Predator

[Connor McBride]

There was no moon visible in the sky as Connor McBride sprinted through the landfill-turned-refugee-camp north of Calais. The air smelled of smoke and sweat. Ahead, someone or something darted through the light of a campfire, casting shadows that flickered and danced as the wind whipped the flames. Connor staggered left, avoiding the ropes and pegs of tents jammed at odd angles into the dirt. As he barreled through the glow of the campfire, he was aware of someone calling out to him in French, a friendly voice lost under the sound of panting breath and blood pounding in his ears.

The thing he was chasing swerved right, away from the searing brightness of a floodlight. Eyes darting after it, Connor saw the path the thing was following: cutting through the tents and shacks, across a patch of tarmac road, and into the maze of shipping containers that made of the rest of the camp. Someone screamed in fright. Chest burning and arms pumping at his sides, pushing himself harder and harder, Connor felt the distance between him and the runaway creature getting larger. If it got away from him now, there was a chance he wouldn't find it again, not in the disarray of the camp.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

[Daeva]

You're losing it.

The unhelpful commentary was delivered directly to Connor's mind with droll sarcasm. Obviously the creature was getting away, or at least it was making a splendid attempt to do so.

The Infernal Lord, Bayemon had seen fit to allow her to be bound to this.. person. She was charged to protect the man if required, and assist him if she were asked. So far tonight he had not needed her, but just maybe things were about to change.

From where she rested, coiled around his arm in the shape of a black dragon tattoo for the moment, the daeva could feel his impetus as he chased after the foul thing. The acceleration of his heart, the rush of adrenaline in his veins, the consternation that such a thing might outsmart him.

You know what you have to do. Ask me nicely.

[Connor McBride]

By the time he reached the cluster of shipping containers, there was every chance that she - it - was right. He was losing it. The thing was fast. They were always fast. Connor had gotten faster, ever since he’d first encountered one of the blood-sucking bastards, but he was still human.

Stooping low as he moved through the space between the containers, he strained to hear, trying to tune out the sounds of the refugee camp and pick out any hint of the supernatural. As he rounded a corner, he peered into the interior of a container. No movement inside, only sleeping bodies huddled together in the darkness.

Lips pulled back over gritted teeth in a silent grimace of frustration, Connor fought the urge to thump a fist against the containers outer wall. The demon was right. He needed her.

“Help me,” Connor whispered.

[Daeva]

Finally.

Checking the biceps of the mortal hunter now would prove his tattoo mysteriously vanished.

Released by the terms the agreement, she was free. For now. The demon materialized atop the shipping container wearing the face and form of a human female relatively close to her own shape and size. Her present state of invocation allowed her to act as Bayemon's vessel on this plane, accessing His Gifts when she needed them. The Livre des Esperitz summed it up nicely in the 15th century, listing among His hellish powers was the ability to "make all kinds of things, people, and armor appear". And so she had.

Stepping to the edge of the shipping container, the daeva looked down to her charge. "If you've quite caught your breath?"

She did not wait, leaping from the top of one container to the next in pursuit of their game.

[Connor McBride]

The demon moved soundlessly from one container to another, and Connor crept after it. The shape of her briefly obscured the sky, covering him in more shadow. Letting the demon loose by asking for her help was not something Connor did often. In spite of the pact between them, any assistance that she provided him with often came with consequences that he, conviniently, wouldn’t learn about until much later. What should have been a mutually beneficial agreement was often anything but. In the moment, however, Connor knew that he needed her infernal powers if he had any chance of catching the blood-sucking thing before it did more damage or, worse, got away.

“Where's the fucker?” he mouthed, knowing that he did not need to speak for the demon to hear him.

[Daeva]

The creature that the hunter was after moved with preternatural speed, but then so did she. The human, while fast, did not so the daeva kept pace with him for now. She sniffed the air as they ran, cocking her head to the side as she listened, catching the flapping of tarp from somewhere ahead. She smelled the stink of it, the congealed dead-human reek of it.

She couldn't wait to catch it.

"By the water. It's gone to ground."

Approaching the last in the row of shipping containers, the daeva did not stop, but vaulted off the top, landing with unnatural grace and precision, continuing forward without pause. The salty air carried the scent to her, and she turned back to the hunter.

"The boats.."

[Connor McBride]

Fleeting glimpses of movement were all Connor got until he broke free of the container cluster, and saw the demon pointing towards the edge of a body of water. Connor’s mind suddenly lurched over everything he had learned about the undead in his short-time hunting them: they hated sunlight and fire. Could they cross running water? Or was that an old superstition borne from nothing, like their supposed hatred of the crucifix?

He could see the silhouette of the monster now. Was it looking back at him? Not waiting another beat, Connor stalked towards the thing, and it hissed. So it did see him. In a moment, it would see him even clearer.

“Light me up, demon,” he said, lifting one bandage wrapped fist into the air.

