Smokeless Powder [Cinnamon Cherrywhip]

[Levi DAmico]

“Seriously, Levi. I really don’t know why you’re doing this yourself.”

The instinct was to shrug his shoulders, but since the man on the other line couldn’t really see that, he had to think up some kind of audible response. “Well, you know what they say: want something done right, do it yourself.”

The man laughed. “Right. Sure. So how much money is in it?”

“It’s like a black hole. Who’s to say.”

“Then withdraw.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Too many loose ends.”

The line crackled as the man breathed deeply into the receiver. “Can’t you just—”

“Look. I’m gonna make it real simple for them and then everything’s gonna run smoothly. They can take it or leave it, but it’s gonna happen my way so… don’t worry so much.”

“You know what’s on the line, Levi. You should be as worried as I am. More so in fact.”

“D’you trust me or not?”

“That’s a little difficult to answer right now.”

Levi put the phone at an angle so he could grumble to himself and pinched the bridge of his nose. What he wanted to do was launch the phone out the window of the car, let the guy have an earful of wind and rain before the inevitable crunch and silence, but he kept himself in check. Trust was a valuable commodity in this business; it often made the final say on whether you’re coming home richer or coming up a river some weeks later as a bloated corpse. Hearing he’d lost a part of that trust put him on edge and that wasn’t somewhere he liked to be, especially when it wasn’t his fault.

“Are you still there?”

The voice pounded in his ear with the same kind of pressure as his pulse. Levi casually passed the phone to the other ear and signalled his frustration with a grunt.

“Just do what you think is right for now,” the man said, “but keep me in the loop, okay?”

Levi simply grunted again.

“Call me in about an hour. I’ve got a meeting to sort out.”

“Best make it two.”

“Fine.”

The call disconnected with a series of beeps and Levi returned the phone to his breast pocket. He didn’t appreciate the man’s tone, or being barked at, but he could see the reasons behind it. No doubt Shiro was getting a similar treatment, if not worse. He was the mediator after all, the one liaising between his people in the East with Levi’s people in the West – and both sides were pretty pissed right now. The Taiwanese said they’d sent their package and wanted their money, but their Canadian go-betweens had gone cold. They wouldn’t answer to the Taiwanese to confirm the package’s arrival and they wouldn’t even answer to him to move the package along its agreed trading line so everyone could be paid. The buck had just stopped and no one would say why. Over the past few weeks, Levi had sent a dozen soldiers to investigate the problem, but none of them had come back either. His remaining men had offered the scenario that the Canadians had run off with the package to sell it themselves and had killed his men to cover their tracks. The Canadians had been good before, reliable and efficient, but he couldn’t deny the possibility. Because he wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, Levi decided that he was going to deal with the matter personally, but because he didn’t trust them all that much, he brought along two of his men.

The drive to the Canadian’s headquarters in this unknown city called Harper Rock, had taken about fifty minutes from the airport. When they pulled up outside, Levi remained in the back seats as his companions got out to form a wall of ugly muscle either side of his door. He looked through the tinted windows of the unmarked, black Toyota Crown, up to the building. It was the run-down sort, a hive of killers and thieves that didn’t bother to pretend to be anything else. The only problem with this picture, as far as Levi was concerned, was how quiet it was. Normally he’d expect someone to come up to the car, ask questions, but in the least he expected to see some kind of activity, some runners and lookers on the streets nearby, maybe even a parked car or two. But there was nothing. The place was deserted. This was not a good sign.

Levi shoved open the car door and stomped past his comrades. As he came within sight and indeed within earshot of the place, Levi finally had all the activity he could have ever wanted. The sound of a loud snap succeeded by a series of bangs caught his attention and he immediately stopped in his tracks. It sounded like gang warfare had exploded just behind those front doors. The blacked-out windows on the left lit up with bright, brief flashes as further gunfire punctured the stillness in concessive bursts. Levi’s men were at his sides again in a hurry, but all three watched the building spark and sputter in the dark like someone had lit a match in a Chinese fireworks factory. When it finally became quiet and the light had retreated, returning the sense of foreboding murk, the three men slowly approached the building.

