THERE IS SOMETHING IN THE NIGHT AIR THAT STIRS A WHITE HOT HUNGER DEEP IN HIS CORE. HE KNOWS. HE KNOWS. BUT HE DWELLS ON IT IN LONGING, IN SOFT YEARNING, AN ADDICT WEANED FROM THE ENCROACHING FIX – TANTALIZING, SWEET, METALLIC. HE CLOSED HIS EYES. HE BREATHED IT IN. HIS TONGUE PRESSES TO THE ROOF OF HIS MOUTH, TO THE CORNERS, TO THE EMPTY SPACES BETWEEN THAT REMEMBER WHAT IT IS TO TASTE. HOW HIS JAWS REMEMBER WHAT IT FELT. IT SIFTS BETWEEN EACH DEEP BREATH, EACH ONE MUCH DEEPER THAN THE FORMER, UNTIL IT IS ALL THAT LINGERS IN HIS NOSE AND HIS MOUTH AND THE SPACE BEHIND HIS EYES – IT SEARCHES THE HOLLOW OF HIS THROAT AND CARVES A TOMB IN THE PIT OF HIS BELLY WHERE IT WAITS. HUNGER PULSING. HE TAKES IT IN LIKE A LONG DRAG ON THE LAST STICK IN THE PACK. TOO SWEET. TOO RICH. BUT IT IS SLICK AS HOT IRON, FULL AND LUSCIOUS AND TOO LIGHT! TOO LIGHT! HIS EYES SNAP OPEN AGAIN WHEN THE BREEZE SUBSIDES TO NOTHING, AND HUMIDITY IS ALL THAT REMAINS. 

A SMALL GROAN PULLED MEEKLY FROM THE PIT OF HIS THROAT.
HE REMEMBERS.

IT WASHES OVER HIM LIKE A FEVER AND BEFORE HE CAN STOP IT, HE IS MOVING – HE IS PACING, STEADY AND ELEGANT FLOW, AS CALCULATED AND QUIET AS HUNGER COULD BE. HE CANNOT HELP THE WAY HE THINKS OF IT – DRIPPING, DECADENT, THE RIND OF SPLIT FLESH AND GNARLED BONE, THE WAY IT GLISTENS IN THE NOT-MOONLIGHT WET AND WARM AND FRESH. HOW FRESH IT SMELLS. HIS THIRST CURLS IN HIS BELLY LIKE A HEAVY VIPER ROLLING BACK INTO ITSELF, AND HIS LIPS CURL BACK FROM IVORN FANGS DAMP WITH SALIVATION – DESPERATION. THEY ARE SLICK AND SHARP, EACH PAIR OF THEM TOO TIGHTLY KNIT BEHIND THE PEEL OF FLESH. HE IS SUDDENLY ALL TOO AWARE OF THEM, BUT THIS IS FINE. IT IS ALL FINE. HE IS SHAMELESS, PREDATORY.

WHEN THEY MEET, THEY MEET AS THEY ARE: TWO WOLVES AT THE HEEL OF A KILL.

AT FIRST, HE SEES HER BUT HE DOES NOT SEE HER. SHE IS A SILHOUETTE, AN OBJECT, AN OBSTACLE, SOME UNDULATING, GROANING THING HIS EYES PASS IN A BLUR. HE SEES THE CADAVER, AND IT IS ALL HE CAN CARE FOR IN THAT MOMENT. (HE DOESN'T CARE FOR ITS DIAMOND PATTERN AND ITS GLOSSY SHEEN. IT IS RED. RED. RED. RED –) A POOL OF ICHOR DRIPS AT THE TUCK OF ITS NECK, AND HE IS ENTERTAINED WITH THE THOUGHT THAT THERE IS EVEN STEAM THAT RISES FROM THE WOUND – FRESH, HOT. AND WAITING.

ANOTHER STEP AND HIS HOOF CLICKS AGAINST THE OBSIDIAN STONES THAT LINE THE CLEARING. HE CAN ALMOST FEEL HER HEAT BUT IT IS NOT FOR CLOSENESS – IT IS SOMETHING AKIN TO FURY, BUT SOMETHING MUCH MORE PRIMAL. IT IS ONLY THIS HEAT THAT BRINGS HIM TO HER ATTENTION, BUT SHE IS STILL YET AN OBSTACLE. KNITTED TEETH, LIPS PEELED BACK OVER THEIR SHARPENED HINDS AND GLISTENING WET WITH RED, MINGLING WITH THE GREY, THE SOFTNESS OF HER NECK, GROWN RIGID WITH WARE. SHE DRAWS BACK INTO HERSELF, ALL WRETCHEDNESS, ALL WILDS, ALL AGGRESSION. SHE GROWLS, AND HIS OWN DEEP TIMBER OF A GROWL RETURNS THE FEROCITY, CRAWLING FROM THE PIT OF HIS THROAT.