[Daeva]

The daeva smiled, pleased. Every time he made use of her, there was a price, she was first and foremost a demon of corruption. Each time would rack up a cost. One day, with or without her interference, the Hunter would die and that cost would catch up with him. She would be there then too..

"As you wish, hunter.." Her eyes lit up, infernal green just before she lifted her own hand, mirroring his gesture. Her own slim fist erupted into flames the same hellish hue as her eyes. As it did, Connor's fist likewise responded, flaring up into conjured fire to deal with the creature.

She moved, careful measure steps, one foot crossing over the other as she flanked the creature, preventing it's escape. Her tongue ran across her teeth, unafraid for herself if she tore into the thing with her mouth. It's poisoned blood could not do anything to her.

[Connor McBride]

The moment the flames erupted, Connor winced, but there was no pain, no heat. His features cast in a hellish light by the green flames, he closed in towards the vampire. The creature twisted, looking between hunter and demon alike. The vampire bared his teeth bared in an animalistic snarl.

“You’re gonna talk, or I’m gonna punch the fuckin’ fangs right out of the back of your head and leave nothing but a smoking crater where your face used to be.”

[Daeva]

The aggressive demands of the hunter excited the daeva, in so far as she knew they had this abomination, it would not get away. It would answer and be destroyed, or not answer and be destroyed but either way, she would delight in tearing it apart, very soon.. She licked her lips again, hungry for the rotten, burnt roadkill taste of the undead thing..

When it hissed, she hissed back and as she did for a moment her tongue protruded serpentine from her mouth. She was by far the bigger monster. The daeva was close enough now, if it moved, she would be on it.

"Answer him fiend.. I've no intention of spending the duration of my release on this dock.."

[Connor McBride]

"Where are the bastards who made you?”

A mangled string of French tripped off the vampire’s pallid lips. Not for the first time, Connor’s nostrils flared as he suppressed a heavy sigh. Lunging forward, he grabbed the bloodsucker by the lapels of it’s grubby jacket, using the hand that wasn’t currently surrounded with jade hellfire. The flaming fist he held up, cocked and ready.

“I need to be able to understand it,” he said, with a meaningful look at the infernal woman.

[Daeva]

Laughing inappropriately, the demon shook the fire from her own hand in a banishing gesture. "This is becoming a frequent one with you, hunter. Not that I do not enjoy it."

Closing in behind the creature, the daeva wrapped her hands around either side of it's skull, holding it. It struggled against them, but was good and truly held fast between the pair of them. At once she began to command it in Hellspeak. It struggled more, rambling on in French as she took command of it's tongue, forcing it into words Connor understood.

"...Je campais dans les bois... It came at night. I thought.. It though it was an animal!"

The daeva looked around the wretch's head, at the hunter. "Anything else?"

[Connor McBride]

“I need more than that. A location, a name.”

Connor moved his flaming fist closer to the vampire’s face, which contorted in pure, bestial terror. The creature strained backwards, against the daeva’s hands, desperate to be as far as possible from the lethal fire.

“You’re dead either way,” Connor said, looking the thing in the eyes, not knowing or caring whether it understood him. “Tell me, and I can put down the monster that took your life from you.”

[Daeva]

Nodding her understanding to the hunter, the demon tightened her considerable grip on the wretch's head, pressing the points of her fingers into it's reeking temples.

"Give him a name and he'll destroy you quickly. Keep babbling and I'll be happy to stake you out, eat you as you crisp.. Give us a name.", she hissed at it.

The rambling switched back into French, then English again but there was only one name to be had in either language. "Léon ! They.. they called him Léon, or the Léon.."

"Where might we find this...Léon? Tell me truly. It may not end here for you. You've been a very naughty boy. You'll go down below with all the others. I can find you there too..", she promised, pressing her lips closer to the side of his head, but keeping her burning green eyes on the hunter.. "There is no place you are safe from me.."

[Connor McBride]

When the demon’s eyes locked with his, Connor didn’t look away, didn’t flinch. He knew well enough that what she said was true, and that in time it would be him that she hunted through whatever infernal hellscape he had summoned her from.

“Down the coast, further south!” the creature spat. "Boulogne, someone said.”

It was the creature that he could almost not bring himself to look at. The face, a shade of humanity twisted into something grotesque. Features all gaunt and skin stretched too tightly over bones, eyes gleaming with an unnatural light. Eyes that were as hypnotic as they were horrifying.

“Let it go,” Connor grunted, and with a look that was almost a pout, the demon released her hold on the vampire.

A beat, a moment where the thing thought it was being freed, and then Connor, with teeth clenched, ramming his still-flaming fist into its gut. A howl tore through the night air, a sound half-man and half-animal. The thing fell to the ground, hell-fire crawling up and outwards from the point of impact. It's flesh burned away like paper, like ash. Deaf to it's screams, Connor fell on it, striking again and again, wet smacks landed on it’s solar plexus, the side of its head, splattering the ground with dark blood and fragments of it’s inhuman teeth.

