VIII-Bonding Over Bloodshed(Felicia)

[Deleted]

London, England
Safehouse
3:02 AM

Bzzzzzz.

Daniel’s eyes shot open on the lumpy matrass, looking over to his right at the phone on the nightstand. He wondered if he should either throw it out of the room and into the bathroom or answer it. That lead to the thought of whether or not he could make it into the toilet or not.

Bzzzzzz.

Taking a breath and reaching for it, he grabbed the Tracfone and pressed the answer button.

”Hello?” he said drowsily. A voice on the other end of the phone said some shit that only half registered to him in his sleep inertia-laden state. None of it meant much. Someone wanted someone else dead. Same shit, different day. Mention of payment came up, and Daniel scoffed.

”You have the nerve to call me at three in the fucking morning, and you offer me fifty thousand dollars for a five hundred thousand dollar job?” he asked. The voice went slack on the other end of the phone. They obviously weren’t expecting that. Daniel didn’t consider himself the best in the business, but he did consider himself pretty fucking high on the list. And for someone to offer him pennies on the dollar for the kind of work that was being offered was slightly insulting. He let out a sigh when the voice told him to wait a moment. Considering hanging up and going back to bed, another voice came on the phone. This one older, probably their version of good crook bad crook.

”What makes you so expensive?” the voice asked. Accepting that he wasn’t going to go back to sleep even if he hung up the phone right now, he sighed.

”Ok, numb nuts. I’ll take the fifty grand, on the condition that you pay the expenses,” he said. The older voice started to ask what kind of expenses, and Daniel sighed again.

”Jesus, it’s like talking to a five year old. Expenses, you fucking idiot. Travel. Plane rides, rental cars, hotel rooms, cab fare. Living costs. Food, mainly. Then you have our kind of work, the spendy shit. Who’s going to smuggle my tools into the country, through airport security, through customs, through baggage handling? That’s no less than thirty palms that need to be greased. Five grand is the usual, to keep them all shut up. Each. I have to bribe the people I interact with in a professional capacity. Get the girl at the hotel counter to accept my fake ID and the fact that I don’t have a credit card to put on file. Get the guy driving me to wherever to falsify his cab route, reset his meter and GPS to avoid suspicion. The security guards at the dead guy’s place of employment. They tend to spot a guy hanging around doing nothing but recon on the joint. They gotta look the other way. The people who specialize in security grids, they need to be paid to knock out the systems or to reset them. That whole package costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Probably more than the fee I’m asking for you idiots, because you need middle men to deliver each of those bribes. So sure, I’ll take fifty grand if you take the expenses. And if anything goes wrong, every single mistake is coming out of your ass,” Daniel finished his tirade with a breath of exhaustion.

None of that was true. He had stopped conventionally traveling years ago. It remained a secret amongst his competitors how he managed to not only beat them everywhere they went, but also how he was able to slip into different countries and have no one be aware he was in said country. A lot of them had government contacts, which enabled them to move around some countries without a lot of trouble. But he had none, and he was still ahead of them at every turn. It baffled them all, and it remained Daniel’s closest guarded secret of his trade.

Everything else was bullshit in the fact that he was a very unassuming man. No one ever quite remembered him as more than a tall man with blonde hair. Depending on where you were, that either made him one of several hundred tourists or foreigners, or one of the billion other similar men. He carried fake credentials on most jobs, that could just be burned like nothing if he needed to ditch them. Among them were fake credit cards for such occasions, that wouldn’t raise any red flags when entered into a system, but didn’t actually have an account attached to them. He had turned every aspect of this into a science, and there was literally no other gun for hire in the world who could do this job as efficiently and as low key as Daniel.

Silence filled the other line and Daniel smirked to himself as he broke said silence.

”I thought so. Half in my account now, half when I’m done.” He pressed the end button on the phone and tossed it back onto the table roughly. He sat up in the bed and took a breath, rubbing the crap out of his eyes and rolling to the floor. He started with the morning calisthenics and began to go through the day in his mind. He needed to get to Paris, first of all. Easy enough. He had a safe house in the ghetto in town. He tended to keep to the bad parts of town for his safe house. People didn’t tend to ask a lot of questions when you paid cash in the bad parts of town. And someone breaking into the place was a non-issue. There was never anything truly valuable there anyway.

Next, he needed to get to his target. He’d spend the day scouting things out, getting to know the kind of person the man was. Vincent Franco, his name was. Art dealer by trade, but apparently he owed some people money and he wasn’t quick enough with the payments. Daniel would have felt bad, but he also had been told what Mr. Franco did to try and make ends meet. He had a big hand in sex slave rings. Daniel would have done the job for free if he didn’t have a reputation to uphold for the scumbags who purchased his services.

He got up off the floor and took a look at his clock. If he remembered his time zones correctly, which he knew he did, Felicia would be up right about now. She’d wanted in on his next contract, if only for the joy of it. He idly wondered if she’d want half of the payment as he picked up the phone and dialed her number from memory.

[Felicia Soler]

So soft and so tragic
As a slaughterhouse.
You press the knife
Against your heart.
And say that,
"I love you, so much you must kill me now."

On the lakefront
Lake Cazenovia Estate
Cazenovia, New York

[dropcap]Ildiko and Tivodar had both met and exceeded many of their infantile milestones required by modern medicine. Both she and Inaki had been there when the twins had taken their first steps across the living room—before promptly plonking back onto their behinds. That had been roughly two months ago. Now they were just a week shy of being 13 months old, having celebrated their birthdays on the 4th of July. Of course the children stayed inside with their grandmother while she and Inaki spent the night outside enjoying the fireworks (and creating some fireworks of their own that hopefully wouldn't lead to any extra surprises come mid-May).

She'd changed the twins into fresh diapers and walked them down to the lake. Under her constant supervision, she made sure they never got too close to the water's edge. The two of them babbled together in their own little language, and if she listened hard enough, she could almost understand what they were saying. They were already more than capable of forming simple sentences, and easily recognised her and Inaki as their parents and Khalidah as their grandmother. Devon wasn't as lucky. With their linguistic skills still forming, they called him 'Dee.' Amalia was simply 'Ama.'

Something flashy and silver caught Tivodar's eye swimming just under the surface of the lake. He pointed at it. “Baba?”

“Baby fish, yes. You're such a smart boy, already taking after your father.” Felicia sat with them just shy of the water's edge and held them tight, even though they squirmed.

“Mama.” The first time she'd heard one of the twins say those two syllables, her heart completely melted. Dada came about a week or so later. Ildiko looked at her with her big brown eyes and gave a dramatic yawn. Tivodar had already lost interest in the fish that he'd seen and his eyelids were getting very heavy. Following his older sister's lead, he yawned and closed his eyes. This morning had been an eventful morning for them. It was sunny out, and she'd decided to take them down to the lakeside to let them crawl, roll, try to walk, and explore the world outside their home. She'd always been an incredibly attentive mother with all her children. Having spent the past several months studying for her medical boards and her clinical exams, her time spent with her children had been somewhat limited. Now that she'd since passed her boards and had gone before the state to be given her medical license, she'd decided to take a temporary leave of absence to spend some much needed time with her family before resuming her chosen career as a cardiologist in the spring.

The twins settled into her arms and were soon fast asleep. Not even Armageddon could rouse them now. She watched as a few geese flew over and landed in the centre of the lake, gently disturbing the water's placid surface. Sometimes it was nice to just get away and be with her babies for a while.

She felt her phone vibrate in her pocket before she heard a ringtone that made her heart flutter.

Blood-stained sheets
In the shape of your heart,
This is where it starts...
Blood-stained sheets
In the shape of your heart,
This is where it starts.
This is where it will end.
Here comes the moon again.

She let the ringtone play through one full verse before answering. That would have given him about four rings to get nervous that she wasn't answering. Clicking the answer call button on her touch screen, she greeted him with a husky voice. “Hello, Buttercup. I thought you'd never call.”

There was a slight pause on the other line. “You told me to call when I got a contract. Just hung up from my contact.”

Oh, so he'd actually remembered that she'd wanted to be taken along on his next job. Perfect timing. She'd spent the past week recovering from her exams and relaxing at home. Like the state Bar Exam to become an attorney, medical licensing—and surgical licensing, at that—were incredibly taxing degrees to achieve, requiring thousands of hours of studying, years of schooling, and months (if not years) of training under a surgeon's wing. “Oh, wonderful. I just completed all my medical boards and clinical exams last week and I was looking to take a slight vacation.” Clicking the speakerphone button so that she wouldn't need to awkwardly crane her neck to continue the conversation, she placed the phone on the grass beside her and pulled the sleeping twins up to her chest. “I suppose you'll be needing a waypoint to teleport to? Or have you been stalking me in your spare time?”

Felicia heard him chuckle briefly. God, how she loved that sound. “I'd hardly call it stalking. More like foreplay. But yes, I need something to use for reference. A picture of a room in your house would work.”

Wasn't that a shame. “I'm not in the house right now.” Though he couldn't see it, he could definitely hear the grin in her voice. “I bet you'd love to know where I am . . .”

“If our last encounter taught me anything, it's that the 'where' doesn't make any difference at all.”

That was true. The where in where she took pleasure in her carnal desires really didn't matter. “True. Would it help if I told you what I was wearing?”

“Not really, because you do your best work when you aren't wearing anything at all.”

“I'm not sure whether I should be offended or complimented by that.” Eh, she'd settle for doing some of her best work out of her clothes. “I finally got my license to perform cardiovascular surgery last week. I think that'll be the . . . third time this century. I like to stick to what I know.” Cutting people up and putting their fragile insides back together was, while not fun (most of the time), it was rewarding and kept her mind busy.

“Wait, third time?” He sounded incredulous. Had she not been immortal, she would have understood his surprise at the notion that she'd obtained such a wealth of medical knowledge. “Are you taking them under different names or something?”

She paused and sighed, smirking. “No, I take them under the exact same name every time . . . and here I thought you were an intelligent man . . . ”

“No, what I mean is, who does your fake ID's, if they're good enough to fool a medical licensing board?”

“Oh, right. You've never met my mother. I suppose I'll have to introduce you when you show up. She's staying with us for the week--giving us a hand with the twins.” It wasn't rare for her to show up at the estate to help hold down the fort, as it were. She had other homes around the country she frequented when the need arose.

“Is it kosher to introduce the guy you fucked around on your husband with to your mother?”

Felicia chuckled. “She already knows everything about you down to the smallest detail. You'll come to learn rather quickly that there are no secrets kept in our family. And don't be surprised if she hits on you.” Even though her mother seemed to be leaning more towards women during this lifetime, Danny did have a certain rustic charm to him.

“ . . . Right. I should be surprised, but I'm not.”

“No, you really shouldn't be. I inherited most of my personality from her--but I think she's more attracted to women for now, at least. She's been trying to woo this other immortal whose virginity she took at the Oracle of Delphi--I won't bore you with the details.” What was her name again? Selkie? No, wait, Sophie. She'd met her on the live chat at some point or another.

“Actually, I find that fascinating--” Of course he would find it fascinating, “--but I'll wait for her to tell the story. If she wants to tell it.”

“Don't encourage her.”

“I have a feeling she would say the exact same thing to me about you,” he quipped.

“Well . . . yeah. And don't piss her off. She's got a worse temper than I do.” Her mother's fits of rage fit into the 'legendary' category. Felicia's fits of rage looked harmless by comparison. “Anyways, I'm sending you a few pictures right now--after I take them. I have two babies in my lap.”

“Aww... I love kids. But I never get a chance to be around them.”

Honestly, even from their first meeting, she had no idea how he would have reacted around kids. She hadn't given it much thought, but he didn't really seem like the type of guy to stay home and play daddy. Then again, she didn't personify what everyone thought of when they thought of a mother figure, either.

“Our estate backs up onto Lake Cazenovia in New York.” Turning her phone around, she snapped a picture of the lake in front of them and sent it through the aether to wherever Danny was on the other end. Turning around, she zoomed in and took a picture of their home. “The second picture should provide you with a good visual of the house itself. Large. Really ostentatious. Kind of wish we'd just fucking sell it since it looks so goddamn gawdy.

There was a slight pause before he answered. “Do you want me to show up inside or outside the house? Believe it or not, people still get kinda pissy at me for showing up in their house after they tell me to come over.”

Technically it would have been more polite for him to show up and knock so that the inhabitants of the home could decide whether or not they truly wanted to see him. “I'm outside by the lake. It shouldn't be two difficult to find the three of us.” She stroked the twins' sleeping heads with one hand. Their hair was still baby soft.

“Where the hell is the lake in conjunction to the house? Or vice versa?”

“The lake is directly north of the house.” She was about to hang up on him when she remembered something she'd been meaning to ask him the next time they spoke. “Oh, by the way, before you go, do you think you could do two favours for me?”

“I don't think it'd be too much trouble. I was going to ask if you wanted anything before I came over.”

She laughed. “You have to ask what I want? I thought I was pretty transparent.” The last time they'd met, she figured she'd made her intentions more than clear.

“I didn't have to ask about the condoms,” Felicia snickered on the other line, “but I figured you might want something else. I do have the entire world at my fingertips.”

There was that. “Well, yes, those of course. Um . . . you still have one of your old military uniforms, right? And a shirt--preferably one you've worn recently while doing physical labour." Why the fuck was she suddenly speaking English while not speaking English? “Fuck, no one talks like that anymore. Bring me a shirt you've worked out in.”

“ . . . I can do that. By the by, I don't have any uniforms. Delta doesn't get formal uniforms, and I turned in the ACU's when I was discharged. What was the second favor?”

Damn. Why did all of his uniforms have to be gone? There was that dream dashed. She sighed, annoyed. “Fine. Find a uniform that fits you, then. And my second favour was bringing me one of your dirty, sweat-covered shirts. Oh, and bring some bordeaux for my mother. Preferably an older vintage. She likes her wine.” It was polite to show up at another person's house for the first time with gifts of food or wine. Most people didn't partake in customs like that anymore, and it was a shame.

“A normal request, I can do that. All right, I'll take a look around. Anything else?”

She thought for a moment before replying. “A few changes of clothes would probably be good. For you, I mean.”

“I can do that. Anything for the kids? Or... Is it proper for me to offer to get something for your husband?”

“I'd . . . advise keeping your distance from Inaki at first. While he understands my need to seek enjoyment elsewhere, he hasn't quite accepted it yet. Then again, he's allowed Devon to live in our home for the better part of a year since the twins were born, but Devon's also stopped fucking me and now he's fucking my granddaughter--have I mentioned my family is really fucked up?”

“You mentioned it when I still had internal bleeding and head trauma, I think. But, good to know. I won't go shake his hand or anything like that for a while.”

The children, however, were a different matter. “If you want to bring something for the kids, go right ahead. They seem to rather enjoy books right now.”

“Books like 'Everybody Poops' or books like 'A Tale of Two Cities'? How old are they, anyway?”

“I read them a few entries from Dante's Inferno before we put them down to bed each night. And they're 13 months old.”

“You know... I saw a collection of the three Dante stories not long ago. That sounds like it'd fit.”

“Amor, ch'al cor gentile ratto s'apprende
prese costui de la bella persona
che mi fu tolta; e 'l modo ancor m'offende.

Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona,
Mi prese del costui piacer sì forte,
Che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona...” she recited the passage from memory. After all, she'd been around when the book had originally been written and published in Italy. “They're going to grow up knowing at least three languages.”

“Interesting. That was Italian, correct?”

“Yeah, but I can translate.

Love, which quickly arrests the gentle heart,
Seized him with my beautiful form
That was taken from me, in a manner which still grieves me.

Love, which pardons no beloved from loving,
took me so strongly with delight in him
That, as you see, it still abandons me not . . . ” She paused for effect before continuing. “Speaking Italian always reminds me of my daughter Lucia--but she goes by the name Nireva now. She'll always be Lucia to me. My little light from heaven.”

“Is that a soft spot I hear from the woman who threatened to tear my arms off and beat me to death with them?” Great, now she was going to get that criticism from him and Inaki? Maybe the two of them would have gotten on quite well, actually.

“Hey, I can be tender!” She frowned, mildly offended.

“True.”

“And Lucia is a well-respected exotic dancer at a high-end club in California. It's a bit uncomfortable for me to admit that she looks good naked, but I'd be lying if I said she didn't.”

“Not all that different from admiring a piece of art, I imagine.”

Oh, it was worlds different, but she really didn't feel like having that discussion over the phone. “There are plenty of paintings of the two of us if you know where to look. She was born during the Renaissance. Anyways, your have your waypoint. I can send you GPS coordinates if that helps. And don't forget the sweaty shirt and the uniform. I love a man in uniform . . . ”

“Heh. I'll do my best. I can probably get one at a surplus shop somewhere.”

