Wet Dishrags and Latex By Khystra Cast of Characters: Cal - our hero Lestat - whiny goth rock vampire M - demon Claire - M's conniving sidekick John - shapeshifting slice 'n' dicer Jade - music-wielding psychologist Lt. Dan Margolis - cop Cal sat sedately in a cozy captain's chair, in the luxurious first class section of a Concorde en route to Barcelona, and wondered in thinking with her hormones had been such a good idea. The snuggling was fun, but snuggles were few and far in between. Most of the time, her new honey, Lestat the Vampire, whined and moaned about what a pitiful existence his was. Or Akasha, the vampire queen he had lost. Or Jessie, the apparent wimp of a vampy girlfriend who had the misfortune of being dissected. Or Marius, Lestat's sire. Or a million other real and imagined slights. Blah da blah da blah. The band, that was different. They were sweethearts. After all, they'd had longer to get used to the little whiner. They were human, though, so at most, they had forty years with Lestat. Cal was an immortal, or pretty freaking close. Eternity is and awful long time. Well, maybe there was something to take her mind off of Lestat in Barcelona. It was in another country, a country Cal's memories said she'd never visited before. Full of new sights, new smells, and many, many shiny, sparkly things. The plane landed, and the crew and passengers began to leave. The sun was setting, but there was enough light to keep Lestat in his box. Cal stood by the cargo doors until sparkles in the city caught her eye, and then, she was gone. The band decided to let her go. She was too good for Lestat anyway. Cal trotted down the street, the locals giving her a wide berth. She looked human, but she was still giving off "Big Time Predator" waves. Fine by her. There were too many sights and smells to enjoy to give the wildlife more than a cursory scan. She walked through the warren of streets and back alleys that made up one of the seedier districts of Barcelona. She was quite lost, and found she really didn't care. What had she been thinking of, getting mixed up with a whiny goth rock vampire? Now, of all times- when she could barely remember who or what she really was. She'd just been getting into the swing of life in the sewers when she'd met Angel - whom she couldn't go near thanks to his unwelcome lodger and her predilection towards killing such unwelcome lodgers - who had reopened the human world to her. Now instead of being some know-nothing changeling, she was far more, and perhaps, far worse. And if there were answers out there, she had no idea where to find - a tall brunette stepped in front of her, dressed head to foot in clingy red latex. "That must be hot." Cal found herself saying. "Not as hot as you." the brunette whispered, stepping close enough to rub her latex-coated self against Cal. "Subtle." Cal stepped back. The brunette was pretty, but, Cal just wasn't in the mood for a same sex relationship. "You want it, I've got it." "And who might you be?" Harmless enough question, and the scent coming off this gal was close enough to human as to not raise any warning alarms, as of yet. "Claire." "So, Claire, what have you got to offer me?" Cal stood back, hands on hips, and cooly regarded the brunette. She could play tough. Be Robyn. Her memories were still fuzzy, but whomever this Robyn person was, she sounded extremely cool. Claire smiled salaciously. "Magic." "Magic?" "Big magic. Want some?" Claire licked her lips suggestively. Cal grinned back, without all the sexual underpinnings. "And what do you want in return?" "Just a taste." Cal played innocent. "A taste of what?" Claire stepped forward, touching Cal's shoulder. "A taste of you." Cal tried not to smile, and crossed her arms over her chest. "Hey, take your best shot." Claire leaned closer, and ran the edge of her tongue across Cal's cheek. Eldritch energy flared, and Claire jerked back, slightly singed. "Ow!" Cal was a tad surprised. Apparently she did still have some magic, after all. "Did I forget to mention I'm not human?" Claire frowned. "What the hell are you?" Cal feigned innocence. "Oh, a little of this, a little of that." Claire's eye's narrowed. "I'll get you for that." Cal kept a straight face. "Take your best shot. Do the black magick hokey-pokey on me, big momma." Playing Robyn was fun! Claire's face twisted, and she decided to use a few of the black spells M had taught her. She spoke in a dead, ancient tongue, and magic the color of a fresh bruise leapt from her fingertips. It arced out, and splattered like hot grease across the blue lightening wall which had appeared in front of Cal. "I'll