“Are you sure this is such a good idea, boss?” the man on his right whispered.

“Yeah, how do you know we ain’t just gunna be shot too?” whispered the man on his left.

Levi drew the Beretta from the inside of his jacket. “I don’t,” he said and continued toward the door. “Just be a quicker shot than they are. It’s that simple.”

With the advice ringing in their ears with the same quality as the gunshots, the men entered the building. Levi had gone in first. He pushed the door open quietly and made light footsteps into the corridor. Up ahead were three doors; one on both sides of them and one more at the end of the corridor. Since all the commotion had come from the left-hand side of the building, it seemed obvious where to go to investigate, but Levi’s men weren’t quite as keen to sniff out the source of the gunfire as he was. As he approached the door, he noticed his companions were a clean three feet behind him. He glared, dark eyes as cold as umbra.

“What the ****, fellas? Stand in some glue or something?”

The men looked to each other, fear as obvious as their brown suits were ugly. Levi just rolled his eyes.

“Fine. Stay here. Keep the exit covered I guess.”

Caution, or maybe it was fear, made him inspect the door handle for signs of force, but its fairly unspoiled condition made the bile rising in his throat and the iron belt of his diaphragm relax a little. He pushed on the door handle and walked in, gun ready. Sure, this wasn’t one of his better ideas – to walk into the scene of a fresh massacre – but he couldn’t really talk himself out of it. Levi had made the decision to go in, case the joint and check-out. That was that, really. He never was afraid of death so much as he was specific about the way he wanted to meet it. He was the arrogant type and knew that if he didn’t get this situation between the Taiwanese and Canadians sorted then he was a dead man walking anyway. Levi preferred the idea of going out with a bang, to die in a shower of bullets. Being chased down and cornered like a rat wasn’t the way he wanted people to remember him. If he didn’t go in there, see what was what and sort **** out, he was going on the run. It was as simple as that.

Levi walked into the large room. Boxes – both large and small – made the walls of a labyrinth within. Nonetheless, Levi could see far enough into the room to make him swallow his tongue; the walls were paneled with sheet-metal and striations of blood. A massacre was obviously the correct word here, but Levi continued into the room. The sound of heavy shoes stepping across quiet, bloodied tiles stopped when his shadow loomed over a shaking man. He was strapped to a metal chair just past the first corner Levi had taken around the boxes. Weirdly enough, the man was blind-folded and gagged too. Levi was about the remove the bindings when he heard a crunch of footsteps behind him in the centre of the room. He didn’t think, just turned and fired a shot into the darkness…

[Cinnamon Cherrywhip]

OOC: This post has been edited/removed by the Moderation Team and shall be restored as soon as the author has edited the text to comply with the site rules.

[Levi DAmico]

Bullets were invisible until they hit something – that was Levi’s opinion on the matter. You fired the gun, you heard the explosion and you saw the aftermath – it was rare you ever saw the bullet. As the Beretta was fired, small explosions lit up the world around him and he saw movement dart around the boxes, trying to get around him, trying to get to his blind-side. He turned with the pink blur, continuing to fire so he had a more substantial view of the target in the flashes of light. Levi watched the person run an arc of 180 degrees or so before they turned on him, swinging something large and metallic in his direction. The action was oddly familiar and he reacted instinctively, as if someone was swinging a sword. In the case of swords versus gunfire, he’d learned that distance and aim was the decider. Levi had the precision skills, but his attacker was coming in hot.

Breathing in, Levi judged the angle and speed at which the target was coming for him. On the exhale, he stepped away in a narrow dodge, staggering slightly, his arms low to his hips to avoid the blow. He couldn’t get his arms up in time to shoot again, so just in case, he stepped away once more, securing as much distance between him and his attacker as possible. Nevertheless, there was no time to stop and smell the roses; Levi had to be on the move immediately. He managed to get his gun up, ready, but all he could do was fire into the dark, fire in the general direction of his attacker and watch for the movement, hope for blood and an end.

