Fire It Up

A town as small of Mystic Falls should have meant fewer people in close contact. Woods, wide open and sparsely populated for much of the month offered peace and respite, places to deal with those who had unfortunately found that close contact deadly. He should have been able to skirt through those spaces undisturbed, performing the task he had been completing for millennia, hiding one world from another. Should have being the operative words.

The witch had been the first. Blue eyes narrowing up at him as though she could see the blazing orange beneath his host’s own blue eyes. She had known and he had been forced to bargain to keep her tongue still. After he had tried to keep himself clear of such situations but in the crowded confines of the college campus, Kresnik had found himself failing. The banshee had seen, had been easy to keep quiet perhaps. She was aware of enough of that world in which they were all now situated to not fight the request to remain silent and not reveal to his host what had taken refuge inside of him. For it was that. Left without a body to inhabit in those blazing woods far north of here, he had found Bram McCabe and had offered his presence as a mutual benefit.

Her presence here in the woods was of no benefit. Kresnik stared at the girl in front of him, fixing finally on the patch that covered one eye. Ah. His head hung for a moment, flames wreathing the face she had identified far more quickly than he had hers. She had been the one out in the campus the night he had been forced to retreat from his host’s consciousness before he had him back in the dorm rooms. The outfit was different, drawing his brows together for a moment as he studied it, but that single dark eye was the same.

Shit indeed. Humans had a thousand exclamations for such situations. His own pinballed around a mind that he had carefully emptied before occupying the space. ”Little of what happens in this town is normal,” Kresnik growled. That should have been the reason for him to stay, to do his work, but each time he found himself in this situation, the desire to leave filled him. ”You should not be out here. Not now. Why did you not leave?” Surely most would have seen the flames through the trees and would have retreated, perhaps calling the human – and patently ineffective – authorities from a distance. The women in his host’s life seemed incapable of such things however.

The square jaw dipped again, the frown deepening as the hellhound looked down at the body on the ground. His eyes remained that blazing orange, but the flames that wreathed his host’s bare skin began to retreat until all that was left was those bright lines of heat, like the figure was made of clay, cracked by the fire that raged within. ”If I had killed them I would not have remained here for you to find.” Despite their appearance his kind did not slaughter in the way of other things.

Kresnik turned, moving towards her. He looked down into that one eye, his body standing stiffly. ”This is unlike anything you have dealt with before, wolf. He knows nothing of what I am. In death he opened himself up to something more and that which he took into him is not out here for fun. To run, or to do that.” One hand slowly drew backwards, fingers spreading to indicate the body. ”My kind exists to keep yours safe, but there are things in this town that seem to want to shatter that safety.” One of those things had wanted to kill tonight. Like one of those small furry animals humanity insisted on domesticating, it had left its prey here like a treasure to be found. If the girl had not arrived it would have been removed before anybody had stumbled upon it.

Tagged: KITANA RYO * Word Count: 670

Humanity’s tendency to deceive itself about what they shared the planet with had certainly made the job of the hellhounds – and their reaper kin – easier. Had they seen a creature on fire in the woods or had it merely been the after effects of too much alcohol? A nightmare perhaps, that glimpse they caught from the window easily passed off as the rising sun or a trick of the light the next day. There was nothing to fear, monsters didn’t exist unless they were of the human kind. It was foolish and blind and for those who happened to stumble across one of those monstrous things. Then, if they were truly unlucky, it would be a reaper coming for them, scooping up what was left of a soul that had been torn free or bled from the shell it had once occupied.

Kresnik eyed the werewolf, fixing both of his on the single eye she stared at him with. Had that been what had taken the eye from her? Had it been what had turned her? Whatever had happened to her was something that Bram was unaware of. His host was one of those blind to what was out there and would have remained so if he hadn’t stumbled continually on the things that he was supposed to remain unaware of. Much he had been able to shield him from, but he couldn’t control every minute of every day, especially not when others had been witness to his panic. Questions tended to build until under the pressure of them all of the answers had to spill out and there were many he would not give.

If it hadn’t been for the body at his feet he might have allowed the human to bleed through. This was too much though, a crack that would open wide enough that either his host would finally lose his mind under the weight of all of his questions, or that he would finally realise that he was not the only one in the rather large confines of this body.

”Want rarely has anything to do with what should happen.” Hissing out a sigh, the hellhound shook his head. The flames should have been warning enough to her that okay was not a part of any of this. Human beings did not talk after they had been wreathed in fire. Most did not stand around conversing over the body of a dead girl either. Kresnik bit down on the observations, continuing to stare pointedly into the single remaining eye of the girl instead.