Now she was getting impatient. “Ugh, just steal one and give me an approximate arrival time. I have to breastfeed the twins on a schedule.”

“Give me half an hour, tops. I'll be there.”

“I'll be waiting outside by the lake.” She ended the call and lay down on the lush grass, and embraced the twins close to her chest. Perhaps she should take a note out of their book and have a nap. A little outdoor nap every once in a while never hurt.[/dropcap]

Довести до белого каления.

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ф ф Mood: Fucking beat, but at least MAI INTARTUBES R WERK
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ф ф Comment / Informational links: None.

[Deleted]

Daniel hung up the phone and couldn’t help but smile at the conversation he had just had. He hadn’t known her for long, but he liked Felicia. It wasn’t exclusively because she had ridden him like a rodeo horse, either. Her personality was something else…

Teleporting to the shower in the next room, his clothes ending up in a pile next to his left foot, he took a quick shower and teleported back into the bedroom. He touched the gym bag with his foot and teleported again, this time ending up fully clothed where he had been standing. He pat down his pockets out of habit, something he didn’t need to do because he knew everything was in place but did anyway, and was on his way.

He ended up in the bathroom of the drug store just a few blocks down the road from his apartment. It didn’t take long to go out and get the box of condoms that Felicia had wanted. He thought about it for a moment and decided to get three of them. He paid for them and left, walking out into the alley next to the store and disappearing from sight.

His next stop was at the book store he had been in a week ago. He still wondered slightly how good of an idea it was to use the Divine Comedy as a bedtime story, but he shrugged his shoulders and picked up the set. If Felicia said it was ok for the kids, then it should be ok. It’s not like they could turn out any worse than her… He set the money for the set on the counter and teleported out.

The next stop was probably the most dangerous. He used his phone to find places to buy the wine she had talked about, and he had also looked up good vintages. Apparently 1959 was a good year. Rare, well made and good to drink. A good year to either hold onto or to drink. He didn’t know shit about wine, but the person who had written the blog seemed to know what they were talking about. Finding an actual bottle had been the rough part. A collector in France had a few bottles. Breaking into the house to get some had been easy. It was still four in the morning, so that was a plus. It had been quite easy to find his name in a local phone book, and then easier to break into his house. The bottle had been hard to locate in the cellar, simply because of how many bottles of wine the man had on hand. When he finally found it, Daniel wrapped it in a clean shirt in his duffle bag and held the bag closer to his body to protect the bag.

Next, a uniform. That was easy enough. He didn’t think Felicia would give two shits about if it was a current issue uniform or any of that crap. It was easy enough to make it to a surplus shop he had done business with in the past. Easy enough to slip the uniform off the rack and leave some money on the counter for the man who owned the place. Daniel didn’t believe in stealing from people who didn’t deserve to be stolen from.

Going over the list in his mind, he nodded a bit when he was satisfied that everything was in place. He teleported to the place Felicia had sent pictures of and let out a low whistle. Place looked a lot bigger in person. He stood on the front lawn for a moment and took a look at the sun for a moment. It was after noon here, so it was easy for him to realize he was facing west when the sun made him squint. Turning to the right, he looked for a tree that looked pretty sturdy and teleported to it to get a high ground view of the place.

The lake was easy to find. And so was Felicia. She was the colorful speck next to two other colorful specks, surrounded by an ocean of green. He focused on her for a moment and again disappeared from sight, only to end up several feet behind her.

He figured she’d known he was here before he ended up right on top of her, but he didn’t take it for granted. He gave her a moment or two to smell him, because he was sure she’d be able to smell him. He knew how she sensed, knew how strong her sense of smell was especially. She’d smell him. He took a look at his watch for a moment, realizing it had taken him twenty seven minutes to get here. Not bad.

”I come bearing gifts,” he said with a grin on his face that carried into his voice. He took a step forward and bent at the knees, settling down to have a seat on the grass next to her.

[Felicia Soler]

And everyone feels happy
Everyone feels great today . . . walking through these gates
Wake up, my dear . . .
It's killing day

Lake Cazenovia
Cazenovia Estate
Lake Cazenovia, New York

[dropcap]Not even fifteen minutes had gone by before Tivodar had woken up and started getting fussy. Ildiko was still out like a light, gently cradled in her other arm. She knew the peace and quiet wouldn't last for long. Ugh, why had she chosen today to wear a dress? Careful to not jostle Ildiko out of her deep sleep or irritate Daro further, she slipped one of her arms loose from the sleeveless dress, then used her 'free' hand to slide the remaining shoulder strap down her right arm. She'd never been a fan of wearing bras, which made breastfeeding much easier. Even though there were bras specially made for breastfeeding, why spend the money?

Shimmying the dress down until her left breast was exposed, she lifted Daro's mouth to her nipple and smiled at him when he started to suckle. “Ciao, il mio bellissimo figlio. Ti senti meglio ora?” She stroked his cheek with her fingers, just enjoying the moment of being able to be a mother to her children. It wasn't a scene many people had witnessed other than her immediate family and her husband, though they balanced child-rearing equally between them.

The light breeze rustling the trees bore with it the bare wisp of a familiar scent . . . and then it vanished. Seconds later, her nostrils flares as she picked up the scent again, much more potent. “You know, I could track you from a few miles away.” She looked out towards the lake. “You don't have bad B.O. or anything, it's nothing like that, so don't go all self-conscious on me. I could turn off my sense of smell at will, but I like knowing who's around me. And you are my catnip.”

She finally looked over at him as he took a seat beside her. “I come bearing gifts.”

“I'm sure you do. I hope you come baring many other things as well, pun fully-intended.” This was an unusual start to a day where someone's life was about to be rather forcefully interrupted. Here she was holding two new lives in her arms—and within the day, she'd most likely be holding someone's bleeding heart in her hand. There was a dichotomy there that was even difficult for her to fathom. How could she be both a nurturer, but completely merciless? “Humour aside, these are my children. Ildiko and Tivodar. We compromised on Daro's name, but my daughter was always going to be named Ildiko.” Both of the children looked like miniature clones of their mother, though Ildiko had longer hair, and Daro's dark hair had taken on the waviness of his father's. It was the only characteristic that appeared to tie his paternity to Inaki. Nine times out of ten, the Rahal genetics won out.

“You can hold Illy if you like. I know some people get weird around babies when parents get all pushy about baby shit.” By now, Daro had decided that he was full, and that it was permissible for his mother to return her clothes to their previous state. She picked up the towel that had been lying nearby. Now that she had infants again, she always had a towel or three within reach because it was never really predictable when they'd spit up. “You're gonna have to hold her now anyways since I need to burp him or risk having him vomit breastmilk in the house—which my mother thinks is riotously funny, but only because she's not the one who needs to scrub it out of the carpet.” Supporting her sleeping daughter in one arm, she touched her down in Danny's lap and hefted Tivodar up until his chin rested on her shoulder. She patted his back for several seconds until she heard him hiccup and burp.

Once he was finished, she cradled him in her arms and peered down at him, smiling. Daro smiled back at her. Mama smiling at him made him happy. “I make beautiful children, don't I?” Picking up on the sound of the patio door opening on the hill above them, she knew it would only be a moment before her mother joined them. Even if she hadn't heard the door opening, her mother had a perceivable presence that was impossible for even the least sensitive person to miss. There was a sudden, pleasant charge of energy enveloping her body as if she were being wrapped in a protective blanket as Khalidah crested the hill and made her way down to them, walking barefoot through the grass.

“Hi, ma.” Felicia gestured between the two of them as Khalidah took a seat in the grass beside Danny. “Ma, Danny—Danny, Khalidah, my mother.”

Khalidah smiled at him disarmingly. Most people were intimidated by her presence given that she was the creator of the world's foremost biotechnology companies. It had been several years in the making, and was only now coming into its own. She considered Danny for a moment. Felicia had been adamant about letting him into the fold. She, however, had never been one to place all of her faith entirely in one man. Considering his extensive background in the military and his background in stealthily eliminating some rather high-profile individuals without drawing any heat, she'd made a calculated decision. “Yet again, my daughter proves that she has impeccable taste in men.” Felicia must have trusted him to some degree or else she wouldn't have allowed him within miles of her children, let alone allow him to hold one of them in his arms. “Obviously you were able to find the place just fine.” In the coming months, he would prove to be a valuable asset. Teleporters were always somewhat downplayed given the nature of their ability, but she knew all too well how useful they were in a pinch.

Ildiko yawned and squirmed around in Danny's unfamiliar arms until she found a comfortable spot to rest her head on his bicep. Using the gauzy hem of her dress, Khalidah reached over and wiped a bit of drool from the corner of her granddaughter's mouth. Ildiko lazily opened her eyes and stared at the not-daddy holding her before deciding that he was just another warm body to fall asleep on.

All of Felicia's children had never had a problem being passed around from person to person, whether they were related or not. Felicia, on the other hand, had been an incredibly demanding child, and an equally demanding adult. “I have a feeling that this one's going to be hell on wheels when she's a teenager.”

“You're really giving her the benefit of the doubt. I give her under a year since that's when she'll start talking.”

“If she ends up being like you were when you were an infant, I'd tend to agree.” Gently sliding her hands underneath Ildiko's arms, she lifted the child from where she was resting against Danny's chest and curled an arm around her sleeping form. “I'm sorry, I hope you don't mind that I just did that—you really looked quite comfortable holding her. But from what I've gathered from Felicia, the two of you have a deadline to keep. I just wanted to meet you in the flesh at least once before you spirit my daughter a world away.” If there was one thing she'd done right in the past millennium, it was raise strong children who could easily stand their ground in both physical and mental arenas. Felicia was no exception.

Getting to her feet, she knelt down next to Felicia and gathered Tivodar from her arms. Even 730-some years later, she still felt a pang of trepidation whenever she knew one of her children was preparing to do something potentially dangerous. But there were several different levels of fear. The fear of a child learning to ride a horse and falling off was much different than the fear of knowingly allowing them to walk head on into a gunfight, regardless of their ability to stave off mortality. Khalidah embraced her, knowing that she'd return before a week had passed. “Zashchitete sebe si.”

Felicia relinquished her hold on her son so that her mother could scoop him up in her arms. “Mislya, che Danny e tozi, obkhvanat.”

Everything had to be a joke with her. Khalidah turned Felicia's head towards her (managing to awkwardly balance Ildiko on her arm as she did so), and gave her a stern rebuke. “Znaesh li kakvo iskam da kazha, Felicia.” Khalidah paused and hugged her again. “Nikoga ne zabravyaite, che te obicham.” Glancing over at Danny, she added, “It was a pleasure to meet you. I hope we meet again, soon.”

“I az te obicham, mamo. Don't worry about us. We'll be fine.” She kissed her mother on the cheek and her children on their foreheads before seeing them off with a wave. “I suppose you'll have to wait and give her her gift when we return. You'd think after 700 years she'd stop fretting about where I go and what happens to me, but I guess you never really stop being a parent.” She watched the three of them disappear over the hill and sighed. “At least I know mine are in good hands with her.”

Moving closer to Danny, she rested her palm upon the nape of his neck for a moment before slowly drawing a single finger down along the centre of his spine. She dragged her finger upwards and returned her hand to its prior position as she looked at him. “Shame it wasn't a brighter day when we were in London. You actually look quite lovely in the sun.” Her lips brushed over the side of his neck until she found his jawline, which she gave a playful nip. He was well aware of what she could do to his flesh with her teeth if the fancy struck her. “Shall we be off, or am I breaking your concentration?”[/dropcap]

Довести до белого каления.

ф ф Word count: 1730
ф ф Mood: Bleh.
ф ф Outfit: Khalidah, Felicia is wearing the SOS.
ф ф Lyrics / Quote: Gates, Wolfsheim
ф ф Illustrations: None.
ф ф Comment / Informational links: None.

[Deleted]

”You know, I could track you from a few miles away. You don’t have bad B.O. or anything, it’s nothing like that, so don’t go all self-conscious on me. I could turn off my sense of smell at will, but I like knowing who’s around me. And you are my catnip,” Felicia said, never taking her eyes off the children in her arms or the lake. He figured she’d be able to smell him before she saw him. She had shared that with him, among other things. He had no delusions of being able to sneak up on her.

He took his seat next to her and slid the bag toward his feet, chuckling at her remark about the gifts he had brought. ”We can get to that later,” he said, leaning over to take a look at the child in her left arm. Then to the one on the right. They were identical, down to almost every single feature. Beautiful, healthy, content in the arms of their mother. Everything a child should be able to count on in life.

”Humor aside, these are my children. Ildiko and Tivodar. We compromised on Daro’s name, but my daughter was always going to be named Ildiko,” she said. He had to admit, they sounded like very odd names, but knowing Felicia, she had a very specific reason for the names. As for those reasons…

”Why those names?” he asked. He was careful to keep his voice neutral, curious. He didn’t for one second want her to think he was judging either the children or her choice in name. Both because he wasn’t a total prick, and because of what she would probably do if that’s what she thought he was doing.

”You can hold Illy if you like. I know some people get weird around babies when parents get all pushy about baby shit,” she said. That simple gesture was enough for him to know that she trusted him. Come to think of it, he probably wouldn’t trust himself, if he were here. Professional assassin didn’t really instill the kind of faith in others one would need to be trusted with anything. She adjusted herself when her son was done eating, not the least bit shy about it. He didn’t know why she should be, given who she was and what the two of them had gotten up to not long ago, but it was so far beyond the norm for her to be so nonchalant about it. ”You’re gonna have to hold her now anyway since I need to burp him or risk having him vomit breastmilk in the house—which my mother thinks is riotously funny, but only because she’s not the one who needs to scrub it out of the carpet,” she said, and Daniel couldn’t help but snicker as well.

”Best part about being an aunt, uncle, or grandparent. You can have the kids when they’re fun and cute, then give them back when stuff starts leaking out one end or the other,” he said. He kind of wondered if any of his step-siblings had any kids or grandkids by now… It’d been decades since he had seen any of them. Not since he’d left home, come to think of it…

He sat still when the baby was passed to him, reaching down to support her when she was set down, then bending down to get a good grip on the little girl and lift her into his arms. He was as calm and as gentle as he could be when he cradled her in his arms. She didn’t so much as bat an eyelash. He lost track of Felicia and Daro as he looked down at the little angel in his arms, broken out of the trance when he heard the telltale sound of the little boy burping his troubles away.

”I make beautiful children, don’t I?” she said, and he smiled over to the little smiling boy in her arms.

”Yes, you do,” he said, smiling at the boy.

He heard the sound of a sliding glass door from somewhere behind then, and he idly wondered if that was Felicia’s mother. He turned enough to see a woman who didn’t look very old at all. He hadn’t know what to expect when Felicia had told him about her mother. The only thing he actually knew about her was that she was also an immortal. He didn’t know at what age she would have quit aging, and didn’t appear to me too much older than Felicia. Even though she could have been thousands of years older than Felicia.

”Hi ma. Ma, Danny—Danny, Khalidah, my mother,” Felicia said, gesturing between the two.

”Good to meet you, ma’am. I’d shake your hand, but I’m a tad preoccupied,” he said, shrugging his shoulders slightly and giving the little girl in his arms a soft bounce. Khalidah smiled and stayed silent for a moment, as if she were studying him. He didn’t really blame her. He was a strange man, and he had one of her grandchildren in his arms. If it were him he probably would have run a background check on the stranger before the meeting had ever taken place.

”Yet again, my daughter proves that she has impeccable taste in men,” Khalidah said. Well, that was a good start. She didn’t sound like she was being sarcastic or snippy, but he had a feeling that if she had it would be too subtle to notice. She didn’t seem like the kind of person that would be open for the world to see, so to speak, if she didn’t want to be. She’d be too smart for that. Felicia was quite powerful, and she seemed to revere her mother for more than the simple fact that it was her mother.

”Obviously you were able to find the place just fine,” she said. He gave her a slight nod. He was here, it would be redundant to inform her that yes, he’d found the house.

The baby in his arms started to squirm, and he made ready to comfort her when she started crying, but she never did. She simple wiggled to a better position and closed her eyes once again. ”I have a feeling that this one’s going to be hell on wheels when she’s a teenager,” Khalidah said. Involuntarily, Daniel looked over at Felicia. He tried to stop the grin from forming, he really did.

The mother daughter way back machine continued for a bit, until Khalidah reached over to take Ildiko from him. He accommodated her as much as he could to make it as smooth a transition for the little girl and looked over at the grandmother when she spoke again.

