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blackberryshortcake · 5 months

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Witches’ Wrath

I Can Get to Hell Much Faster Than You pt.2

Part 1

The man I’ve learned to call Sebastian lead me to what assumed was a guest room in this labyrinth that boy called home. Out of a small wardrobe in the corner of the room he produce a dress.

“Put this on. Can’t have you looking like that in front of the young master.”

“Like what?” I glance down at my clothes. Modern in design, black skin tight jeans that belled out at the bottom covering the top of my black boots the kind you’d assume were slippers but were suited for everyday wear, and a simple grey zip up hoodie.

Rather than answering my question he continued on.

“You sure have grown comfortable in your new world. Do all women wear clothing that leaves little to the imagination or has human society simply forgotten proper etiquette.”

I snatch the dress out of his gloved hands. It was simple cream in color something you’d probably see a corpse wearing or in a photo of a long dead relative.

“When did you get all high a mighty.”

The demon who stood before was almost unrecognizable. Bowing to the hand of a boy and playing servant so easily. Corvus has always been, well not necessarily kind but not as viscous or violent as many others of his kind to be. He was proper in nature but now he’s different, posh is the right word I think. What was so special about the boy that he was able to whip this demon into a right and high-class British asshole that stood before you.

The tension in the air was palpable.

“Do you require any assistance in dressing?” He asked almost looked amused.

“No I think i can handle it, thanks”

“Very well I will return in precisely 15 minutes the young master would like to have word with you in his study.” He pull a pocket watch from his waist coat, glanced at it and left.

The dress was uncomfortable and odd something you hadn’t worn the likes of in years and you had hope to keep it that way. After a bit of a struggle and many curses for deaf ears the hellish invention was on and I promptly heard a knock on the door.

“My Lady?”

“I’m not your lady Corvus stop callin me that.”

“My apologies may I come in.”

“Yeah sure whatever.”

His eyes widened slightly they landed on me. He almost looked shocked. Almost.

“So we gonna go see the kid or not.”

“Ah yes, right this way”

He lead me through many halls and turns if I had been any less of a demon I suppose I would have been lost. We come to a stop in front of yet another mahogany door. He knock before opening it a gesturing me inside.

“Sebastian leave us.”

“Yes my lord”

He stood facing the window a fool would think he was deep in thought but I guess I see past that.

It was him who broke the unbearable awkward silence

“Sit” said as though I’m some sort of dog. Like the one he turned Corvus into.

We sat facing each other a large antique desk in between us.

“So tell me how exactly do you know my butler.”

“I’ve known him for a long time”

“I didn’t ask how long you’ve known him I asked how you met him.” The venom in his words would be more intimidating if he wasn’t but a child.

“ I met him in a field of buttercups and forget-me-nots after I was burnt at the stake.”

“I’m sorry?” he was slightly taken aback by my brashness.

“Can I tell you a story? Normally I don’t just go tellin just anyone this story but since you’ve got a friend of mine wrapped around your skrawny finger I figured I’d extend the courtesy.”

“Go on” he was pissed

“The was a girl once in a small village in the new world. Her and her mother settled there, her father had died just about 2 winters prior. And when that girl came of age one of the older men in the town, I think he was percher if I remember right ,took upon himself to marry that girl off since she had no daddy to do it for her. And when that girl refused they labeled her a witch and then tied her up and peraded her around the village. Scorn her and accuse her of frolicking with the devil, But when they tied her to that stake she swore and she cursed them. She burned but never felt it and when she woke she was in a meadow. A man sat atop a rock nearby dark hair bewitching to the foolish and he spoke to her took her under his ebony wing and taught her to fight taught her how to seek revenge on those who wronged that poor girl.” My voice trailed off and I felt a tear hit my hand in my lap.

“So let me guess your that girl.”

“Maybe I am.”

“I suppose I never saw Sebastian as the nurturing type.” Oh how I wanted to punch that smug look off his face.

