Chapter 137: Moonlight And Blood
Walls shuddered with bass, the floor throbbing beneath boots and bare feet alike. Darkness flashed in timed bursts, color slamming across the room in sync with the beat. Glowing sigils, animals, and drifting shapes bobbed through the crowd, bursting on contact as bodies collided. The music ran hard and fast, heat rolling off packed flesh as youth moved as one mass, slick and breathless.
Auras burned like constellations. One woman hovered inches off the ground as she danced, a spiral of flame corkscrewing around her hips and shoulders. Nearby, a man and woman—both stripped to skin—let blades orbit their bodies, steel kissing flesh in shallow cuts as they ground together, tongues tasting blood as easily as sweat.
Hedonism, unchained.
Along the walls, tables and booths overflowed with users, but three claimed the center: a raised alcove crowned with private dancers spinning around poles of pure light.
The Woon sisters lounged like proprietors, not guests. Admirers pressed close, beautiful men and women clawing for a glance, a word, a touch. Bottles littered the table, glasses half-drained with liquids of every hue, some foaming, some keening softly. Flashdrives lay scattered between them, Digi-Stixx both fresh and spent.
She pulled one close, a bald woman, all bone and sinew, eyes sparking electric blue, and exhaled a plume of violet smoke. Data-lines crawled across her pupils as her eyes glazed. A smile split her face, then laughter, then a broken cry, her body swaying as pleasure seized her spine.
When the gurgle of foam started from her mouth and nose, and her eyes rolled white, a lazy flick of Hye-jin's fingers brought a man in a suit out of the shadows. He hauled the woman away without ceremony.
Her seat filled instantly. Another girl reached for a Stix before the warmth had even faded.
Hye-jin sighed and leaned back, fingers combing through the hair of a handsome, pale-skinned man with eyes like moonwash.
"Are we just giving up?"
Ji-yoon dragged a rail of black dust into her nose and snapped back against the booth. For a heartbeat, the veins in her neck inked dark before fading as she exhaled, smiling through it. She sank into the cushions and chased the burn with a pull of smoking ale.
"We tried. We failed. Now we live with it."
Across the table, Yu-na curled her lip at the tattooed woman pawing at her. She drove the woman's face into the tabletop, lifted the slack, bleeding head, pressed a brief kiss to her mouth, then dumped the body to the floor.
"Quit whining. Without clearing those quests, none of it matters. So fuck your plans, fuck dad, and fuck this place. I'm out!"
She slid out of the booth and cut through the crowd. People scattered. The ones who didn't regretted it.
A raised palm from Hye-jin stopped a suited man mid-step.
"Let her go. She's liable to kill someone right now."
Ji-yoon scrubbed at her nose and gave a crooked shake of her head.
"I almost feel bad."
Her sister's eyes narrowed.
"She's acting like a kid. Why—"
"Not her. The guy she's about to use. She'll fuck him to death. You know how she gets."
Hye-jin shoved a man's head down, spread her knees, tugged her skirt higher. A twitch crossed her mouth.
"What about you? You really fine with this?"
Ji-yoon snapped open her ring, laid out another line of black dust, and sighed as her eyes bled dark green.
"Drop it. The world dungeon's the only move left. We should do what we've always done. Why keep throwing ourselves at him? I hate him as much as you do. I'm just done being tired. I want levels. And decent dick while I'm at it."
Another hit burned up her nose and she collapsed back into the booth, eyes glassing as a lazy smile spread. Her arms folded tight around herself, fingers digging into her chest, breath hitching as the drug settled in.
Even with her crotch busy and her head clear, Hye-jin knew her sister wasn't wrong. The logic lined up clean. Still, something in her refused to loosen its grip. It had been there since childhood, a pressure behind the ribs that never eased. She needed that man dead. Any second spent chasing something else felt false. Like stealing time from herself.
Hands tangled in hair, heat slick between her thighs, she felt nothing that lasted. The climax came and went, sharp and empty. Even as her body shook, her thoughts stayed cold, counting angles, rehearsing paths, never resting in the moment.
When the last tremor drained from her muscles, she didn't even register the choice. Her nails sank into the neck between her legs, calm and precise. His brief struggle barely reached her face as she drank him dry of blood.
She hauled the body free without effort and waved it off to a waiting guard. The space beside her filled again at once, a blonde sliding in, glass already in hand.
Lifting the drink, she scanned the crowd...dancing, drugs, rutting bodies packed tight, and felt the clock ticking down. What her father was preparing was unstoppable. No one here would escape it.