ALONG HIS SPINE, HIS HAIR DREW ON END – FAINTLY REMINISCENT TO A TIME HE RECALLS HIS WOLFISH NATURE, ANOTHER LIFE THAT BETRAYS HIM IN HORSE FLESH. HE GUARDED HIS THROAT, HIS CROWN PULLING SHADOWS ACROSS HIS NAPE AS LIPS WRINKLED BACK FROM THE GLINT OF HIS FANGS THAT CAN ALL BUT ACHE WITH WANT. THERE ARE SHARP THINGS IN THE DARK, TOO.

IT TAKES A MOMENT BEFORE HE IS WILLING TO ACCEPT THE SCENE BEFORE HIM – FOCUSED ON THE DRIP, DRIP, THE SOFTNESS OF THE SOUND IT MAKES WHEN THE BLOOD LEAVES HER LIPS DESPAIRINGLY, PADDING AGAINST THE GROUND WASTED. IT IS ONLY THEN HE BREATHES IN THE AMBIANCE, AND LIKENS HIMSELF LESS LIKE A MONSTER AND MORE LIKE A DEVIL. HE DOES NOT LOOSEN ENTIRELY, NOT RELEASE THE GROUND HE HAS CLAIMED OR THE ANTICIPATION OF BATTLE THAT RISES IN HIS BONES. BUT HE SOFTENS SLIGHTLY INTO THE FAINT SEMBLANCE OF SOMETHING HUMBLE. HIS EARS RELEASED FROM BENEATH HIS HORNS, AND HIS SHOULDERS ROCKED BACK WITH A DEEP INHALE. "something tells me you're not the sharing type." WARM, SMOOTH, HIS TONES ARE A STEP AWAY FROM THE GROWLING TIMBRE THAT HAD SCRAPED THE EDGES OF HIS THROAT. HIS WORDS ARE SMOKY, HOT TRACES OF FOREIGN DIALECT - SOMETHING ROUGH AND PREDATORY BUT ALL THE WHILE DEBONAIR. HIS LIPS EASE AROUND THE SYLLABLES WITH A TOUCH OF SOMETHING SIMILAR TO SOLTERRAN RUGGEDRY, BUT TOO CONSUMED WITH UNDERLYING ELOQUENCE. "neither am i." BUT IT IS NOT A THREAT - A GRIN THREATENS THE CORNER OF HIS SNARLING LIPS, BUT HIS EYES ARE FAR TOO STEADY UPON HER.

A word leaves her lips but it doesn't match – it doesn't match – it doesn't match the curvature of her neck or the ferocity of her eyes, not the sharpness of her teeth or the way the eerie light falls on her harshest contours like a threat. It is disembodied, a graven crow from some distant naiad, a giggling nymph dredged from the undertow of dis-heavenly leagues. It is soft, a feigned bit of startle, wonder, cradled in the innocence of some childish figure. But it does not match. He watches the way her teeth – not her lips, no – the way her teeth form the word, and if it hadn't been for this measure of ware he may have missed it. It undoubtedly, though the idea was an otherworldly thing, hardly possible, came from her. his eyes moved from the soft curvature in her mouth (was it not something rougher, something less curiously O'd before?) to the blood that dripped from her chin. The one, the two, the three that hit the ground with rhythmic certainty. Pupils dilate; it's hard to ignore the fact that his mouth tastes like an awful nothing, a cruel sort of nothing that begs for flavor. It went unnoticed until now, now the hunger rises with a vengeance and he can only think of warm meat, of blood, of red, red –

the twilight shifts and she is no longer a wolf – she is a girl, cunning and tender, full of refined edges that speak endlessly of touchable softness, of magnanimous curvature, a delineation that unravels itself slick as python coils. He watches with an unspoken wonder that treads the depths of his eyes but is lost to the rest of his face – that which loosened and tightened all at once, so that the shadows dripped from the edges and loomed in the corners, waiting and biding with a curious inhibition. She was no longer just an obstacle ; how oddly the carcass seemed to fade into the backdrop as he beheld her change, so much that he nearly forgot his parched tongue or the way it stuck to the roof of his mouth with impatience. She was a pretty thing at the bottom of a deep well, something shiny, glittering and harmoniously wanton – and she bid him to lean just a little closer.

