#midnight predator

[raevenlywrote]

Cat Nap

Summary:

Turquoise is trapped in a nightmare of her past while sleeping in the courtyard with Jaguar during Midnight Predator. Content warning for trauma nightmare, implication of sexual abuse, and descriptions of pain and knives/scarification

Trapped in a nightmare. One of the worst I’ve had in a long time. I’m used to the running, calculating while my pulse pounds, fleeing through the tight geometric lines of indifferent streets. No one ever comes to help me. Even my dream self has learned to stop asking. Just keep moving, even as the logic of dreams and city planning corral me back to the starting point.

I don’t even cry out when I’m caught again. The familiar, too big hands seizing by the shoulders, jerking me down from the fence I’m failing to climb with a strength I could never hope to resist. So I don’t try. I just let him take me, and save my fight for a moment when it might actually make a difference.

I don’t smell in dreams, but I taste. The sour metallic knife of his tongue always tastes of death, no matter how faint. The inhuman strength of his hands and the rotting taste of blood always reminds me that he is Hunter, and I am Prey.

I taste, and I feel. Every excruciating inch as he lifts my nightgown, a small, lacy thing that I would never wear of my own accord. I try to use that disconnect to distance myself, to remember that this is a dream, and it isn’t really happening. It doesn’t help. Because it may be only a dream now, but it did happen. Over and over and over again.

“You’re mine.” His breath against my neck is hot and fetid, turning my stomach. His fingers find that spot on my ribs, right side, two up from the bottom, hardly the size of a quarter. But-

Pain

A hot shriek lances through my entire side as he presses his thumb into that one spot, tender and never allowed to heal. Even when I’m awake, even when I’m years older, it still hurts. Whatever he did to it, whatever he’s doing to it, it changes me forever. I will never not carry that aching weakpoint.

I struggle. I can’t help it. It hurts and there’s only so much discipline available to my young-- to my sleeping brain. I am not trapped back there again. I am only dreaming. This is only a night terror. If only that would help me wake up.

His body is a long, heavy line against my back, one arm an inescapable band across both of mine. He’s too big, too strong, I can’t stop this-

“You will always be mine. You will always bear my marks.”

The pattern of it flashes before my eyes, dream logic putting us before a mirror. Better than my childhood bedroom. I look into the reflection and try to see myself as the adult I know I’ve become-- strong, hard-muscled – taller than he ever was, as strange as that is to think. The dissonance isn’t enough to break the dream, but it is enough to remind me of the shape of my actual body, and distantly, I start to become aware of that, too.

It is also being held down.

That’s not so surprising. I can’t bear to sleep uncovered – far too vulnerable – but heat always makes the nightmares worse. Doubtless I have spun myself into a stupid cocoon of sheets and sweat. Hot, so hot. Can’t get away. Grip too tight.

The first trace of the knife bites into my skin and I scream. I can feel it building up in my real throat, feel how hot and dry my mouth has become. I long for a cup of hot coffee, the bitter wet rush of morning. It will take time to brew, time I will have to be alone in my skin, locked in this stupid nightmare half-world as I wait for my panic to drain from me. But at least I am not in a Bruja house, where a fellow hunter could learn of my weakness. No one knows about my night terrors but me, and--

“Look at me!”

His voice has lost its polish, rage revealing the monster underneath the elegance. Costumes and niceties can never cover up that they’re all monsters, but they all love to drape themselves in the pageantry of them anyways. He is always “Lord” or “Master”. Always with capital letters. He can hear it in my voice if I don’t. Just as he could see in my eyes that I was somehow slipping away, slipping his grip. That won’t do. He is teaching me a lesson. I must be present.

The pattern of his mark flows over my shoulder, electric fire where it passes over my bones. Like the spot on my ribs, the mark burns, like liquid metal being poured over my skin. Branded. The marks on my wrist – incidental remnants of past lessons, not deliberate like this – mark me as his to any who know his work. But this mark, this flowing, looping line, is his signature. He is an artist, and an artist always signs their work.

I struggle again, willing my dream self to wrench free. I know my phone is nearby, if I could just wake up enough to move, to call someone--

Who would I even call? I don’t have any friends.

Cathy had friends.

I will never let myself be Cathy again.

I won’t be her, but I can’t be me. Too trapped in the past to remember how to twist, how to use my meager strength effectively--

Something I have never felt before rasps over the back of my neck. It is rough, and wet, but somehow also soft and dry. It isn’t soothing, but it is rhythmic, and it is different, so it is welcome. I focus all my thoughts on that steady, strange rasp, trying to use my figuring it out to wrench myself from the dream.

I am still held down. I am still trapped by a body so much stronger than my own.

A body.

I always sleep alone.

The rasping is joined by a strange rumble, deep and gravely. I feel tiny rocks against my skin, the grit of the outdoors. Did I fall while on a job? Do I have a concussion? Am I dying? There’s grass, the foreign green smell of growing things, and a musk that makes all the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

A neck that is being licked.

By a jaguar.

I don’t even know if he’s actually a jaguar. Neither of my lives had any real reason to know the difference between all the various big cats. He could be a panther or a leopard or even some kind of maneless jungle lion I’ve never heard of before for all I know of the family Felidae. Class? Doesn’t matter. It’s such a Not Daryl thought it breaks me free, and I am finally starting to wake up.

Starting to. Mortal bodies are treacherous things, and they don’t like to change gears well. In a vain effort to protect me from myself, my body has flooded itself with whatever chemicals keep me still and motionless in my deepest sleep. Today – and it is wild to realize that it is today and not tonight – it has probably saved my life. If I tried to fight back against my new master, even in my sleep, it would doubtless not have gone well. No matter how kind he has so far seemed.

