Chapter 1 - Murder at the Butchers
"And I want that with extra ham you hear?""Sir there is one minute until we close. I'm going to have to ask you to not order anything else. Just stay here I'll be right back."
The boy running the butcher's counter cursed the closing shift and prepared all the meats this annoying demanding customer ordered. Each chop of his cleaver was more frustrated than the last, thunks getting louder as he went through the list of cuts.
"Okay sir, here is everything and-" The man wasn't standing impatiently at the counter. He wasn't standing at all. The boy stepped out from behind the counter, there was no blood glistening the tile floor but the man was sprawled out in the moon light. His skin was a sickly shade of blue from the dingy neon sign flickering outside the door. The boy nudged the body with his foot. He was as dead as a door knob. Only once this sunk in did the boy shriek, dropping his meat cleaver to the floor in a panic and running for the phone. He spun the rotary dial and phoned the station.
%%%%%%%%
Lovella Channing was enjoying a good mug of beer at the after some club sandwiches. She scanned the crowd but The Golden Apple had the same folks it always had. It was past happy hour. She had and three empty plates. Anyone she maybe could've flirted with had peeled off either to hail a cab or likely eat each other out in the rooms upstairs.
"No whiskey today Channing?" The bartender said when she took her plates from her.
"No Marz, not on a case- no whiskey."
"No cute girl either."
"Get off my back, one day I'll find someone. What happened with you and that moonshiner?"
"She and I were a one time thing, Seriously, don't give me that look. Lovella you know I don't double dip. I-"
Lovella put down her mug and turned quickly to the window. "Thanks Marizpan, see you tomorrow." She fished out some cash to pay her tab, chugged the rest her pint in one go, and left as Marzipan called out, "G'Night Channing!"
%%%%%%%%
I didn't like leaving in the middle of polite conversation like that, not to Marz anyways, but I could hear a shrill shrieking cry clear as sunshine in the chill night air. No one else could, and that's how these things always start. I put my hat on and pulled my trenchcoat closed. I tied the belt and it was certainly a tighter fit than when I'd arrived at The Golden Apple. Thankfully it was raining strong and steady, this gave every smell in the air a stronger hit, and I recognized blood on the wind immediately. I stalked it through the streets to a much quieter part of the city, residential with a street of shops, one with its sign still on and a stench of death luring me in.
"Oh thank goodness you're here!" A nervous little thing opened the door for me. I looked him up and down- young kid, flop of hair, fat peeking out from the hem of his shirt, scared to hells gates and back, evidently left with no one of seniority to deal with the situation for him. And a situation it was.
"Step away from the body, leave everything where it is." I told him, and pulled out my polaroid for an initial snap.
"So, Wes, you come back in he's flopped over, you didn't hear nothing but you said the chopping was loud. Alright and the cleaver there is?
"I didn't do it!"
"I know kid I know, the cleaver is yours you dropped in shock alright got it." He nodded and I got this all in my legal notebook. "Hey, the pigs will come around in a sec you tell em what you need to but right now pick up the cleaver wash it and put it where youse supposed to." I took a good look at the victim, the blood was strongest at his head and lo and behold snake bites on the neck. The cops could have fun with that. I got the kids' number and the shops', "If you need anything, if the pigs give you trouble, you dial me up I'll see what I can do, and I'll call you if I find anything they wouldntve."
"Thank you Sir,"
"Channing, Detective Channing." I flip him my card.
"Oh sorry Ma'am,"
"Sir is just right kid." I shook his shoulder and he smiled, "Only tell the cops exactly what they ask and then have them drive you home."
"Alright Sir, thank you Sir."
I didn't understand it, I couldn't sworn they were snake bites, and that the cops would be getting animal control, but when I pinned up the polaroids to the walk in my office, I noticed it was two, not four, piercings on the victims neck. I needed a pick me up. After locating a bag of beef jerky I came back to my board, gnawing on a piece after piece as I worked.
At 1:00 am I closed up the old case files I was cross referencing, took my hair out of its bun, left my snacks on my desk, and went to sleep on the leather sofa. I got a call at a bright and early 7:00 am, it was Wes the boy from the butcher shop.
"Detective Channing I left everything but the cleaver right where it was and the cops didn't touch nothing either, they carefully took the body, but then just put up some funny chalk and crime tape. But I come in just now and the bag of all the meat I cut for the man is gone."
"I see, thank you Wes, and which kinds of meat were they exactly." He rattles out a list to me that I jot down, subconsciously my mouth watered. I grab some biscuits and ate them on the railcar as I make my way back to the butcher's. I take out the list and see if I can sus out the scent of any. The petrichor is on my side and I get a lead. I'm taken down a winding path of streets and alleys until I come upon a block which used to be a subway entrance but is in limbo while restructuring of local infrastructure takes place. More importantly, I hear someone down there, chewing. I take out my one shot pistol, it isn't much but it will get people to behave, or a girl to her knees if that's what she's into. I have a penlight but choose not to use it.