[Cinnamon Cherrywhip]

So, stubble had moves did he? This was better, this was what she'd wanted. Someone who would fight back and maybe give her a bit of a challenge. With how the others had behaved, she hadn't really been trying with him. So there had been no vampiric speed and skill in her attack that he'd dodged. She'd moved past him, and could hear and feel the path of the bullets as they were fired wildly in her direction. His aim was completely off however, and so none of them hit her, and she simply walked back towards him with a grin, rolling her head on her shoulders as she came towards him. Her whole body was splashed and covered with the blood of what she could only presume were his friends, and she watched his face with glee to see how that sight would register.

"Guns are so impersonal and ******* cowardly. Why don't you try being a damn big boy and come at me properly?"

She smirked further, her eyes never leaving his face as her tongue ran over her teeth and her fangs visibly grew. This man was going to die within the hour, so it made no difference if he knew what she was. There was no issue, as this breaking of the masquerade would be dealt with when he died.

"And just to make things more interesting..... for me at least....."

She chuckled and reached into herself, drawing out her power and shaping it into multiple versions of herself. Within seconds, another 10 visions of herself were standing and milling around, all mixing up so that he would hopefully lose track of the real one. Then, it was time to wait and observe, to see how the monkey danced for her.

[Levi DAmico]

Levi knew he was literally shooting in the dark, but he had expected at least one bullet to hit. The successive rounds had turned the warehouse into a dance club with violent music and strobe lighting, but when his cartridge emptied, the darkness and the echoing gun shots became heavy in the air like a liquid. It was too dark to see **** and any footsteps coming at him like black-lightning was going to be impossible to dodge. He wasn’t panicked, but he wasn’t very impressed. How had he managed to let this ******** get the better of him like this? Had he underestimated this ninja in the shadows? Were they wearing body armour or had karma finally decided to withdraw his luck?

Levi returned the empty Beretta to its holster and took out the fully-loaded BHP. The single-action, semi-automatic wasn’t his first choice in weaponry, but he was running out of options and apparently, out of time too. As his eyes adjusted to the sheer black of the room, he saw his assailant coming at him and when they spoke, he felt even worse about this whole thing. It was a woman, for Pete’s sake, how’d he managed not to shoot the *****? Had someone loaded his gun with Pez just to screw him over? He delayed firing off a round straight into her skull as she came close enough to get a reasonable look of her. Walking slowly toward him like that through the darkness, enrobed in white – which was actually more pink and red now that it was dripping with blood – she looked like something out of a nightmare. Somebody else’s nightmare that was; Levi couldn’t remember the last time he’d dreamt of anything.

As the bloody maiden spoke, goading him, he just smirked and shook his head. The bodies slumped around, all the blood, the discarded, shot-up boxes with their contents spilled, and the aggressive, riled-up ***** in front of him gave him the impression that this was no joke, but he couldn’t help but think that someone was taking the piss. How did a girl like this – small and pale as a daisy as she was – really cause all this damage and bloodshed? He’d known women to go full-psycho around that special time of the month, but to take out a whole hive of heavily-armed gangsters? Well, something was extremely fucked up with this whole thing.

He knew his instincts were spot-on, but never in his wildest thoughts could he have predicted the scenario that unfolded spontaneously around him. The girl, the psycho-*****, first she was just there taunting him, licking her lips and grinning and the next second she was someplace else entirely, but also still there at the same time. Levi brought his hand to his face, wiping his eyes and his nose against the back of it like he was trying to clear his view or get some stray coca negra out of his system because he just couldn’t be seeing what he was seeing sober and straight. She was everywhere, like clones of herself had just appeared out of thin air. He’d blinked and a whole army of her twins… or was it undecaplets… they all crawled out of the woodwork and were standing around, fussing about, playing with sharp implements. In a weird way, it kind of made sense to him how the girl and her possy had taken out the Canadians, on the other hand, he still thought he was stoned. How’d he miss them all come in at once? Where had they come from even? Levi shook his head, it didn’t matter, he had enough bullets to deal with this problem.