and what a thought ; he considered doing so, so that his shoulders twitched with the anticipation of movement and his spine unkinked just – just slightly. Warmth razed where her eyes roved, and while he watched her warily for any lingering moment they dared creep along the softness of his neck, the curvature of his throat where veins pulsed with virulent ichor. But they did not hold to any particular place of vulnerability – they simply drank, they roamed with conquering ambition every framed crook of his musculature. And when he met her gaze he wasn't sure if the wonder was with mirth or hunger, but he understood the latter well and almost wished it more. O, he wondered how sharp her teeth were, their knitted ferocity and reddened shadows, how they glinted and glimmered, how they could rake against his flesh and sink with effortless abandon –

and he would let her drink, and drink, wouldn't he? Until she was full, until it was his blood that dripped from her maw, those satisfied jaws slaked in titan blood that tasted like copper and gold and virtue –

no. no? no.

something in the light changes as it passes her eyes, and their verdant hue reminds him of the woman in the scarab. But these are different. They are cold.

His hunger drops to the pit of his stomach like a stone, and from it the hot torment of doubled fervor. He allowed his jaw to slack, an attempt to wet his tongue and lips that feel too, too dry. If it hadn't been for lapse of memory, he may not have even heard her speak. Her voice lulls like fawn-ish effete, sweet and lacquered and o too cool. Erasmus is a predator. He knows the sound. But his body can not help but relinquish from its sharpened angles and crooked spires to the smoothness of a more handsome barbarity, its metal is melted to a curvature framed by the shadows that hung from the trees, tangible and painstakingly mortal. she offers - her neck bows in the light and the way it moves is like softened petals unfurling from a bloom; tender, honeyed, he watches the lines draw across as swift as skating. his lips are tight against the press of his fangs. it is a request. it is a demand.

but he is selfish.

in a thought, he closes around her throat like a starving hound does upon a slab of meat - depraved, shameless, tongue searching and prying the pulse that rises from arterial webs - and he drinks her like fine wine. but instead he swallows, and his nose flares with the scent of raw, fresh gore. to dream. to need. his tongue slicks across his fangs and he chuckles quietly. "name's erasmus." smooth, collected baritone unravels from the quiver of his lips and his eyes prick the spot that thrums against the flesh of her nape. he swoons, silently, after musing a quartet of syllables that nearly stumble over each other. each thought is more troubling than the last. furious and cold. a taste. just a taste? he turned, angling towards her just a few steps, maintaining the tense distance between them that meant the difference between civility and fatality. for a moment, his gaze returns on the carcass, but they can't help but return to something fresher. a deep breath, and he wonders what her skin tastes like. she smells of brine and sweetened musk, opportune and decadent ; his tongue curls with anticipation, remembering a too-faint tinge of iron. "are we strangers, still?" the utterance is smoke and craving lost to formalities, something husky and hanging desperately by a thread - it is fiendish charm teething on appetite, and it begs to be whispered against her neck. pressed to it. carved into it. 

somewhere in the jungle, the drone carries too weakly for him to hear, and he just almost forgets that there ever was a relic to be searched for. 

And he is close – lustfully close – painfully close – bodily close – too close – so close that his lips knit against the dryness of his fangs and his tongue curls hungrily against the roof of his mouth and there is a hotness in his core that stirs too much like a fire. But it is not his heart, no, oh no, he is not just a boy stammering in the brilliance of a beautiful girl, he is not lost in the press of pheromones like a hopeless thing tossed to fate. When she moves, it is not like a hapless paramour that he leans into the horrible gap she leaves, a space filled with wonder and want and hunger. It is not like a cherub lover that he breathes her in, it is not a fluttering that meets the inhale in his lungs like butterflies and sweetness, like venusian trance, like aphrodite worshipped. No, the thing that moves in his belly is not butterflies or nerves, it is a sharp pang of anticipation, the horror of feralty, like a feeling that he will starve like he has never felt before. It is infuriating. To step into that space that feels more hollow than it should, to press his teeth against an empty coldness where he knows warmth once stood waiting. And that thing that creeps between his ribs lunges then, hot and sharp, and he cannot help but fill that space with a growl. It is low, quiet, almost a sound of contentment. The smell of blood is not her own, and that is disconcerting. It smells colder by the second, dry, faint, and he suddenly remembers the carcass between them.

