Path of the Vampire forum

When Lancaster had wondered what Charlotte might have in mind for tonight, he had not thought hunting would be it. When he thought about Charlotte, he did not think that hunting would be her thing. Lancaster arched a brow as he thought about it, before he shrugged.

”Sure,” he said. And why not? He had cleared the rest of his night and there was nothing wrong with hunting. It had been a while since he’d shifted, and it might be nice to go a little wild for a night. Even if it didn’t leave much time for catching up, but they had time. They could do that when they got home, or another night.

He found himself staring at Charlotte. Did he know what her form was? It wasn’t a question he went around asking, and he wasn’t sure they’d had that conversation before. He shook his head, in the end. ”I don’t use it often,” he said. He was a man hell-bent on remaining as human as possible. And what was less human than turning into a ******* animal? Truthfully, it was something he did mostly with Pi – he the playful Dingo, she the white wolf – they frolicked through the wilderness, free, and with each other in the most natural way possible.

Given all that, however, Lancaster wasn’t averse to the idea. It wasn’t that he was against turning into the Dingo, it was just that he didn’t think about it often. He didn’t have any reason to go changing every other day. But if it was something Charlie felt like doing, then he wouldn’t say no.

”What… pardon if I should already know this, but what do you ah… turn into?” he asked. It felt like such a strange question to ask. What animal are you? It wasn’t normal. That was for sure.

Lancaster was the opposite. Sometimes, he didn't quite know what he himself was feeling, but he could read other people's emotions like words on a page. Almost like he absorbed them, until he became confused. He wouldn't say that he was uneasy, or unsure. Nervousness was not something that Lancaster was accustomed to. The idea had taken him by surprise, is all - but as the car continued on its journey, he eased into the night's plans as the unfolded in front of him.

"A Dingo," he said. "A dog, native to Australia. Makes sense, really," he said. He figured that the animals they turned into had something to do with their personalities; in his case, he was playful by nature, and loyal. And, well, Australian. He didn't know much about Hyenas, though, or why Charlie would turn into one. Weren't they scavengers? As he turned to watch Charlie, he could not reconcile the two.

"Why do you think you turn into a Hyena?" he asked. It was a pertinent question, he thought - and he did not think that it could be too personal. Charlie would have her theories - and Lancaster was interested to learn them.

As Charlie pulled up to the hunting ground, she glanced over at him and smirked. A Dingo. It took everything in her not to make a 'Dingo ate my baby' joke, because she was sure that just being an Australian would have granted him the 'blessing' of hearing that joke often. Yet, at the same time, she could see it, from what she knew of dingoes they were just wild dogs and dogs like most canine breeds, were usually loyal and playful... at least around their own packs.

She turned off the engine just as his question came and she had to admit, it was a good one. Charlie had her theories and all of them could be plausible but which one was true. "It could be so many different reasons why my personality chose that particular creature. It could be that I had been watching a documentary on them, it could be the fact that both they and I live mostly on scavenging and stealing things from others, or it could just be that I'm a vicious woman if you push my buttons the wrong way..." the last part came out with a bit of a laugh. She was very aggressive if someone pissed her off, but she had a long and very hard fuse to light.

"Hyenas are odd creatures, perhaps it was as simple as that... I'm odd, their odd..." She shrugged a little and smirked. "Doesn't really bother me though, actually you should see the faces of those in the cavern when mutate... i become a half human half hyena hybrid and I have to admit, I'm a scary looking thing in that form. As a hyena though, they are also a pack breed, which is usually odd for felines... oh yeah... get that... they are actually in the cat family." She said with another laugh. Not everyone knew or could even tell that Hyenas were part of the feline crew, especially since the untrained eye would see something more dog like than cat like. "Lions do it, but aside from them Hyenas are the only other felines I know of that are pack based. Though hyenas are matriarchal." She said as she glanced at him, knowing that she had been rambling a bit.

"Though, it was probably just a random choice of nature." She gave another shrug and then smirked "Hyena's do like to hunt though, they just do it when they need to, usually they don't need too, they just steel it from someone else. In my case... the hunting - animals - doesn't bug me because my father and I used to do it when I was human. Though being from a fishing port, I could hold a fishing pole before I could walk." She fell quiet again and then gave a soft laugh...

"Sorry, I'm rambling."

The car was switched off, and Lancaster listened to what Charlotte had to say.