“You only know what he wants you to know…..You may think you’re in control but he could kill you if he so pleased right his very moment without a second thought. You’re lucky you caught one with some sorta fucked up morals. Demons they’re funny creatures they don’t exist to temp humans as many assume they exist solely for population control. Can’t have to many souls running around in the afterlife now can you.there simply isn’t enough room.”

“Tell me this, what kind of demon are you if you don’t consume souls”

“I make deals. Imma Dream demon. I think some call us masters of the mind. Only a hand full of us exist.”

“There is more like you wandering about.”

“Only a few, only other one I met is Bill and he’s a certified psycho, he was there at the beginning of time and I’m sure he’ll be there at the end. Just consider yourself lucky yah met one that has some sorta humanity left.”

“Humanity that’s a laugh” He seemed to pause for a moment to think before speaking once more. “I’d like to make a deal”

“Yeah and what kinda deal is that”

“I will permit you to stay here in my manor while you figure out your…situation and in return I want you to gather all the information you can on my butler.”

“So you want me to spy on him. Someone I’ve know for just over 300 years. For a boy I met less than two hours ago.”

“Yes” the answer was so nonchalantly I almost believed this little shit.

“How about this I stay here and with Corvus and he helps me with my…situation and in return I’ll protect you and you may have my arsenal of power at your disposal.”

“The power you no longer have” his response was smug almost like he thought he had a checkmate locked and loaded.

“Imma helluva lot stronger than you think”

“Deal”

We both stood and I offer my hand to him engulfed in a souls flame that is ablaze of bright green. The kinda flame that produced no heat but a light that burns just as bright as the stars. He hesitated but reached for my hand. The moment our skin touch I felt it my eyes were white and I could feel and see any and every memory this child ever experienced. I could feel in the moment he feared me. But it was all over just as soon as it had begun. And I was on my way out the door.

“See yah around pip squeak”

The second that heavy mahogany door shut I was grabbed by the throat and slammed into the nearest wall. Corvus was pissed I could feel his breath on my face while I fight to catch my own once more.

“What exactly gives you the right to fill his head with those thoughts.” Anger and malice in every syllable he spoke.

“Did I stick a nerve Sebastian”

His gloved hand around my throat tightens.

“All-all I did was tell him the truth and he wanted to make a deal. Last time I checked that’s not against the rules.” When in the hell did he get so strong.

“Ciel Phantomhive’s soul belongs to me”

That stupid fucking accent of his was really pissing me off

“I don’t want his soul and anyways what the big deal with it anyways? There are plenty of other souls just like his. If I had the power to right now I could leave and come back with 10 just like it and 20 that are even better.”

“That simply isn’t the matter at hand” he’s loosened his grip but he was still impossible close to me.

“Oh it’s not is it. Do you understand how fucking Insane this all is. I saw inside his head when we shook hands and how had i don’t know CPS not been called or some shit. Now don’t get me wrong the modern world I’ve called home is no better but at least someone would say something about all this” gesturing around me. “Not to long ago I finally realized where I had heard the Phantomhive name before I new the boys daddy once upon a time and the fact of the matter is you have what a 14 year old boy running a business and working for the queen like he’s not yah know a child” I may be a demon but I was still once human.

“The young master is quite mature for his age.”

“You and I both know you could have given that kid his revenge a real long time ago and put him out of his misery. Yah know what I think? I think you like it here. I think you berated me for going “soft” but you’re ending up just like me.”

His eyes burned with the fury of a thousand fires, but no response was given.

“Whatever” I push him off me and head down the hall but not before promptly flipping him the bird.

I really need to get outta this dress.

After finally changing back into my clothes I decided it was high time I explored this manor in the process I met May-Rin the maid who was to clumsy for her own good. Finny who was outside in the garden in the process of kill a rosebush with “fertilizer”. Tanaka a small older gentleman who I presume was another butler and last but not least baldroy who was frantically exiting a smoke filled kitchen when what I can only assume was the demon whisky by me to put out said fire.

