RE: november's WIP thread
WRITING SAMPLES ▌
After a few seconds, the pain finally subsided.
Andras Sheridan staggered to his feet, trying to shake off the disorientation that came with a shift.
Blood was caked all over his fingernails, clogged everywhere between his teeth. Scars and cuts stretched and reopened as he sat along the ground. He looked around, blinking. Two big piles of fur and claws and blood, completely unmoving. Two dead wolves, and he smelled a third in the distance.
It wasn’t safe to be in human form during a war. But if you wanted to end a war, sometimes it was the only choice.
He needed to be in his human form for this, needed to think clearly. And tonight, that would be… hard. There was something about the taste and smell of blood that got his other half… wild. Excited.
He put his fingers together and let a sharp, high pitched whistle through the woods. The leaves rustled in the distance as a pair of Betas responded to his call. Neither of them were in perfect shape, but they were strong and alive. That was good enough to count as a victory, far as he was concerned.
He grabbed Garen by the back of the head, stretching his fur a couple times in a rough greeting. “Hunt him,” Andras growled. “move slow.”
The two wolves bounded in front of him – but not far enough that they couldn’t turn to defend him if needed. Andras marched through the woods, ignoring the cuts and scratches from the nearby bushes, as he followed the trail of blood.
The scent was as loud and stark as anything, but wolves could often hide their scents in a fight like this, especially one near the water. Turn to human, find a shotgun, load it up with silver and pray. It wasn’t enough to kill a werewolf outright, but it could put enough of them in pain that maybe…
Not likely. But possible. Andras rubbed his hands together, picking up the pace as they moved downhill. His family depended on him to think of things that weren’t likely and to prepare for them. He was their alpha – they obeyed him absolutely, and his duty to protect them was just as absolute.
I didn’t think wasn’t an excuse.
Garen let out a little barking huff. Andras peered recognized the wounded man, running to a rickety log cabin. Wade Clairburn was one of her lieutenants. No wonder the bastard fought so hard.
They were at war with a woman, and that made everything harder. Females weren’t as common in werewolf society, and Alpha females were even rarer. Having an alpha bitch in your pack meant safety, stronger children, a bigger pack. They usually ruled their packs outright, and the packs were fanatically loyal in return, fought long after someone smarter would have rolled over.
Andras pushed through the brush and followed, pushing towards him.
A rival pack challenging an alpha bitch was generally suicide – but she wasn’t the only rare breed in the state. He was the son of two alphas, massive even by the standards of a were. And he’d never been raised to hold back and blend into polite society, human or wolf. Kindness was reserved for family. Anyone else… well, it depended.
Wolves didn’t instinctively follow the strongest in the pack. And having the power of an alpha didn't always make you the alpha. Sometimes it was the oldest, or a mother, or someone that could inspire them to cooperate. Packs were like any other family, in that way. Which meant he had to work harder to -
“Andras, you fuckin’ coward!” Wade’s scream broke his thoughts, and the wolves dashed into action. The man was just… trying to goad him. If you fought one wolf, you fought the pack. And if your pack was shattered or separated, you were hunted down and brought to heel.
Or something worse.
Wade screamed and backpedaled into a wooden cabin, but there were eight heavy wolf steps coming behind him - too many of them and too fast.
It was stupid. The fights weren’t supposed to be fair. Unfairness was the whole point.
The wolves tore into him, slashing at his arms and legs while he rolled into a ball, frantically trying to protect his throat. Andras smirked for a moment, watching the beta crush Wade’s thigh with his heavy jaw and toss his neck back and forth, dragging him across the floor and sending blood splattering wildly.
Wade was being torn in two different directions, and it was impossible for him to defend himself. There was nothing in the world more deadly than a pack of weres that set to destroy something. If Andras waited much longer, the man would be shredded beyond usefulness.
Which wouldn’t serve, of course.
“That’s enough,” Andras boomed.