kill you! I swear I will, bitch!" Claire screeched, every shred of composure gone in a blue-arcing instant. Cal shook her head. "You'll try, but you'll fail." Pause. "Ya know, I've been looking for someone to kill, and I think I'll kill you." Cal shifted slightly, revealing that she now possessed vertical pupils and a mouthful of carnivore teeth. Claire took a step back. "Don't be too hasty." Cal sniffed the air, sifting past Claire's overpowering perfume. Yeah, still human. Rats, just black magick and bad perfume. Rats rats rats. "Oh poo, you're human. I took an oath not to harm humans." Claire visibly relaxed. Then Cal shook her head. "On second thought, I think I'll kill you anyway. Yeah, you're bad, I'm doing a good deed." Claire stumble-stepped backwards until her back hit the brick wall of the alley. "Can't we talk about this?" Cal ignored the plea and eyeballed the alleyway. "Oh, its small in here, and I'm a big girl" Pause. "Oh well, who cares. So my ass will be sticking out into traffic. It's for a good cause." Claire's face was dead white. "Please . . ." Cal transformed completely, becoming a red timber wolf the size of a horse. She stepped forward, pulling her rear in out of traffic. "Graar!" Cal bared her teeth, looking very vicious. Thud. Claire had fainted. Cal frowned, changing back. "Oh poo, it's no fun when they faint." She knelt down, grabbed Claire by the shoulders, and gave her a good shake. "Wake up so I can kill you!" Claire's eyes fluttered open. "Don't kill me! I need your help!" Cal let go, and sat back. "Oh yeah, how?" And Claire began to talk. Jade snuggled against John, truly happy for the first time in her life. She could feel the raw edges of the bullet wounds in his chest rubbing against her back, and idly wondered if they would heal. He'd told her he'd beaten death, did that mean he was dead? This was so far beyond her realm of expertise, it wasn't even funny. Oh well, she could worry about- The phone rang. Jade started, then gently disentangled herself from John's arms. The phone rang again, and Jade hastened to get it. Although, John didn't seem to notice, he slept like the dead. Jade winced, oh, bad pun. She reached the phone, and picked it up before it had a chance to ring again. It was Lt. Margolis. He'd found, he said, where M had hid John's contract. She had to come right away, and together, they would destroy the contract and free John's tortured soul. He gave Jade the address of M's palatial mansion, and hung up. Jade quickly dressed in some of Blue's clothing (Blue being the girlfriend who was brutally murdered while John had been forced to watch), and hurried out of the apartment. Finding the house wasn't hard, neither was getting in. Jade surmised that anyone who could buy and sell souls like trading on the stock market had little to worry about from robbers. Jade stepped inside the doors, and was met instantly by a tall Asiatic woman with red-black hair. Obviously, this was the slut, Claire. The one who had seduced John and sealed his fate. Jade's face twisted, and she raised one hand in warning. "You back off." she growled, trying her best to sound dangerous. The Asiatic woman blinked. "Excuse me?" she said. Jade took another step forward. "Back off, or I'll slap the snot out of you!" Jade was surprised by the venom in her voice. Did she really care so much for John? Then the Asiatic woman punched her in the face, and Jade dropped to the floor. "Hmph, Claire was right. You really are a pathetic little Barbie." the woman effortlessly lifted Jade's unconscious body off the tile and took her out of the house, leaving her to lie under the boughs of an ancient olive tree. "You'll be safe here, little Barbie. I'm gonna go whack the big bad boogie man for you." Cal spent a long moment staring at Jade, then shrugged out of her clothes. Her skin rippled, shifted, and changed. She shrunk a few inches, her bust blossomed, and her fiery red tresses shrivelled into lank blond strands. Clothes morphed out of her malleable flesh, and heels grew out of her feet. Moments passed, and then, Dr. Jade de Camp's identical twin stood before her. "Lessee if blondes really do have more fun." As she spoke, Cal's voice switched from her own to Jade's, from the brief sample she'd gotten of the blonde's voice. As far as anyone knew, Jade was awake, alert, and standing in front of M's house, not knocked unconscious under a tree. Then Cal wandered into the house. She'd not gotten ten feet into the foyer when someone grabbed her arm. She turned. Relatively attractive, in a ferret-like sort of way. But something was wrong. Something was missing. A