Young Writers Society

Lunis was close. Very close. Her eyes narrowed as she focused on his pulse. All she would have to do was lock her jaws around his throat...

Her humanity fought from the sidelines. She had to keep still. If her own heart was beating she would have focused on that. If she had to breathe she would have controlled her breaths. But she was dead. And he was alive. And she was hungry.

Her humanity was drowned out. She lunged.

In the blink of an eye, Lunis sidestepped Emily. Swinging a paw back as she shot past him, he pinned her against the wall. And, in another blink of an eye, he grabbed her by her shoulders and pulled her down to the floor, elbow against the small of her back.

"I'll get her some blood," said Nubes, starting to turn away as Lunis set his other paw against the back of her head. "Just make sure she doesn't do anything stupid - I don't think she's nearly as strong as you."

And then he sprinted down the hallways, sniffing to pick up any hint of blood.

Emily struggled under Lunis's hold. Her hands, which he hadn't thought to secure, worked a spell. The execution may have been blindly archaic, but the result was just as effective, if a little blunt.

Lunis was thrown backward and Emily turned on him, baring her fangs. Her hands still popped and sparked with red sparks, devoid of heat but certainly not of power. She may have lacked the presence of mind to form anything more than the most basic of spells, but those were as dangerous as any others given the correct circumstances.

She lunged again.

Whoop, turned out he should've done something about her hands. He could take care of that.

Dodging Emily again, Lunis whirled around and pounced right after she hit the ground. As he set a knee on her back, he grabbed her arms and pulled them back, burying her hands in his paws. He'd have to make sure she didn't shuffle around too much, especially because he still had her fangs to worry about, but at least he was getting a hang of how she fought. Impulsively, blindly. Not the worst strategy, but she lacked the speed or strength for it.

"Stay down," Lunis growled.

She didn't hear him speak, or, she didn't comprehend his words. They were merely dull vibrations in the background of his heartbeat, which nearly deafened her in its volume.

She struggled, trying to get her fangs writhing biting distance of a vein. The only things that remained in her mind were her hunger and his pulse.

Ugh, of course she was struggling - she probably couldn't hear him at all.

He moved to keep his other leg away from her fangs. "Can't you wait?" he grumbled. Even though she couldn't hear him, he didn't see any reason not to complain. "Nubes will be back soon enough. I hope."

She continued to struggle, no more hearing his words than heeding them.

She attempted to twist free of his grip as her veins further blackened, nearly all of them becoming visible beneath her unusually -for a vampire- dark skin. Even with her emotional range nearly nonexistent, frustration and anger still filled her at her restriction. She tried again to get closer to anywhere way she might find acessess to the heartbeat that overtook her thoughts.

Lunis almost screwed up twice. The first was while staring at the veins on her hands (they were becoming a lot darker, which didn't look like a good sign), and the second was when he heard the faint sound of Nubes's paws.

Looking up, the panther growled at the red bottle he saw Nubes holding. "What's that?" Lunis said.

Nubes came to a stop and shrugged, pointing the tip of the bottle at Emily. "I don't know," he said, "But Emily wants blood, and she said that a world she frequented typically sold it, and I found this bottle at some kind of a restaurant, so I figured it was worth a shot."

The panther was about to argue that, but Nubes took that moment of silence to squeeze the bottle and douse Lunis and Emily in some kind of red liquid.

Using a claw to wipe some of it off his fur, Lunis licked the claw. "...That isn't blood," he said, glaring at Nubes.

"How was I supposed to know?" Nubes said, throwing up his hands. "I didn't even know it was possible to store blood until five minutes ago."

Lunis stared down at Emily. "She's angry enough that I'm not even sure she'll notice," he said. "Let's see what happens."

Reflex took over as soon as the color red entered her vision. Lunis's grip loosened with his distraction and she wrenched free, taking the opportunity to taste some of the liquid she was now covered in. She choked.

This wasn't blood.

Poison.

The animalistic hunger waned a bit, enough for her to regain a grip on humanity. She gasped, her eyes and veins rapidly returning to normal. Her venom didn't subside, however, and her irises were still too red to be fully human, but her mind was back. And she was exhausted.

"Erm, is she alright?" Nubes said, crouching down beside Emily and wincing as she choked on whatever it is that had been in the bottle.

Lunis, who had been forced back and was now sitting on the floor, set a paw against Nubes's chest to keep him back. The panther could trust his own reflexes, but Nubes had always been a little slower. "Emily?" Lunis said, staring at her vaguely red eyes and black veins. "You're looking a little less awful."

Emily trembled, trying to get her bearings.

Their words finally registered.

"I'm not feeling less awful," she said, her voice hoarse.

Her insides were churning, trying to process food that wasn't there. She looked down and examined her current state.

"What...I didn't....did I..." her eyes darted between the two of them as she shifted to her knees, not trusting herself to stand.

Nubes set a paw on Emily's shoulder. "No, you didn't," he said.

"Want me to carry you around?" Lunis said. "You sound like s***, and Nubes can't pick you up with his weak arms."

The leopard glared at the panther, but Lunis did have a point. They couldn't stay where they were, since Emily could starve, and Nubes certainly would have a hard time carrying her around. Lunis could've just worded it better.

Emily snickered weakly, "Yeah, I bet I do. I'm just..." she glanced down at herself, her face betraying her bafflement, "I'm not supposed to be able to snap out of it. Not until I...well, until I've had something to eat. I...how did you do..." she gestured vaguely, "...this."

"Maybe you assumed it was blood?" Nubes said, shrugging. "You didn't seem quite like you had your wits about you, and so I wouldn't be surprised if whatever instinctual part of you fighting Lunis was convinced it was the blood you were looking for."

She thought about it, "....Okay, maybe. But I don't think...well, it's not supposed to work like that. I don't think..."

She rubbed her temples, a habit of mimicry more than an actual defense against her growing headache. A quick thought about how much strength she actually had in her limbs told her that walking was pretty out of the question. Gods, she hated being carried. But there really was no avoiding it.

She eyed Lunis carefully. She would be awfully close to his neck. If she snapped again...

She shook her head, "I, um, I don't know if I'm going to snap again," she admitted, "I don't want to be too close..."

She gestured again, a few sparks of arterial red fizzling off her hands involuntarily in her anxiety.