”I’m sorry, I hope you don’t mind that I just did that—you really looked quite comfortable holding her. But from what I've gathered from Felicia, the two of you have a deadline to keep. I just wanted to meet you in the flesh at least once before you spirit my daughter a world away ,” she said. He wanted to say there was no rush, that he could take up to a week before he had to get on the assignment if he wanted to. Sure, usually he liked to keep things prompt, but some dill hole who needed to be killed by order of some other dill hole could be put on hold for whatever reason struck his fancy. Good thing about working for yourself, and for dealing with people who couldn’t exactly report you to the better business bureau if things didn’t happen on a time table that was up to their standards.

He stayed quiet as mother and daughter embraced and spoke in a language he didn’t understand. The tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, it made it quite clear what was being said. Khalidah told Felicia to be careful, and Daniel was pretty sure she said she would be fine because he was going to be there. Daniel doubted she needed him to be there for her to be fine, but he took it to heart all the same. She was trusting him with her life, even if it was just something to say to her mom to keep her from worrying.

”It was a pleasure to meet you. I hope we meet again, soon,” she said, and Daniel gave her a small nod.

”I think we will,” he said. He didn’t doubt that everything would go well, but he always left a small bit of room for the unforeseeable. He did dangerous things for a living. It was never a given that he would make it home, or at least whatever hole in the ground he was calling home at that particular time, at the end of the day. Some day, he’d just get unlucky and it’d be over. If it hadn’t have been for Felicia, that day would have already passed and he’d be dead in a crummy apartment in London. He wondered idly how long it would have taken for someone to discover his body…

”Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine,” Felicia said, giving her mother one last kiss, as well as one for each of the children, before Khalidah took them back into the house. ”I suppose you’ll have to wait and give her her gift when we return. You’d think after 700 years she’d stop fretting about where I go and what happens to me, but I guess you never really stop being a parent,” she said. Daniel smirked and looked at her.

”Don’t you ever worry about Lucia?” he asked her. She had a soft spot for her daughter, that much he knew.

”At least I know mine are in good hands with her,” she said. Now that they were alone, she returned to the Felicia that he had met in London. She got in close, ran a finger from his neck to the base of his spine and back, and gave him a slight nibble at his jaw.

”Shame it wasn’t a brighter day when we were in London. You actually look quite lovely in the sun,” she said. Always the flirt…

”I could say the same thing about you, but you’re beautiful in any lighting,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. He rested them both at the small of her back and closed his eyes for a moment. He pictured the apartment in Paris that he had set up and used only a handful of times in his career before he opened them again to the mop of dark hair.

”Shall we be off, or am I breaking your concentration?” she asked.

”If I could do it in the alley, as distracting as that was, I think I’ll be fine,” he said as he smirked and reached a foot out to touch the duffle bag that was still near his feet. It disappeared with them in an instant, and ended up in the same position at his feet when they appeared at the apartment in Paris. It was a shithole, just like the one in London, but he kept to shitty places like this for a very specific reason.

”Did you bring anything with you? Or are you just going to go as you are?” he asked her. ”And we have to discuss a few logistical issues too. The risk of leaving DNA evidence being the main one. Trust me, the kind of people I go after have more resources and more money than the cops, and no matter how good you are, they will make life very difficult,” he said. He didn’t want to think of someone finding out who Felicia was from a stray hair and sending a hit squad after her. She would be able to take them, but the risk involved to her family was something they would both want to avoid at every possible cost.

[Felicia Soler]

Cannot block the signal from the battery to the brain
Cannot block the poison from the trigger to the vein
Nothing stops the impact of the breakdown lane
Spinning off the axis madness burning brighter every day

PLACE HERE (MOVIES, PARK, ETC.)
STATE HERE

”Why those names?” He wasn't asking to be rude. They were unusual names to most Westerners unfamiliar with Eastern European culture.

“Ildiko was the last wife of Attila the Hun. Even the most historically inept person knows that in order to be kept in good company with Attila, you had to be strong. The name itself means 'fierce warrior.' Tivodar is the Hungarian variant of the name Theodore which means 'God's gift.' I hope they live up to both of them.” Inaki hadn't been quite sold on either name since they did sound odd to American ears, but whatever. He spoke Dutch. Dutch was a weird fucking sounding language so he had no room to complain. And even his own name was strange, even though it was a slightly more updated version of the name Ignatius. “Daro was originally going to be named Ignatius after his father—Inaki is a variant—but he hated it. So I put it as his middle name. Ildiko took my original name as her middle name—Prisca. I suppose my own mother was prescient in that regard.” She wasn't sure whether Danny understood its meaning in Latin and proceeded to explain. “Prisca means 'ancient' in Latin. There was also a Saint Prisca, but my family has never really been on good terms with organised religion, especially the Roman Catholic Church.”

”Don’t you ever worry about Lucia?” Danny asked. He'd met Nireva a few times, even if only through the live chat her mother's company now ran.

“More than I hope you'll ever know.” She sighed, making a mental note to call her daughter whenever they arrived at their final destination. With exams coming up, she knew better than to bother her daughter with petty everyday shit like asking her how she was feeling and how her studies were coming along. Even when they'd been separated for centuries, she'd always seen to it that she lived within a day's ride of Nireva's home, in case something happened and they needed to leave with haste.

She felt quite comfortable in his arms, even as all the atoms of her body were torn apart and reassembled within a split second, several thousand miles from where they'd been mere moments before. Felicia held herself against him and waited for her eyes to adjust to the sudden change in light and scenery. Much like the apartment in London, this one was just a place to sleep and shower. The windows hadn't been open in quite some time, and the air was heavy in the room—very nearly cloying. While it wasn't a complete affront to her nose since it smelled very much like Danny, there was an undertone of mildew that made her curl her lip. She hadn't been expecting the Ritz Carlton.

With her arms around his back and her cheek pressed over his chest, she closed her eyes and shivered as he spoke. “Did you bring anything with you? Or are you just going to go as you are?”

“I had a small bag packed at home. By now, ma will probably have realised that I left it there since you decided to 'spirit me away' so quickly. I have a feeling she'll probably leave it on the back porch for you to retrieve.” Her hands wandered from his back, along the sides of his ribs, and over his chest, finally coming to rest upon his shoulders. Tucking her fingers under the collar of his shirt, she yanked it aside, revealing the jagged, half-moon scars which were a perfect replica of her upper and lower jaw. That would probably be a wound she'd be reopening quite often. She ran her fingertips curiously over the scarred area which stood out in contrast to the rest of his skin.

He didn't seem to mind. ”And we have to discuss a few logistical issues too. The risk of leaving DNA evidence being the main one. Trust me, the kind of people I go after have more resources and more money than the cops, and no matter how good you are, they will make life very difficult.”

She let go of his collar and it sprang back into place. “Then I suppose we'll either have to be extremely careful and extremely thorough.” Her lips curled into a sultry, suggestive smile. “I thought you used protection?” Speaking of protection, before he could make a move on her, she slipped out of his arms and knelt down next to the packed duffel bag. “Go gather my things. I'll be here when you get back.”

Come to think of it, she had no idea where exactly 'here' was. She could have been anywhere. Germany, India, South Africa . . . Once he'd left, she opened the duffel bag and found the one—no, three—boxes of condoms (eh, those would last a day). If he'd had any clothes folded in there, they certainly weren't folded once she'd finished ransacking the bag for one of the two favours she'd asked from him: a sweaty undershirt. Haphazardly stuffing everything except the condoms and the undershirt back into the oversized duffel, she pressed the shirt to her face and inhaled as she searched the apartment for a television. There was a small one in the kitchen on one of the counters which she turned on.

When the screen finally flickered to life and the speakers kicked on, she knew that she had to be somewhere French was regularly spoken, seeing as how she was currently watching an old episode of Plus Belle La Vie. That narrowed down the country list significantly, though she assumed that she was somewhere in France. She'd have to ask Danny where they were when he got back.

Pulling a seat away from the table, she sat facing the open doorway, and rubbed the shirt under her nose like she used to do with her blankets when she was a child. It was a comforting feeling in these unfamiliar surroundings.

She hadn't even noticed that he'd returned until she saw him standing in the recently unoccupied doorway. From the nose down, her face was hidden behind the dirty white shirt. “I'm not gonna say anything other than, yes, this is exactly what it looks like.” Swiping the three boxes of condoms out of the way, she folded up the shirt and put it aside. Kicking out the seat across from her under the table, she gestured to it. “Sit. We can discuss logistics if you feel so inclined.” Felicia leaned back in her chair and snatched one of the condom boxes off the table. She carefully teased it open and waited for him to say something as she read the label. “Oh, polyurethane. Fancy. And thoughtful, even though I'm not allergic to latex.” Reaching into the small cardboard pack, she tore one of the condoms away from the rest of its pack mates and flicked it at Danny's chest, giggling. “You sure these are big enough?”

Довести до белого каления.

ф ф Word count: 1247
ф ф Mood: Stinky.
ф ф Outfit: Same as initial post.
ф ф Lyrics / Quote: Electric Molecular, Chemlab
ф ф Illustrations: NA
ф ф Comment / Informational links: Included in post.

[Deleted]

“I had a small bag packed at home. By now, ma will probably have realised that I left it there since you decided to 'spirit me away' so quickly. I have a feeling she'll probably leave it on the back porch for you to retrieve,” she said, and he let out a small chuckle.

”Right…” he said. The thought of her having a bag ready to go hadn’t occurred to him… He chalked it up to him being able to go and get whatever he needed from anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice. It was strange to him, doing things the normal way anymore. He had built his life around being able to teleport.

Then I suppose we'll either have to be extremely careful and extremely thorough. I thought you used protection?” she said, a seductive smile on her face. He smiled back to her and watched her kneel down to go through the bag he had packed.

“Go gather my things. I'll be here when you get back,” she said, and he gave her a quick nod. Without another word, he was gone. First, to her home on the lake. Just like she had said, a small piece of luggage was there for her, right by a small bench on the porch. He reached out and grabbed the top handle, not wanting to be there any longer than he needed to be and disrupt the other people there. His next stop wasn’t the apartment in Paris, but the one in New York. Where he had left his supplies after completing his last job. He grabbed onto the carry handle of the huge nylon case and teleported out of the apartment and back to Felicia. Leaving the two bags on the floor near the duffle bag that he noticed was pretty torn up and rummaged through, he walked through the doorway to the kitchen. He saw her inhaling the fumes of the shirt and stopped for a moment. He smirked at her, and he wondered if she knew he was back. After all, she wouldn’t be able to smell him through the smell of ‘him’ on the shirt, right? He toyed with the idea of sneaking up and scaring her, but he then realized that she wasn’t as preoccupied as he thought she had been.

”I’m not gonna say anything other than, yes, this is exactly what it looks like,” she said. The smile on his face grew as he walked over to have a seat in the chair she offered him.

”I’ve grown used to your… quirks. They’re cute,” he said as he leaned his elbows on the table and took a look over at the TV. He had no idea what show was playing at the moment, and he had no idea what was being said either. He understood a bit of tourist French, enough to get him by when he was acting like a jackass tourist while he wandered the streets. No one thought much of him, and when he appeared meek at the right times, they were downright dismissive of him.

”Sit. We can discuss logistics if you feel so inclined,” she said. The smile on his face dropped and he grew slightly more serious. He took his work seriously, for the most part. Not too seriously, but he didn’t want to bring in Felicia unless she was prepared for all the finer points of killing for money. Sure, she killed people on her own just fine. She was also more resilient than he was. None of that bothered him. Only the, as he’d said before, logistics.

”Well, we can start with the DNA. The thing that’s hardest to keep track of is hair. Hair likes to fall out on its own all the time, and the forensic teams that sweep crime scenes are getting more and more thorough. I wear a wetsuit at most times. It keeps most fibers from collecting, and the hood keeps all my hair in place. For you, I can get another hood. Everything else shouldn’t be a problem,” he said. He assumed she could control her blood flow and such, if she did end up getting injured. If not, he could clean that up pretty easily. Hair was unruly, and almost impossible to find when it was scattered about somewhere. Even if they had to leave samples of blood behind, he always carried a bottle of ammonia to spray the blood with. That killed any hope of a forensic expert finding anything useable.

”Oh, polyurethane. Fancy. And thoughtful, even though I’m not allergic to latex,” she said. He laughed and caught the single condom that she threw across the table to him and looked it over for a moment.

”I am nothing if not a gentlemen. That, and the store didn’t have latex,” he said. Small, underfunded, as big a shithole as the neighborhood it was in. But they’d had something that was good enough.

“You sure these are big enough?” she asked.

”Close enough. They stretch,” he responded. He closed his eyes, visualizing the information he had been given earlier today and then opened them to look at Felicia again.

”The target is a man named Vincent Franco. He’s in the hole with some bad people, and they want us to make an example of him. He’s not a nice guy… He has a penthouse at the top of a tower he owns in town. Technically, it’s an accounting firm. Unofficially he uses it to launder money for anyone who has big piles of dirty money. It’s also a stop for the sex slaves he deals in,” Daniel laid out from memory. He could remember sights in picture perfect clarity, and information almost as well.

”He has a security team of ten men, spread out between his penthouse and the basement where he keeps the dirty money and the slaves. It won’t be hard to get to him. There are multiple adjacent buildings that I can use to teleport us there. If we’re quick and quiet, we’ll only have him and two of his guards to deal with. If not, we can abort and go with plan B,” he finished. Plan B would be the bomb he always kept with him. Drop it, teleport out, and set it off. Always paid to have a few fail-safes in place.

[Felicia Soler]

This gun is loaded, devoted
You postulate the rest
Riding the seesaw
There's no law
That I have ever met

Paris, France

“I’ve grown used to your… quirks. They’re cute.” Cute wasn't exactly how she would have described it. Stalkerish and creepy would have been more appropriate. But whatever. As long as he wasn't bothered by it.

He sat in the seat that she'd offered to him and gave her the run-down of a litany of things she'd need to pay attention to. She was only half-listening to him as she kicked one of her feet up into his lap and used it to pry his thighs apart. “Well, we can start with the DNA. The thing that’s hardest to keep track of is hair. Hair likes to fall out on its own all the time, and the forensic teams that sweep crime scenes are getting more and more thorough. I wear a wetsuit at most times. It keeps most fibers from collecting, and the hood keeps all my hair in place. For you, I can get another hood. Everything else shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Technically, I can force myself to lose all the hair on my body—and I mean all of it,” she gently pressed her foot into his groin and smirked, “but since I'd rather not walk about looking like a cancer patient, a wetsuit would do. You just want to see me in something skin tight that you can get me out of later, admit it.” She continued to massage him with her foot as he continued. Their target was involved in sex trafficking and money laundering, both of which had been the mob's backbone for several years. Eliminating him and anyone who had ever seen him would be doing the world a favour.

He recited the security conditions at the target's property with precision, clearly laying them out from memory. If they could get into the penthouse, ideally everything would be a done deal in minutes. Aside from what she'd shown him in London, Danny wasn't familiar with the full extent of her powers. Wasn't he going to be in for a treat. “Ten guards with guns is no problem for me, and I'll give you fair warning before you need to plug your nose.” She didn't explain further. Why ruin the surprise? Humans were ruled by hormones and pheromones alike. All she had to do was tap into the right ones and almost anyone could be rendered compliant in a split second. “Do I have to be quiet? You know how difficult that is for me.”

She applied more pressure to the space between his legs with the ball of her foot and curled her toes. Felicia hoped he knew that she wasn't being intentionally flippant regarding the job at hand. On the contrary, she was quite serious about seeing it through. “I suppose we can start at the top and work our way down; that would probably make the most sense. Does Franco have any family?” She asked the question in a casual, throwaway manner, as if only creating simple banter. In reality, she was taking her own set of notes in her mind. She didn't like leaving loose ends. Someone would obviously notice him missing and would report it, if not to the authorities, than to individuals like Danny whose job it was to take care of 'problems' like that. “Any friends or business associates?” Felicia lacked her daughter's sense of justice. Nireva had never killed anyone intentionally (that she knew of). Instead, she felt most at peace when she was ripping someone's heart from their ribcage and setting their intestines out to dry like clean laundry on a line.

“If you buy me a wetsuit, I might let you watch me put it on, but I'm guessing that would be pretty uncomfortable for you.” Felicia put her errant foot back on the ground and pushed her chair away from the table. She stood up and stealthily side-stepped the table, then stopped once Danny's head was within reach. He always seemed to be able to exercise a great deal of restraint when she was around; it was a trait that she admired, considering she'd long ago given up the reins on her own restraint and had thrown caution to the wind. Placing a hand on his shoulder to steady herself, she sat facing him in his lap and gave him a curious look. “Oh, that's right. You're still a virgin. You've never actually seen me kill someone before. I've been told that I've made slaughtering the human body into an art form.” The last person she'd attempted to kill had been Adrian Kilvayne, and like the slippery piece of shit that he was, he'd quite literally slipped out of her fingers by turning himself into a stream of water as she hefted him over the side of the Angelis Hotel. What a goddamn shame. She would have enjoyed seeing the pattern his brain would have made when it splattered against the pavement upon impact. If he even had one, that was.

