Nettie Maely corners herself on the narrow streets of Brickery County. She wedges her back between a car and Rosetta's predatory glare. Her white dress is smudge yellow from the excretions oozing out of her injuries. They were healing faster by the minute, but she needed to keep the risk barrier at minimum.
The midnight black Panther stalks its prey, its head jewelry clicking with every meticulous step it took. All it saw in front of her was dinner, free food, happiness. It's waiting for the vampire to make its first move, first mistake, give it a chance.
But all Nettie's withering figure can do is speak. Just like her husband.
"Y-you know we, c-can talk about it...like civil- I am as decent predators of the society, we can—" Nettie chokes on her words as Rosetta snarls out a roar.
Nettie's breath hinges in her throat. Her brain is predominated with only one thought, 'I need to wait, wait for it to work...'
Rosetta pounces on Nettie, her jewel laden claw with sharp diamond nails pierce Nettie's collarbones, tearing through her pale skin and oozing yellow.
The vampire chokes out another scream, frail hands haphazardly clutching on a necklace around Rosetta's neck, gripping its pointy beads in her palm as Rosetta's claws dig deeper into her neck.
Fuck risk.
Nettie screams, neck half hanging off her shoulders, and turns over the panther with one hand. Rosetta's head crashes against the bricked path and she gets dragged away by force. The panther lets out a loud mewl.
One of Rosetta's headgears pierce into her skull.
Nettie pulls her half detached and dangling neck back in its rightful place, sticking it over the shoulders again. Her yellow veins get to work, instantly healing what was lost. Nettie limps to stand up just when Rosetta runs up to her, bleeding through her jaw and amethyst eyes blazing for firey vengeance.
If Rosetta got a paw on Nettie now, she'd tear her limbs apart.
It was not a game of stalk the prey and play anymore. It was life or dinner.
Rosetta pounced at her prey again
Nettie punched the glass window of the car that she was leaning against and tore out its door. She shielded Rosetta's pounce in that instant, hindering her claws as it impaled the metal.
Nettie throws the car door away, with Rosetta stuck on it, and runs.
Rosetta, with a few wild shakes of her head and stretches of her forelimbs, reduces the door to scrape metal and runs after the escaping vampire.
The figure in front blurs.
In merely a few seconds, Nettie disappears out of Rosetta's sight. The panther looks around the empty streets and lively households, who are oblivious to the happenings outside.
Could Nettie be inside one of them? Feasting over fresh humans to gain more power?
Rosetta tsked, closing her eyes and only using her nose to detect Nettie's scent.
The vampire was an injured one, it was still in vicinity. There was no way it could overpower the might of Rosetta.
The panther could feel the eerie sensation of being watched. She sniffed around in the silence when suddenly a car's sensor starts echoing.
Rosetta turns behind her, knowing that Nettie must have bumped into it. She runs towards it but suddenly-
-someone jumps on her back.
Someone sits on her.
It's not Czar. It's cold, it's lanky, it's the vicious predator Nettie.
Rosetta roars again, deliberately crashing herself into walls left and right, angling so as to give the vampire some brain damage.
But Nettie keeps deflecting with ease. Her long fingers catch a place on either side of Rosetta's head and she bends over to meet her hazel eyes with Rosetta's amethyst ones.
Before Rosetta could shake off the vampire, their eyes meet.
Rosetta stills in the moment.
In her amethyst pools Nettie saw a fire, black fire making its way through a forest. She hears howling, shouts of humans, laughs and cries.
— She sees caves being destroyed and other black panthers being held down by spears impaling their skulls. She sees the world through Rosetta's eyes and it pains her cold, dead, heart.
"I see your world, let me be a part of it," Nettie whispers a melody in Rosetta's, hypnotised, ear.
— It was humans working with supernatural beasts to bring down the Black Panthers. They were shouting instructions and laughing while restraining dead limbs of Rosetta's family.
— But suddenly, there's a howling pack of wolves charging at their burnt base.
"I see your misery, let me cleanse it," Nettie sang again as Rosetta's eyes got darker, breathing paced.