Islip into the shadows descending into the station. The gnawing and chewing sounds are closer, smacked lips, tearing of flesh, meat swallowed, an organ being ripped asunder. Suddenly two eyes meet mine in the dark, reflective like a cat's and unmistakably red. Now my eyes are also reflective so when we make eye cobtact I know they've seen me.
"I mean no harm if you mean no harm." I say, pistol trained on the pair of eyes.
"I do mean harm, but we'll see if it's to you." The figure says. A big clunk and electric jult and the dilapidated station lights flicker on and stay flickering. But I can see her- clad in a satin red suit and black pencil skirt, tight with a ripped slit from thigh to hip. Curly hair messily half obscured her face but I could tell just the same there was blood dripping from her lips, in her hand a disembodied arm with bites out of it. I knew the look of hunger on any face and her eyes brimmed with blood lust. My legs trembled in something the opposite of fear.
"I didn't mean to disturb your meal." I said and carefully holstered my pistol.
She stepped closer, "You already have. Maybe you would like to join me?" I knew from the way she tilted her head she could smell me for what I was. I hadn't eaten lunch yet today, but I was also on a case, and I also did have some standards.
"Do you know the location of a delivery of cold cuts misplaced some time last night." I said with a hint of taunt on my tongue.
"It's right here, Ma'am," She revealed from the darkness the bag, untouched aside from the blood now hand printing it as she held it up to me.
"Sir,"
"Sir-" ;
"Channing, Detective Channing." As soon as I said this I knew it was a mistake.
"Detective!" The woman's voice escalated into a shriek not unlike the one I heard last night. I was pounced on and she grinned as she tackled me down to the ground baring her teeth and, fangs, at me. Two could play this game I flipped her over and bared my own teeth which elongated as I growled. I shook out my hair as my shape began to change, I was still matched with her strength but my nails becoming claws, body hair becoming proper fur, and the tail, took her aback.
"If you're not like them why do you work for them?"
"They haven't done anything to me, at least not yet. Is there some reason you gotta take from them and not animals? Don't you have animal meat right there? I live off animal meat just fine."
"They have hunted me and left me to hide and then driven me out of any place I can hide. Stores are not open much when the sun has also closed up for the day. But people wander the streets in the open night air when all the world is shadows. When I try to take from animals as you say so righteously this is what happens-"
She gestures to the man on the ground and also to a scar across her lips. Her mouth had not been dripping only with blood of her victim but also of her own. She grunts and pins me down again. Without thinking I lean up and want to lick the blood off her lips and lap at the wound before stopping inches from her lips and pull away.
"I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me."
"Are you insulting me? Trying to take my blood from me?"
"It's-" I don't want to say pack instinct it isn't pack instinct really it isn't its just blood. "We both share a thirst for blood. Though I fancy mine from animals and you are no animal."
"I am no animal yet I have you at fang point." She says as a jeer, breath against my neck.
"I don't call myself an animal and I won't call you neither. That word's only for those who hate our very existence." my breath hitches, "I highly recommend you not to bite my neck, you do not know everything it entails."
"You don't hate me then. And you don't want me to feed off of you. But you are a detective I see no other choice than to end you here and now. Besides I'm still starving"
"What if I told you I wouldn't rat you out." I didn't know what I was saying but she was too hot, I kept my mouth moving. "I've wrangled the pigs into a cold case before, a little file misplacement never hurt no body when I do it. It's not like the pigs do anything mighty useful when they catch someone. If you don't want my help I can be on my way but I think, I think we could help each other out."
"What would I be giving you Sir," The woman asked and I clammed up. She had a reasonable question and I was a wuss who wouldn't admit that I found her cannibalism hot. Certainly would never spill my pathetic need for company on nobody but Marz, only cuz she'd seen me through everything.
"I don't need anything from you, but if you're willing to trade over the cold cuts I can do more than just slip this case under the rug." I said
"You will set my case free, but if I give you these pounds of lunch meat you'll do more?" She eyed me slowly
"Yes Ma'am," I said, I was going to be ashamed of how much I wanted it but I'd walked in on her taking a man's bicep down her throat like sashimi, I needed to see her finish him off.
"Very well, have lunch with me."
She tossed me the back of meats and went back to her victim. I ate but also watched her eat- drinking wasn't the right term more just feed. She was clearly in it for the blood now that I could watch carefully. She left aside organs but sucked up bone marrow, didn't care much for hands or feet but devoured the heart passionately. My heart sped up and I had to reluctantly tear my eyes away lest I get entirely enthralled.
