindedly went to the pendant dangling over his chest. "The necklace I'm wearing has a spell connected to it that lets the user become whatever they're wearing. I'm wearing fae clothes, so I look like a fae version of myself."
"And if someone's hungry, there's the food court," Leon pointed out. He gestured behind him. "If what I saw on the cameras was right, it's that way. Even if there's no one at the restaurants, there should be some vending machines if anyone has money."
Emily chuckled, though there was little humor behind it, "I'm afraid my friend here is banned from using vending machines until further notice," she inclined her head toward Lunis, lacking the energy to raise an arm, "You two wouldn't happen to have any association with the fae of Aldrin?" She asked the question in a way that wasn't unlike how someone who's friend was associated with that clan would ask it. In truth, she was asking as someone who's friend had been brutally murdered by that particular clan.
She was fairly certain that particular clan was isolated to Ireland, but they could have branched out. If they did, she was in trouble. Vampire hunting fae were far more dangerous than their human counterparts.
She kept her posture nonchalant, her close-lipped smile easy and carefree. As if she had absolutely no personal stake in his answer.
Lunis had one of the angriest expressions that Nubes had seen on him in a long time; if it wasn't for the fae and human that were possibly a threat to Emily, Nubes would've started laughing.
While Lunis shrunk back, folding his arms over his chest and restraining a growl, Nubes took a step forward. "I was just at one of those restaurants some time ago - you may have noticed me, I imagine. Also, that sounds like a remarkable necklace, Kane," Nubes said. "What kinds of forms can you take when you wear it?" He couldn't quite expect Kane to give him an honest answer, but a lie could say as much about a person as the truth. Besides, Emily was putting on an act, and the leopard saw no reason not to take part in it.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Leon and Kane exchanged another look - Leon had known that Kane probably knew nothing about them, but he just wanted to make sure before he answered.
"We haven't heard of them before," Leon admitted, "but we're both still learning about the fae. Even though I'm half fae, I don't know that much..."
Kane glanced down at his necklace. "We're not really sure. It hasn't been used often, and no one's ever done research on it - we don't even know where it came from."
"Oh, no, that's perfectly fine," Emily's relief didn't show in her voice or body language, "I was just wondering."
She thought for a second. "Do you two have any contact with the rest of the supernatural side of the world?" she asked, still friendly. It was always tempting to just ask what they thought about vampires, but that didn't seem like the safest option at the moment.
She glanced up at Lunis. He was angry. Very much so. She willed him not to snap.
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