The “cooks” eyes met mine and he sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck.

“You lost or something miss”

He had a thick accent the kind you’d figure a chimney sweep or a Mary poppies character would have.

“No, just wandering I suppose”

“We’ll I don’t think Mister Sebastian would like you wandering down here”

That’s when Sebastian’s thick voice cut through the air

“She is perfectly fine where she is. You however have once again ruined a perfectly good meal. Do you care to explain yourself.”

By this time he’d come out of the ashen kitchen to the hallway

“Thought it might cook faster, yah know”

Sebastian sighed and pinched his nose.

“You are responsible for cleaning that mess up I have other matters to attend to” with that he once again checked his pocket watch and briskly walked past me. I’m surprised he didn’t shoulder check me as he did.

He’s different than he was when it last saw him something odd years ago. Not just his looks although I don’t mind the form he has taken now with that pitch black hair and amber eyes. He’s just tall enough to be intimidating but not to tall as to be awkward. He’s simply handsome but his personality is different when we first ran into each other he almost seemed like he cared for me as I believed he did long ago. Now he’s cold, calculating, not vicious or vial as many demons are but his eyes a see of resentment towards me or the world. I do not know.

There however is one thing I know I better clean my act up and get the fuck outta dodge so I never have to see this god forsaken era again. So I never have to see him again.

…continuandum…

Though I’d take a second crack at it. Feel free to give feed back.

Ps here’s Pt.3

#sebastian michaelis x reader #black butler #black butler x reader #black butler x you #black butler x y/n #sebastian michaelis #ciel phantomhive #fanfic #sebastian x you #sebastian x y/n

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thethistlegirlwrites · 2 months

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Vampires Anonymous

Joey looks around the abandoned office-turned-Vampires-Anonymous and wonders how this night is going to go.

There’s about ten people scattered throughout the room. A guy playing a harmonica in a corner, some upbeat tune that’s probably actually a folk ballad about how some guy died in the old west, two heavily tattooed girls playing some kind of card game that involves a lot of yelling and smacking the top of the deck, a young guy with a frowzy shock of dark purple hair, an old man with cowboy boots and a weather-lined face apparently dozing off with his feet propped up on a battered desk, a guy who looks like he could have been a lawyer in his past life brushing off the seat of a wobbly spinning chair, and a woman with a dandelion poof of hair and a patch-covered jacket perched on top of a four-foot-tall filing cabinet. Then there’s Joey, and Shay, and the listing stacks of paperwork, file boxes, and busted chairs the previous tenants left behind.

Part of what Shay’s doing as community service for his own mentorship is starting a support group for fledglings that’s connected to the mentor program. It’s one thing for young vampires to have a connection to someone who can offer advice and the wisdom of experience, but it’s also good to have people who are at the same spot, sharing the same struggles.

Joey’s got her halfway house ‘sisterhood’, but she agreed to come anyway because Shay should have at least one person he knows to offer support the first few weeks.

But if Shay’s nervous about his first night leading the group, he’s not showing it.

Lawyer-guy looks around the room. “Shouldn’t we be, like, making a circle of chairs or something?”

“You wanna hold hands and sing Kumbaya, too?” Cabinet-percher asks.

“This group is what we make it,” Shay breaks in, with the same authoritative calmness Joey remembers from the days when he drove off jerks harassing her. “In my experience, too much structure makes everyone feel too formal, or too put on the spot because we’re all looking at each other. We’ll try it this way first.” He looks around. “I would like everyone to introduce themselves but only as much as you’re comfortable with, and no last names right now. I’ll start. I’m Shay. I’ve been a vampire for a little less than two years, but I was bitten in college and it took me quite a while to actually die and turn. The reason I got picked to work with this group in the first place is that I was trying to deal with the chronic venom pain and got hooked on heroin. I’ve been in and out of mandatory rehabs and group therapy most of my adult life. The point being, I know something about what makes a group work or what makes them useless, and we’re going to try to be one of the better ones here.”