His eyes drop to the body and he thinks what an awful thing it would be to waste.

But oh, he knows her blood is warmer, and he wonders too much more how different it is. What does it taste like? Is it hot iron, salt and tart and full and strong? Is it nectarous warmth, a lull of sensations too sweet to bear, too soft to stop, too delectable that he forgets where his lips end and her flesh begins? Does it pulse madly with a resilient ferocity? Does it thrum like the sea, patient and perilous? Another breath and he tattoos her silhouette on the back of his lids, and his tongue moves over its seat to taste, to dream of taste, to test appetite with wild credence. It is a resounding need and fervor rushes in his veins, almost incorrigible for his reckless desires. When he opens his eyes again she is another measure from him – another length of closeness that he dares brink with that predatory guile that moves along his body like arcing static. She withdraws and he follows. Her every step back is another drop in the pit of his starvation, like the click of her heel is a shallow plop at the bottom of a gaping well. He is dizzy, and his eyes follow her with a bloodlusting stupor that veils his golden cresecent iris with a film of depraved longing. Just a bite, his blood whines so loud in his ears, and he is almost panting it aloud, just a kiss, just one. But his teeth know better, and his throat smothers the notion to speak. 

He does not care to be entranced by how wild his name sounds in dancing on the heat of her lips, but watches the way flesh of her throat rises and falls meekly with each syllable. The crook between her cheek and nape quivers in the shade, and he is contemplating the art of its arch when she tugs (too gently) on his mane. When he looks back to her eyes, the memory of the girl at the scarab fades. These are a different green after all, are they not? These are not the same precious green, these are precarious, these are aloft with looming violences, as dedicated to uncertainty as the sea, the sea! What he would do to escape the damnable thing, but it is just beyond her now (how long has he been walking after her, how far has he followed her?) and roars at her back. And her grin is flashing hot and cold, and when his eyes move to sea the way the waves cascade and froth mist at her heels he cannot help but despair – anguish, how misery fills him when the look in her gaze is no longer a tease but a question, a request. To swim? His tongue presses the studded edges of his teeth and he moves to shake his head no, no, he has had enough of the sea. He wants nothing more of it, he doesn't want to smell it anymore, to hear the awful thing, to stare into its distance until he can no longer see where it ends and wonders, indeed, if it does at all. He wants to stop and tell her no, but...

What a waste, to turn against the way the moon falls upon the shore so bone white and smooth, to shrug away from this naiad shrinking into the oceanic backdrop like she belongs (oh gods, does she) to the horror of the devil's reef and the sand and the beauty that lay before him like a gift. He has never been more aware of the way his heart pulses with the threat of hunger, and the more space that creeps between them, the more his despair feels more like fury. Its cold weight and knot in his throat is exchanged for the sweltering uprising of a frenzy, and his expression shifts from a civil want to something darker, something crueler, and how he wants to grab her by the throat. Drag her from the watery recesses of the encroaching waves. Curl his teeth and appease their ache, kneading her flesh in an epiphany so reckless and so necessary. What would blood look like, on the bone white shore of this nightmareish island? Would the sand drink it in like it has been centuries since it has been fed? Would it glitter on the surface like a many precious rubies? Would it blacken in the moonlight, or fade to dust carried on the seabreeze? Was it hers? Was it his? 

Would he like that?

The heat of his flesh is pins and needles grating on the essence of mortality. He is cloying shadow and metallic brawn, and he is not aware of the way his once softened curves have broken to faint notions of deviance and furor. He is a myriad of shifting angles, blackened, jagged edges that stare back at her with a longing as old as time itself. And it is only romantic if you yourself are a monster. For a moment he is lost for words because he cannot help but notice the way his blood is screaming against his material where it once hushed whispers in the pulse of his veins. A need, a need, there is a new hum that pervades his mind and it has everything and nothing to do with the jungle behind him. It is pure, unadulterated craving, and he loathes how the space between them is so ungodly empty. He thinks for a moment that if he dares open his mouth, it will only be a growl or a roar in similar fashion to another, and a demand of that nature that was once a request. It is no longer just a bite. He feels like time is slipping from his grasp, as if her blood too could grow cold, and the thought is awful. 