Toying with the collar of his shirt, she chuckled to herself, wondering what kind of story he'd built up around their first encounter. She hadn't tried to kill him—at least not in any conventional way. “So what clever little story have you come up with to explain the rather curious scars on your shoulder to the other women—or men—in your life? And don't lie; there's always someone else.”

Довести до белого каления.

ф ф Word count: 975
ф ф Mood: I should be tired but I'm not.
ф ф Outfit: Same as before.
ф ф Lyrics / Quote: Seven Shades of Black, Smashing Pumpkins
ф ф Illustrations: None.
ф ф Comment / Informational links: I should also go make my bed, but meh.

[Deleted]

”Technically, I can force myself to lose all the hair on my body—and I mean all of it. But since I’d rather not walk around looking like a cancer patient, awetsuit would do.You just want to see me in something skin tight that you can get me out of later, admit it,” she said. The workings of her foot made it hard to follow everything she was saying, but he managed. He could keep a level head in stressful situations well enough, and that skill transferred over to something like this quite well.

”I thought getting you out of it would go without saying, at some point or another,” he said with a smirk on his face. She was pretty good at pushing his buttons, and he was still trying to figure out all of the ones she had that he could press.

He laid out the security they could expect in the building, and her face indicated that she was listening intently, even if her foot was indicating that she wasn’t.

Ten guards with guns is no problem for me, and I’ll give you a fair warning before you need to plug your nose,” she said. He furrowed his brow as he tried to figure out what she meant by that when she spoke again. ”Do I have to be quiet? You know how difficult that is for me,” she said. He did indeed know how difficult that was. He still didn’t know how they had avoided discovery in the alley in London. She had been quite vocal about how much she enjoyed the situation.

”If we play things right, we can do things quickly. We’ll also be going at night, so no one will be there that doesn’t need to get killed. Floor by floor, you should be able to make as much noise as you want,” he said. He doubted her cries of pleasure, which he assumed she would be making as she killed the target and his thugs, probably wouldn’t travel through the floors. If they did, it wasn’t a big deal. They were going to be the two most dangerous people in the building.

He felt a sudden increase in pressure and let out a groan, closing his eyes to try and regain focus. She was as good with her feet as she was with her hands. And every other body part…

”I suppose we can start at the top and work our way down; that would probably make the most sense. Does Franco have any family?” she asked.

”None on record. Definitely none living in the building with him. The most we can expect is a girlfriend. If we’re unlucky, one of the slaves that he… Testing,” Daniel said, obvious distate in his voice. He didn’t mind violence, death, murder, any of it. But one Vincent Franco had made his way to the top of Daniel’s shit list because of the sex slavery. It would be quite the moral conundrum, if they encountered one of the slaves. Guarantee anonymity and kill the victim, or risk exposure and let her go… He could only hope that it wouldn’t come to that.

”Any friends or business associates?” she asked. Daniel thought back to his ‘notes’.

”None that I know of, but I can imagine he does. They aren’t on the list though. The client wants this to be violent and bloody, to send a message. Whoever takes over the operation will need to be alive to heed that message. So anyone not in the building right now will be off limits,” he said.

If you buy me a wetsuit, I might let you watch me put it on, but I’m guessing that would be pretty uncomfortable for you,” she said, removing her foot and getting up from her chair.

”It would be a bit of a hassle to have you put it on, then take it off, then put it back on later…” he said. She came up to his side, and in a very Felicia-esque move, sat on his lap. His hands moved almost on their own, reaching down to steady and support her. The fact that he was reaching down to squeeze her ass was totally secondary, honestly.

”Oh, that’s right. You’re still a virgin. You’ve never actually seen me kill someone before. I’ve been told that I’ve made slaughtering the human body an art form,” she said. He would agree that there was a certain art to ending lives, but he had a feeling that their definition of said art form were different.

”We’ll see who’s art is better when we get there,” he said. To him, doing things quickly, cleanly, and with a high amount of finesse was the art form. She most likely based hers on brutality. Nothing wrong with it, especially in jobs that were supposed to make a statement, like this one, but he didn’t make a habit of doing it himself.

He could feel her play with his collar, pulling it to the side, most likely to admire the mark she had left on his shoulder. Another one of her quirks, he supposed. Still didn’t bother him.

”So what clever little story have you come up with to explain the rather curious scars on your shoulder to the other women—or men—in your life? And don’t lie; there’s always someone else,” she said. He laughed a bit and looked up at her.

”I don’t have anyone else. Not at the moment, anyway. I’m not ashamed to say that there have been other women in my life, but if you take a look around…” he said, pausing and looking around at the kitchen they were in, “…this isn’t exactly the lifestyle that invites a steady girlfriend. But if I did have to explain it, I’d probably go with the truth. My last fuck buddy liked things rough, a little kinky,” he said.

He stopped for a moment and turned his head back toward the living room, eyeing the nylon case he had picked up from New York. He had to give everything inside a run through, make sure nothing was damaged or worn, generally make sure his ‘tools’ were in perfect working order. Seemed like a good time to have some fun.

He teleported, taking the chair and Felicia with him, to the living room. She was now sitting on the chair, and he was standing behind her with his hands on her shoulders. He had to remain in contact with the person or thing he was teleporting, otherwise bad things could happen. Bad being they never reassembled. Every molecule that made up them, or it, stayed in a giant cloud in the air and floated around until it was scattered into nothing. He’d never tried to do that with a person, but it was something he had always been curious about.

”Just a few minutes,” he said, giving her a pat on the shoulder. ”I need to look through my bag for a bit, make sure everything is intact. We also need to get you that suit,” he said, walking a few feet in front of her to unzip the bag. It was square in shape, black, unassuming. It looked like a an insulated lunch bag on steroids. Inside were multiple hard cases, organizers mainly. Every knife, gun, and type of bullet had its own case. His suit was in a simple nylon backpack.

”You seem like you’d like knives. I have plenty of extras,” he said, lining up the clear plastic cases by content. He had several of each, just in case he had to destroy one, or lost it.

[Felicia Soler]

Oh, you're such a bad influence
And you've got ways to make me do what you want
Oh, and you're such a bad influence
And I've got to stay away from you

Somehwere in Paris, France

[dropcap]The small digital clock on the wall read 8:14 PM. That sounded about right; it had been mid-afternoon when he'd shown up at the estate in New York, and if memory served her correctly, most of France was six hours ahead of the Eastern Standard Time she'd grown used to.

“If we play things right, we can do things quickly. We’ll also be going at night, so no one will be there that doesn’t need to get killed. Floor by floor, you should be able to make as much noise as you want.”

It was night now. Hopefully he hadn't meant tonight. That would have been much too soon. “Can we make it tomorrow night so I have a day to . . . settle in?” The corner of her lips twitched upwards into half a grin. Both of them would be sleeping very well tonight assuming she was able to get more than just her hands on him. She began kissing the side of his neck, stopping where the edges of the scar peeked out from under the fabric of his shirt. The sound of his laughter made her smile, though his words made the look on her face falter only slightly.

“I don’t have anyone else. Not at the moment, anyway. I’m not ashamed to say that there have been other women in my life, but if you take a look around…” She glanced around the kitchen. Aside from the small television and the clock on the wall, it was completely barren. She doubted there was even anything to eat in the pantry—eh, knowing Danny, there was probably a fair amount of non-perishables that had a shelf-life of at least 20 years, but other than that . . . “…this isn’t exactly the lifestyle that invites a steady girlfriend. But if I did have to explain it, I’d probably go with the truth. My last fuck buddy liked things rough, a little kinky.”

“You should use something more epic than that. Say you got attacked by a cougar or something. It would mostly be true.” At least he would have been being honest about it. He seemed to genuinely value honesty which was . . . strange, given his choice in profession. But she actually valued honesty. It was a quality in her that most people didn't like. Inaki often referred to it as her not having an 'off' switch, but she wasn't about to play pretend and act like she liked someone she just flat out fucking hated—even if she'd never met them. Her mind was made up.

As he turned to look into the living room, she prepared to deliver another strike to the area on his shoulder that she'd grown so fond of--

--or she would have, if he hadn't teleported them out of the kitchen. Her teeth clicked shut on nothing but air, and she glared at him when she felt the pressure of his hands on her shoulders. “Oh, right. That was fucking fair.” Now she was a little irritated. She hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast earlier in the morning, and now she was horny. Eh, she was horny most of the time when she wasn't sleeping, but that was totally not the point. They had a whole 24 hours (give or take) during which to fuck around, and she was going to take full advantage of it.

“Just a few minutes.” He patted her on the shoulder before stepping around her to examine the bag and the assortment of weapons therein. “You seem like you’d like knives. I have plenty of extras.”

“I have all the weapons I need right here.” He hadn't seen just how quickly she could really move. The living room, while small, was a large enough stage to prove her point. Standing up, she moved the chair out of the way, setting it against the wall furthest from him, roughly twenty feet away. Having sufficiently drawn his attention, the muscles in her legs twitched as she charged them with the biological energy stored within her body. Her body became a blur of movement as she sprinted at him and came in low, catching him in the sternum with her shoulder. If he'd blinked, he would have missed her coming at him full tilt like a miniature missile.

The momentum with which she'd hit him sent them rolling across the floor until she felt her body smash into the supporting wall behind her, cracking the plaster. The sternum was a fairly solid bone. The impact would have knocked the wind out of him, but wouldn't have caused any extreme damage that would have been impossible for her to repair. She sneezed as the dust that had been kicked up started to settle and she rolled him onto his back. Creeping up his body, she placed a knee on each of his biceps and pinned them to the floor. “That can all wait until tomorrow, unless you want to get it done tonight. We need to eat, I need a wetsuit and a shower—but mostly food.” She rolled off of him and let him up, though she was completely content to remain laying on the floor where she was. She started reaching for some of the smaller containers that were within reach of her foot and drew them towards her, then kicked them across the room as if she were playing a game of shuffleboard. “You can't take me anywhere and expect me to behave. Where are we anyways?”[/dropcap]

Довести до белого каления.

ф ф Word count: 1006
ф ф Mood: I'm perfectly adequate today.
ф ф Outfit: Same as initial post.
ф ф Lyrics / Quote: Bad Influend, Robert Cray
ф ф Illustrations: None.
ф ф Comment / Informational links: None.

[Deleted]

”Can we make it tomorrow night so I have a day to . . . settle in?” she asked. She gave him a smirk that told him she wasn’t just interested in putting her clothes in the drawers. He felt her lips moving on his neck, a favorite area of hers it seemed. He was sure it had nothing to do with it being home to one of the largest veins in the human body, totally.

”You should use something more epic than that. Say you got attacked by a cougar or something. It would be mostly true,” she said. He laughed at that. The absurdity of the literal act of being mauled by a wildcat was funny, and the truth being so close to the story…

”I don’t know if we could call you a cougar… Physically, you’re half my age. And attacked… I don’t know if you can call it an attack…” he said. The only difference between the two of them during the encounter had been her getting bite happy.

His teleporting interlude, which he had thought was hilarious because he liked to screw with her as much as possible and still live to tell about it, didn’t go over quite as well as he would have thought. He expected a giggle, a laugh, something, but no… At least she didn’t seem to want to kill him for it.

”Oh, right. that was fucking fair,” she said. She sat in the chair for a bit, probably fuming, but he did have to take inventory and inspect everything. It was a very important part of the job. He heard the creak of the cheap wooden chair as she stood up, and he heard her footsteps on the floor. He saw her walk to the far end of the room to do… Something. He didn’t know what.

”I have all the weapons I need right here,” she said. He looked over at her as she seemed to be getting into a running stance. No, why would she be doing th…

His train of thought ended at about the time she slammed into him, and then slammed both of them into the wall. She took the brunt of the impact by hitting the wall, while he had something nice and soft to run into. He let out a small cough and rolled over to his back, at least he thought he did. His thoughts tried to collect and catch up with the impossibly quick speed everything had happened in, and it took him a moment to realize that she was the one who had rolled him over. Evident, by the act of her climbing onto him like a jungle gym and using her legs to pin him in place. He knew he could get away from her if he wanted, but he didn’t actually want to right now… It was such a nice site to look up to, especially when he looked down and saw so much of her thigh exposed from the dress riding up.

”Ok… No inventory then,” he said as he looked up at her.

”That can all wait until tomorrow, unless you want to get it done tonight. We need to eat, I need a wetsuit and a shower—but mostly food,” she said. Yep, no inventory tonight.

”Suddenly, I don’t have the desire to do that anymore…” he said. His hands rose awkwardly to meet the soft skin of her thighs, and he realized just how close his face was to her crotch. Decisions, decisions… Her talking about eating didn’t help it any either…

”You can’t take me anywhere and expect me to behave. Where are we anyways?” she asked. Right… He’d forgotten to tell her. Oops.

”At the moment, we’re in St. Denis, the high crime suburb just outside of Paris, France,” he told her. ”And I would never expect you to behave in any way but the way you always do. It’s a turn on,” he said with a smile as he continued to run his fingers along her thighs as best he could.

”Now, let me up and I’ll see about finding something for dinner. You provided last time, and let me choose, so it only sounds fair that I do the same for you this time,” he said. Not really, she had chosen the restaurant and told him he could get whatever he wanted. Which was fair enough. It had been the best grilled chicken he had ever eaten, if he was being perfectly honest. He looked up at her for a moment and wondered if she was going to let him up or not. It depended on which of her appetites won out, the one in her stomach or the one a bit further south…

[Felicia Soler]

Looking people in their eyes
See the concrete things behind
See the false tears that they cry
Feel the sleeping guilt inside

Somewhere in Paris, France

[dropcap]Oh she knew exactly what he was thinking of doing with the way that he was ogling her inner thighs. And whilst she also had that kind of 'eating' in mind, her stomach was doing its best to remind her that she actually still needed to eat real food every once in a while. Manoeuvring around as well as he could given his current predicament, she felt his fingers stroking the outside of her legs. “You really aren't helping me decide what I want to do more right now, you know?” She could have broken his wrists and that would have been that—but then he wouldn't have been of much use to her. Well, he still would have been of use to her, just not in as many ways as she would have liked.

“Suddenly, I don’t have the desire to do that anymore…” His breath was hot on her skin. Again, not helping. ”At the moment, we’re in St. Denis, the high crime suburb just outside of Paris, France.” He paused long enough to tear his gaze from the lower portion of her body and met her eyes. “And I would never expect you to behave in any way but the way you always do. It’s a turn on.”

A noise which sounded caught halfway between a hiss and a moan left her lips while he traced designs on her thighs with the tips of his fingers. He was making this a way more fucking difficult decision than it needed to be. She only vaguely heard him say something about Paris while she was battling through what to do in her mind. Two pairs of instincts were telling her to do two mostly different things, though food and sex were intertwined. Both of them involved all five senses; she just needed to decide which need was more immediate.

“Now, let me up and I’ll see about finding something for dinner. You provided last time, and let me choose, so it only sounds fair that I do the same for you this time.” Danny looked more than content to remain where he was.

With a huff, she stood up and stepped aside, giving him a nudge in the ribs with her toes. “I'll take my meat raw, please. Not yours,” she added, “I'll save that for later.” Ugh, great, now she needed to go take a cold shower to clear her mind. She'd already seen the kitchen and the living room and made an educated guess as to where the shower would be. In a flash, leaving nothing but wind in her wake, she sped towards the main bedroom and into the shower room where she locked the door behind her. Locking the door hardly made any sense due to his ability, but hopefully he'd be able to take the hint that she would continue to be in an irritable mood until there were a few pounds of meat in her stomach. If he decided to show up in her shower during her alone time, she'd end up making the wound on his shoulder look like a mere papercut by the time she finished with him.

She disrobed and tossed her skirt onto the closed lid of the toilet before she stepped into the tub. On second thought, fuck it. She wasn't in the mood for a shower. Closing the drain, she turned on the hot water and adjusted the cold tap until it was at just the right temperature, then stepped into the tub. She was going to take a nice, relaxing bath until he came in and ruined it for her, at which point she'd probably knee him in the balls.