The betas stopped attacking, but still stood over him, growled loudly, snapping their teeth inches away from Wade’s eyes and throat. Andras had bought the man a moment of peace, but it would be ripped away the moment he heard defiance, or any kind of answer he didn’t like.
“Fight me,” Wade said weakly. “Fight me if you’re so tough.” Andras had left his shift to talk, and to give his pack orders more complicated than he could give in his pure forms – but Wade was too weak to hold a form now. But still, he almost admired the bravery.
Almost. It was stupid bravery, got more people killed than needed to die.
“Where’s the bitch, Wade?” Andras put his hands on his hips, staring the wounded man down. “That’s the only thing I’m interested in right now.”
Wade rolled over and coughed, sending little specks of blood flying into the air. Blood was oozing from his leg and pooling down into the ugly wooden floorboards. The male would probably survive if he got treatment, but odds were he wouldn’t have to worry about that at all, not with his fucking mouth. “I don’t have any idea. Far away from here, I bet.”
“Where do you think she’s at? Hiding down at the Delta?” A little laugh jumped up from his throat. She’d be real stupid if that was the case. Her pack had been outnumbered and on the run since the first couple of days. There were dead soldiers all over these hills, and most of them were hers. They needed all the help they could get.
If she fell back and waited at the Delta, tried to make one big stand – well, it wouldn’t go well for her. Or any of them. Andras gritted his teeth and two long steps forward. The betas circled backwards, reading his eyes and moving a respectable distance away.
“I don’t know where she is, Andras.”
“Every minute we have to spend tracking her down is a minute my family is at war, all across this valley.” A war that, practically, was already over. But men died in wars that were *almost* over all the time, no doubt about that. Andras lifted his leg, put his foot right over Wade’s shredded thigh. “So right now, you’re fucking with my family’s survival.”
Andras pressed his weight onto the wound, and Wade screamed, failing and bucking against the floor, clawing for escape that wasn’t going to come. “That won’t be accepted. Not now or ever. Am I making myself clear?”
“Yes! Yes, you’re –“
There was an abrupt silence as Andras lifted his leg and relieved the pressure. Stupid of him. He’d been so focused on Wade that he hadn’t paid attention to the room. Andras Sheridan sniffed the air, felt something familiar crawling up his nose. It wasn’t completely sure, because there were so many scents in the cabin, but the more he thought about it –
“She’s already here, isn’t she?” He stepped away from her beta, ignoring him for a while and called to the emptiness in the back of the cabin. He wasn’t exactly sure how many rooms were back there. He took one thick finger and pointed to the ground in front of him. “If you make me chase you around all night, I will make you regret it. Come now, if you hear me.”
---
It wasn't the coolest reaction, but in the moment the first shot rang out, Steven's first consideration was what a fucking tacky place this would be to die. He sprang halfway out of the booth and stumbled towards the door - right into another... what did you call them at strip clubs? Were they Johns? The man was a spray-tanned guido who'd flown south for the winter, but he was too busy running himself to do anything but him a hard shove as he ran for it.
He whirled around with a hard look on his face - he'd had his eyes on that man for the last ten minutes. The signs were there - the gun had a heavy sort of look and sagged on the man's strong side. But this was America, you could carry a gun around wherever you wanted, and the world was full of threatening people, wasn't it?
Damnit. Most people never ran into things like this, but it seemed to follow him like bad smells on a homeless man.
Most of the people were running for it, even the bouncers. The running away was the normal thing during this sort of incident. He narrowed his eyes and gave the moving crowd a hard stare.
The girl on stage was sprinting backstage. And the shooter was walking after both of them. Possibly a coincidence. Possibly someone losing his mind over a woman. But there was the thing with possibility - it stretched out into forever and meant a dozen things at once when you only needed one.
He looked back at the bar - two shots of whiskey neatly arranged in ugly yellow glasses. They’d have to wait - and that if he was lucky.
No response worth mentioning. He stepped into a narrow corridor of dressing rooms. It was smaller and shorter than he might have thought from the outside, but most places in strip malls were like that - he didn't imagine why this one would be any different.