Obviously she did not believe this human capable of murder, although his word should not have been enough to convince her alone – unless she was smelling the truth wafting from his skin like the smoke. Would the smell have her wrinkling her nose as he approached, the proximity irritating the girl’s senses to the point where perhaps she would leave? Unfortunately not. Her expression did twist, but it seemed to be with a confusion that he would not be able to clear much of. ”We must be able to identify what it is we hide. There are others to take the merely human, we cannot move as easily as they can amongst their kind.” It was an instinct, one that came as easily as breathing. Werewolf, witch, vampire, all he could identify on sight. From the moment she had found Bram running around barefoot on campus, he had known exactly what he was looking at.

The wolf’s single eyed gaze dropped lower, following the lines of the body he’d indicated – the one no longer shrouded in flames. As it rose up the questions started to fall from her again, not merely accepting his word and leaving as he had hoped she might once she had enough information to satisfy her curiosity. ”I am what comes when death has been tasted,” Kresnik told her. ”Bram died and was given a choice. He made the right one. You must now make the right one too and leave wolf. Do you not see the danger that may still remain here?” Kresnik began to back up again, stooping to lift the dead weight of the girl into his arms. How much longer before someone else stumbled upon them and the secret began to spread like the fingers of fire that would soon race over his skin again?

Tagged: KITANA RYO * Word Count: 730

How anything survived in this town was beyond him? Humanity had seemed to throw itself towards self-destruction almost from the moment of their creation, but somehow it was worse here. Things like this werewolf knew that they weren’t alone here. They were part of a blood thirsty, violent world that they should’ve shied away from, but like his host, each of the women who had ended up orbiting him like planets around a sun seemed to charge straight towards it. Perhaps there was supposed to be something heroic and noble about it, Kresnik wasn’t sure he could see it, though. Why the death wish?

The hellhound flashed the teeth that stood out bright white against his host’s soot smudged skin at the wolf’s mutter. Not half as poetic as it was tragic. She was still young and not as jaded as one like her should’ve been – the same way that Bram had not yet become jaded by the strange and violent situations he kept finding himself in. Had the eye been taken from her the same way? The scars that perhaps scored the flesh beneath the patch that covered it not carving deep enough to leave her skittish around things she should not have toyed
with.

”I know what you are the same way I know what they are,” Kresnik muttered, gesturing towards the body at his feet before he settled a hand against his chest. ”It is a feeling, an awareness that allows us to work as we must.” He could begin to pick apart the way he simply knew, the sensations that slipped over his skin and beneath his flesh the same way the flames did this form when he took charge of it.

The hellhound’s mouth pinched as the question, undoubtedly born of the fear of being outed, came again. ”Do not worry, the truth of what you are is not being passed from one to another. Even he does not know.” The broad hand spread on the bare chest again, indicating the soul that resided within this body. Like everything else that happened when he took charge, the knowledge of what this wolf did on the full moon, or what the blonde witch who had visited the campus was capable of, was withheld from the mind that would soon take control again. If the wolf could bite her own tongue then perhaps he would remain in the dark.

They had learned long ago that secrecy was the only way to guarantee their own safety. Reveal what they were doing and they made a target of themselves. Hellhounds weren’t fragile like humans, or even like some of the supernatural world, but they weren’t unkillable either. Immortality could be finite, even for entities such as Death himself.

Kresnik shook her head at the wolf as she tried to pick apart what she had been told – and obviously only understanding parts of it. His hand tapped at his chest again, as though mimicking the heart that did beat within. ”Was dead. If I were to leave his heart would continue to beat, but once upon a time it did stop. The flames and smoke took him in his moment of heroism.” This wasn’t the place to talk of such things, but it appeared as though the wolf wouldn’t stop questioning him until she was satisfied. ”Six years ago,” Kresnik said on a sigh. ”Far from here. In a wildfire. He saved two lives before he succumbed to it and found one to bring him back from death.” An agreement the hellhound wasn’t sure would have happened if the choice was offered while Bram’s heart beat and he had other options.

A chin still covered in the scruff of a beard, despite the flames that had licked over it only moments before, lifted, gesturing around them as though it would reveal what he was talking about. The thing that had killed the girl had left for now, but it didn’t mean that it wouldn’t return and perhaps being a werewolf would not be enough to protect her now. ”But what about the thing did that?” Kresnik growled lightly. ”Are you sure it is gone?” It seemed she was certain enough, felt safe enough, to continue peppering him with questions. As the flames began to lick over his skin again the wolf stepped in, leaving him stepping back with the dead girl swaying in his arms. ”You will not leave until you know.” Not a question, a statement that only stoked his frustration. ”A hellhound. You should forget that you ever spoke to me.” The witch had promised to keep silent about what had passed between them, but she had not pushed as this one did now.

Tagged: KITANA RYO * Word Count: 786