Felicia leaned back and let the hot water gradually envelop her body. God, she hadn't actually taken a real bath in a really long time. To think that amenities like this has only been reserved for the rich upper class until roughly this past century was still hard for her to believe. Stretching out, she let her left leg idly hang outside the tub, and she groaned. The next time she moved was to turn off the water before it overflowed. She could have spent her time in the tub masturbating, but she had Danny for that and he was . . . rather experienced in that regard. He'd had no trouble learning how to play her like a fiddle. Part of her secretly her hoped that he did interrupt her, if only to let her know that their dinner had arrived. It wasn't like she was baring anything that he hadn't already seen several times over. Modesty was something that was completely lost on her.

Closing her eyes, she let her other senses compensate for her lack of vision. If he teleported, she'd be able to hear his heartbeat, even from several rooms away, or else she'd be able to smell him. Even though it was obvious that this particular apartment had only been used a handful of times within the past year, she could still smell a faint whiff of him here and there.

Stirring the water with a few fingers, she settled into the warmth and crossed her arms over her chest. It wasn't the biggest tub that she'd been in; that record still belonged to a Turkish bath she'd taken over in the mid 1600s. The Pamukkale hot springs were known for their known beautiful white travertines and small mesas filled with tepid, mineral rich waters. Perhaps she and Niri could return there someday after her exams were finished . . .

She wasn't sure how long had passed until Danny's familiar scent drew her out of her stupor. The water had gone from being hot to lukewarm; it must have been at least a half hour. With her eyes still shut, she flicked water at him from the tub. “I take it you found something for me to eat?”[/dropcap]

Довести до белого каления.

ф ф Word count: 1076
ф ф Mood: Waiting for the train to go by at 5 AM.
ф ф Outfit: Same as initial post. Naked? Idk, it's Felicia. Probably naked.
ф ф Lyrics / Quote: Anybody's Window, Wolfsheim
ф ф Illustrations: None.
ф ф Comment / Informational links: Included in post.

[Deleted]

They were both silent for a short moment, as Felicia decided which of her hungers needed to be sated first, and Daniel was ready for either one. He’d do whatever she wanted him to do, as many times as she wanted it.

”You really aren’t helping me decide what I want to do more right now, you know?” she said, referring to his wandering hands and the hot air he was blowing almost directly onto her most sensitive parts.

”Whatever do you mean? I’m just here where you put me,” he said, feigning innocence. He was just making the best of the situation that he’d had little choice in being in, after all. And it was easy to find the upside to the situation… Her breath hitched in her throat, followed by a sigh as she stood up. He was a bit disappointed, but he knew the fun part was only postponed, not canceled. He felt her toes poke into his side and looked up at her. He did his best to look her in the eye, and not in the other area that was plainly on display where it had only been teasingly covered a few moments ago.

”I’ll take my meat raw, please. Not yours,” she said, just before a smirk ran across his face and he started with a smart remark. ”I’ll save that for later,” she finished. He stayed on the floor for a few more moments, watching her take off and slam the door to the bathroom in the space of a second. He laid his head on the ground and smiled, closing his eyes and picturing just the thing he needed…

He opened his eyes in the back alley of a busy Paris street, stopping the X rated flashback that wanted to play in his mind as he did. It was remarkably similar to the one that had changed his way of seeing said alleyways for the rest of his life. It was barren, dirty, a dumpster for the supermarket to the side hid him from view. Good times…

Shaking the memory out of his head, he strolled out into the sidewalk connected to the alley and into the store. It didn’t look all that different than supermarkets in America. Or any other first world country, come to think of it. It was remarkably similar. The items were different, sometimes. Large name brands could still be seen on the shelves, as well as signs outside that advertised sales. It wasn’t hard to get around. Even if you didn’t speak the language.

He picked up a basket from a stack just on the side of the door and walked right back to the butcher’s block. First thing he needed was some meat. He thought back to the first time he’d met Felicia, when she’d barged into his London hideout and then proceeded to eat most of the food he had in his fridge. He thought back to it, and figured that was a good place to start.

Through a rather entertaining process of pointing and either nodding or shaking his head, he was able to communicate to the woman behind the counter that he wanted two T-bone steaks, and a few of the chicken breasts that were behind the glass. She wrapped everything up in parchment paper and labeled it for him to pay for up front, and waved him off with a smile. He didn’t know why the French had such a reputation for being assholes. In his experience, the chance of running into a French asshole was about the same as running into an American asshole. Actually, American’s seemed to be assholes more often than the French… Waving it off, he took a look at a few other selections and stopped for a moment. He had no clue what else to get… He didn’t know what she liked, and he would only be eating the meat in accordance with his diet. He settled on a Baggett, because why the hell not, and a bottle of wine that looked… Drinkable. He had no idea what he was doing when it came to wine… Or any alcohol, really. The best he knew was what kind could be used to kill bacteria. Taking a look down at his basket, be thought for a moment and then figured he was ok.

Walking over to the checkout stand and waiting in line, he got the debit card out of his pocket and waited. He usually used cash only, as a rule, but he also liked to use this card to keep some non-suspicious activity on it. He would only use it in places, and at times, that would correspond with a regular travel schedule for a normal person. And even then, it was usually only food. If this were every compromised, he could be in Switzerland with all the correct papers to change the account over without hesitation. It may be a bit suspicious, but if he had the right forms and the right paperwork with the right signatures, no one really gave a fuck. They weren’t losing his business and got to keep charging him the exuberant fees they were charging to house his money securely. If memory served he had close to a hundred million there. They definitely didn’t want to lose his business. He also liked that the international account would all him to swipe his card anywhere and the bank took care of the exchanging. It also let him use an ATM like normal, again at a ridiculous fee. He was lucky he made so much money, or he would have been in the poor house paying the fees alone…

When he was paid up and outside, he made his way back to the alley and teleported as soon as he was out of sight. He strolled right over to a cabinet in the kitchen and grabbed some plates. He always made sure that he had dishes and whatnot in his safe houses. He never knew when he would actually need to live in one for a short amount of time. He set one of the steaks and two of the chicken breasts to broil in the oven and set hers up on a plate. He set the bread on the table, as well as the bottle of wine and a glass for her, and walked to the bathroom. He’d been gone for a little while. He wasn’t sure how long, but when he opened the door and saw her in the tub, he grinned. It looked like she had fallen asleep. He walked slowly over to the side of the tub to wake her when her hand lashed out and sent some water at him. He stopped as he felt it hit his thighs and his crotch, and looked down at her. At least it wasn’t cold water…

“I take it you found something for me to eat?” she asked. He smirked and grabbed the towel off the rack and held it in his hand for her to take when she was ready.

”Nope, just kinda wandered around and looked at the sights,” he said. She could probably smell the meat that he was cooking for himself, so he felt safe screwing with her. Although he could probably still expect her to smack him or otherwise inflict some form of pseudo-violence on him.

[Felicia Soler]

Oh baby dont you know I suffer?
Oh baby can you hear me moan?
You caught me under false pretences
How long before you let me go?

Somewhere in Paris, France

[dropcap]Did he honestly want to die tonight? Cracking one eye open, she somehow managed to glare at him and sighed, showing her distaste. She could smell meat being cooked in the oven and her stomach gave an angry rumble. Obviously he'd found something for her to eat during his brief absence. “I really hope that isn't my meat that I smell.” Reaching down into the water, she pulled the plug on the drain and stood up, then stepped out of the tub and wrapped herself up in the towel Danny had been holding for her.

Tucking one corner of the towel inwards so that it would stay affixed to her body, she rubbed up against Danny and pushed him up against the wall. One of her hands finagled its way between his legs and she was somewhat sorry that he'd actually been wearing pants. Giving him a much too sensual squeeze, she grinned up at him and whispered over his lips. “You are going to have a very rough night tonight.”

She wasn't even going to bother with clothing herself. What would have been the point if she was going to be out of them almost as soon as she put them on? Brushing past him on her way out of the bathroom, Felicia followed the scent of cooking meat, and sauntered her way into the kitchen. Not only had he decided to buy her meat; the bottle of wine on the table told her that he was expecting her to get liquored up. But it wasn't just a bottle of wine. It was a very expensive bottle of wine. God bless the French.

“If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were trying to get in my pants.” A bottle of 2010 Ausone, St. Emilon sat breathing on the table before her. “A $2,000 per bottle bordeaux,” she remarked as she poured herself a glass. “I'm afraid you know me far too well.” As she'd requested, all of her meat was raw. Most reasonable people would have balked at eating chicken or beef raw due to the many parasites and foodborne illnesses that were common to such meats. She was lucky in that her ability allowed her to metabolise everything down to its most basic components; even in her mouth, the deadliest viruses didn't stand a chance of surviving.

Seating herself at the table, the chicken breasts were the first to disappear down her throat. She very nearly inhaled the two of them in four bites each without even bothering to chew before swalling. The t-bone was the next to go. Given the unusual biological composition of her body, she was able to hone the enamel of her teeth into blade-like edges which seared through the thick bone as if it were little more than a piece of crisp toast. Much to the chagrin of her madame at finishing school, she had little use for proper utensils when she was starving and instead much preferred to resort to more bestial methods of getting sustenance into her body. Whenever she felt that Danny was getting a little too close to her plate, she paused to glare at him between bites. Was she really the dragon that he wanted to poke in the eye? There were only a handful of people in the world who could steal food off her plate and not end up missing a hand: her husband and her children. Woe betide anyone who attempted to steal so much as a french fry off her plate at McDonald's . . .

With what remained of the t-bone in one hand, she poured Danny a glass of wine and took the bottle for herself because obviously it was her bottle. He may have bought it with his money, but it was her fucking bottle. That being the case, after she'd finished pouring his glass, she held the bottle possessively against her towel-covered chest.

“And as far as knives go,” she was referring to his statement from earlier, “I was raised in the Middle Ages. Every man, woman, or child worth their salt was taught how to handle a blade. I never did like swords, though. Too unwieldy. At least with a knife, you can get in quick, stab someone in the neck, and get out.” Using a blade still wasn't her preferred method of killing; she much preferred to unscrew heads or just stand there and watch as someone bled out. “What's your favored method of killing? Given how we first met with you pointing a gun at my chest, I'd say you're fairly well-versed with firearms. Hmm. Guns and knives. I think I'm seeing a theme here.” Felicia tapped a thoughtful finger to her lips and cleared her plate from the table and put it in the sink. Fearing Danny would attempt to steal her bottle of wine while her back was turned, she set it on the counter next to her and washed her hands. The front of her towel was dappled with blood from the meal she'd just eaten. “Are you perhaps trying to compensate for something? Or do you just enjoy the feeling of cold steel between your fingers?”

Grabbing the bottle of wine from where she'd left it, she squeezed her way between Danny and the table and sat in his lap. Whether or not he wanted her there was irrelevant. This was her seat now. “I like to kill people slowly and watch them suffer because it amuses me. I also like to suffocate them. I think Devon's nearly died a few times when he ended up on the wrong side of my temper.” And since Danny had no idea who Devon was (and she hoped he never did), she explained. “Devon is a live-in houseguest . . . thing. My granddaughter seems to enjoy his company, but the two of us didn't exactly get off to a good start when my mother brought him home. She always likes to bring home stray humans. Anyways, hydrochloric acid is a rather nasty fluid. I pretty much made his body digest itself from the inside out until my mother made me reverse it. And then Devon and I had sex—his first time—what the fuck dude is still a virgin at like 35? I felt like I was fucking a unicorn—this mythical creature, a 35 year old male virgin. And then things just got really fucking weird between us, and he'd do shit to piss me off, so I'd throw him out a window or make him drink antifreeze. But we're cool now.”

As much as she hated to admit it, he'd grown on her . . . like a really annoying wart she couldn't get rid of, but since it had been on her body so long, she'd just gotten used to it being there. “I'll have to show you a picture of him once I get to my phone. I swear, if you ever ran into him, you'd want to put two in his chest and one in his head just to put him out of his fucking misery, holy fucking God, he's ugly. I have pretty goddamn low standards when it comes to looks because bla bla some trite shit about 'looks fade with time,' but shit. He's just a really special case.” She took a long draught from the bottle and put it back on the table (still within arm's reach, just in case). Having another look around the apartment—or what she could see of it from the kitchen, at least—there was a film of dust covering just about everything. It must have been a while since he'd last needed to use it. “So have you and one of your lady friends already broken this place in, or do I have the honour of popping its cherry?”[/dropcap]

Довести до белого каления.

ф ф Word count: 1409
ф ф Mood: Awww, Behemoth.
ф ф Outfit: A dirty, blood-stained towel.
ф ф Lyrics / Quote: Supermassive Black Hole, Muse. Shut up, I think about vampire baseball whenever I hear it, and that is sad. But I'm also pretty sure this is what Felicia calls her vag.
ф ф Illustrations: None.
ф ф Comment / Informational links: None.

[Deleted]

”I really hope that isn’t my meat I smell,” she said, draining the tub and standing up to take the towel he had from her. He couldn’t help his wandering eyes as they got a good look at her.
”Nope, that’s mine. Yours is already on a plate and waiting,” he said. She’d told him she wanted it raw. He liked to mess with her from time to time, sure, but he wasn’t stupid. When she was all wrapped up, she pushed him against the wall and proceeded to grope him for a bit. He didn’t make any moves, not sure if she was just screwing with him or if she was actually starting something.

”You are going to have a very rough night tonight,” she whispered. He didn’t expect anything else.

”I’m fine with that,” he said, still keeping his hands to himself. If he started something, he knew they wouldn’t get to the table to eat. And that, in turn would put her in a worse mood.

He followed her to the kitchen, watching her walk away in a towel that was just a bit too short to cover everything. He enjoyed the sight the entire way, snapping out of it when she spoke as she saw what he had brought.

”If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to get into my pants,” she said. Daniel let a smirk make its way to his face.

”Me? Noooooo…” he said.

”A $2,000 per bottle Bordeaux. I’m afraid you know me far too well,” she said. He raised his eyebrows at that for a moment. Two thousand dollars? That was interesting. He would never have guessed that was the price tag on that one bottle. Idly, he wondered then what the price tag was on the bottle he had stolen for her mother was… She took a seat and began to eat her own food. Actually, inhaling it would have been a better term… It didn’t bother him, but he wondered how it was such a small girl could house such a huge appetite. He checked his own food, seeing it had a nice brown over the outside and took it out with a nearby oven mitt. He transferred it over to an empty plate and took a seat across from Felicia.

He began to break into the bread, cutting a piece off with a switchblade from his pocket and then cutting it open. He ripped off the chicken from the bones and made a sandwich of sorts. They ate in relative silence, both quite hungry and both not quite worried about table manners. He noticed her glaring at him from time to time, and idly wondered why… He wasn’t dumb enough to mess with her while she was eating. That seemed like doing the same to a lion at the zoo. It was not the best idea in the world… He also noticed the glass of wine she had poured for him and reached over to take a taste. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t his thing. He already knew he wouldn’t be drinking it all, and took one more sip before he slid the glass toward her.

”As far as knives go, I was raised in the Middle Ages. Every man, woman, or child worth their salt was taught how to handle a blade. I never did like swords though. Too unwieldy. At least with a knife, you can get in quick, stab someone in the neck, and get out,” she said. He agreed with her. His ideal knife was less than five inches long, blade length anyway. He didn’t like anything that didn’t have a full length handle.

”I prefer curved knives for real work. They always cut a bit better,” he said. That was more to do with his style of using them than anything, but it didn’t change his preference for them.

”What’s your favored method of killing? Given how we first met with you pointing a gun at my chest, I’d say you’re fairly well-versed with firearms. Hmm. Guns and knives. I think I’m seeing a theme here,” she said. He didn’t know if he had a favorite per se, but…

”I like whatever gets the job done quickly. I don’t have a chance to stand around and lookey loo much, so anything that can quickly and reliably kill someone is what I use. And it usually isn’t a gun. If you recall, I was in rough shape when we met, and I wasn’t in the position to fight or flee. The gun was just a way to fight while I was slowly bleeding to death at the table. I am very good with guns and with knives, even my hands, but I don’t play favorites,” he explained.

”Are you perhaps trying to compensate for something? Or do you just enjoy the feeling of cold steel between your fingers? she asked. He smirked at the innuendo, even though she knew he didn’t need to compensate for anything in that department.

”Compared to you, I’m a very normal, very feeble person. And when man has run into limitations like this, they have used tools to complete their job. I can’t do to a person what you can with my bare hands, so I need a bit of help to… Grease the wheel, we’ll say.” he said.

He watched her move over to him after washing up and resumed her earlier position of sitting in his lap. She seemed to like this position, and he wasn’t one to tell her not to sit here. He liked it as much as she did.