Her sister's image surfaced as she glanced toward the entrance, picturing the man her youngest would bleed her anger into.
"At least he'll keep his soul."
----
Outside, the night held a soft warmth. Cool enough to bite if she stopped moving, mild enough to fade with a steady stride. Summer evenings always suited Yu-na. She liked the heat, the open sky, the stars sharp and bright overhead, fixed points that felt like they belonged to her alone.
The anger she'd carried out of the club had drained into the gutters behind her. What remained burned hotter, lower, a pressure that pooled and spread with every step.
She walked with her face tilted up, eyes tracking the stars, and pulled a cigarette from her pocket. The skull lighter clicked and flared, fire kissing the tip as she drew in.
"Think I'm done, Jude. Time to leave this place."
[He won't let you.]
Smoke filled her lungs. She exhaled toward the rising moon, a pale cloud unraveling in the air.
"He doesn't care anymore. Once he ascends, he'll be too busy to notice."
[And your sisters? You really think you can leave them behind?]
A short laugh slipped out. As she passed a break in the wall, her hand drifted over a patch of stubborn grass. The blades blackened on contact, curling in on themselves as she moved on.
"They'll manage. Hye-jin doesn't need me. Ji-yoon will keep her steady. If I stay, I'll only make things worse."
The streets lay empty, even near the city's core, where the club still throbbed behind her like a distant heartbeat. This wasn't the outskirts of Shatterbay, where gangs clawed for blocks and blood marked borders. This was corporate ground. Here, shops stayed lit and doors stayed open as long as tribute flowed to the Woons.
Even so, night thinned the brave. Past sundown, only the confident, or the reckless, kept their doors unlocked, protection or not.
Across the street, a storefront detonated outward in a bloom of fractal glass. The shards multiplied as they flew, growing, reshaping midair. Within the glittering storm, a stranger's face split in laughter as he launched himself skyward.
Trailing him out the door, an elderly woman emerged at an unhurried pace, her weight hanging on a worn cane. She tipped her chin up, tracking the fleeing lattice of glass, and her expression curdled.
"You think you can steal from me and get away with it?!"
She barked a laugh, then spat. The motion was casual; the result was not.
The glob of saliva cut the air like a round, struck a pane, and the glass seized, swelling and knotting as the spit wrapped the shifting fractal mass tight.
A voice tore out from inside.
"Let it go, you old fuck! Should've dropped the price—now choke on it!"
Light surged—
Then night slammed down.
The woman vanished. The sky-born glass vanished. Sound stalled, color drained, and the street locked in black. Everything went still. Everything disappeared. Everything except Yu-na.
Her gaze dropped to her boots, fixed on the smear of grit at her toes. Muscle coiled. Pressure rose. Her aura thickened.
The old woman saw her first.
"—Young Mistress!"
She bowed deep, panic cracking her voice.
"My deepest apologies! I didn't see you—please forgive me!"
"Inside. Now."
No hesitation. Skirts hitched, cane slung over a shoulder, the woman bolted back into her shop as fast as her legs would carry.
Above the street, the spit binding the glass collapsed to ash. The face trapped inside sharpened, pupils pinning on the young woman below as a grin spread.
"Not bad. And pretty. My luck's been hot since I landed. Hey—drop your CC. Let's talk. I'd hate to mess up a face like that."
"You really are new to Shatterbay."
The words didn't come from her. He caught that a beat too late. They rolled out of the dark instead, layered and plural.
"Since you've just arrived, and since I speak for the Woon family, it's on me to welcome you properly."
Something tugged at his nerves, but he kept the swagger. Light pressed back against the dark inside the shifting facets, his tone turning playful.
"A rich girl, huh? Fancy. How bout I let you sit on my lap? We can talk about what pops up first."
His laugh started and died mid-breath. The woman was suddenly gone. The shadows thickened. Shapes began to take form.
"Hey—where'd you go?! I was being nice! Push me and I won't mind killing—!"
"Relax."
The darkness answered like thunder.
"You won't need to mind anything in a moment."
The glass panicked, snapping into a humanoid outline. Fractal plates locked into armor. A blade grew from his hand as he hauled his aura tight.
It didn't matter.
The scream never cleared his throat. The dark fell like surf, crushed, tore, devoured. The last thing his mind fixed on was a sea of skeletons boiling in the black, thousands of them, rage packed so tight it drowned thought.
Moonlight returned. Yu-na stepped into the middle of the street. A knot of shadow drifted down and sank into her palm, dissolving into skin.