There was another shot in the distance. Probably the parking lot, probably the shooter unless a war was erupting out there - his heart thumped loudly and his face felt warm as he increased his pace, crouching down just a bit as he moved in the hopes of making himself a smaller target. Great chance of that happening, right?
---
He reached under the bed and pulled out a thin crop. Scarlett closed her teeth together, her mouth watering nervously. The crop would be painful enough, but her hands were still bound - who knew what else he had there, just out of reach. He turned toward her and slapped the front of her thighs with the crop, making her lean forward, and then slashed the crop directly onto her nipples, sending little waves out
onto her titflesh.
Another series of quick slaps with the crop, harder each time and never predicatble enough for her to get used to it. She bit her lip to keep from crying out, and that might have been a mistake - Bashir took it as a challenge, swatting her breasts so hard
and so fast that it almost like the flapping wings of a bird. She moaned, and then screamed from the bottom of her throat.
"Stop! I'll tell you! They're -"
"What did I tell you?" His hand returned to Scarlett's already sore throat. "You already had a chance to please me by those means. And now, if I find out a moment sooner, I will slash your throat once I've fucked it."
Scarlett bit the bottom of her lip.
"Ah. She learns." He smiled to himself, as if approving, and threw the knife to the other side of the room, and then untied her hands from behind the bed. Scarlett looked longingly at the knife for a moment, and Bashir grabbed her wrist and lifted her to her feet.
"I thought you would have had enough of fair fights by now." He slung her across the room, within inches of the knife. Barely understanding the man's arrogance and her own good luck, she scooped the knife up, feeling better about her position until she turned around. She found Bashir standing calmly with a long, heavy bullwhip in his hands.
"Don't look disappointed. It's entirely fair, you know. Small room. Just a few feet to travel. If you survive, you get to kill me. Whereas you... well, I'll definitely want to have you alive by the end of this, won't I?"
She swallowed and took a hesitant step forward; there was a chance that -
The whip cracked a few inches from her naked calf. She jumped into the air, and when she came back down, her heart was thumping wildly. She'd
absolutely have to learn to stop starting her sentences like that - it hadn't ever worked out for her since meeting this man.
"If you're wondering how good my aim is... it's enough to hit a quarter."
She took a step back, and squealed as the whip snapped firmly across her thigh and sent her cratering to the ground as he pulled back. The back of her head crashed into the hard floor.
"A moving one."
--
Kaedar reared his hand back and laid a thunderous slap across the boy’s face. “Is this your traitor then, Taiden? Have you planned all this from the start?”
Four or five of the crew - too few, far too few - started to stand and defend him, but Taiden waved them down with a gesture and sighed, fast, soft, and miserable. Kaedar had already learned a hard lesson about touching him directly, so now the man had chosen more… creative ways of signing his displeasure. He grabbed Matchi by the neck now, thrashing the runt around like a ragdoll. Taiden scoffed inwardly and let Kaedar have his time. “This is the boy that does all your thinking for you, isn’t it Taiden? Perhaps the crew and I should find out what he truly knows, huh? About you and your witchcraft.”
Shit. Taiden had won over a few members of his own understandably skeptical crew about a mission off the edges of the planet with the men who’d raided their ships, shelled their cities and killed their crew. Against all odds he’d traveled through the Hassare channel on the far end of the world, managed their meager supplies, fought off more than one mutiny and finally, finally made it to a place beyond the edge of the world, something few men even imagined existing in truth, a secret land beneath the ocean…
And here they were, still at each others throats like they were shipping off from Barsia for the first day.
“You murdered my witch,” he said calmly. “A few thousand miles back.” And there would, inevitably, be a hard answer for that. An excruciating one. A smarter man would have understood that calm, accepting tone for what it was, and either reached for a sword or shit his breeches, but Kaedar just powered through, like the words of other men were just temporary inconveniences between his own speeches.
