Blood in the Canals (Venice and Vampires)

[Kage]

"N'aw shit?" Vezio muttered, the mouth of the wine bottle against his lips as he took a few slugs, not caring to reach for a glass. He didn't want to leave the sheets. At the statement from Raven telling him to move over he promptly did so and moved the sheets up against his shoulders as he sat on the 'bed'. A harsh shutter rose up his spine, teeth clicking together lightly.

"You know, I never thought I'd freeze to death... it was always falling off a building or being shanked by a hooker, really." Vezio gave a soft laugh before taking a rather long sip of the wine, as if he were inhaling the drink. He found himself to be very thirsty after waking up. Not blood thirsty, no, but the kind of thirsty he used to get sometimes when he was still human. The kind where he would have to go downstairs in his parents house to get a large glass of water and drink it all in one take.

[Purple]

Raven sat next to Vezio on the bed, pulling the blankets up to her neck. It wasn't really much warmer in there than it was in the open air outside, but just the absence of the wind caused by the moving boat helped increase the temperature considerably. Still, the girl couldn't stop shivering. Next time they stopped she was going to find a space heater, that was for certain. She found herself scooting closer to Vezio, almost subconsciously. The warmth radiating from him, while not much, was at least more than the air, or the blanket, offered at the moment.

"You can't freeze to death now, even if it feels like you're going to," she muttered, "And hookers aren't usually that violent." As she spoke though, she realized that this was the first time she'd heard him laugh since the night they first met. Given the circumstances, that was understandable, but still, it was a nice laugh, if a bit weak, a laugh she found herself wanting to hear again. Raven relied on laughter, her own or someone else's, it didn't matter, almost as much as she relied on blood. It was the only thing that would calm frazzled nerves and preserve her sanity. Well, what was left of it, anyway.

"Do you have family?" she asked suddenly, the thought occurring to her out of the blue. Perhaps it was some distant memory of her own family, back in happier times, that made her wonder, but all of a sudden she needed to know. She would have needed to know at some point anyway, of course. Families complicated things.

[Kage]

Vezio stopped another laugh short, his brown eyes shifting to look over at the black-haired girl. The smile on his lips dimmed slightly as he put the bottle between his legs, against the sheets. "Yeah... I do," he murmured, his eyes staring forwards once more, the look in them making it seem like he was far off. "Mother... Father..." he breathed quietly, his deep brown eyes giving a soft glint, the thought of his parents making him feel calm, comfortable, like anyone might have felt about them. "They live a few hours out of Venice, but recently they've been talking about moving back to South Korea... where the rest of my family is."

Vezio's eyes softened at the memory of his three week stay there, of how happy his family had been to see him, of how happy he was to see them. Old friends showed up, he laughed, messed around, and just... lived for those three weeks. It was like nothing had ever changed. Oh but it had changed... quite a lot, actually. He remembered walking around halfway through the third week, in a slightly foul mood, sluggish and tired all the time. His parents had taken him to the emergency room, to see if anything was wrong with him- if he were sick. He had gone along, not wanting to make a scene or upset his family, only to be told that he was in perfect health. The only thing that seemed to bother him more was that the doctor had taken blood from him- and he knew well enough that he needed that blood to live, and was slightly more than irked that they'd taken it.

Despite feeling sick, Vezio had managed to act more perky around his parents, friends, and family the rest of the week, to insure that they were happy. He had never felt more 'alive' in the whole five years of his vampire life than he did for those three weeks with family in South Korea.
A long sigh suddenly escaped the boy's lips, his eyes closing for a moment before opened again, eyelids low as he stared at the bottle in his hands. He remained in silence then, unable to think of anything more to say.

[Purple]

She frowned as the laughter died, immediately sorry she'd brought up the subject of family. He seemed happy thinking about them, but it was the kind of happiness that came from memories, the kind of happiness that only led to sadness. She watched him for a long moment, wondering what he was remembering but not having the guts to ask.