The meat I ate wasn't half bad either. It was still cold and not dried out thanks to the miserable cold rain that washed over this city day in and day out. I sucked on the blood from the meat to try to see this woman's side of things but I needed something down my throat not just to drink so I went back to eating as I usually do in my half werewolf form: all hands and teeth big gulps letting pieces get properly broken down on digestion not chewing. I had stopped observing the woman to eat my meat and now noticed she had finished off the man and was observing me. I looked up and she simply licked her lips.
"Can I take you home?" I asked her, "As a place you can stay instead of this station I mean," I wanted to take her home regardless but didn't say that aloud.
"Yes, give me a moment." She didnt wipe her face or her hands but she did grab a worn backpack and a black umbrella. "I am ready Sir Channing."
"After you M'lady." I said and took her arm.
"I never got your name." I said as an after thought.
"I have not had one in a long, long time. I think I will be taking up a new one. I am not who I was then, you understand?"
"More than understand. Sorry if this is intruding but maybe Crimson as a name, the color suits you."
She intentionally swiped some of the blood from her chin and sucked on her finger, releasing it with a soft pop. "You say it suits me? Mmm, then you may call me Crimson."
%%%%%%%%
"So this is it," I refrained from self depreciating on the small cramped nature of my two room apartment which was essentially a studio apartment plus my office as the second room. The woman put down her things and looked around. I drew the shades and turned off the lights.
"While I can see in the dark the artifical ones are not what hurt me."
"Oh appologies."
"Sir Channing, why is it you asked I not bite your neck."
"Ah there's a whole Thing for werewolves about neck biting theres like specific part that if you bite is it's"
"A form of sexual intimacy?"
"Yea, well no and yes, all biting can be sexual you probably know that already." She nodded and smiled flashing her fangs, "It's a more specific long term bonding thing which can't be revoked."
"Ah like turning."
"Yes. Yes like turning." I nodded profusely
"Have you ever met a werepire?"
"Ah I have not-" I wasn't about to tell her she was the first vampire I'd met more than briefly. "What are they like?"
"Hmmm, hungry, very hungry." She looked at me like I was her next meal and my stomach growled. I walked towards her, "Just so you know, the place not to bite is the right side of my neck. The rest, though, is free range." I backed her against the wall in the three steps that I took. She took the hint and scraped her fangs against the skin on the left side of my neck. She very slowly bit down.
"Harder c'mon."
She followed my direction and bit in all the way and started to suck from the points of her two fangs, it felt more like a proboscis than a hickey. She lapped up the blood from the two wounds and pulled back.
"You taste of whiskey."
I laughed, "I probably do." She groaned and leaned into me. I put a hand on her chest to steady her and then moved in down over her breast to her stomach, when I pressed down with my fingers she whined so I did it again, making small circles against the overhang of her stomach.
Her hands were on my thighs and her fingers were about to slip up my dress but then she stopped saying, "It is nearing midday, I have stayed up too late I'm afraid."
"You can take the bed,"
"No this is your house I am a guest, you even had to give me permission to enter the apartment building and then your apartment, I cannot take the bed."
"I-" I sighed, "M'lady you don't understand just how often I sleep on the leather couch, its more than routine for me. I am giving you permission to sleep on the bed, she was evidently about to protest more so I added, "and I specifically do bot give you permission to sleep on the leather couch."
"Ah you use our nature against me how cruel." She gave a sly smile. "Can you help me with this?" She gestured to her dress. Her curves were nicely visible in the satin but her arms were too big to properly reach the zipper on the back without strain.
"Of course," I walked up behind her, in the mirror I noticed it was just me, of course. I put my hands at the sides of her chest and slowly moved them down her body, the mirror showing her the shape of her silhouete by the movement of my hands. She relaxed into my touch. I tugged down the zipper and she stepped out of the dress. We were of course both women but that did nothing to stop the blush I got seeing her u dressed, if anything it was more than if I were to see a man undressed because they're simply not my type save for some of my fellow butches.
"Thank you Sir,"
"Lovella, my first name is Lovella." I said in a rush, she couldn't be calling me Sir in a situation like this without some negotiations and a safeword first.
"Mm, a nice name, especially for one like you."
"So um good night or- good day?" I said awkwardly while leaning on the doorframe to my office.
"Good day Lovella" she responded. She retired to bed while I went into the office to arrange hiding the resolution of this case from the pigs. I was still a little light headed from being fed on and tried not to get distracted at the image of the shape of Crimson's stomach.
Author's Note: Cover art is from @vanilireph on rule34
Magical Realism
Vore/Canibalism/Death
Mutual gaining
Feeding/Stuffing
Sexual acts/Love making
Addictive
Enthusiastic
Indulgent
Romantic
Female
Lesbian
Weight gain
Wife/Husband/Girlfriend
First person
1 chapter, created 10 months
, updated 10 months
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