He didn’t switch off. Although he was a man of the world and there were plenty of things that he knew, he didn’t know everything about Hyenas that she shared. Though, he did laugh when she mentioned that they were in the cat family; he wanted to make a joke, something about him and Pi both being Canine, and it having skipped a gene, or something, but he had to remember that Charlotte hadn’t been turned by him. It wasn’t his blood that ran through her veins. It was someone else’s blood. She belonged, in blood, to someone else’s family. Maybe it had something to do with that. Some latent feline trait.

The laugh lingered on his tongue, danced in his eyes.

”Could be, it’s a trait that came from your sire,” he said with an arched brow. He was already getting out of the car; already allowing the fresh breeze to touch his skin, to call for the wildness within him. Lancaster was a pacifist at heart, but he did have a whole other side. A whole other part of him he liked to deny; one that he never showed off with pride. A penchant for violence. It was a wonder he didn’t go running as the dingo more often. It helped to soothe the violent urges. He always came back feeling as if he had just come down from an amazing high. Without the hangover.

He wanted for Charlotte to get out of the car, too, before he continued his theory.

”As you say, Hyenas are often mistaken for dogs. I knew they weren’t – I watched The Lion King,” he said with a wink. Was it ever stated in The Lion King? He couldn’t remember. But he’d naturally thought, as a child, that Hyenas were cats. Maybe he’d read it somewhere.

”Anyway. You joined us. Canidae d’Artois. A lineage whose head turns into a white wolf. The second-in-command a dingo. You’re a feline, adopted by canines. A cat, mistaken for a dog,” he said. It was a theory uttered in crude terms. It probably wasn’t the reason at all, but Lancaster liked the poetry of it.

”You don’t see yourself as matriarchal?” he asked, even as he started to toe out of his boots. He didn’t want to lose his clothes. Especially not these boots. He’d prefer to leave them in the car while they went romping around the wilderness.

If there was ever a time that Charlie would have shown any feline personality traits, it would have been in that moment when Elliot had called the guy that created her her sire, causing her hackles to mentally raise. Yes, the ******** had brought her into this life, but he had not done anything much afterwards to actually gain the title 'sire' to her. In her eyes, he had basically been nothing more than a blood donor, and one that had gotten her killed because he hadn't taught her how to fight or protect herself. He also never taught her about his hate for children being turned and then abandoned her the moment she created one. Her eyes darkened, they were almost black in that moment when she turned them on Elliot and spoke with a tone that was harder than she meant to come forth. "You are my sire, not that ******** who turned me."

Looking away for a moment, she glanced at the mirror, knowing all she would see is a well beyond rotted corpse looking back at her and then sighed softly and looked back at him. "Sorry, and anyways, he was a panda... or so he had told me one time a long time ago."

Her door had opened the same time that his had, and Charlie had lifted her head to the sky, inhaling deeply and taking in all the scents before she turned and looked back at the man that she considered her sire and smirked "I'm convinced it's their laugh... sounds a lot like a bark." She said before she shifted a bit, resting her one foot on the door well of the car as she leaned against the top of the car. She did find it amusing though when he brought to light the fact that the name spoke of canines, and she wasn't shocked to hear that Pi was a wolf, and she was still trying to imagine what he would look like as a dingo, but the fact that she was a feline adopted by them. She had heard of odder things.

She smirked a bit and nodded to him. "Technically, since I have parted from the jerk, I am the head of my own line. However, I was still under the *** when I took the form first. Perhaps it was because he was an 'exotic' animal that is what I picked up and became one as well. Who knows though?" She said with a slight shrug of her shoulders and then glanced around. "Probably the best time to change, no one is around for miles that I can hear." She said and then pushed away from the door and pulled off her leather jacket and stepping out of her black boots.

As a girl her loved to BnE from time to time, she realized that black was a very important shade to wear nightly, but she had been working on her computer tonight, so while her boots and jacket were both black and leather, the rest of her outfit did actually have some color to it. She was wearing a loose fitting light blue shirt that had Tesla/Edison scrawled across her chest, but because it was so loose, it slid from one shoulder, revealing that she was also wearing a tank top of some kind under it, something that was soon coming to light as she pulled the loose fitting shirt from her body as well.