"How often do you see them? Your parents?" she asked instead. The real question was, how long would it be until they wondered where he was. She assumed that they didn't know what he was. It was against the rules for them to know, though of course that was the hardest rule to enforce and so the easiest to get around. Still, most vampires found it easier to avoid telling anyone. It just wasn't a conversation most people wanted to have with their families. Raven smiled bitterly at the thought of having to tell her dad that she was a vampire. Likely he would have taken it better than her brother had, but still, she was glad he'd been dead long before she had to find out.

[Kage]

"Not too often," he murmured to Raven in response. "I visit them every now and then, but they know I'm busy," here the vampire used air quotes when the word 'busy' had been spoken. "So... you know...." He shrugged lightly before closing his eyes and giving another sigh, this one just a release of air in his lungs. Another silence followed, but soon he had a question of his own for Raven.

"-How about you? Family, I mean..." Vezio turned his eyes (and them only) to look at the girl, raising to bottle of wine to his mouth, parting his lips to let the thick drink flow into his mouth. The taste itself was different than the regular bland, dirt taste he got from eating regular food (which was a sad fact to him, because he missed tasting all the things he used to love).

[Purple]

"Family for me is...well it's weird. My whole family is full of Slayers. It goes back forever as far as I know, on both sides," Raven began, "My mom was American, and for some reason she was just never really into the Slayer business like her parents and my father were. Well I guess I shouldn't say that. Dad didn't like killing vampires as much as he liked researching them. He wanted to find a 'cure' for them, some way to turn them back into humans. I won't even tell you how many headless corpses came through the house when he thought he was close to a breakthrough." She paused and drew in a deep breath. Creepy as that last statement was, that had been the happiest time in her childhood, when her father was working on his projects and her mother was, if not sharing is enthusiasm, at least humoring him.

"Eventually Mom ran off to England. Don't ask why because I never knew exactly. One day she was there and my mom, the next she was packing her stuff and leaving. She was always doing shit like that, just running away from problems instead of dealing with them," she said, shrugging. Try as she might to be nonchalant about it, there was a hint of bitterness in her voice. She had been twelve at the time, too young to understand completely but too old to forget it. She might have forgiven her mother for leaving had it been just her, but she saw what it did to her brother, who was only eight at the time. He just kept waiting for Mamma to come home, and well, Mamma never did. He waited for at least a year, and the day reality finally came crashing down on him broke her heart.

"Dad trained me and Ben, my little brother, to be Slayers, and I started doing missions when I was fourteen or so," Raven continued, pulling herself out of her memories. She knew that if she let herself think about it too much she would never finish the story. "Dad kept on with his research, even though he never really got anywhere. Not long after Ben had started missions, Dad was trying to 'observe' a group of vampires where they'd been living. The Slayers wanted someone watching them anyway, since vampires grouped together usually means trouble, and Dad volunteered. Unfortunately he got a little too close one night, and they got freaked out and attacked him. Seven against one, he didn't stand a chance."

Her dark hair was falling in her face now, but she hardly noticed. She was years away, her eyes staring at the floor without seeing any part of it. "I was nineteen then, and Ben was still fifteen, but we went with my two uncles and a few cousins and killed the vampires, who were stupid enough to stay in the same house," she said, "We lived with my grandparents after that, and life went back to normal, more or less. And then...then I became a vampire, and I haven't seen or spoken to any of them since." Raven drew in and let out a deep breath as she came back to the present, looking over at Vezio with a shrug. The worst part of her story wasn't the middle where both her parents disappeared but the ending, when she did, which was perhaps why she skimmed over it the most. She could talk about her dad dying and her mom leaving, but even after years she hated mentioning the last time she'd seen her brother. That was what hurt the most.

[Kage]

"...Sorry..." Vezio murmured quietly, handing the girl the bottle as he stared at the sheets covering his feet. He glanced at Raven for a moment before taking the gray beanie off of his head and sticking it on her own, purposefully pulling it down to cover her eyes. He gave a small laugh at the sight before looking forward once again. He had a feeling it would only get cooler because it was near dawn (now that he took the time to notice).