The Browning High-Power held 13 rounds and he intended on firing all of them into their pretty little faces and bodies. He’d shot women before, this wasn’t going to be an issue, in fact, he was going to take a bit of pleasure in putting the bitches down. Clearly they weren’t friendly or suitably house-trainable so he was doing the kennels a favour. He aimed for the one on the far left and fired toward the chest area. The large surface made the chance of a hit higher and he wasn’t going to waste time on perfecting his aim or waiting to see if he’d struck before he fired again. He pulled the trigger on each second, breathing calmly, watching their movements and endeavoring to count up to eleven, but as sure as you shouldn’t eat yellow snow, he knew he wasn’t going to catch them all by surprise. Levi prepared to respond to whatever happened next.

[Cinnamon Cherrywhip]

CC was watching him carefully as the smirk on his face vanished and seemed to fly across the room to re-appear on her lips. He wasn't so self assured now, and seemed to be sobering up and realising what was going on here now. Or at least, not realising what was going on precisely, but realising that things weren't as he'd first guessed and presumed. He didn't say a word and simply lifted his gun and began firing around himself. CC couldn't see the images she'd created, as they were all simply in his head - but she knew they were working and doing their job of distracting him as his gun rapped out the bullets, one after the other. She took a few seconds just to watch him move, to see how he handled himself. There were a few seconds there where she was almost impressed - but the sound of the gun firing wiped away any appreciation for his form she might have harboured. Guns were the weapon of choice for cowards - and she couldn't admire anything in a coward.

Making her move as he turned his head so slightly away from herself to focus on one of her other selves, she took the opportunity to slip back and out of sight. Using the shadows that fell from the boxes as cover, she made her way around to come up behind him. Her bare feet could feel every lump and bump of the uneven concrete floor, every little stone and bug she stepped upon - but they made not a noise as they crept closer and closer towards him until she was mere inches away. He was quite a bit taller than she was, she noted now she was up close, and so the first thought she'd had wasn't possible. The thoughts had run through her head within the space of one step, so it wasn't like she was there, standing behind him for any extended period of time. No, she was going in and then out, not wanting to be caught in the arc of gunfire as he would undoubtably create after she'd acted.

Her blade drew back, her wrist flicked as her elbow and shoulder extended - and she felt the point drive into his back to precisely skewer his right kidney. As fast as it had entered him, it had left him once more, and she was backing up while not taking her eyes off him - that self same smirk on her face as her eyes glinted and waited to find his.

"Why not face me properly? Not like a coward with a gun. Draw your blade and dance with me!"

Her clipped words echoed, her accent tainting the ends of her words and giving them a foreign feel. Her curled lips drawn back in her smirk, her fangs evident and waiting like a snake looking to strike and bury into their victim. This was what she lived for, this was what made her feel alive, and this is what she'd been looking for all night. A slaughter with elegance and grace.

[Levi DAmico]

Levi stepped slowly into the room, following each woman’s movements and firing to take each one down. But he couldn’t keep track of them all and like black lightning, one of them had struck from the darkness and from behind. He felt the cold metal rupture the flesh, shunt through the muscle and stab at the soft, vulnerable parts of his body. He was shoved forward with the assault, and if not for his death-grip on the BHP, he would have lost it, so instead it hung beside his hip. Just as quickly as the blade had torn through his flesh, though, it retreated and left the area blazing, the flames running down his back like a liquid. Levi roared from the elevating pain, felt his whole body begin to shudder, but instinct and adrenaline made him turn to face his aggressor. Dark eyes filled with ambition, hate and rage shot into the darkness toward her face. Her words burned against his ear, in fact, his whole body felt like it was on fire. It was as if she’d stuck him with a red-hot poker and his heart was pumping lit gasoline around his body. He didn’t want to listen to her **** and reacted on impulse; he really had no reason not to do or say whatever the hell he damn well pleased anymore.