The pile of clothes grew quickly, and sometime while she had been getting rid of the clothes she had turned to give her sire some privacy while also using the car for the most part to block them both. And once she was ready she closed her eyes and concentrated on the feeling of her bones break and reform, it still hurt like a ***** sometimes, but she was so used to it that it didn't take away from her concentration. And as fur began to sprout and she made her way to all fours, she let out a yelp that sounded a lot like a laugh. After all, there was a reason why some people were described as laughing like hyenas. Her chocolate eyes glowed for a moment as the power finished and then brown became darker until it was hard to tell iris from pupil.

Another laughing bark came from her as she used her nose to shut the door and picked up the keys with her mouth and tossed them into the rear wheel well. A loud 'clunk' sound telling her that the magnet had caught and that she wouldn't have to worry about that. And then she was trotting slowly around the car, waiting on Elliot to join her. In this form she could already tell that some of the animals were onto her, could smell or sense her because they were already moving away from the area, but she didn't care. She may not look fast, but her celerity still worked in this form, so if she wanted to take something down... she would and she would do it quickly. But tonight was about the hunt, taking ones time, so she was going to try to tone down using her powers as much as possible.

One would think that as soon as they shifted, any and all conversation would be cut short. Given their specific abilities, however, and recalling (he thought, anyway) having talked to Charlotte via mindspeak before, Lancaster realised that their conversation wouldn’t have to stop where their humanoid bodies did.

As Charlotte began to undress, Lancaster turned his back and did the same. The clothes were piled into the car, onto the seat he’d just occupied. He made sure to close the door before he initiated the shift; he could only imagine closing it by shoving at it with his paws, and he didn’t think Charlotte would appreciate it if he scratched the paintwork. Lancaster wasn’t much of a car guy, himself. They never did appeal much. He might even have been somewhat of an environmentalist; not enough to become a lobbyist or a hippy, but enough that he preferred walking or biking anywhere he needed to go.

Besides which, owning a car didn’t really fit with the backpacker lifestyle, and it had never occurred to him that he should get one, since moving to Harper Rock. He had a motorcycle sitting in a garage somewhere, but even that he barely used.

There was a time when he’d first discovered his ability to shift that he’d spent every night as a dingo; he and Pi had romped through the wilderness all the time together. As such, even now when he had been out of practice for so long, when he shifted it was with ease. He had only to take several steps before he was all fours, the vibrant red of the dingo’s fur a blur as its body shook violently, ears clacking against skin and bushy tail whipping back and forth behind him. The new skin settled, tongue lolling happily from the dog’s mouth.

Dingos could either look like small household dogs, or they could look large, more akin to red wolves. Lancaster was the latter. Although he had never seen himself as a dingo, he felt powerful within its lithe body. He felt more confident in this body than he did in his own. Why did he not do this more often?

For a few seconds, he stopped to stare at the Hyena Charlotte had become. His head bowed, nose twitching as it searched out her scent. It was strange, he thought, to be keeping company with a hyena. Strange, to be a dingo. This whole scenario was something out of a fantasy novel and a lot of the time, Lancaster still struggled to come to terms with it. Rather than dwell too long on how strange it was, however, Lancaster wasted no time in leaping past Charlotte and crashing into the undergrowth.

If there were animals nearby who didn’t know of their presence, they certainly would now.

Lancaster may look like a large, red wolf, but after so long without having used this body, he instead acted like a boisterous puppy.

Perhaps, given a good ten minutes, he might soon calm down enough to actually hunt.

Charlie looked back at Elliot as he stared at her, the two very conflicting forms - a hyena and a dingo - would have definitely called attention to the two of them. Two 'exotic' creatures, both more known in hotter climates than colder ones, and two very different sides of the animal spectrum. It was a bit amusing to know that he was shocked by her appearance in this form. Despite the fact that it was an odd choice of animal for her to be in the form of, she enjoyed being in this form, felt the power she got from using it and usually was in this form. For a month or so she had been in this form more than she was in her human form. Of course she didn't leave the apartment much that month either, but this form was almost like a security blanket to her.

When Elliot dashed passed her, acting more like a pup than a grown man in a grown dingo's body, she sent her laughter telepathically to him before she began to follow after him, her gait powerful and strong, and allowing her to catch up to him a bit. Her large ears allowed her to hear more than just him romping through the bushes, but also the other animals that were onto them scattering in other directions. She could pin point the squirrels making for the trees, the rabbits heading for their holes. The only ones that did not seem to scatter were the other apex predators that lived in the area, the wolves and bears. Moose also didn't budge and she could hear them as well, of course, Moose were used to wolves and their pack hunting, and the bears and their great strength and power, but they did not know of dingo or hyenas - both pack hunters as well, though not usually in the 'pack' they were in now.