“I like to kill people slowly and watch them suffer because it amuses me. I also like to suffocate them. I think Devon's nearly died a few times when he ended up on the wrong side of my temper. Devon is a live-in houseguest . . . thing. My granddaughter seems to enjoy his company, but the two of us didn't exactly get off to a good start when my mother brought him home. She always likes to bring home stray humans. Anyways, hydrochloric acid is a rather nasty fluid. I pretty much made his body digest itself from the inside out until my mother made me reverse it. And then Devon and I had sex—his first time—what the fuck dude is still a virgin at like 35? I felt like I was fucking a unicorn—this mythical creature, a 35 year old male virgin. And then things just got really fucking weird between us, and he'd do shit to piss me off, so I'd throw him out a window or make him drink antifreeze. But we're cool now,” she explained. He listened intently, grinned at all the right places, but held all questions. She did a good job of answering them all.

”Does this mean I’m special, because I haven’t been pushed out a window yet?” he asked. He realized too late that he shouldn’t have said ‘yet’. It’d probably just give her ideas…

“I'll have to show you a picture of him once I get to my phone. I swear, if you ever ran into him, you'd want to put two in his chest and one in his head just to put him out of his fucking misery, holy fucking God, he's ugly. I have pretty goddamn low standards when it comes to looks because bla bla some trite shit about 'looks fade with time,' but shit. He's just a really special case,” she said. Yeesh. She sounded like, on some level, she had really hated this guy. If that were true, it seemed like Daniel would have a better chance than he had thought of staying in one piece while he was with her. It never came into his mind to leave her, but it was also a very real fact that he may get maimed or killed when she was having a bad day. The way she always seemed to be affectionate and how she enjoyed his… Skills.

“So have you and one of your lady friends already broken this place in, or do I have the honour of popping its cherry?” she asked. He thought for a moment and let out a small chuckle.

”No, this honor is all yours. Just like the shower and the bed in London. And the couch. …And the kitchen table,” he said, memories popping into his head as he thought of every place they had done the deed in the old apartment.

[Felicia Soler]

War is overdue
The time has come for you
To shoot your leaders down
Join forces underground

Somewhere in Paris, France

[dropcap]So he was more of a practical killer than . . . whatever it was she was. An exhibitionist? She liked to make her dead bodies look like they belonged framed in a museum, or scattered across the pages of a medical textbook on the human anatomy. Not quite Jack the Ripper, but also not quite Picasso. Somewhere in between. “I would like to second the fact that you're good with your hands.” He definitely had the hands of a man who worked for a living. Whereas Inaki's hands were soft and smooth, Danny's certainly were not. But that was part of what she liked about him; he had what most would have considered a rough and dangerous lifestyle, and his hands while clean would definitely never win him any awards as a hand model. “And, no, you're not special because I haven't thrown you out of a window. Yet. Would you like me to?” Eh, if he died, her mother could get here relatively fast to bring him back to life.

He sounded quite happy with himself as he listed off all the places they'd previously fucked around. “You forgot against your neighbour's door and the tub. Which I guess would also be the shower. Whatever.” There was no way in hell he was ever going to look at any of his safehouses in the same way once she finished with all of them.

Taking his plate from the table, she dumped the remainder of its contents into the trash and set the empty plate in the sink. “I can feel your eyes all over my ass.” Not that she could blame him. She knew she had a nice ass, and she figured he'd given her a towel that was a little too short for his own personal enjoyment. “You're a dirty old man, you know that? Going after helpless young women . . . ” She feigned a dramatic swoon, walked to the table, and sat upon it in front of him, putting his head back into the position it had been in when she'd had him pinned to the floor. He fit quite nicely between her thighs. “You roguish bastard.”

**********

In the last 24 hours, his apartment had seen more action in a day than the Bunny Ranch saw in a year. For once, she was actually well and truly exhausted—in a very satisfied way. Danny had been able to rise to the occasion—she smirked—and he'd actually been able to keep pace with her nearly insatiable libido. If a CSI agent were to take a blacklight to his apartment, they'd have a veritable field day with the amount and location of various bodily fluids which had been sprayed, spat, or smeared on the walls (and the floor, and the ceiling, but who was counting?)

Danny had reluctantly left for a few minutes the prior night to procure a wetsuit for her after she provided him with her proper measurements. She tried it on the instant she had it out of the bag just to make sure that it fit; he removed the suit from her body almost as quickly as she put it on. As the night wore on and gradually gave way to morning, he'd had to break open the second box of condoms. By her estimation, they were already half finished with those as well. The only time they bothered parting ways was to use the bathroom (and even that was a crapshoot). She'd been taking a shower to wash the sweat off her body to have a fresh go at him and had locked the door, completely forgetting that locked doors were hardly a problem for Danny go get through. The shower had been broken in quite a few times in the late evening hours.

They'd succeeded in tiring each other out roughly mid-way through the morning. When she finally managed to rouse herself around 5:30 the following afternoon, she stretched out and rolled on top of him--which again led to a set of entirely predictable circumstances. It was now 6:17 PM, and the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, casting a warm, orange glow over the entire city. She'd gotten into her wetsuit with a bit of assistance and tested out its flexibility, bending over backwards and grabbing her ankles with her hands, sliding into a vertical and horizontal split position with her legs askew, and by walking across the room on her hands with her toes pointed toward the ceiling (though that was more for show).

Satisfied that it fit well enough, she sprang from her hands back to her feet and flashed Danny a bright smile. “Fits me like a glove.” From his assortment of knives, she picked the ones with which she was the most familiar; two all-purpose double-bladed daggers, long enough to block attacks when used in tandem and sharp enough to deal a quick and deadly blow. Drawing one of the small knives from its sheath, she approached him and gently held it to his neck. “We should try sparring together sometime. I think we'd be fairly evenly matched in terms of skill, though you'd probably have the edge with your ability.” Honestly, she wasn't sure. She could move extremely fast in close quarters combat; their 'fight' would likely end in a draw—or more likely, it would end with the two of them being incredibly turned on. “I was raised when there were no guns, and the only weapons you had were your wits and your body. My mother taught me how to knife-fight, and my aunt helped perfect the skills I'd already learned. I passed those skills onto Lucia when she was old enough to walk and hold a dagger.” Little had she known at the time that the trip she'd taken to the blacksmith with her daughter that day would have had such life-changing consequences.

She returned the blade to its sheath at her side. “I really don't know. I think if you held a blade to my neck, I'd find it incredibly sexy. Unless I felt you were threatening me, in which case I'd probably bite off your hands.” He'd seen how easily her teeth sliced through the bone in the steak she'd eaten the night before. Shearing through tendons, cartilage, and the thin bones in the wrist would be nothing for her jaws.

Felicia gave him a thorough once over with her eyes, admiring the sight before her. Even though his body was hidden from view beneath the skin of the wetsuit, she could easily make out the contours of his muscles and . . . other areas she'd taken quite a liking to. “In the Renaissance, they would have carved sculptures of your likeness.” It was as close to a compliment as he was going to get. Deftly stepping behind him, she grabbed him around the mid-section in a forceful grip, much stronger than her size would have implied. Flattening her hands over his abdomen, she pushed them down to his groin and let them linger there, applying a gentle amount of pressure to her touch. “So,” she started her question with a chuckle in her voice, “what do you do if the suit gets a little tight?” She emphasised her words with a brief massage from her fingers. “I imagine that can't be very comfortable for you.”

Moving her hands from between his legs to his shoulders, she jumped on him from behind and wrapped her legs around his waist, letting her arms lazily dangle in front of him for a moment before she clasped her hands together upon his chest and supported her weight against him. “If we want to get this done tonight, Buttercup, we should probably leave now. You can have the first kill since this is your job—and because I want to watch—and we can split the rest. Sound fair?”[/dropcap]

Довести до белого каления.

ф ф Word count: 1390
ф ф Mood: I LIVE
ф ф Outfit: This minus all the logos and shit. Just black, with a matching hood.
ф ф Lyrics / Quote: Assassin, Muse
ф ф Illustrations: None.
ф ф Comment / Informational links: BG HUNGRY

[Deleted]

”I would like to second the fact that you are good with your hands,” she said. Well, that gave him a bit of an ego boost. He had never really cared about that kind of thing in the past, but then again, she was the longest ‘partner’ he’d had in quite some time. Everything else for years now had been one night stands for the most part. The fact that they were on first name basis was already more serious than he’d been for those years.

”Well thank you, thank you. That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. And a few other things on the outside,” he said. He smiled and watched her moving around the kitchen, not needing to use much imagination when he watched the towel ride up in all the right ways every now and again.

“And, no, you're not special because I haven't thrown you out of a window. Yet. Would you like me to?” she asked. He chuckled and thought about it for a moment.

”Sounds like an elaborate form of foreplay. If the glass didn’t get me, I’d be ok,” he said. Falls weren’t a problem, it was the obstacle that led to a fall.

”You forgot against your neighbor’s door and the tub. Which I guess would also be the shower. Whatever,” she said, and he laughed when he remembered the door.

”Still can’t believe we did that… He must have been pissed,” Daniel said. That was definitely one of the more adventurous ones. Second only to the alley. She continued to clear the table, very easy to do considering the simple setup they had had. He again took a moment to admire her as she moved, and he smirked when he had been caught.

“I can feel your eyes all over my ass,” she said. Feeling guilty for a moment, until he realized just who he was dealing with, his smirk widened.

”Just tell me to stop and I will,” he said.

”You’re a dirty old man, you know that? Going after helpless young women . . .” she said, and he couldn’t help but chuckle. Thinking of her as helpless was quite priceless. He was going to say something else, but she came back to the table and took a seat on it. Her hands grabbed the back of his head, and he was forced to lean forward. Forced only because she pulled before he had a chance to lean in himself. He knew where this was going, and he’d been waiting for it since she had gotten him on his back in he living room.

“You roguish bastard,” she said.

”That I am,” he said from between her thighs.

-------------------------

Daniel had never been quite so worn out in his life. He wondered how she even had the libido and metabolism and whatever the hell else she had. He vaguely thought of a star imploding on itself when it’s mass was too great. That happened to stars, didn’t it? He was honestly too tired to care.

It was amazing how much sex they’d managed to fit into such a tight schedule. They had errands to run, all leading up to a fairly important assignment, and none of that stopped them from fucking like rabbits who were trying to repopulate the species. Somewhere in the middle of handling her naked body like it was a lifeline while he was drowning in the ocean, he had gotten a measuring tape and taken some of the base measurements. Chest, hips, waist, shoulders, the works. From there, it was quite easy to get into the shop that sold them down by the docks in California. The sport type ones were the best, in his opinion. Not the deep diving types, just the normal ones that surfers and shit wore. It just needed to keep anything from attaching to the suit and transferring somewhere else, it didn’t need to be totally waterproof. The extra bulk on his suit was bad enough, with the Kevlar and the other protective shit on it. Felicia wouldn’t need that, but she could be set up with one if she wanted it. It was just the standard gear sewn into place to keep everything contained.

When they were both showered after their latest romp, they got suited up. He had also picked up a few other ‘gifts’ for her. He only half paid attention to the crap he was looking for when he saw her flexing around and testing out the suit.

”Here. I got the size from your shoes. Steel toed boots, flexible, breathable, all that good jazz. They’re my favorite,”e said. Nothing put some umph in a kick like a steel toe. They were also the kind with the small pockets on the side, purpose built for a boot knife sheath. He then handed her her gloves and mask.

”Cut proof gloves, always handy to have. And the hood. Same stuff the wetsuit is made of,” he told her. They were both in their suits, and now they just needed to get their weapons. They both took a look at the selection that Daniel had, and he already knew what he was taking. Exact same thing he always took.

Using the pockets that were custom sewn into the suit, he slipped two sheaths for the two krambits he favored. The two daggers he carried were always present in the pockets on his boots. And on the inside of each forearm, he carried a set of throwing knives. It was surprising how useful it was to take someone out at a distance and still remain silent. Last, his usual pistol went at the small of his back. He hardly ever used it, but he always carried it. It had come in handy before.

”Fit’s me like a glove,” she said about her suit. Good, that mean’s he didn’t screw the sizing up. It would have been embarrassing if he had messed up because mid-measurement he stopped to grope her. ”We should try sparring together sometime. I think we’d be fairly evenly matched in terms of skill, though you’d probably have the edge with your ability,” she said. He thought about it for a moment and scratched his chin.

”I dunno about that. As quick as I saw you move the other night, I don’t know how much help that would be in close range combat,” he said. He supposed the safest way to go about things would be to never actually fight her. Sparring would be safe, because it would most likely end up with them fucking again. And they both enjoyed that immensely.

“I was raised when there were no guns, and the only weapons you had were your wits and your body. My mother taught me how to knife-fight, and my aunt helped perfect the skills I'd already learned. I passed those skills onto Lucia when she was old enough to walk and hold a dagger,” she said. He wondered just how good she was with that knife. If she’d been using one for that long, he had to wonder if she had kept it up enough to be a straight contender with it. Obviously her ability would aid her greatly, but he wondered how good she was without the ability…

“I really don't know. I think if you held a blade to my neck, I'd find it incredibly sexy. Unless I felt you were threatening me, in which case I'd probably bite off your hands,” she said. He laughed at that. He'd never do that. He know already that if anyone ever contracted him to kill her, they would be shit out of luck. Same with anyone in her family. And beyond that, she was a friend. And apparently an employer, though nothing had come of that yet.

“In the Renaissance, they would have carved sculptures of your likeness,” she said, coming over to grope him some more. He let out a laugh and looked at her out of the corner of his eye while he tried to adjust some things.

”You keep doing that and we won’t leave…” he said. He wanted to go and get the job done, but there wasn’t a timetable he had to stick to.

“So, what do you do if the suit gets a little tight? I imagine that can't be very comfortable for you,” she said. He groaned and just he she said, the suit started to get just a little bit tighter. He grit his teeth and tried to exert his will over his body, but it wasn’t quite working. He could break himself into base molecules and move himself around the world in seconds at will, but he couldn’t do anything about a boner… Except…

He teleported out of her grasp for a moment and appeared in the exact same place he had been. When he was back, blood no longer filled his penis, and the problem was taken care of.

”I usually just do that, but you’ve made loosening things up so much more fun than they used to be,” he said, feeling her grab his shoulders and then jump up onto his back. He instantly pitched forward a bit to keep from falling over and couldn’t help the laugh that escaped his lips.

”Enjoying yourself?” he asked as he grabbed onto her arms to keep a grip.

“If we want to get this done tonight, Buttercup, we should probably leave now. You can have the first kill since this is your job—and because I want to watch—and we can split the rest. Sound fair?” she said.

”I couldn’t agree more,” he said, and they were off. They appeared on the top of a building just across the way from the target’s home and business. He moved to the edge of the building and squinted as he took a look down. All he needed was to get a clear picture of the place, just enough to get there…

In another instant, they were inside the top floor of the building. He had moved Felicia off of his back and to his side during the port, only so he could move quickly if he needed to. And he did need to. They had instantly been spotted by one of the guards who patrolled the top floor, and he was reaching for a radio rather than raise his gun to shoot at him. Not the best idea in the world.

He disappeared from sight and appeared a millisecond later, just in front of the guard. One of the krambits were in his hand, and Daniel reached out to take the gun out of play. He twisted his finger into the trigger guard and held the trigger forward as he kept it pinned against the guards body. The knife moved, first severing the cord of the microphone that attached to the radio, and traveling further forward and slicing into the man’s neck. Before the blood spurted out Daniel teleported away, the hint of blood on the blade falling to the ground, and came to stand next to Felicia. The guard tried to stop the flow at the same time as he tried to run. He soon lost coordination and tripped over the leg of a chair in what Daniel was assuming was the living room.

When the guard fell to the ground and the pool of blood began to soak into the luxurious white carpet, Daniel looked over to Felicia.

”Thoughts?” he said as he slipped the blade back into it’s sheath.

[Felicia Soler]

Destroy this city of delusion
Break these walls down
I will avenge
Justify my reasons with your blood

Paris, France

“Thoughts?”

Felicia shrugged. “I give you ten out of ten for efficiency, eight out of ten for style, and five out of ten for creativity. But whatever gets the job done with as little screaming as possible, I suppose.”

She stepped over the pool of blood on her way into the next room, careful not to leave a trail. In spite of the fact that she was wearing a pair of rather heavy boots, she was light on her feet and barely made a sound. From the living room, she moved down a hallway and unsheathed the two double-edged daggers she'd requested. The blades were slightly shorter than she would have liked, but they were definitely sharp enough to slice through flesh and cartilage.

As Danny had told her earlier, there was another guard on this floor. He must have been close since she could smell him. The hallway split at the end, leading either right of left to what she assumed were the bedrooms. If her senses were leading her correctly, he'd be on her right. Stealing a quick glance around the corner, the guard's back was to her. It was hardly fair to attack when someone's back was turned, but she'd never intended for it to be a mercy killing. In what looked like a single movement, she bolted down the hallway, a black blur that could easily have been mistaken for a shadow.