[Daeva]

At the hunter's command, the demon released her hold on the creature and stepped backward. She knew what came next. A smile, completely unnatural and at odds with the situation which seemed to be nothing to smile at, turned her lips upward as she watched the mortal pound the undead thing into mush.

Before it could be completely pureed by his fist and hellfire, the daeva sank into a crouch beside the pair, pulling free a chunk of the now quite dead thing.. It might have been.. a rib bone? She shrugged, not really caring and sat on a shipping drum with her prize. The fingers of her right hand snapped, into her waiting hand a bottle materialized, bearing the label: Frank's Red Hot sauce.

With a look of eagerness the demon glanced toward Connor, wiggling the bottle at him. "I saw this on the television. I hear this is what to use for flavor in the mortal world. It said quite clearly in the commercial, you people put this shit on everything."

[Connor McBride]

Eventually, when his muscles began to ache, Connor relented - and fell down into the mud beside what was left of the vampire. The air stunk of burning flesh. His breath misted in the night air, rising like puffs of smoke from his cracked lips.

In the moment, it always felt so right to deliver the bastard’s to their final death. In the heat of the fight, he felt the righteous surge of anger, of purpose, driving his fist again and again - but once it was done, there was no afterglow. No feeling of satisfaction, that he had done what he was meant to do, what the world would thank him for. All he felt was guilt. His brother and sister-in-law were still dead. His nephew too, most likely.

Maybe he’d find the bastard who took them in Boulogne.

Connor swallowed down the bile rising in his throat and sat up. To his side, the demon sat pouring hot sauce onto what little remained of the vampire’s flesh, taking dainty bites of rib meat.

“You’re fuckin’ sick, you know that?” He shook his head and laughed a weak, bitter laugh as he pulled himself up to his feet. “Course you do.”

The fire around his fist was long gone and only a painful tingle remained in its place. If he was aware of the blood splattered across his face, he did nothing about it.

“That’s enough favours for tonight, Daeva.”

[Daeva]

Sucking the end of the bone, rolling it around between her lips to make sure she got every bit, the demon just smiled. Of course she did. Everything had to eat.

"Waste not, want not..", she threw the end of the bone back into the smoldering remains.

Her green eyes flashed toward the hunter. He was going to dismiss her already? Instinct told her to run, she could out run him. She could get away, leave him to his own devices. Let him track the creatures on his own, until one of them finally got the better of him. It was a nice thought, but futile. With a word from the hunter, she would be returned to nothing more than a tattoo on his flesh, and a voice in his head. The demon watched him warily, waiting for him to do it.

"How boring you are, hunter.."

[Connor McBride]

“You’ve an interesting idea of what’s boring.”

The sounds of the thing’s dying howl's had drawn inquisitive eyes from the main body of the camp. Eyes that shone in the streetlights as they peered, warily, at now lone figures of the hunter and the demon. Connor met the gaze of one of them, a taller woman clutching a small child to her chest, and shook his head. The crowd that had been slowly, but unnervingly gathering, but to disperse.

Connor exhaled and took a step over the remains of the dead vampire.

“If I thought I could trust you for a second, I wouldn’t have to put you back, would I?” he asked, his mind wandering ahead to the possibility of a train to Boulogne, and the merciful idea that it might not be due for hours, meaning he could sleep for a little while on the empty platform.

[Daeva]

The demon held up her hands in a gesture of futility. "Where precisely would I go?"

She had not yet tested it, how far away from him she could get on her own, or for how long. The mortal was pretty good about putting her away when he was done with her. Lord Bayemon had allowed her, not any of her legions of sisters, her to be bound to the hunter, and so for the foreseeable future, they would be inseparable. She would be at his side, or on his body, but always there.

Annoying really.

Finished with the hot sauce, the bottle disappeared from her hand as the daeva hopped down from the shipping drum. "If I wasn't spiritually bound to your hide, I wouldn't have to try and run for it.", she countered, like it mattered. It did not.

"Whatever. Do it then, before I decide to transport you to the bottom of the sea.", she folded her arms across her chest, surly. She could not do it of course, she was bound to protect him, not drown him..

[Connor McBride]

There was no banishing rite, just as there was no art to invoking the demon. It was Connor’s will alone that determined when to set her free, or recall her. He simply thought it: come back to me. The trouble was, it would not be that easy to permanently sever the bond between them, when the time came. Having no need to stand still and wait for her, Connor walked on, steadfastly not making eye contact with anyone from the camp who had come to see what the commotion was.

“I don’t want to forget anything I’ve seen tonight,” he said, to himself, but also to the creature that was coiled possessively around his arm.

[Daeva]

The dark stain of her presence on his skin was not without it's price as well. By all accounts, she had heard it was quite painful when their kind was first bound to a mortal's skin, and then again each time they were returned there. It did give the daeva some measure of satisfaction, knowing that it stung his flesh as badly as it did her pride, being ordered about by what she considered to be a lesser species.

It was not concern, but curiosity accenting the voice now in Connor's mind.

Why would you want to recall the last moment of that blighted creatures death, hunter?