[Eturnal] Cash, Labour, or Blood (Evelyn)

@"Evelyn"


Tazhee Azur loved his restaurant. Some would say that it had saved him from a life of petty crime.

Hah. Eturnal keep Tazhee clean and crime-free? Now that was quite the funny joke. Sure, it had kept him from running around doing someone else's dirty work... but that was because he got to do his own. Eturnal needed flesh and blood to function. Tazhee himself had to feed.

In all honesty, it was all because the chupacabra wanted to.

Like what he was doing right now: he was hanging off the edge of his own stage, a mismatched assortment of people with instruments far enough behind him to be safe from his dancing tail and its fish-hook barb, belting out Should've Known Better by memory simply because he could.

It was his restaurant. Who was going to tell him he couldn't climb up on stage and sing? Apparently not his customers; Tazhee was more than uninhibited enough to put on a good show, and the lean shadow that was this particular vampire chupacabra really didn't have a bad voice. It didn't stand up to his hunting or his cooking-creation, but then those were special.

This was just plain fun, and fun was the name of the game.

@"Evelyn"

Eturnal was one of the few establishments in the area that didn't have live security watching to door. There was a very good reason for that, of course. The proprietor certainly could have afforded a few hirelings full-time.

If Tazhee was in the dining room, he didn't need anyone else. He especially didn't want to share in the entertainment that came whenever someone thought they could mess around. He might have been distracted, singing whole-heartedly and absolutely loving it, but there was something he loved more. Something he would drop just about anything and everything for.

Hunting.

As such, when some chick went straight from the bathroom to the front 'door,' Tazhee tossed the mike at one of the musicians behind him and bounded to the floor. He landed on his hands as well as his feet, smoothly jointed and as born to the pose as walking on two limbs.

The chupacabra was hunting, and even in the moderately crowded - and generally undisturbed, even now - dining room he had his target's scent. He wasted no time, but sprang around and over tables with the weight of a shadow and the speed of a flame.

His claws were plenty to keep his grip as he whipped around the corner of the front wall, into the street within a few heartbeats of spotting the walk-out, and his shoes had slipped off supportively somewhere around the time he leapt off the stage.

Tazhee's spines were up, a triple-ridge of fleshy but sharp spikes along his back, and his grin promised blood.

Eturnal's musicians were the only ones who earned free meals. Everyone else paid in coin... or in blood, and Tazhee wanted to collect.

@"Evelyn"

Tazhee adored when his victims ran. It just made the chase so much longer, so much more enjoyable. His grin only stretched wider as he ran, sleek and dark through the streets that rarely saw care and saw reliable witnesses even more rarely.

He could have gone faster than he did. Even without tapping into his vampiric abilities, chupacabras were fast.

He wanted to savour this, almost as much as he wanted to catch and destroy this fool who thought she could dine and dash him. He didn't need to send people like her away broken but alive - he didn't particularly care if she learned. He wanted others to learn from her mistake, certainly, but he wasn't going to hold back his enjoyment just to keep her alive.

Tazhee also knew these alleys better than the back of his hand, and he didn't even scar. This was his territory - albeit territory shared with others, out beyond the walls of his restaurant - and he knew precisely where he was, where she was, and where the best nooks and crannies to drive prey were.

He let the girl keep running towards one. When she took an unacceptable turn, he simply sprang past her, close and fast and lethal enough to rustle her clothes but not touching her quite yet. She simply had to run the right direction, and she would live a few minutes longer.

Or he might get bored, and simply run her down in the street. That would work as well.

@"Evelyn"

Poor, poor child. The sound of her heart almost threatened to falter and drop her dead of fright there in the middle of the road! That wouldn't be nearly as much fun... but keeping her right on that edge of lethal terror would be.

And then she was caught, and Tazhee simply lounged for a moment, blocking her exit and simply watching. The implication of fire in his eyes was so much more prominent in the dark, and he could see as well as if all the world were lit with that fire.

His ears pricked with interest at the sudden change in her skin, and his grin widened. "My my. My little runner has some tricks, does she? Tricks do not excuse you from stealing from me." He shifted back to standing on only two legs, smooth and fluid and nearly invisible in the dark but for his eyes and the occasional glint across his teeth. "Still. I do enjoy being entertained."

@"Evelyn"

"What do I want? Why, recompense. This is hardly the sort of place where a business can survive by letting someone walk out free of charge or penalty." His grin didn't falter, and his ears didn't let him be tricked one bit by the girl's bravado. It was a very good quality bravado, to be sure, but it was still backed by heart-trembling panic.

He strolled a little closer. "Wait for you? Let you go? My dear, do you really think me foolish enough to fall for that?" The other option might satisfy him, he supposed. It would be okay to just be paid properly... and if he knew where she lived, well, that opened up other opportunities.

Tazhee let a bit of the threat in his posture soften. Not all of it, not by a long shot, but a bit. An implication of rationality, as it were. Whether or not it was an honest implication the girl would have to guess.

"How far is your home, little thief?"