“Shut the **** up, you whore!”

His loud, guttural voice punched the air, but swiftly melted behind another gunshot. With no warning, Levi point-shot at the woman’s shoulder from the gun’s position at his hip and then launched himself at her with a roar. The instinctive shooting style ordinarily reduced accuracy, but he couldn’t miss from the distance, not with a bullet and not with his fist either. Shooting at her sword arm would have debilitated her and since she was so keen to have him fight without a gun, he was determined to give her more than she bargained for. He was going to kill her with his bare hands and he was going to enjoy it as his last act before one of her sisters finished him off.

[Cinnamon Cherrywhip]

She was ready for him to attack her, ready for him to shoot her, but the distance between them wasn't great enough and her sidestep came just that fraction of a second too late. The bullet grazed her arm, nothing more than a flesh wound, but enough to piss her off. He was following swiftly after the bullet, so she didn't have time to get too angry as she had to immediately react. However, if he were to look at her face, he would see a slightly psychotic and insane smile creeping across her blood stained lips. His fist came at her face - and her smile simply grew.

Her own hand lifted, came into line with his fist as it came for her, and then her small hand wrapped around his much larger one and took hold. She used his own momentum against him then, stepping around the punch and keeping hold. It was almost like she was forcing him into a pirouette that ended with his arm wrapped around himself as he was held against her - though it meant leaning him back with the height difference between them. She looped her right leg between his and then around his right. Her left hand held his right across his body, while her right hand was pressing to his kidney, fingers exploring into his body to squeeze anything fleshy and delicate that she could find. Her head was on his right shoulder, her lips by his ear as she purred softly.

"Such fight, so misdirected."

He sighed softly into his ear, trying to hold him as he struggled and ignoring the irritation as the struggle knocked the scab from her wrist where he'd shot her earlier, making her blood once more ooze forth.

"Don't worry - it will all be over soon weak one!"

Her fangs were still extended from before, and with a quick flick of her head, she'd butted his to reveal his neck - which allowed her fangs to swiftly sink deep into his flesh as she drank from him to retake what he'd made her lose. If she'd had telepathy, she'd have pressed a thought into his head - but as it was, it had to remain in her own.

"Mmmmm, garlicky!"

[Levi DAmico]

What he wanted, what he really craved, was to feel the compression of warm skin and the crunch of bone as his fist came in to strike. What he felt, on the other hand, was cold air and then an even colder grip. His body jolted and twisted with a shift of movement and before he knew it, he was spun around and held fast. The strength he felt constricting him, holding his gun arm across his own body against his left shoulder, it didn’t match a girl’s. Levi was sure that it wasn’t just a case of not looking as strong as she was because nothing could be that strong – nothing Human anyway. Her strength was animalistic, like some Great Ape or Python, and as she wrapped her leg around his and bent him backward, he felt like a rat in her coils. Her head was right on his shoulder, the bluntness of her chin pressing into rigid muscle. There wasn’t any pain, not even as her fingers plunged into his stab wound, he couldn’t feel anything under the adrenaline anymore, but he pushed and wriggled to no avail. The cold breath on his ear and her hiss of words made him angrier, but no amount of rage or adrenal rush could give him the power to break free. Then she head-butted him and for an instant, his world went black before coming back with stripes of colours – like a star-shaped firework had exploded behind his eyelids. There was a horrid, high-pitched wailing sound in his ears that distracted him for a while, but then there was the pain.