Joey tries to pay attention as the others follow suit.

Tattoos and Tattoos Two are sisters, Kai and Lia. They got turned the same night when they played a punk-rock gig at the wrong bar and ended up on the menu instead of onstage. The old man is Loren, a name that makes Lawyer-guy snicker until Harmonica throws a ball of crumpled paper at him. He’s a former rancher who ended up bled dry by both the banks and vampire loan shark he turned to in desperation. Purple hair is Francisco, whose story is disturbingly similar to Joey’s, except that the vampire who took him and four other people across the border decided to hang onto them for a while. He’d been the only one infected, and had woken up in the middle of a body dump in the desert. Like Joey, he’s on Chimera’s case docket for home earth citizenship. Harmonica turns out to be a very unassuming Jay, which feels like way too short and normal a name for his charismatic aura. He’d been a bit part actor in sitcoms until he tried to break up what he thought was a rape in the backlot and ended up surprising a hungry vamp instead. Lawyer-guy, whose name is actually Keith, really was a lawyer, apparently. A divorce lawyer whose less than above-board methods led to him crossing paths with a sleazy vamp offering PI services for his clients. One argument over payments later, his practice and his life were over. Cabinet-percher is Aaliyah. Former LA cabbie who got literally stiffed on a fare. Twice over, unfortunately for her. The first time by a vamp who bit her rather than pay up, and the second time by a desperate guy who was fleeing an armed robbery. When the radio gave out his description, and Aaliyah had looked into the mirror to confirm it was her passenger, he’d shot her in the back of the head and bolted.

Joey didn’t really mean to go last, but it kind of just happened. She’s not the sort to break into the conversation, and she was trying too hard to take in everyone else’s story.

“Uh, I’m Joey. I’ve been a vampire for about eight months. I was bitten when I was nineteen, by a border smuggler.” She kicks at a dust ball on the floor. “I spent the next six years in LA and when I died, my family buried me and I turned. Now I’m in the mentor program to get a chance at getting them back in my life.” It feels painfully slow. Two weeks is too long to wait for the physical visits, but if everything goes well, in another month she’ll get moved up into the once-a-week bracket. “I hadn’t told them I was going to become a vampire. Mostly because I didn’t actually think it would happen.”

One of the two tattooed girls (it’s going to take weeks for Joey to remember who’s who) scowls. “Let me get this straight. You didn’t know you had the venom in you?”

Joey laces her fingers together and looks down at her hands in her lap.

“Not for sure.” She sighs. “I didn’t want it to be true. I couldn’t afford it to be.”

“Didn’t you feel anything?” Aaliyah asks. “I felt like my skin was going to burn off whenever someone touched me. It hypersensitized me to everything. And my teeth were killing me.”

“I kept telling myself everything I felt made sense.”

She was driving her sister to appointments, working the fights at night, scared she'd be caught and deported because she couldn't get a visa. She’d figured the stomach pains meant she’d end up like Jorge across the hall, with a stress ulcer before thirty because he too had overstayed his legal welcome. She thought the hunger was from skipping meals so her siblings got more.

She was ignoring the pain because Via came first.

“Everyone else in our neighborhood was just like me. Always tired, alert to anything that might be trouble, not enough in our pockets to put enough on the table.” Even the teeth had made sense. She’d always ground them in her sleep. Mauri used to complain about it in the camps, say she was keeping him awake.

The one thing she’d never felt was the aggression Shay had described, that drove him to the fights where she’d met him. Chimera’s been theorizing for a while that there’s a subclass of vampire in which the venom activates the victim’s flight instead of fight response, creating a stealthy, shadow-dwelling vampire when they finally turn, an ambush predator rather than one that stalks its prey actively.

They still don’t know if it’s linked to the person’s inherent responses to traumas, or if it’s connected to a specific strain of sires. After all, one could argue that the vampire who turned her was the same sort. That kind of alert wariness would be an asset to someone in his line of work.

