"Insignificantly enough / we both have significant others."
12079 / 50000 words. 24% done!
I am just barely ahead of my "should be"; clearly this means I will have to be Super Productive tomorrow in order to restore my in-case-of-emergency head start. Also, grocery shopping and further job-hunting and Northgate.
In the meantime, have an excerpt! Because why the hell not. *strokes it carefully* Okay, actually there are plenty reasons why not, I have not let ANYONE read any of this yet except for Crazy Muslim Guy On The Bus--but now I'm letting MANY people read it! Because that makes sense. Really.
Well, at least it saves me E-mailing it to the usual suspects.
Nox believed in a higher power solely because her name was too damn ironic otherwise, and because no matter where she went in life it was always the same damn story.
“Bloodsucking scum,” she said as she swung out with her axe.
“Words hurt, you know,” the vampire accused, jumping back and narrowly avoiding being beheaded. He was a handsome bastard, strong-jawed and dark-eyed and Nox’s least favorite version of the breed, because it was one thing to have to save a girl from an ordinary-looking guy who was coming on too strong and another thing entirely to have to save a girl from a really hot guy who was really into her, thanks, why don’t you fuck off skank.
Very little was as annoying as having to give someone a concussion so they’d let you save their life.
“Fuck you,” she suggested pleasantly, and this time when the vampire dodged the swing he crashed right into the wall she’d backed him into, and that meant he couldn’t dodge the next swing. Nox smiled beatifically as the axe sliced through clean and the other went down in a clattering of hollow bones, skin bursting into dust and rot. Not a very old one, but generally any vampire who genuinely believed the best hunting ground out there was a rave hadn’t been around long.
She almost wished he’d gotten in a nibble off his would’ve-been dinner before she’d gotten there, really. There was nothing in the world as pathetically funny as watching a vampire trip on X.
“All clear?” Lux asked from the mouth of the alley--somehow vamp fights never wound up anywhere else--and Nox let the axe drop to her side as she glanced back at him. Her big brother. Or little one, sort of. Well, he wasn’t much taller than her but he was broader, and the niggling nonspecifics of the rest really didn’t matter.
“There’s a human,” she told him, pointing at the unconscious girl against the far wall of the alley with her weapon, and Lux’s expression immediately softened from amusement to concern as he strode over and dropped into a crouch to check on her. Nox pursed her lips in vague annoyance--she hadn’t hit her that hard--and let the axe fall back to her side.
Lux examined the girl carefully, his hands ghosting over the full length of her body and his eyes unfocused, looking at something Nox couldn’t see. Magic stuff, which she’d never given that much of a damn about because Lux could do it and that was all that mattered. He was probably reading the girl’s aura for damage or something.
“She’ll be okay,” he said, straightening the awkward tangle of the girl’s legs and gently turning her neck so her head would lie at a less uncomfortable angle. She was alive right now because of Nox, but because of Lux and his healing hands she’d probably feel like a million bucks in the morning.
“Slap her with a fog,” Nox ordered, knowing that the post-danger high of surviving an encounter with a vampire was a bad, bad idea to let a kid like this one experience. Sometimes it didn’t matter, mostly people convinced themselves it’d just been some psycho with a fetish and they’d been saved by an ordinary Good Samaritan, but no one who felt the need to party with that many drugs in their system could be trusted not to get overexcited and go looking for more.
Didn’t help that vamps could do that whole “bite = orgasm” thing when they felt like it, either.
“No problem,” Lux said easily. His fingers brushed feather-light over the girl’s forehead for just an instant as he stood up, casting a blur across her memories--he’d gotten so fast at that--and his free hand was already going for his latest cell phone before he’d even finished straightening up. He called an ambulance, like usual, and Nox like usual bundled up the vampire’s remains and went over the alley with a fine-toothed comb to make sure nothing suspicious was getting left behind, and like usual nothing was except a few strands of hair and blood, and that burned up beneath Lux’s fingers just fine. Any evidence her eyes couldn’t find no one else was finding either.
At least, no one who wasn’t like Lux, and over one punk vampire barely past fledgling, that wasn’t going to be a concern. Magic-users and vamps tended to hate each others’ guts as a matter of course.
Generally speaking, Nox remembered, licking teeth that weren’t technically fangs, no matter what they wanted to be.