“You say that, Taiden.” His eyes flickered around suspiciously, as if she would float up from one of the ship’s instruments and hurl lightning at him. Idiot. A witch wasn’t just something you found at a school or wandering a dark road. And one that would actually help you was even rarer. The idiocy still upset him. An asset like that - a woman like that, with her charcoal grey eyes and funny whispering tone - completely wasted, killed to settle some fucking argument he barely even remembered. “But explain how there’s a search party waiting for us the moment we arrive in an undiscovered land.”
“I don’t know enough to have an explanation,” he said patiently. Then he stood - drawing flinches and half drawn weapons from the majority of the crew - and made his way to the high, class window arcing above the ship. That was the only way to go about this. Ignore the taunts, ignore the pain, ignore his concern for the kid. They’d still need the navigator for the the trip back - hopefully Kaedar wasn’t stupid enough to forget that.
Then again, he was stupid enough to kill a witch. Any feat of idiocy was on the table.
“Maybe they do search parties to keep sharp. Maybe there are wild animals on the island. Maybe the Pala have split into tribes and they’re at war with each other.”
With a great yelp, Matchi wrenched himself free of Lord Kaedar’s grip. “Certainly those are more likely possibilities than us somehow colluding with an uncontacted civilization, isn’t it?” The boy spat on the floor of the ship, tried to look tough and authoritative. Taiden had played his hands around in a living man’s guts not three weeks ago, so the effect was mostly lost on him. “You should think before you -”
“And what are you going to do about this?” Kaedar pointed a knobby finger at him. Technically, Taiden was the captain of the vessel, but it was Kaedar’s ship and most of the men were Kaedar’s crew. When it came time to split the rations or get accolades from someone, he rushed to take credit. When they were alone in hostile territory, leadership fell to Taiden.
What a wonderful fucking partnership it was.
“Nothing.” Taiden tapped twice on the thick upper hull of the ship. “This thing is quite the attraction. If we’re lucky, they’ll come to us.”
Kaedar waved his hand, and four men came towards him with their weapons drawn. And this was a bit of an insult, really. They’d seen him fight first hand, and they still pretended that four men would be enough to do the trick. “I want you to go and talk to them, since they’re so strange to you. Go make friends with them. Impress upon them the importance of our mission to their home.”
“I’m not the most charming -”
“According to the legends, neither are they,” he interrupted. “If they’ll listen to anyone, they’ll listen to you.”
And if they won’t listen to anyone, he thought, then he’d get killed. And as far as his traveling companions were concerned, that was no great loss at all. Fine. He pushed off the window (there were certainly shapes moving out there, but he couldn’t make much out through the massive glass) and turned to the boy.
“Matchi of the Blackhorse,” he said with a stiff, formal tone, “your duty does call you.”
The boy sprang forward, forgetting the bruises rapidly forming around his neck and grabbing Taiden’s armor. The preparation only took a couple of minutes. This was a very light armor that didn’t even cover the whole body, something to make him a bit more imposing (not that he needed it), while giving him the freedom to move quickly and finish his opponents (whether he needed *that* remained to be seen). With a long series of screws and a heavy heave, the crew popped open the doors and Taiden jumped down to the sandy, rocky surface or what might have been a great and undiscovered land.
Undiscovered. Now that was a funny word. The land had been discovered by someone of course, claimed by someone - and some of them were already moving towards him through the bush.
He moved towards the patrol without his hands raised in surrender or even acknowledgment. He had no idea whether this truly was Pala or what these people were like. But since he didn’t truly know these people, he found it rather wise to return the favor.
MISC NOTES ▌
If you have a female led or female dominant idea and you want to do it with me (the super unicorn), just approach me with it and we'll see. No guarantees but it'd be a change of pace, anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
On a similar note, I don't mind writing F/F stories but I don't anticipate people approaching me for that unless you already know me. Men are irredeemably gross, and I say that as one of them. That said if you're interested, say hi and we'll talk about it.
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