She stopped within an inch of his body and breathed down the back of his neck. “Now would probably be a good time to hold your breath or plug your nose, Buttercup.” Humans hadn't been definitively proven to have releaser pheromones like several other species, but since she'd long since cracked into the powers of her genetic code, such medical mysteries were easy for her to overcome. She filled the air around them with the scentless, invisible chemical signals and could already sense the desired physical changes taking place within the guard's body long before he turned around.

**********

Sasha Yadrenko had been promised a rather large sum of money to act as Vincent Franco's personal bodyguard. He'd been a longtime member in good standing with the Solntsevskaya Bratva for the years that he lived in Moscow. No one had ever died under his watch in the decade he spent working for them before he was asked to transfer to a detail keeping watch over Vincent Franco, now sleeping in the room next to him. He was more than familiar with the other business the art dealer had taken up on the side, and because it was fairly lucrative and paid his bills, he really didn't give a shit what happened right under his nose.

Lately, there had been more than a few threats on his employer's life, and he'd dealt with each of them quite swiftly. One had been chopped into small, manageable pieces and fed to pigs. The other had been donated to a scientist in the States known for their dealings in the black market of spare bodily organs—sans any identifying characteristics. He did his job, and he did it well; that was the only reason why Franco was still alive.

His shift was drawing to an end. He'd already pulled ten hours working security detail, and he really wanted some sleep. Yevgeny would be there to take over for him in another half hour, but part of him wanted to take off right now. Just as he was reaching for his radio, he felt a hot breath of air on the back of his neck, followed by an equally husky voice. The synapses in his brain started firing of their own volition, commanding blood to move down to his lower torso. A sudden, sharp sensation of lust skewered his mind and he wanted nothing more than to go downstairs to the basement where he could find someone who could help relieve the rather uncomfortable situation in his pants.

Perhaps he wouldn't even need to look that far. As he turned around, he faced a young woman whom he'd never seen before, covered from head to toe in what appeared to be a wetsuit. Well, she'd certainly do. He made a clumsy attempt to lunge at her; the raging erection rubbing against the inside of his clothing certainly wasn't doing him any favours. All he wanted to do was get his hands on her and fuck the shit out of her. Now. But as quickly as he moved to grab her, she vanished.

“Where the fuck are you, you little bitch?”

**********

She was practically dancing around the guard as he stumbled around. Coming up behind him, she raised both of the blades on either side of his neck and slammed them into his throat, severing his windpipe. Giving the blades a harsh twist, making sure to force them to dig in even deeper and slice through all the major veins and arteries supplying blood to his brain.

On reflex, his hands went to his neck to staunch the flow of blood, though that was remedied easily enough. Using the daggers in tandem like a pair of garden shears, she placed the blades upon either side of his wrists and forced them to meet together in the middle. Though the blades alone may not have been honed enough to cut through bone, the wrist was a particularly delicate and weak joint, and the additional strength afforded to her by her ability made removing both hands from his body a simple (albeit bloody) task. His mouth was open in a silent scream which forced even more blood out through the mortal wound in his throat.

Felicia caught him as he fell to the ground and laid him out on his back. One slash from the blade in her left hand cut away the clothes he was wearing and she slowly, almost lovingly, drew the severed halves of the clothing away from each other, revealing his heavily tattooed chest. The blood had stopped flowing from his neck and his wrists not because he was dying, but because she was keeping him alive. Barely.

Glancing up at Danny, she began the gruesome business of removing one of the tattoos (a bull) with one of her blades, holding it as if she were holding a scalpel. “I think I'm gonna play with him for a while.” Her mirrorlike gaze moved back to the man under her knives. Slipping one of the blades just under his skin, she prised the tattoo out of his flesh and flung it against the bedroom door. It hit the door with a sickening squelching noise before falling to the floor, leaving a bloody imprint in its wake. From there, she moved onto the next tattoo (a dagger with several drops of blood on the blade), and repeated the process. She performed the grisly work with a smile on her face, and didn't mind the occasional accidental spurt of blood that hit her in the face when she nicked an artery.

The eight tattoos on his chest and shoulders were removed with brutal efficiency and formed a nice pile outside Franco's door.

She could have just released her hold on him and allowed him to die via exsanguination, but where was the fun in that? Instead, she lifted the daggers and brought them down on his chest with the power of a sledgehammer, splintering his breastbone on impact. One of the daggers plunged through his heart. The other, which she'd been holding slightly lower, slashed through his liver. Upon removing the blades from his body, she released him from the care of her ability and allowed him to live out the last few seconds of his life in relative peace.

Her wetsuit was definitely living up to its name. It was completely wet with blood. Her face probably looked like she'd been half-bludgeoned to death, though he hadn't managed to lay a finger on her. Felicia took a deep breath and stood up, surveying the work she'd just done. Not one of her better kills in terms of gore, but she was still impressed with herself.

Sheathing her weapons, she walked up to Danny and kissed him deeply, losing herself in the moment. “I'm all about efficiency, but sometimes I just enjoy making people suffer. It's a very powerful feeling knowing that I hold their life in the balance, and that I can end it whenever I please.” Felicia moved aside and gestured at the door. “Your turn.”

Довести до белого каления.

ф ф Word count: 1480
ф ф Mood: *Yawns*
ф ф Outfit: A wetsuit
ф ф Lyrics / Quote: City of Delusion, Muse
ф ф Illustrations: None
ф ф Comment / Informational links: None

[Deleted]

It was an interesting thing, watching Felicia work. He didn’t know what she was going to do when she told him to plug his nose, but he had a feeling it was going to be violent. He watched her creep up on the remaining guard on this floor, and she crept right behind him. They both froze for a moment, and he could tell she was working her magic. The guard didn’t lash out at her like he thought would happen, but instead tried to grab her. The bulge in his pants told him what she had done, and from his vantage point he could already tell what she was going to do.

Almost faster than he could perceive, she was behind the guard with her knives out. Quicker than that, she killed him. Not the kind of kill Daniel preferred. No, she killed the man, but he hadn’t caught up with that fact yet. He tried to save himself, and she stopped that from happening too. But he was still alive. Then her fun started…

Daniel watched her have her fun, carving the designs off the man and tossing them aside like they were bits of trash. She kept up with this for a bit, until she ended things and stood up. She walked over to him with a purpose, and she grabbed hold of him. The kiss took him by surprise for a moment, but it wasn’t long until he reciprocated.

”I’m all about efficiency, but sometimes I just enjoy making people suffer. It’s a very powerful feeling knowing that I hold their life in the balance, and that I can end it whenever I please. Your turn,” she said. He knew that feeling quite well. It hadn’t happened much, and he didn’t like to admit it, but sometimes he enjoyed killing people. The really, really bad ones anyway. He killed people for a living. He used skills taught to him with the best intentions as perversions of their former use. He did his best to avoid collateral damage, but he didn’t lost much sleep if something bad happened. All of this was true. But he never crossed a line that shouldn’t be crossed. He didn’t kill innocent people on a whim. He didn’t rape, he didn’t do a long list of very unsavory activates. The kind of people who did, those were the kind of people he enjoyed killing. Just like the person who was about to be his latest victim.

He opened the door to the next room, seeing Mr. Franco sitting up in bed. Felicia’s victim hadn’t screamed, true, but the subtle noises that were given off by her killing hadn’t been loston the man who had only been laying several yards away. As soon as he saw the pair of assassins enter his bedroom, he made for a drawer on the bedside table. He produced a small revolver, and took aim. Daniel took the opportunity to teleport a few inches from Franco and place his hand on the revolver. He disappeared from sight, leaving Franco on the bed with an empty hand. Daniel appeared back at Felicia’s side with the gun in his hands. In his slight absence, he’d disconnected the barrel from the frame. He’d also merged the firing pin into the metal of the hammer. The gun was reduced to two very expensive paper weights.

”Wha… What do you want?” Franco asked in a very American accent. ”I can pay you anything, I can!” Franco bargained.

”This always happens. They always think money is the answer, even though we’re being paid a very hefty sum to be here in the first place,” he said nonchalantly to Felicia. He turned back to Franco and let a smirk pass his face. ”By the by. We’re here because you don’t have money to pay your benefactors. You certainly don’t have enough to buy out the contract,” Daniel said. He didn’t say that buying out said contract would be useless. Both because Daniel thought he was a reprehensible human being that needed to die simply on principle and because Daniel didn’t make a habit of going back on his contracts when the I’s were dotted and the T’s were crossed. He’d quickly find his work drying up when people knew they could buy his loyalty. First come, first served, that’s how this business worked if you wanted to stay in it.

”Remember the chair in the kitchen?” he asked her, referring to the stunt that’d gotten her so pissed off at him. It’d given him some inspiration, and this seemed like a good time to try it out. If it didn’t work, he’d just go with the knife again. Sure, lackluster, but very reliable. Felicia wouldn’t begrudge him a bit of… Teleportation dysfunction.

He made a show of walking over to Franco, slowly, letting the man try and retreat as best he could. As predicted, he made his way into the corner of the room without realizing he had just backed himself into a corner until it was too late. Daniel reached out and touched his arm, and they were both gone. They reappeared, back at the bed, but Mr. Franco looked a bit different. A lot different, actually. A neatly folded piece of cloth and leather was at the foot of the bed. Mr. Franco was on the bed, still and quiet for a moment. Until his pain receptors went off. Every single one of them, all at once, and he let out a blood curdling scream. Daniel slapped a hand over the man’s mouth, and Franco thrashed around wildly. It only served to put him in more pain.

The skin that had been slipped away like a glove started to leak blood onto the silk bedspread, adding to the growing pool that soon made it’s way to the floor. Franco started to calm as he went into shock, and Daniel looked over to Felicia. He shrugged his shoulders as way of asking for her opinion. This seemed far more her style.

He walked back over to her and watched Franco start the very slow and painful path to his death. It was good policy to wait here for a moment to make sure that the deed was actually done. Just for a minute or so. If he was still alive, Daniel would go and finish the job. Or maybe he would let Felicia use this blank canvas, so to speak, for some of her own artwork.

[Felicia Soler]

I eat boys up
Breakfast and lunch
Then, when I'm thirsty, I drink their blood
Carnivore, animal, I am a cannibal!
I eat boys up
You better run!

Paris, France

”Remember the chair in the kitchen?”

“Which time?” She had no idea why he'd be referencing the two of them fucking on the chair, and assumed he was referring to when he'd teleported them out into the living room, much to her chagrin. Keeping her hands on the hilts of the blades just in case, she watched him move across the room, slowly, and watched the dawning realisation that he was about to die fall over Franco's features. Reigning in her instincts was no simple feat, considering that she'd been inhaling the very same pheromones which had led to death of the guard outside the door. Felicia whined pathetically, sounding very much like a dog in severe need of attention. Staying in her spot by the door took all of her willpower and she had to satisfy herself by watching him move. She forced her muscles to keep her rooted where she was, at least until Danny gave her the go-ahead to do as she pleased. Until then, she'd just have to suck it up and deal with it.

The instant he made contact with Franco's arm, the two men disappeared, only to reappear on the bed seconds later. It took her a moment to process what had happened, just as it took Franco's sensory systems a second to catch up and realise that he'd quite literally been skinned alive. Well. That was different. How the fuck was she gonna outdo that? Now she was a little irritated.

“Really, Buttercup? I still have to use knives to skin people—that is so totally not fair.” Felicia huffed and sulked where she stood by the door and sullenly crossed her arms. And then Franco had to go and be an idiot and start screaming, which awakened in her a completely new set of instincts which her aunt had helped to manifest years ago. Prey which made noise as it died was a beacon to other predators and scavengers within earshot. The same thing went for humans. Franco wasn't stupid; there were probably other guards on their way up. No way he didn't have a means to communicate with all of them.

All of her muscles were twitching, debating between launching herself at Danny and shredding the Kevlar off him with her bare hands, or putting an end to Franco's incessant screaming. Even as shock set in, he was still making an incredible amount of noise, and his voice alone was tapdancing on her last nerve. She whined again, desperately trying to make a decision, and decided to ignore Danny's gaze for the time being.

She rushed past her Kevlar-clad counterpart and came to a halt at the edge of the bed. Ignoring the neatly folded skin and gore bleeding off the mattress, she glared down at Franco's skinned body. The skinning itself had destroyed a number of fine veins and blood vessels which connected his skin to his musculature, though it hadn't affected the large veins and arteries like his aorta and the femoral artery which ran the length of his thigh to his groin—nor did it obstruct her view of his pulsating jugular vein or carotid artery leading from his chest up the side of his neck, where it branched out, eventually feeding into his brain.

In much the same way she'd temporarily modified her teeth to be able to chew through the bones she'd eaten earlier in the evening (Danny's was not one of them), she raised her thumb and index fingers to her mouth and rolled them over her teeth, feeling the necessary changes take place. When she finally removed her fingers, she revealed the changes that had been made. Where there had once been two relatively flat rows of omnivorous teeth lining the upper and lower portion of her jaw, there were now a jagged assortment of sharp , dagger-like fangs which looked like they should have belonged to a large carnivorous animal. And just to be sure that she didn't leave a trace of DNA behind, her saliva took on the chemical composition of hydrochloric acid. If it was good enough to break complex food down into basic elements, it was good enough for her.

She knelt down on the bed and went to work immediately, holding him in place with one hand on his forehead and the other lying across his belly. Although he was rapidly descending into shock, he was still making far too much noise. That was remedied easily enough with a swift bite delivered to the front of his throat which destroyed both his windpipe and his voicebox. With Franco now going through his death throes, she clamped her jaws on what remained of his windpipe and snarled at him, patiently waiting for him to suffocate and expire.

But she still wasn't done. When she was sure that he was good and dead, she began methodically tearing out large chunks of his flesh and spitting them out on the bed. She continued her gruesome work until she could see the bright white outlines of the vertebrae which kept his head from falling off his shoulders. Diving back into the gore, she locked her teeth around the thick bones and gnawed on them until they gave way, separating his head from the rest of his body.

Stepping off the bed, she walked back over to Danny, licking the blood from her teeth. Blood dripped from her chin onto the front of her wetsuit and she grinned at him, quite happy with the mess she'd made. “Just a few tricks I picked up from my aunt.” Her entire face was red, completely covered in blood and the occasional small piece of flesh she hadn't managed to swipe away.

Довести до белого каления.

ф ф Word count: 1189
ф ф Mood: Rrrrgh proboards . . .
ф ф Outfit: A really bloody wetsuit.
ф ф Lyrics / Quote: Cannibal, ke$ha, with added Felicia music video for lulz.
ф ф Illustrations: None.
ф ф Comment / Informational links: None. Now I need to go be an adult and go to work. ):<

[Deleted]

”Really Buttercup? I still have to use knives to skin people—that is so totally not fair,” Felicia said as she sulked. Daniel couldn’t help but smile at her, odd considering what he had just done to a fellow human being. Maybe she was rubbing off on him…

He stepped to the side and watched as she went over to finish the job. He didn’t understand why she wanted to go and do the things she did, but he wasn’t one to judge. Just seemed unnecessary. He watched her bent over Franco, tearing into him with her teeth that she no doubt made sharper. Judging by the easy she tore skin from bone. Usually she had to work at it a bit. She left off with a finale that included a decapitation, and walked back over to Daniel. He looked at the rows of sharp teeth in her mouth, vaguely reminiscent of a wild cat, when she smiled at him.

”Just a few tricks I picked up from my aunt,” she said. He raised an eyebrow at that.

”Is your aunt a tiger?” he asked. It was very reminiscent of a wild animal attack. That sure would throw the people who discovered this for a loop. Obviously man-made wounds on the guards, and wild animal bites on Franco. Hmm. He almost wanted to stick around to see the looks on their faces. Almost.

He walked out the door, Felicia in tow, and closed it before he took a look at the living room off the side of the hallway. A door stood apart from the others that probably led to side rooms or closets. It was made of metal, for one. He pointed at it and led them over to it. Before he opened it, he took a look through the peephole and made sure the way was clear. He was about to open it when he caught sight of the alarm contact point. Of course…

”Hang on. Alarm. I think it’s localized. No way he’d have a direct line to the cops with the kind of stuff he was doing here. Probably goes to whoever else provides security,” he said. Local mob forces, probably. Everyone and their dogs had money in this place. They would certainly have a lot of big guys with bigger guns on speed dial to protect it.

Putting his hand on her shoulder, he teleported them to the other side of the door. No need to disable the alarm if he didn’t need to. It would also confuse the living hell out of the people who discovered Franco. That was another reason he liked doing stuff like this. The reaction he imagined people having was usually priceless.