It came suddenly, with no warning; a scorching sensation that started at his neck and pressed deeper and deeper into his body. It was like he’d been bitten; like this crazy ***** had bitten him. Levi felt the suction, the pressure on his veins drawing them out of his body through a point in his neck. As the feeling intensified, taking away whatever strength remained and making his peripherals blacken, Levi sought out one last chance of revenge. He knew what was coming, he could feel the cold filling in just like people said it did, but he couldn’t go down without knowing he’d done everything he could. He still had one hand loose. He hadn’t the chance to do anything with it before because it had all happened so quickly, but he had to do something now or never. He pushed his fingers into a point and aimed for her face, driving blunt nails – three of them – into her eye socket. The eyeball squelched under the force of the invasion and was as terrible and messy as sticking your hand into a pocket of wet mud. The action afforded him some breathing space though, which he quickly took full advantage of. The oxygen filling his lungs and brain as swiftly as it did gave him a weird kind of high and as he stared down at the feminine hand holding his own, he could only think of one thing to do.

Levi’s jaws clamped down on her wrist.

If this ***** wanted to play like a beast, she’d find the beast in him too. He put as much pressure into the bite as he could and then he shook his head aggressively, epitomizing the Shark he knew so well. He knew the violent shaking had made good use of his canines when he tasted the dank taste of blood slip down his throat, but in his rage, he’d inadvertently torn the skin off a fresh wound of hers and had to spit the papery flesh from his mouth when he’d felt it against his tongue. Honestly, he felt sick, and the only thing stopping him from gagging or vomiting was the strange satisfaction of having taken a chunk out of her. He grinned, his eyes hazy and his body smouldering, but he held that sneer on his face like it was a badge of honour, even though he was sure he'd fall to his knees if she let him go.

“You bite me, *****,” he said, swallowing hard on the rising bile. “Expect to be bitten back.”

[Cinnamon Cherrywhip]

She wasn't taking much blood, she only needed enough to replace what she'd lost on the floor and boxes and such in her little spat with this one. Part of her was tempted to knock the little **** out, maybe toy with him for a few weeks before she killed him. He had spunk and fight, and she thought she could have a lot of fun with him - not to mention he tasted not so bad. Nowhere near as good as Lorelai did, because that woman was just.... well.... damn! But he was one of the better tasting humans she'd found and it would be a shame to kill him without at least a second or third taste. So lost in her thoughts was she, that she'd become distracted and a bit vacant eyed - however, that vacancy was soon filled by the little ******'s fingers!!

Her fangs ripped from his neck in shock and in that moment of surprise her grip loosened enough for him to move her wrist around and get it to his mouth. She wasn't paying attention to that though, and so him taking her blood into his mouth and possibly swallowing it was lost on her. She never even considered what that might mean, that he might turn if killed. She was only seeing red, out of her one good eye - the other running wih a mix of 'eye juice', tears and blood - and only wanted him dead. How dare he poke her in the eye in such a way. How dare he manage to get a decent hit in. Just.... how dare he!

Her hand shot away from his back and to her side, where she'd put the little blade she'd picked up, and retrieved it. In one fluid motion, her arm moved from his back, to her side and then up and around to drive the blade slap bang into his temple with so much force it buried in right up and beyond the hilt. Immediately, he became a dead weight in her arms, but she was so pissed off, she simply let him drop and then kicked him a couple of times for good measure.

"Good for nothing piece of ****! I was going to give you a ******* chance too! Well, just for another couple of ******* weeks of life, but dammit, it was a chance!"

She was grumbling to herself as she crouched by his body, rummaging in his pockets to see what there was of value or interest and taking it all. Money, ammo, weapons, keys, cards - everything was taken, including his jacket as it was less blood splattered than she was and would help her get home with less pointed stares. She used his shirt to dab herself down and clean herself up as best she could, and then leaving the blade in his head, she turned and left him there. Without even an inkling of what was to happen in the next few hours or days. She was oblivious to the fact that this man, was now irrevocably tied to her for eternity.

But wasn't it going to be fun finding out!