Charlie jumped over a fallen log and again was laughing lightly through the telepathic link she could establish with Elliot. ~Ready to hunt yet, or are you still breaking in your form?~ She questioned mentally, her tone in her mind amused as it would be if she were talking physically. She let out a whooping sound, it was distinct, her own personal sound, basically her signing her name to things. Usually animals had their own sounds, but hers was also a good way to hunt. At least, that is how she had heard it was supposed to be. It was a same that she didn't have a few other hyenas in her pack, then she would be able to test it out.

However, she had Elliot, and while he was a totally different animal, she knew that dingoes also liked to pack hunt, so perhaps he had a sound all his own too that she could learn and would learn. Her body may be the shape of a hyena, but her mind was her, well her and her animal form, as if she had two personalities. So this gave her the ability to remember sounds as well as she memorized pictures or anything and everything she saw. With another whooping sound, that echoed through the trees, giving off the illusion that there was more of her, she bounded off in the direction she had heard Elliot in and followed his distinct scent as well.

If Elliot had a distinct sound that he made when hunting as a Dingo, it was not a sound that he knew. It wasn’t one that he consciously emitted. The white wolf was something that Pi took seriously - they had talked about it, before. One of their sessions before sleep, or maybe even several. The wolf was part of her. It informed her feelings, her thoughts, and her actions. It was why Canidae d’Artois was born. It was why their lair was a ‘den’. Pi considered herself head wolf, and her family were her cubs.

Lancaster? He had no such connection. He could have, if he thought about it. If he was overly spiritual. Except that he wasn’t. He was a vampire who was far too attached to his own humanity; thinking overly much about how he could turn into a dingo was not something that he was prone to, and when he did change he chose to have fun, rather than make it more serious than it needed to be.

Charlotte had suggested hunting. Lancaster hadn’t asked how serious she was. Now that they were here, with the dirt beneath his paws and the scent of the wild around him, he didn’t want to hunt. He recalled his times with Pi out here. How she’d wanted to spar. How she’d wanted to pit the white wolf against the dingo. But Lancaster had only ever wanted to play. To wrestle, to roll around in the dew-imbued grass.

”I wouldn’t say I’m ‘breaking it in’. I’m just having a bit of fun,” he said. He could hear Charlotte behind him; could hear the rustling of the leaves and the breaking of the twigs, her four pours as the pounded the ground. He could hear the peculiar call of the hyena, so out of place in these woods. Lancaster had been to Africa before, had heard that call from a distance. It had sent chills down his spine.

”You know, I always thought hyenas were a little creepy?” he said with a laugh. Maybe that was why he was so astounded that Charlotte turned into one. The Charlotte he knew was not creepy. It just did not seem to compute.

Charlie let out another whooping sound, since that was actually a more common sound than the one that had given Hyenas their 'laughing' nickname. Hyenas only ever really 'laughed' when they were stressed, much the same way a cat could purr if it were stressed as well. The sound bounced off the trees again, but in her mind as she left it open to Elliot, she was laughing a bit at his just wanting to have fun. ~You don't get enough dingo time do you?~ She questioned before Elliot was telling her that he had always thought that hyenas were creepy. Again she was laughing softly in her mind to him before she came to a stop before some trees, lifting her back paw so that she could scratch an itch behind her ear.

~They can be. Like I said earlier, I think it's the whole 'laughing' sound that we make. Sort of like nails on a chalkboard. Then there is the scavenger part of things as well. And there was apparently a really bad cable movie made about hyenas as well. Oh and that Buffy episode! Yeah, Hyena's get a bad rep, but I think, having spent so much time as one, that they are actually pretty cool. I mean I can hear things no one else could... perhaps it's just my own senses mix in with the hyenas but my senses do seem sharper in this form. Also, I have also noticed that when I am out here the Fae stay away, that could just be for form itself or the power... I don't really know. But I do know that despite all the 'creepiness' of this form, I enjoy being in it more than I should.~ Again there was that laughter in her mind, her tone cheery and upbeat. She truly loved being in this form.

~I feel I can let my guard down in this form.~ She added before she continued to chase after Elliot, jumping through a bush right beside him and letting out a slightly faster whooping sound before giggling inside her mind. ~That sound really gets to ya, hmm?~ She teased.