“That’s messed up.” Jay shakes his head. “I can’t believe you just ignored that.”

Joey swallows. No one will blame her if she stops talking now.

She’s not sure telling anyone the specifics about her family is ever a good idea.

But that’s something born out of years of running and hiding and fear.

She doesn’t want to carry that with her into this place.

“I wasn’t alone when I came across the border. I made the deal I did in exchange for him getting my siblings and me here, so my sister could get the medical help she needed. Via was always the brave one. Facing her pain with a smile even on her worst days. If she could be okay, how could I be anything else?” Joey swallows. “It felt like nothing compared to what she must have been living with. She needed me to be strong for her, and I had to make sure she could get to the doctor, that we could pay for her treatments, and that she felt safe.”

“Damn. You just ignored vampire venom poisoning because taking care of your family was the most important thing in your life. That is bad-ass,” Aaliyah says. “You told something killing you from the inside out that it was gonna have to get in line because your little sis needed you.”

Joey didn’t think what she’d done was that impressive. She’d just been getting herself out of bed every day for Via, like she’d done every day since their mother was murdered. But apparently, to a room full of vampires, she’s managed to pull off something extraordinary.

“Yeah. Don’t think I can top that,” Keith says with a shrug.

“You literally got infected and died in the same day, of course you can’t,” Kai (Joey can tell now because she’s spun around in her office chair and there’s a big stylized K inked on her shoulder) retorts.

“Beginning to think you should be the one leading sessions,” Shay says, a hand resting gently on Joey’s shoulder.

She shakes her head. It was scary enough telling a roomful of vampires about her siblings even existing. She’s not someone who likes the spotlight. Ever.

“No way.”

He gives her a smile. “Well, in that case…” He holds out a chipped bowl full of strips of paper and pens. “Write down your favorite vamp bar. Has to be a legal one though, and not a coven-members-only kind.”

“Okay, why?” Francisco asks.

“Because I think we’re going to have a much better time getting to know each other over drinks.” Shay says with a grin. “We’ll draw names every week, rotate through.”

“That seems like a weird way to run the vampire version of AA,” Keith mumbles.

“We’re not trying to stop drinking synth-blood,” Lia says. “We’re trying to learn how to cope with being vampires. I think it’s great.” She tosses her slip in the bowl. “Heads up Kai and I have the same pick and it’s karaoke so be prepared to sing for a round because there’s double the chances ours gets picked.”

“Oh no,” Jay groans.

“What do you have against music? You were playing that harmonica for a solid ten minutes.”

“Music, fine. Me singing, so not a good idea.”

“Then you’d better start practicing and hope it gets picked a couple weeks from now,” Aaliyah says, tossing her own pick in.

Shay swirls a hand around the bowl. As the only member of the group without a suggestion, he’s the most unbiased picker. He pulls out a folded paper, opens it, and shakes his head. “Okay. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but who possibly suggested a dive like the Vein Drain?”

No one raises their hands.

“Well, it is a legal establishment, but can we at least try not to start a full bar brawl on our first meeting night?”

There’s a pretty mixed response of nods and shrugs.

Shay looks at Joey with the first really concerned expression she’s seen all night, but all she can do is shake her head. “You let them pick.”

“And I think I’m going to regret it.” Shay sighs. “I’m going to be really bad at this aren’t I?”

“I guess we’ll find out if Lawson has to read us the riot act and bail us out of holding in the morning,” Joey says. “In the meantime, I guess we’re going to find out why this place is one of our new friends’ favorite hangouts.”

(You can read this story and others from this universe on my WorldAnvil here!)

@catwingsathena @nade2308 @the-one-and-only-valkyrie @telltaleclerk @ettawritesnstudies @writeouswriter @whump-place @the-lovely-wren

#febuwhump #febuwhump2024 #febuwhumpday26 #help them #vampires anonymous #shane barrett #josefina quintero

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