Thread: Lead Us Not Into Temptation (Rave & darkangel76)

Rml felt it again. He'd almost forgotten what day it was, and the lapse in memory was a blessing turned curse. There was nothing like that sudden beat of the heart, that took with it all self-control. How fragile he must have been, to be doing one thing in a moment, and the next his mind is consumed. This need, this overwhelming craving for the taste of the mortals that surrounded him. They walked by, oblivious, blind, like sheep herded into the maws of the wolf by the very devil that cast the beast from the sky. A mocking breath was exhaled from his nose-- that was not the most honest thought. This Fallen was not cast down. He was not yanked, nor was he dragged. He was tempted. He was brought down here by nothing except his own will. He'd bitten the forbidden fruit, but it was not God who forbade it this time, but his very opposite. A minute. That's about all the time he had before everyone in sight became prey. 'Hey, Ram! Come here man the game's about to start!' The voice called out from the bar across the street, just as the Angel stepped onto it. He went by Ram, and so they'd known who he was. Six days out of the week, at least. Sunday Night Football, replayed for the drunkards and the divorced in hours of the night that the sun began to defy with its rising. Rml had saved these one last. The area around this bar was picked clean. For twenty miles in each direction, the Fallen had traveled, feasted, purged-- but proximity was running out. This town-- this was his town. This is where he lived, and you don't shit where you eat. This would end up being the last night he stayed in this place. He would feast here, and he would leave. Somewhere far. Somewhere where he could recruit better people than the slops in this good for nothing town. Somewhere where he could purge, and not wipe out half the population. The humans didn't deserve this. Or maybe they did. Thoughts of morality left him the moment the hunger struck. ...Pour me a beer then, Jake. The Fallen's voice was deep, reverberating to those who heard him closely, and those would be the last words spoken to the bartender, and his customers within. His feet pulled him across the street, and once inside, his arm swung back so the door could lock behind him. Jake, the bartender and owner of this place-- a chubby man, balding through the middle of his head. He was nothing but good to Ram ever since he moved here. He fed the patrons thirst. He listened to their drunken stories. He struggled to pay his debts. Jake would have no more problems after this night. The minute was up. Evidence of what transpired inside would first be heard, not seen. Had the glass not been sound proof, echoed screams, loud enough that you'd think they tore through the throat as they escaped, ran rampant within the bar. Blood splattered and spilled across its windows in bursts of cut arteries and slashed throats. Skin was torn from limbs, and scattered across the floor to float in pools of crimson leaking under every booth and every stall. Ligaments were torn from their bases. An arm severed to be consumed first, a throat next, a rib to follow. Every time the police reported on this, it was the same. The stench of rotting. Endless pools of blood. But not a single body, not a single piece of flesh in sight. Only bones. Broken and picked so clean you'd think they were crafted, as opposed to stripped. The sound of touch downs and celebration from the hanging TV did the bare minimum to block out the noise. Its screen was covered in the same spilled blood that stained the entire bar, and it only took the Fallen two minutes short of twenty, to unlock the door and let the gush of blood escape through the first exit released on its trap. The stench would quickly follow. People would come here. People would notice. It would be another report. Not that it mattered-- when the minute was up, Rml could no longer be seen while his frenzy of lust and hunger ran rampant. An Angel that traded his wings for the shadow. That was what he was. A crowd would come. He tried to restrain himself, but at this state, there was no such thing. Not to a degree of success. He turned around. If he went through the back doors and alleys, he might at least avoid the temptation, since he had no chance of resisting it. So he turned, and he went out the other way. His leather jacked was stained burgundy with the smears of blood. Grafts of flesh were covering his pants, and his brown boots were dyed a red not unfamiliar to the scene before. His face, especially his mouth and jaw, were covered with the blood of those he consumed. He had to discard his shirt and jacket. They were too heavy. The smell upon them reminded them of his weakness, and so he took them off and threw them in the nearest dumpster, leaving the shirtless angel to wander through the alleys. Yet fate would have it, that his victims were not quite finished for the night. Just as he stepped into the alleys of the neighboring apartment building, he heard it. The shuffles of feet. The click of a walking stick. An elderly woman taking out the trash. His heart allowed him a single second of fear. A single second of regret and guilt about what was going to happen, but the moment it past, his feet darted forward, and another life was taken. Struck to the floor. Throat severed. Ram knelt before her, sinking jagged and sharpened teeth into the side of her neck, tearing flesh from bone and consuming her as she lay there, dying. The thirst was so strong, that he did not feel the hairs on his body rise until it was too late. His back felt it first. The approach. The sudden sting of the unknown. The sudden burn of the holy. He didn't know what this was. An Angel?...No, it was not strong enough. It didn't matter, right? He could not be seen. They'd wander here, see a dead body, and run. But...it was different. It was different and it was confusing him. It was pulling him. It was pulling him away from his kill. From his thirst. Such a thing was not possible. Such a thing defied the temptations of Satan, and no being was strong enough to do that. Until he felt the touch-- and she would feel blood stained skin beneath her finger tips. In a split second he rose, revealed to her for reasons unknown. A titan. A behemoth, dwarfing her in size. His body was so muscled and lean, it was as if he'd been crafted by Greek hands from marble. His frame was wide. His height no less than six feet and then some. The visage in her mind would have almost been maddening, had she been normal. She'd get the lightest version of it. Of what it was like to look upon Hell itself, within a creature not spawned from it. The image of black wings fluttering from his back would flash in her mind. They no longer existed, and yet they flashed regardless. A wingspan so wide it would reach well past the edges of the street they stood on. He towered over her, and he looked down upon her with a red flare in his eyes, full of rage and confusion. Full of conflict between his hunger and her presence. He knew, from the second she looked at him-- that she could see him. See behind him. The body. The massacre. The blood. He knew what he was called around here. He knew what they named him. Stupid-- the Nightcrawler. She'd have no time to think of such a thing, for in the next second, his arm had extended, and his fingers had grasped her fragile throat, squeezing hard enough to lift her from the very ground with his grip alone. How can you see me. His voice was almost deafening in this state. Not from its shriek, but from the pull of it. From the sudden urge to draw herself even further to him the moment she hard his voice. Who sent you.