memory popped up into her forebrain, and Cal knew what to do to fix this wrongness. Cal stared at Lt. Margolis for a long moment, then grabbed him by the shirt-front and pulled him to her. "Jade?!" Margolis squawked, amazed by her actions. Cal shrugged out of the form she was wearing, back into her own. To say Margolis was surprised when Jade transformed into a naked Asiatic beauty with red-black hair was an understatement, but that was nothing compared to the shock he got when she kissed him. Inside M's study, one of the gryphon-skin contracts burst into smoky flame. Claire just stared in wide-eyed wonder, as the contract flamed itself to useless ashes, then smirked when she realized what was going on. Her ace had arrived. M cursed, wondering exactly what magic Dr. Jade de Camp had up her sleeve. He stepped closer, relieved to see that it was Margolis' contract, and not John's which had just cremated itself. Ah well, M could always find another recipient for the hell-snake in the ceremony. It was a big city. Back in the hallway, Margolis felt his soul return to him with the force of a shotgun blast, and he was driven out of the strange woman's arms. He went skittering across the floor like a hockey puck, and smashed into a heavy teak sideboard. The last thing he heard before darkness claimed him was the woman's concerned voice, "Well, that's never happened before!" Pause. "At least, I don't think it has." Cal trotted over to Margolis, knelt down beside him, and fastened her lips over his. Blood and nanobots surged up her throat and barrelled into Margolis' system. A quick search told her that Margolis was out cold, but had suffered no more than a bump on the head. He was going to be okay. She retracted her nanobots and leaned back, tenderly wiping the last of her blood off his lips. Yark, blood. Well, she quickly amended, yark, her blood. The little nanobots which kept her alive, functioning, and normal still needed her blood when exploring someone else. The silvery liquid which ceaselessly ran over her skin, well that was different. She wasn't sure how, but it was. The nanobots were just wandering around on her, not actually working. Technology could be so confusing sometimes. Cal stood, and finished the journey to M's office. She paused at the door, sifting through the morass of old building smells, hunting for the elusive M. She found his scent, but wasn't sure of his species. Oh well. The oak doors swung open, and someone other than Dr. Jade de Camp strolled into M's office. "Who are you?" M asked curiously. "I borrowed Dr. de Camp's form to get in here. You're a demon. I waste morons like you." Cal grinned, showing a mouthful of shark teeth. She was still playing Robyn, but now with a little bit of Claire. It was fun. M's gasp of surprise brought his two shotgun toting henchmen in at a dead run. But they skidded to a halt when they saw the shark-tooth lady. M allowed himself a small smile. Little did she know his true nature! "Come now, dear. We can talk about this. I can offer you much." He could work this. He always won, in the end. So it was, so shall it always be. For ever more. "Somehow I doubt that." Cal said. She noticed the little pile of ashes on his desk, and smelled the ozone scent of an escaped soul. She didn't know how she knew that smell, but she did. "Oh, and I did that. Took that soul back. It wasn't yours, you know." M's eyes widened. This halfling was in possession of the Schazrat Kiss? The kiss that healed those that needed it, to the point of returning souls? Not possible! Cal scrunched up her nose. "What is with your smell?" She asked, acting as if he'd never spoken. "You smell like a wet dishrag. Bet you taste like one too." "Is that an offer, pretty eyes?" M's mouth curved into a salacious leer. He couldn't let on that he knew. Her kiss could spell his doom. Claire and the henchmen watched the shark-tooth lady return the grin, and then launch herself at M. Her body changed with a quicksilver glimmer, going from clothed woman to slavering werewolf in a shudder of disturbed air. She piled into M, her jaws clamping around M's face, and now the others could understand what she had meant when she'd told M he probably tasted the way he smelled. M reeled backwards, ineffectually trying to push the shape shifter off him. He certainly hadn't expected this. When he'd seen her teeth, he'd known she was a morph, but such tightly-controlled shape shifting was unheard of in the morph population. And werewolves couldn't alter their appearance in the way this one had. As the creature's jaws crunched into his face, he realized just how seriously he'd