— The wolves started attacking the humans, gnawing at their bodies and setting free the still alive panthers. Rosetta was scared and Nettie could feel her overwhelming emotions. Pain, hurt, betrayal, fear.
— Rosetta blamed it on herself.
— She locked eyes with a human child, crying out tears of gold.
— Nettie feels Rosetta spiraling into another memory, of fresh forests and grassy fields. Of blue skies and fruitful trees. Of helping a lost child escape from a boar's clutches. Of helping the child clean their wounds with the water.
— Another memory of dusky skies and windy nights. Of pale rivers and Rosetta waking up to the same human's face. A little older. Having saved her from a snake.
— They were friends.
— She hunted and the child cooked.
— They were friends on autumn days when dry leaves floated over the waters. They were friends when the snow stuck to the ground and the child could find none other to call home. They were friends through the warm summer and humid rains.
— But the memories blur into darkness again. Darkness of night. Darkness of the black fire enveloping the forest. Darkness of the child's eyes whom Rosetta trusted and brought home. Her home. Whose home the child burnt.
— And silver tears shone gold against the black fire. A wolf pounces at the child and Rosetta just watches. Watches her friend being tore into bits.
— She feels a hand on her head and looks up. It's young Czar with blazing scarlet eyes and a maniacal smile. He was having fun.
"I see your loyalties, let me turn them."
Nettie sang again, pulling out of Rosetta's memories and into the dimly illuminated streets of the present. The Panther's amethyst eyes are almost black now.
"Love only those who let me in."
Rosetta falls to the ground in a soft slumber.
Her rhinestones had came off sometime during the fight and her perfect oval tipped nails were now chipped. Nettie stands up with eyes blazing pink and one look at her nails has her sobbing like an upset three year old on Christmas.
<3
"Everyone has buried secrets," Pristine whispers to the holes in the walls of the basement. "Let's see what you're hiding, Estella Crowne."
She plunges her hand in one of the wall holes and picks up two paper stars. She peeks inside another hole and finds one sticking over a dense cobweb. Another one in a broken egg of some reptile and two more hiding in a blind spot. Pristine finds the last one under a snake's skin and cringes with her whole body.
Mighty dragons or bumbling bees did not creep Pristine out as much as snakes did.
She contours her pretty face in a grimace and collects the stars in her hand. She closes her fist around them and a white synergy surrounds it. After opening it, she sees a piece of paper.
It's a letter.
"Huh, anticlimactic," Pristine mumbles to herself while reading through the contents in one go.
"That doesn't make sense. Why would she go through the effort of tearing it apart yet not fully destroying it unless—"
She drags off as her eyes follow a strange pattern. Written in beautiful cursive, there are only few alphabets that start in uppercase. The rest of the letter is in lowercase. Sneaky.
A small smirk pulls up her peach lips.
"Marlin S is hiding under the protection of Michael Knightblood in the real Aningmoon Castle. The Shadow Empire is waning. Strike now, repent later."
The letter read.
"Weren't you packing some important information, Estella Crowne! Why hide it from your Prince? Aren't you loyal enough?" Pristine chirps to herself, giggling and hugging the letter to her chest. Countless possibilities overwhelm her small form.
"We're going to the real capital!!" She squeaks out, fisting the letter again as the paper reduced to its old form of origami stars and places them all in one hole.
Now that she has information, it's time to escape.
<3
"And a hit!"
Edith grins after catching yet another strawberry in her mouth. Her lips stretch wide, brown eyes almost glittering in some child-like joy as a sense of accomplishment overcame her.
Julius groans, yet again.
"Punishment time!" Edith leans in, picking a piece of beetroot from the salad plate, she closes the space between her and Julius. His boyish eyes follow her hand movements as she brings the piece of vegetable and rubs it on his dry lips.
Her eyes are immensely focused on leaking all of the red vegetable's color on his lips. Julius notices her teeth biting down on her tongue, which was poking out of her strawberry stained lips. Her dirty blonde hair fall over her face, hindering the peace in her activities, so she starts blowing them away.