"show me." And the utterance is breathy demand, he growls! He sighs! How his voice is dredged along his throat as rough as rock-bottom, tired and restless, so clotted with a desperate hunger that the shadow of the words sounds more like let me in, and his gaze is studded with a budding impatience. His eyes are suddenly dark and piercing, prodding and ever darkly ravenous, and when the hollow space between them becomes so cold he thinks of stale veins, he steps forward again with a hotness of pursuit that is everything sultry and anything unlike a gentleman.

but he doesn't know what she is.

It is always the sea.

It shows him then, when she glimmers a grin so wild he has only seen its glint in the depths of muddy waters once before, and recoils against the waves that bath her greedily. They lap at her curves, drag against her muscles, pulling at the fine tendrils of cream-white hair whose salt-rind is like moonlight waning against the froth. And then – and then – there is more, and there is less, and there is ocean that stares at him with all the wonder of a world. There is not an ocean between them, because she is the ocean, and when the water bubbles up against his hooves and hisses, come in, come in, he takes a step away.

He watches.

He watches as she unfurls, not unlike a flower – as blooming, silvery petals unfold in the moonlight, so does she unravel. First there are legs and waves and then waves and then fins and waves, and Erasmus is unsure of whether it is her or a great serpent that wags in the waters. And he does not impress that she is beautiful or horrifying, when his eyes take to every fall in her curves and every wisp of frills that rise from them. There is no expression that cannot divulge both, or either – his breathing laxes in his chest, and he looks at her like he is looking into the dark, fathomless leagues of jetted waters.

His mother has warned of deep forests whose mouth of pines opens jagged and broad for young men too bold for their own good. She has warned him of the skies that open for thunder and the cracking of dragons' wings, and she has warned him of rattling snakes and jeering coyotes and all the things that eat and ruin on those great, desolate plains. But never had she warned him of hurling black waves set aflame in the moonlight, and the way sharp things wait for him just out of the shallows, or the way beautiful women can become monsters in the lap of a furious ocean. So he is unsure if she is a god or a woman or a monster, but knows that all three can be worshiped with the same veneration.

When she begs him to the waters he contemplates deeply as his eyes will roam, but they can't be steadied to her because they've forgotten her pulse and the warmth that lays beneath the surface. And he moves, but only slightly, because the waters rush to him just as swiftly as he has. They collide against his feet and rush over his legs, crash against his knees and drag the sand from beneath him. All along they hiss, come in, come in, and she says, the water's nice, and he thinks of how cool it feels on his hot skin. How cool it feels, its vapor rushed against his belly that churns with a great hunger.

And oh, gods, is he hungry.

He remembers then, and he can't help but lap in the moonlight and the silver and the brine that rests against her neck when the breeze tangles her hair damply against it. His blood is singing and hers is roaring like the ocean when he takes another step and thinks that the salt of the sea on his tongue when he breathes must not be too unlike the taste of her blood and the thought is as refreshing as it is terrifying. Because he has never tasted anything like her but the precious hot ichor of young men too bold for their own good.

But before he can move more, he is laughing. Its sound is cold, hollow, and dark as a morbid lull on the breeze.

A predator cannot help but think of the ways of weakness, of vulnerability, in its prey. And as he watches her tail whip against the waves and she float among them like a ghost, he thinks of how he had fumbled in the ocean like an adolescent thrown into a pit of snakes. He then thinks of running swiftly over The Wilds, with the wind and the moon and the blood across his chest. Would she run swiftly, across the sand and the brush and the jungle green, as beautifully and tragically as she drifted in the sea like a lounging dryad? He stopped laughing, and a grin dared to tread where his once desolate expression bore her with wonder. It stretched, handsome and devilish, his fangs kneading the soft line of his lips. "too cold, for me." 

Not without a wink and a crooked smile he swung, dancing as gracefully as a warrior may, and snatched the limp cat from the sands. Without further hesitation, he dove into the dark of that humming wood, carrying her once-meal far from the roaring sea that sounded too much like a tomb. He thundered on, on, the great cat abreast as it hung from its scruff; and while he dreamt amusedly of angry, beautiful women who floundered on the beach like gasping fish, he was not often one to look back.