underestimated his attacker. Again. One of the henchmen tugged on the arm of Claire's suit. She tilted her head to the side, "Mm?" was all she said. "Help him!" the henchman ordered. Claire tiled her head side to side, watching the increasingly one-sided battle. She sniffed, frowned, and finally said, "No. I don't think so." Pause. "No, definitely not." All very calm. She'd wanted him dead for some time now, since he'd transformed her into a giant set of tits and ass. If she didn't have to get her hands dirty, all the better. "You help him. You're the ones with the shotguns." The henchmen looked at Claire, then back at their boss, who had since been driven backwards, and was now pinned against a wall while a werewolf two feet taller than him crunched his face off. Then they looked at each other. "No." they said in unison. Shooting the werewolf would probably just piss her off. They were right. Cal's teeth clashed against each other. She reared her head back, and spit M's face and the forward half of his skull to the side. His body jittered, but he was far from death. Like most demons, the human body he wore was just a shell, and the true demon was somewhere else. His chest heaved, his shirt tearing. Finally, some action. A pair of flesh-toned scissor-jaws worked their way out of M's chest. Too slowly, though, to do him any good. Cal dug the claws of one hand deeply into M's shoulder. With her other hand, she grabbed the upper jaw and wrench backwards. A guttural scream issued from somewhere inside M's torso. The jaw tore free of M's chest cavity, followed by a torrent of black blood. "Is that the best you can do? I'm supposed to be scared, Mr. Wet Dishrag?" Cal was disappointed. From what Claire had told her, this guy was a real heavy hitter. It was a ruse, apparently. M's body flexed suddenly, succeeding in throwing Cal off. She flew backwards, and demolished an antique sideboard. M, meanwhile, pulled backwards, his various remaining limbs wriggling like snakes. Cal righted herself, in time to watch M undergo a transformation of his own. Not as elegant as hers. Demons, go figure. His flesh darkened, hardened, and became shiny. Exoskeleton. In a matter of moments, he transformed into a giant bug. A . . . water strider? The monstrous insect scuttled forwards, and tackled the two shotgun toting henchmen, and . . . ate them. Then it belched and skittered out the door. Cal trotted up tp Claire, who was standing back from the hench-mess, looking rather disgusted. Cal regrew her human form, and clothes, just because it seemed like the thing to do. "You okay?" she asked Claire. "I . . . slept with that bug. Yech." She shuddered. Cal tilted her head, realizing that behind the perfume and other things, Claire was - wrong. An instant after another gryphon-skin contract exploded and Claire went bouncing across the room like a demented super-ball, Cal dashed out of the room in search of M. Robyn sat at the chic little bistro, sipping a wine several centuries old, and admiring Duncan across the table. He of course, was doing the same with her. Both heard a clattering, looked up, and saw a giant water strider scurry past. "Was that a bug?" Duncan asked, frowning. Robyn reached across the table and smoothed his furrowed brow. "Water strider." she said sweetly. Duncan nodded. Then, something else came towards them. But this one was human. It, or she, as the case was, skidded to a halt in front of their table. The woman, very attractive in an exotic fashion, (but not Duncan's cup of tea, oh no, his one true love for all eternity was sitting before him in goddess-like perfection, glowing like the sun setting over his long-gone homeland, her eyes like liquid pools of the purest jade, her hair like fire, her . . . uhh, oh yeah, the other girl) blinked at them, and said, "Oh, hi Robyn." Robyn looked away from Duncan for a moment, looked totally un-surprised, and replied, "Hi Cal." Then she went back to gazing at Duncan. Cal? Where did he know that name from? "Didn't we go to her funeral?" Robyn sighed at the perfection in his voice. "Yeah, but no one dies for very long." Duncan thought for a moment, then acquiesced. "Yeah, you're right." Then he went back to gazing into Robyn eyes. And wondering how he could distract her from stealing certain bits of his jewellery. "Here, make life easier." Robyn tossed Cal stick of dynamite. Cal caught it, tossed it at the bug, and blew it to bits. "That was easier." Cal thanked Robyn, and then went back to M's, gathered up her cop, and spent a few torrid nights in a fancy hotel with him. Main * Profiles * Fanfics * Creativity * Awards * Links/Rings