Julius sits pointlessly still, temporarily forgetting all woes and wholly invested in this nonsensical game they were playing.
"Da-Done!" Edith claps, big eyes admiring her work,so close to Julius' face. He feels a bit flustered as his eyes involuntarily take a stroll down her very close and insanely inviting neck.
Julius coughs in her face, poking a finger in her forehead and pushing her away to create distance yet again. Edith leans back in her place, now nibbling on the piece of beetroot from which she colored Julius' lips.
Scandalized, yet again, Julius gulps out incoherent words which fail to meet any comprehension for Edith cuts in.
"Now, it's your turn to answer or catch!" She claps.
They had been into this game for quite a while now. One of them would ask a question and the other would either answer honestly or choose to catch a vegetable in their mouth. If they missed a catch, they would be compelled to answer honestly and if they caught the catch, they'll get a wish instead.
Because both Julius and Edith were almost drowning with questions, the mutual agreement was instantaneous.
Fortunate by misfortune, for Julius was absolutely trash at catching vegetables in his mouth— though he'd quarrel his way into a grave upon insisting that Edith was too good at faking throws— and hence Edith had to give almost no information yet she was on the receiving end of a lot.
Edith was no more a supernatural dweeb.
She now knew that the world they lived in had Supernatural territories divided by three species, or kingdoms. The shadow kingdom, as proudly told by Julius, held together the werewolves, lycans and shapeshifters.
The Blood Empire, as Julius had nasally enunciated, held an alliance with the creatures of night, apparently the Vampires, Zombies (Edith had flipped out at that one) and scientific hybrid creations that are usually out for blood, flesh or brains.
Anubis Hallows— as Julius had sighed out in borderline misery and left instance to point out, with intensity, that their meer existence was an inconvenience— sheltered the beings of magic. Edith's jaw dropped lower as Julius' list of fantasy increased from fairies to mermaids to ghosts, spirits and whatnot.
After some bloody sodding war for unity or whatsoever they had decided to live in peace after giving their neighbouring kingdom an important relic of their own and yadayadayda. Nothing Edith considered important in her current circumstances.
They were geographically somewhere-somewhere Edith was too dumbly astounded to understand or remember.
She also knew, now, that Julius was a werewolf, Royal born, apparently that was very important for some reason but Edith wasn't concentrating for some supernatural erotic fantasies were going around in her head when Julius was explaining.
Julius had called her a pervert when she had eyed him head to toe and paused a few unnecessary longer seconds at his crotch, instantly asking after that, "Do you guys have passionate heat sex? Isn't it borderline indulging into beastality? Are you guys a part of the furry cult?"
Julius evaded answering because it wasn't Edith's turn to question again. Pfft.
On contrary to Edith's horny teenager brain, all Julius would ask about was Marlin Stewart and The Artificial Vampire, both of which Edith had been evading by catching food and coloring Julius' face instead.
She was going for a clown face on Julius. He had natural red hair to begin with. Man was Godmade for this opportunity.
"Okay, my question is," Edith snaps her thumb in front of Julius' zoned out face, and continues, "Why are you all after Toril Maely?"
Julius chose to catch a grape. He ended up snorting it instead and insisted that one hole was better nothing, but Edith left no chances.
Sucking a breath, Julius answers, "He is one of the only remaining Alchemists, existing from ancient times. Apparently his birth planet was destroyed so he travelled through dimensions, with his beloved wife, and reached Earth. The Blood Empire gave him shelter in turn for mastering the art of reincarnation through science."
Edith sucks in a breath, "No way he did it?!" She whispers out loud, leaning closer in case someone heard over them. As if they were talking about Nuclear Weapon codes.
"Bastard mastered life and death."
No fucking way. Her carol singing, eccentric and gibberishly eloquent neighbor— just— whAT?!
Edith's pupils were blown out of comprehension, curiosity riding her train of thoughts. How? When? What does he do with it?!
"Don't worry though, he's too pathetic to do anything alone. Guy's slimy as shit and everything comes at a cost—"
Julius is cut short by a sudden force that shatters the Oakwood doors.
<3