"...How much longer 'till Greece?" He asked, but lifted his eyebrows after that. "And what are we going to do when we get there?" The vampire questioned the older girl. "I mean... They'll find us sooner or later, whether they're from Italy or not...." He started, however, he lifted his head when he heard a distant noise. It was clear to him that a vampire's senses were heightened a whole lot more than a humans' was, so it might have sounded closer than it actually was, but he could have sworn...
"- I think I hear a speedboat." He stated, his head lifted, orange hair slightly messy from recently taking off his hat. "...Yeah- I definitely hear a speedboat." Vezio muttered, looking around with his deep brown eyes.

[Purple]

Raven took a drink from the wine bottle, laughing when she found a hat over her eyes. She pushed it up so that she could see and looked over at a Vezio, as if to say "Why?" She thought for a moment, adding up an estimate of how long it was going to take them to reach the island she had in mind for their hiding place. It had been awhile since she'd been to her family's vacation house, and she could only hope that had been even longer since Ben had been there. Legally they shared the house, as their father had wanted them to, but when they had visited it with their grandparents after Dad died, it was just too full of memories to go back. She had gone there right after her change to a vampire, just because it was the only place she knew to go, hiding there until she got up the nerve to go back to Venice.

"It could take as long as two days, depending on how often we stop and for how long. The quickest I've ever made the trip is fifteen hours, and that was with no stops," she said, sighing. "We're going to hide on one of the islands. The Greek Slayers don't like to cooperate with the Italian ones, so if we're lucky, it will take them a long time to find us. If we're not, we'll go to Athens, ditch the boat, and get on a plane to somewhere." Where exactly, she didn't know. She would have time to think about that later. Hopefully.

She cocked her head to one side, listening to the sounds of a speedboat approaching. It was moving much faster than the cops had been, and the likelihood that they had already turned around and begun back the other direction on their patrol was unlikely. Besides, the engine sounded bigger, more powerful than what the police had. It sounded like a boat designed to outrun anything, a boat designed for getaways. It seemed to be getting closer, slowing down as it approached. Whoever was driving the boat, they had seen the little Italian vessel, and they were curious.

"Well this could be interesting," she muttered. Raven slid open the cabin door and stepped outside, spotting the speedboat just off the port bow, moving as if they were trying to pull the boats up side by side. She stepped towards the steering wheel and dropped to the deck a moment later as a bullet whizzed past her head. She was up a half second later, quickly firing a shot that most likely missed as she lunged for the wheel. She twisted it sharply to the right, causing the back side of her boat to slam into the front of theirs, a motion that may or may not have caused the next two bullets to lodge in her shoulder rather than somewhere else. "Vezio!" she yelled as she pushed the gas pedal to the floor and sped them away from the little island, gritting her teeth against the pain.

[Kage]

"I'm here- I got it!" Vezio called, holding the gun and pulling the trigger, the gun facing the water. He heard the dry click before holding the gun out and giving off three shots. He clearly saw two of the bullets stop in one of the man's heads, and the others collarbone. "Are you okay- lemme' get those out, it would suck if the wound healed with them still in there." The vampire turned and bent over slightly, standing beside the older girl and swiping his hand against the blood dripping from her arm.

Almost immediately his fang elongated and his eyes swirled to a deep red color, but he ignored it. Instead he leaned his face towards the wound and parted his teeth, literally biting into one of the holes in Raven's shoulder and clamping his teeth around a bullet, pulling it out and spitting it to the side before repeating the action in the other. He wasted no time in trailing his tongue along the wounds, no doubt healing them up faster than they would have on their own with his saliva. When he pulled away a shutter sped up his spine, causing him to bite his thumb with his regular teeth, looking away and behind their speeding boat to see if the others were following.

Vezio repeated the process with the bullets that he had done when it was handed to him the first time before putting it in his back pocket. "We'll need to stop at an ammo store, too...." He muttered blandly.

[Purple]

Raven's hands gripped the steering wheel hard as Vezio worked on her shoulder, trying to keep the boat from veering off course due to lack of focus. A shudder ran through her when he was finished that she told herself was from pain rather than the feeling of his tongue against her skin. She had had bullets pulled out of her before, and she had been bitten by vampires before, but the two had never been combined that she could remember, and it was an incredibly strange experience. Gradually she allowed herself to relax as she felt the wounds begin to heal, the muscles and skin knitting themselves back together. The pain faded seconds after the last tiny scratches and finally Raven leaned back against the seat with a tired sigh.