He couldn’t read the signs, but he could look at the pictures, and they told him that the elevator was only around the corner. He got an idea and walked down the hall. Usually, the elevator would be avoided at all costs, but they weren’t quite infiltrating. Not in the traditional sense, anyway. After checking the corner to make sure no one was there, he motioned for her to follow and called the elevator. It opened immediately, having stopped at this floor probably to get Mr. Franco up to his penthouse. Ushering her inside, Daniel reached up and popped the hatch off the top of the elevator.

”We can use this to draw the next set in. We both go up top, close it up, and send it to the next floor. Odds are, the two on the next floor will be stationed near the elevator. We can take them out, and take out the primary means of transportation for the building at the same time,” he said. If you could stop people from moving around in a timely manner, it made things like this much easier. Made it much easier to ambush a great deal of people at the same time when they all had to use the stairs as well.

Hitting the button for the next floor down, he watched the doors close and felt the elevator start to move. Grabbing her to teleport to the top when there was enough room, he closed the door most of the way. They needed to keep an eye on the car to ambush the two properly, but given their extraordinary capability to do so, it wouldn’t be hard to do it. He waited patiently for the car to stop and for the doors to open. Like he had thought, two men were standing there to meet whoever they thought was in the car. Confusion filled their features more than anything, and they walked inside to take a look around. Easy pickings.

[Felicia Soler]

You're so hypnotizing
Could you be the devil?
Could you be an angel?
Your touch
Magnetizing
Feels like I am floating
Leaves my body glowing

Paris, France

“Is your aunt a tiger?”

Felicia shook her head. “No, but she can be. She's a shapeshifter. Hopefully you never have to meet her since she has an even shorter fuse than I do, temper-wise.” She glanced back at the mess she'd made on the bed and spat on the floor. “I think that'll make enough of a statement.”

She wiped her chin with the back of her glove. The blood was starting to dry on her face, and it itched. Now she was dying for a shower, amongst other things. Much of her brain was overloaded with bloodlust, though there was still a portion of it which made watching Danny move incredibly difficult. God, why did they have to be wearing wetsuits? She understood the logistics behind it, but now her mind was being clouded with several dirty thoughts of a highly x-rated and counterproductive nature.

“Hang on. Alarm. I think it’s localized. No way he’d have a direct line to the cops with the kind of stuff he was doing here. Probably goes to whoever else provides security.”

Felicia paused as he held his hand up and instructed her to stop—which was much more easily said than done, as it was quite obvious from the look on her face and the quickness of her breath what she really wanted to do to him against the reinforced door. When he put his hand on her shoulder, that didn't exactly help things. Closing her eyes, she tilted her head toward his hand and rubbed her cheek against it, letting a sigh escape her lips. She felt the strange jolt of energy through her body as it was broken up and reassembled instantaneously on the other side of the door. Now she felt even more wired. “You're just trying to postpone the inevitable, you tease.”

She remained behind for a moment as he trekked down the hallway leading to the elevators, then followed once he signalled her that the coast was clear. Once inside the elevator, she was tempted to slam her hand against the emergency stop button and jam the doors, but Danny had other ideas. She watched as he popped open the hatch located in the ceiling of the elevator next to the fan.

“We can use this to draw the next set in. We both go up top, close it up, and send it to the next floor. Odds are, the two on the next floor will be stationed near the elevator. We can take them out, and take out the primary means of transportation for the building at the same time.”

Felicia leaned into him and drew her hands up the front of his torso. “Or we could completely immobilise the car and fuck around for a while . . . ” It was quite obvious where her mind would be for the next several hours. And of course he elected not to choose the course of action she felt was the most obvious, instead hitting the button that would make the elevator advance to the floor below them. She growled at him and bared her fangs when he grabbed her by the arm and teleported on top of the moving elevator car, then reined her instincts back in and refrained from snapping at him—but only barely.

Keeping her eyes on the inside of the elevator car, she waited patiently for it to descend. The metallic doors slid open some seconds later and gave entry to two other armed guards who looked quite bewildered by the lack of passengers in the elevator. Before Danny could make a move, she slammed her arm against his chest and hissed. “Don't you fucking dare. These are mine.” Kneeling down, she pushed aside the overhead panel which concealed them and descended into the car.

Deftly pulling off one of her gloves, she grabbed hold of the guard nearest her by the back of his neck and initiated an immediate link with his nervous system. In her haste, she'd been particularly careless in the positioning of her body and felt a searing hot pain through her left breast before she realised she'd been shot. Staggering backwards into the wall, she viciously snarled at the guard who'd shot her, more out of being taken by surprise than the actual pain of being shot. Forgetting any semblance of battlefield honour, she leapt on him, though not before he'd managed to squeeze off another shot to her throat, which only enraged her further. Fine. Danny could have the first one. This motherfucker was going to be her special project.

Forcing him to the ground, she unsheathed the knife from her left hip and took aim before slamming the blade downwards through his wrist, effectively impaling his shooting hand to the floor. The shots he'd fired at her would have been fatal if she'd been mortal. With blood pouring from the wound in her neck, she placed her un-gloved hand on his face and forced him into a state of paralysis. Drawing on her ability, she used his body to heal the injuries she'd sustained, and transferred the damage she'd sustained to him. While the holes in her chest and her neck healed, expelling the bullets which had penetrated them in the process, the very same wounds appeared on his body. The first bullet had only just missed her heart, though it had penetrated a lung. Almost immediately, he began coughing up blood before his lungs filled with the sanguine fluid, rendering breathing nearly impossible.

Grinning at him as blood issued from his mouth, she ended his life in the same way she'd ended Franco's—by shredding his throat with her teeth.

Once Danny had successfully dispatched the other guard, she turned to him and rubbed her bloody face against one of his sleeves. “You aren't covered in nearly enough blood.” Felicia pulled away briefly and grinned at him. “Shall I change that?”

Довести до белого каления.

ф ф Word count: 1079
ф ф Mood: Fucking cold. Goddammit, fucking Cleveland.
ф ф Outfit: Bloody wetsuit, and Felicia teeth, but human-sized.
ф ф Lyrics / Quote: Extraterrestrial, Katy Perry, with added Felicia. lol
ф ф Illustrations: None.
ф ф Comment / Informational links: DON'T YOU DARE JUDGE MY CHOICE IN MUSIC. D:<

[Deleted]

“No, but she can be. She's a shapeshifter. Hopefully you never have to meet her since she has an even shorter fuse than I do, temper-wise,” she said. Well, that… “I think that'll make enough of a statement.”

”I was just going to say that,” he said with a grin on his face. ”Are we gonna start finishing each other’s sentances now?” he asked.

They sat on top of the elevator, Felicia continuing to work at every innuendo she could fit into the conversation, climaxing with their next stop. Pun intended. He watched her drop down, first giving him a warning that she wanted to take these two, and started her work. There was a bit of panic when he heard the gunshots, watched flashes of blood make its way from her suit. He was down in a moment, his entrance totally missed by the guard who was trying to get his bearing back to take another shot at her. Daniel reached around and grabbed the slide of the gun in his hand, yanking it back and hitting the magazine release at the same time. The gun was now empty, and useless. More so, a liability as the man instantly tried to get it free of Daniel’s grip to reload it and use it. Not bothering to take a knife out, he wrapped his left arm around the guard’s throat. The bend of his elbow right at the center of the throat, he pulled back and locked the arm in place with his right arm. The gun was still in his right hand, and pinned in place in a grip that wouldn’t let up. Daniel felt the guard tense up as he tried to power out of the hold. He was slammed against the wall of the elevator, but it was no use. Before long, the man started to weaken before he passed out from lack of air. Daniel let him fall to the ground before planting a boot into his chest and grabbing him by the back of the head and the chin.

With a slight turn to his right, he then jerked the man’s head to the side and heard the satisfying crunch of his neck. Without the bones holding it in place, Daniel turned it around more to completely sever the spinal cord. He got up and took a look over at Felicia, seeing her drive her knives into the man on the ground. She got up, a grin on her face as she rubbed it on his arm. He gave her an odd look for a moment, but it quickly turned to a smile. He may not understand her, but he did like her.

”You aren’t covered in nearly enough blood. Shall I change that?” she asked. He cocked an eyebrow for a moment and looked at her.

”Uh… If you want to. But we’re leaving here without any blood on us,” he said. He’d teleport them right out from underneath the blood that covered them. It was a necessity, to avoid tracking DNA back to the apartment. Speaking of blood…

”When you got shot. How much blood of this is yours?” he asked, looking at the huge pool working its way into the carpet of the elevator. ”Can’t have any trace of you staying here,” he told her. And then something else hit him. He hadn’t actually been worried about her being shot. He knew it wouldn’t do much at all to her, but now that the excitement was over and he was thinking with his brain and not just his base instincts, he realized what had just happened. Taking a finger and putting it to the hole in her suit at the breast, he felt the skin beneath and looked back up at her.

”Are you ok?” he asked. She’d probably give him shit for asking, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

He took a look at the bodies and reached down to grab one by the ankle. He drug the corpse, hers, into the doorway of the elevator and blocked it open. That would keep anyone from using the thing. It would make things easier and quicker if they only had to worry about their front side, and not their rear or flanks.

[Felicia Soler]

As your lips form the words you won't say,
In the distance your favorite song plays.
I turn you over and look in your eyes,
Promise you that this is forever
Or till one of us dies.

Paris, France

“Uh… If you want to--” Felicia grinned, “--but we’re leaving here without any blood on us.”

She frowned. “You . . . are absolutely no fun.” Kneeling down next to the two corpses, she took the glove off her other hand, and then placed both her hands into the growing pool of blood. Through the use of her ability, she was able to identify which DNA belonged to her and absorbed it back into her system as she passed her hands over her target's mangled, bloody body.

”When you got shot. How much blood of this is yours?”

“A lot, but I've shed way more blood than this during an average period, so I'm used to it. After birthing as many children as I have over the centuries, it's probably pretty wrecked in there.” Okay, she was exaggerating, but it was partially true. The Quiverfulls had nothing on her with regards to helping to overpopulate the planet.

”Can’t have any trace of you staying here.” Fair enough. She knew she'd probably have to do a bit of clean up anyways.

Felicia nodded. “I know, it's all gone now.” She took her bloodied hands and smeared them across his face, then pulled her gloves back on. “There. Now you look much more intimidating.”

Danny lifted his finger and poked it through the hole in suit. Uh. Right. What was he doing? Her eyebrows raised questioningly, she asked, “Are you trying to cop a feel, or . . . ?”

“Are you ok?”

Wasn't it obvious that she was okay? She was still walking and talking. Being shot a few times wasn't going to slow her down. The question took her by surprise and it took her several moments to concoct a response that wasn't completely sarcastic. “I'm fine. Now stop poking me in the nipple unless you want to start something.” She lifted her hands to his chest and gave him a playful shove. “You do want to start something, right?”

*********

Several minutes later after having performed floor by floor searches and executing all the targets there in, she'd been covered in layers of blood which transformed her olive-toned features into a dark, sanguine mask. She was quite happy to roll around in the mess she'd made out of one of the female guards who was tasked with the job of ensuring that the slaves stayed put. Felicia squirmed around on her back in the thick puddle of blood which had issued from the woman's severed neck after she'd been suspended upside down from a large metal pipe—by her entrails. It was fun being able to keep someone alive while they were being eviscerated. If she was going to treat her fellow human beings like animals, then she deserved to die like one, with Felicia's special brand of finishing touches.

“See, I wasn't lying earlier when I said that I made murder into an art form.” She rolled onto her belly and yawned, then crossed her arms under her head and used them as a pillow. There were no dry spots on her wetsuit; it was completely soaked through to the skin. To a normal human nose—belonging to someone who hadn't spent time working in a profession where they were regularly exposed to gore—she probably smelled awful. Propping her head up on her hands, she looked up at Danny. He wasn't nearly as much of a mess as she was, surrounded on the floor by blood and viscera. “I think I need a shower. I'm a very dirty girl.”

An instant later, she was on her feet and embraced him enthusiastically, easily lifting him from the floor as she pulled him to her. She set him back down and rubbed her face against chest. “And seeing as how you executed this flawlessly, allow me to officially welcome you into the fold of Lux Aeterna. You will serve us quite well.” If he didn't, she'd just have to kill him, which would make her sad. “We should go back to your place and get cleaned up and continue whatever we were doing this morning. Or go to sleep. But since I'm totally wired now, that's not happening. I'm also in dire need of a back rub.” She gave a final look around at the carnage they'd wreaked (on this floor, at least) and shrugged. Sticking fingers in her mouth, she manipulated her teeth (mostly) back to normal, but kept the fangs partially for show and partially because she knew they got Inaki all hot and bothered. Felicia grinned at him and laughed. “I say we finish that bottle of wine in the kitchen, in the tub. I need to rest up for a bit and you make a fabulous pillow.”

Довести до белого каления.

ф ф Word count: 886
ф ф Mood: Fuck why can't it be Saturday.
ф ф Outfit: A bloody bloody wetsuit.
ф ф Lyrics / Quote: Written in Blood, She Wants Revenge
ф ф Illustrations: None.
ф ф Comment / Informational links: None.

[Deleted]

”You . . . are absolutely no fun,” Felicia said with a frown on her face. Daniel smirked and watched her clean up her own blood from the pool. That would be a nice trick to have.

”Wish I could do that,” he said. It would have been nice in a few past situations.

”A lot, but I’ve shed way more than this during an average period, so I’m used to it,” she said. Well that was too much information… ”After birthing as many children as I have over the centuries, it’s probably pretty wrecked in there,” she said.

”Speaking as someone who has seen it, extremely up close, it’s still looking pretty good,” he said with a smirk. She stood up with blood all over her hand from the pool and, before he could do anything, reached over to rub a large portion of it on his face. He sighed slightly and looked at her.

”Was that necessary?” he asked, wiping some of it away with his gloved hand.

”There. Now you look much more intimidating,” she said.

”Black suit and knives and the killing people part, that wasn’t intimidating?” he asked. She shooed him off as he poked at the hole in her suit, and he smirked when she shooed his hand away.

”Of course I’m trying to start something in the middle of this building filled with people who will shoot us on sight,” he said sarcastically. But it was fun to mess with her, the more he poked his finger in the hole.

-------------------------

”See, I wasn’t lying earlier when I said that I made murder into an art form,” Felicia said as she reveled in the aftermath of her latest kill. He let her have her fun, especially since she had done away with the jailor from hell in a way that he still thought was too good for her. He looked around, seeing the door that would lead to the cell that the slaves were kept in. A small feeling in the back of his mind that passed as his conscience told him that they couldn’t just be left there. It’d piss the new owners off something fierce that they lost the stream of revenue, but Daniel didn’t actually give a flying fuck.

”I think I need a shower. I’m a very dirty girl,” she said. He smirked and looked down to her.

”You’re quite dirty all the time, even with the shower,” he said with a smirk. She was up in a moment and giving a hug that lifted him off the ground. He could safely say that that was the strangest thing that had ever happened. He knew she was strong enough to do it, apparently, but it wasn’t something that happened to him often. Especially when he was about a foot taller and almost a hundred pounds heavier than the person doing it. She put him down and nuzzled into him, and he wrapped his arms around her.

”And seeing as how you executed this flawlessly, allow me to officially welcome you into the fold of Lux Aeterna. You will serve us quite well,” she said. He thought for a moment and then laughed.

”Us? I dunno, I have a hard enough time serving you,” he said. He liked to think he had the stamina of a man half his age, but that didn’t mean much at all compared to her.

”We should go back to your place and get cleaned up and continue whatever we were doing this morning. Or go to sleep. But since I’m totally wired now, that’s not happening. I’m also in dire need of a back run,” she said.

”I like the sound of that idea…” he said, trailing off as he thought of everything they were going to do.

”I say we finish that bottle of wine in the kitchen, in the tub. I need to rest up for a bit and you make a fabulous pillow,” she said. He smirked and reached down to kiss her forehead. He pulled his arms away from her as he looked at the door one more and time held up a finger.

”Just one second, and then we can go do all of that,” he said. He walked over to the door and took a set of lock picks out of a pocket. In just a few seconds, the shitty padlock on the door was off, and it swung open freely. He looked inside the room at the slaves inside. Most of them cowered, thinking he was one of their captors. Some of them stood strong, ready to fight until the very end. Daniel, feeling his conscious reward him with a warm feeling, turned around and grabbed Felicia. They teleported out in a moment, and just as he said, they were both clean of the blood they had been covered in. Actually, it would have been more accurate to say that he was covered in it and she had been marinated in it.

He stopped by the kitchen to grab the bottle and then grabbed her hand to lead her toward the bathroom.

”I believe you promised a bath?” he said with a smile.