Paying the Price (RP)

A look of amazement spread across Persephone's face. Is she serious??! Her mind began to rattle off all of the very many things that could go wrong, when another voice inside her, a deeper darker voice, said, You are a demon. None of that matters any more. You have already lost your mortal soul; nothing else compares.

She stood in the hallway for a moment, blinking, processing. Then she exhaled, shrugged, and heaed in after Emma.

Once within, she wrinkled her nose at the stale smell and made a face at the unpleasant sound coming through one of the walls. Worried that someone was home, she began to walk in that direction, trying to tell if it was coming from a room within this apartment, or from another unit.

Persephone grimaces and gestures to Emma. She whispers, "Emma! There's someone in there! And they're... thumping on the wall?? Oh god I hope that's not a headboard..."

She looks at Emma an says, "Should we peek?" She summons her courage and asks herself, What would Emma do? and heads to the door. She opens it a crack and peeks inside.

Emma noted the several locks on the door. It wasn’t unusual for a place in a bad neighborhood to have extra security, but it made her curious. Moving swiftly through the apartment, she checked the fridge and rifled through the cabinets, looking for anything that could tell her how long Chablis had been gone, and what kind of person she really was.

She was about to move and check the bathroom when, she, too, heard the sounds coming from the bedroom. She moved to her Pers side immediately, trying to make sense of the noise as Pers peeked through the crack.

Persephone stumbles back just in time to avoid being ...eaten? Bitten? Drank from? She doesn't even know. What she does know, however, is that she does not like this person. At all. She doesn't even want to think about who the victim is in the other room....

She regains her composure and begins to reach inside, only to find the demon within already trying to explode out of her.

Emma couldn’t help but notice the stale, rotting food inside the fridge. Half-eaten takeout, moldy fruit, expired milk. If Chablis had been living here, surely she would’ve cleaned it out by now, right?

Unless...

The noise from the bedroom broke her train of thought, and her blood ran cold. That was when it clicked, everything connected in a single moment. The multiple locks on the door? Probably to keep anyone from breaking in during the day. The heavy curtains in the living room? Designed to block out the sunlight. Chablis had been Sarah’s roommate. She was always there.

"Pers, watch out!" She called as she saw her friend moving toward the bedroom door "It’s Chablis... She’s a vampire!"

Shadow swirls around her and her skin once more becomes translucent. Bones twist, muscle and sinew stretch and throb, and her hands twist into jagged, chitinous raptorial limbs, like a human sized preying mantis made of obsidian. Emma might notice that this time Persephone's form is subtly different, adapting to the situation; no wings sprout, for example, and her skin grows plates of chitin. With the mantis arms, she looks more insectile than she did before.

Persephone speaks, that low and rumbling, three voice chorus once again emanating from her. "What have you done with Chablis?!"

Persephone growls in her demonic voice and swings her claws at the door frame next to the lunging vampire, hoping the shower of splinters, not to mention the sound and sight of Persephone, would cow the vampire for a moment.

"No, Pers! Don’t hurt her! She’s starving!!!"

Emma’s mind raced. Chablis had mostly been feeding off one person—Sarah. That didn’t make her a monster in Emma’s eyes. She heard of far worse vampires. The ones who fed indiscriminately. The ones who killed their victims without a second thought. Chablis, on the other hand, seemed to try to limit the damage. She fed on Sarah. She made sure she forgot all about it. It was still cruel and unfair, but as vampires went, was she really that bad?

That didn’t change the situation, however. Chablis was out of control; she could see it in her eyes. Nothing they could say would calm her down until she got what she needed. She almost considered offering her own blood, but she didn’t trust Chablis not to drain her dry, or bit too hard and leave a deep gash that would never heal.

This could turn into a tragedy if they didn’t figure out a way to incapacitate her.

But how?

Persephone transformed as the vampire lunged at her through the doorway, armored plates rising to the surface of her skin just in time, as the vampire's ragged teeth gouged into her now chitinous shoulder. "Arrghhhh! It burns!" she cried out. Shadow flared out of her, almost like smoke from a raging fire, and she shoved the vampire backwards, back through the door. She swang her jagged claw arm at the vampire, striking the wooden doorframe and tearing completely through it. Splinters and shards of wood exploded into the room, peppering the vampire and making an awful noise. Onlookers might not be able to tell if Persephone intentionally hit the door frame or was going for a killing blow and the frame just got in the way. Regardless, the growl, the claw, and the hundreds of wooden splinters now piercing the vampire's skin was enough to break through its ferocity. It collapsed onto its back, on the floor, looking up at Persephone in terror.

Meanwhile, the chitinous plate on her shoulder has two nasty gashes in it, and blood began to pool in the gouges from where the fangs had pierced the armor. She leant against the lone remaining door frame and breathes heavily. In between breaths, she growls, "I don't... I don't wanna hurt you. Are you... Chablis?"

Persephone turned to Emma, about to yell at her for ...but then Persephone forgot. As Emma approached, entering the dark hallway near the bedroom, she was backlit in the dusty light, giving her a glow about her, almot like an aura of beauty, or an angelic halo. Persephone's head tilted... Wow... she thought. Persephone had always found Emma to be attractive, but they had been more like sisters than lovers. Besides, Persephone didn't know if Emma was bi, and now she was married! Yeah but maybe ...No! What the hell Pers... she thought, and tried to refocus.

She turned back to Chablis and said, "Behave and maybe we can help. She, uh, knows vampires apparently. Maybe they can help."

Turning back to Emma and shaking off her own sudden arousal, Pers asked, "Can your vampire 'friends' help? I'm not feeding her and I don't know want else to do?"