"Probably drug runners afraid we'd find their stash," she muttered, glancing behind her to make sure that the other boat wasn't following them. They hadn't moved, and there was only one man still standing on the deck. It seemed Vezio's shots had been good. "There's a little town in Montenegro that's known for hunting. We can stock up on ammo there."

"Oh, and thanks," she said, adding with a wry smile, "That's one less you owe me."

[Kage]

"Yeah, I guess it is." Vezio muttered, pulling his thumb away from his lips and putting it in his pockets as he sat down beside Raven, watching the water seemingly part from the front of the boat. He remained in silence, merely watching the girl's hands on the wheel. A sort of itching thought became persistent, so much so that it began to annoy him. He envisioned himself say what the thought was, as it kept nagging him to speak the words, but they didn't come out. Finally, after a bit of hesitation, the younger vampire looked over at Raven's arm, at where the wounds had been.

"You... lost a good bit of blood from that.... If... if you feel the need to... Mm... feed," Vezio hesitated for another moment, his eyebrows pulling down slightly, as if he were trying himself to figure out what he was attempting to say. ".... I wouldn't, ah... mind if you needed to bite... me- I mean...." He averted his eyes and rubbed the side of his neck in a nervous manner. He knew what he wanted to say, but it didn't exactly come out the way he'd imagined it would.... Damn.

[Purple]

"No, I-I really shouldn't," she said, but the words didn't match her eyes, which had turned a deep red at just the thought of a meal. She had been a little tired before, and after losing so much blood, she knew she couldn't go much longer. Still, she couldn't take another vampire's blood, couldn't steal what he needed to live. Granted, humans needed blood to live too, and vampires stole it from them all the time. But no, she could get a squirrel or something on the next island they saw. If she could even catch one at the moment, that was. And squirrel? That was just not at all appealing. But Vezio? She couldn't make a meal out of Vezio. That was just weird. But he offered...but he clearly felt awkward offering. And she would feel awkward accepting....but he did offer...and she did need it...

"But I mean if you, if you really wouldn't mind..." Raven said, opting to look off to the side rather than meet his eyes. Damn

((I was so tempted to put a >.> face after what she said XD))

[Kage]

"I-I don't mind, really... I had quite a lot before we ran." His eyes remained averted, trying not to think about sucking that one hooker dry before tearing her to shreds. In fact, he kind of felt... fat. If a vampire could get fat, that was. Maybe gluttonous was a better word- it seemed to fit a bit better. He had eaten more than he would have normally, and therefore could spare a good bit, to be honest.

Feeling a slight bit more confident in his decision, he nodded lightly to himself and looked back at the girl. "Yeah... I wouldn't mind, I'd rather this than you feeling like crap until we find a decent meal." Vezio muttered, his brown eyes staring at her shoulder, unable to look her in the face just then. "And like I said, I had a lot before... so I doubt it would take any 'life-blood' away from me. I've got more than I need." The vampire's eyes glanced up at Raven's before averting again. He would wait for another response before he showed his neck (currently covered by a scarf he'd put on right before the shooting).

[Purple]

"If you're sure," she said, slowly easing up on the gas to slow down the boat. When eventually they had drifted to a stop she killed the engine, both to save gas and avoid attracting unnecessary attention. Raven turned on the seat so that she was facing the other vampire, hoping he meant it when he said he would be okay if she took some of his blood. Everything she knew about vampires said that he would be, but that didn't stop her from worrying. "Thank you," she said softly, finally looking him in the eye as she waited for him to remove his scarf.

[Kage]

"I'm sure...." Vezio murmured. "And no problem." He responded, unwrapping the scarf from around his neck and letting it fall to their feet. He turned his eyes to the right, tilting his head slightly, brushing a hand against his neck as a sudden chill in the air (as if it weren't cold enough) caused goosebumps to rise on his skin.
The young vampire swallowed lightly and kept his eyes to the side, lowering his hand to the seats and waiting. To be honest, he'd never felt so 'exposed' as he had with his neck craned to the right, showing to another vampire.