"Pathetic. Barely a warm-up."
[Of all the people to meet. Man's luck was dogshit.]
She tipped her face to the moon, stretched once, and moved on. Each step carried her farther, each stride leaving whispering dark and the soft cries of the dead in its wake. Waiting was over. The heat needed an outlet. Now.
She headed for the edges, south, to the docks, to Dead Hand ground.
"You'd better be home, Seo-jin…"
Her eyes burned black. Shadows followed her feet. A Woon sister hunted through the night, bloodlust and hunger setting the pace.
----
A crawling wrongness slid up Seo-jin's spine. Not pain, pressure. Thin, filthy, like fingers woven from spider silk dragging across exposed nerves. He shrugged it off and sank deeper into the chair, room dim and quiet. Above him, Grimm drifted in a loose orbit, Seo-jin's fingers idly working through the ghost's hanging guts.
He didn't fit on his head anymore.
Grimm's skull had outgrown him. The bones had sharpened, angles cutting hard where curves used to sit, predatory in a way that left no room for confusion. His canines had lengthened into proper fangs, obscene and clean.
The spine and rib cage had thickened, stretched, but nothing new had sprouted. The intestines still dangled, only now the ends had hardened into hooked, serrated claws. Another growth spurt he'd slept through.
Sleep had been his own plan. He'd tried. More than once. But the noise in his head wouldn't die, and with dawn bringing his next move, his trip into the freelands rest felt as distant as the moon. His body was still. His mind refused.
[You could try counting sheep. Humans do that to fall asleep.]
His brow twisted.
"Where the fuck am I supposed to find sheep?"
[Not literal sheep, retard. You imagine them jumping a fence. You count. Your thoughts loosen.]
"You're a retard."
He considered it anyway, then scrapped the idea. Counting sheep would just make him hungry.
He stretched, muscles pulling tight, then stopped. A thought pushed up from nowhere, intrusive and unwelcome. The system answered before it fully surfaced.
[Touch yourself and I will never speak to you again.]
Heat hit his face.
"Fuck off. You'd be lucky for the show."
[Disgusting. Organic life is profoundly abnormal. The fact your species functions at all defies reason.]
"Just because a man needs to burn off stress doesn't make him weird. You're just pissed you don't—"
The words died mid-sentence.
The broodlink flared, sharp and urgent. Panic's voice punched through the instant Seo-jin opened the channel.
'Broodfather. There's something fleshy coming your way. Moving fast. Smells strong. Want me to kill her?'
'What does she look like?'
A pause stretched thin.
'Blonde. Really super ugly. Aura's black. Smells like bones.'
"Shit."
He didn't need more.
'Leave her. Stay close just in case it gets bloody.'
'Yes, Broodfather! Blood, blood, blood, blo—'
The link snapped shut. Seo-jin was already moving, up on his feet, motions sharp and restless as he straightened the room by instinct rather than care.
[You're assuming a lot. What if she's here to fight?]
"Alone. At night. Doubt it. From Seo-jin's memories, that woman only comes for one thing."
[Then turn her away. Seeing you with Lilid was bad enough.]
It was the smart call. He knew that. Still, without her name spoken, the Spider Queen had already surfaced in his head, her voice lingering, the memory of her sneer and the comment about him fucking like a human clawing back up.
"Go do something else. Read files. Run numbers. I don't care."
Auras pressed close. He scanned the room one last time, barely satisfied, then moved for the door and opened it before the knock landed.
Two Dead Hands froze.
"Boss, we've got company. One of the Woon—"
"I know."
He brushed past them.
"Clear the area. No one enters the warehouse until I say so. No matter what you hear."
They hesitated just long enough to grin.
"Yes, boss!"
They split to spread the word.
His head stayed busy, thoughts sliding between borrowed memories and his own as he stepped outside. Yu-na was already there, distance collapsing in two fluid steps, her body warping the air as she moved.
'Fast.'
She stopped in front of him, sweeping her blonde hair aside. Black eyes caught the light, wet and sharp. The dark red dress clung to her frame, tracing every line, heat pooling at her chest in a way even his eyes couldn't ignore.
He dipped his head, smiling.
"And here I thought my night was quiet. A personal visit from the Witch of Death herself? I must be dreaming."
Downwind, the truth hit him all at once. The scent. Thick. Heavy. Wanting. The flush on her cheeks. The heat rising up her throat.
"Wohan Seo-jin. You'd better not disappoint me."
Her hand caught his collar as she passed, dragging him backward through the door and into the warehouse.