I don’t know why he’s in cat form, and I don’t care. I don’t think I could have stopped myself from fighting if I’d woke to him as a man. As a vampire. I can’t let myself fall into the trap of thinking of him as a man. I know far too well how good they are at wearing that gentle mask.

But his tongue on the back of my neck feels good, and there’s no denying that it saved me. The purring-- purring, that’s what that weird rumble is-- is also alien, like the tongue, and all these novel sensations allow me to fully separate from the past. The dusty, cave-like smell of vampire mixes with green and sun-warmed fur smells of Jaguar, giving my brain new context for old danger signals. I hate that on him it smells good, complimenting the muskiness of his cat self. Hopefully on his human-shaped form it will smell like vampire and only vampire.

Why am I so obsessed with smells? Because it is the one sense that never fails me. Even in the dark, I have learned to smell danger, tapping into wealth of information that human kind has long abandoned. And again, in my dreams, I never smell. So I know I am awake, like touching the glossy screen of my smartphone usually wakes me, an anachronistic sensation to my pre new millennium childhood brain.

I don’t have a phone right now. I have a big cat.

He licks and purrs, clearly trying to soothe me. Is he awake, or is this just some feline instinct, common to all kitties no matter their size? I don’t care. I need the comfort, and the novel sensations, so right now, just for an instant, I allow myself to relax back into it. Into him.

Later, there will be questions. Later, there will be discussions of how I came to him, what his plans for me really are, negotiations that are merely part of the game for their kind. I am weak, and could never hope to enforce any contract they no longer wished to keep. I am weak, but I am no longer Prey. I know how to think, know how to fight, know how to run. I know how to wait. So I let his rasping cat tongue lick away the sweat of my nightmares, wondering if they change how it taste. I will use the comfort he’s offering me to ground myself, and I will learn what I can of this new place. I am not Safe, but I am not back there, either. It’s a start.

[sinistervex]

Some sketches of characters from the Den of Shadows book series.

[raevenlywrites]

If you know you know

[major-gilneass]

Going through the entirety of Amelia Atwater-Rhodes books. Just finished the Maeve’ra series, gonna restart the Den of Shadows (I’ve read the original quartet, but not the extended series), then the Kiesha’ra series…and I just ordered the Mancer series from ThriftBooks, so YAY.

[risen-from-stardust]

More sketches + wips

Shotout to eunoia, cynicalyst and some other beloved internet user

[sugarand-everythingnice]

Non canon self insert art of my friend @oceansofstarlight and I ‼️

And of course ♡♡♡

I love you pookie ♡♡

[seedsofwinter]

"They have a gym" is what rental places tell you to try to justify the overpriced rent they wanna charge. Not what a *newly reinstated slave empire* should put in their brochure to tell you they've changed.

Fixing Midnight Predator

The A number 1 thing that would help fix Midnight Predator (while remaining canon compliant) is addressing in the text that Jaguar isn't entirely free to act until Jeshickah is dead. I've always understood that that's part of his whole deal in resetting up Midnight, and why he's all "gotta hire someone to kill Jeshickah for me" and why he's not completely overhauling the system just yet

Like his to-do list is 1) Kill Jeshickah so I'm not under her direct control 1.5) Kill Gabriel if he makes me 2) Kill motherfucking Daryl if he doesn't get his shit together 3) Hire someone to help me not be a complete asshole because I am a work in fucking progress

The best the book ever really gives us is the lukewarm speech about the slave he never had to hit, and how he acts towards Eric (at least I think his name is Eric. It's after midnight and I dont' really care. His boy waif, his fucking Robin). There is room within the existing text for a better Jaguar. It just needs to put in the work.

[clonerightsagenda]

Presumably my motion disturbed the air currents/internal pressure somehow but I walked over to my bedroom door and it obligingly opened so if I'm haunted it's at least being helpful

[gl1tchxr]

animals all have human level intelligence in my world, so it wouldn't make sense for them to herd sheep and cows or have dogs and cats for pets. so what if insects filled those roles? that opens the door to so many cool concepts. huge fluffy moths kept for their silk, mantises as livestock guardians, cricket coops instead of chicken coops, beetle species being bred for the brightest colors and shiniest shells to compete in beetle shows, tarantulas as beasts of burden, dragonflies as aerial mounts. honestly just scale them up and bugs can do anything

[bk-179]

I am very tired so this is bad but. Gingerbrave with prey animal symbolism is very potent actually and we should use it more

[coffeestripes]

draw ALL YOUR YAUTJA AND XENO OCS AS BABIES pls and thankies uwu

Queen i'm giving u a kiss for this JDSKJ

Fine! But not all of them, i have more than 54 counted and named yautjas and two hives. However imma make more posts besides this one don't worry

I had to obviously do my first three ocs

Yes Berserker is heavy af

Little note: No they don't have the same age, neither are close to be (Except Yah'taod and Vanka'aur for like 100+ years or so)

Extra cuz i like to add some little lore time to time. The new bitch here is Un'Tou

Midnight (and again Un'Tou)

Va'Joir and Ca'Kour-E

and finally, Eclipse and Xerxes. i uhhhhh suppose like this? i have no idea how to do their facehuggers

[risen-from-stardust]

Bunch of sketches!

Shotout to xeno-buggy, naoutchi, crowworkz and cynicatalyst. I love y'all OCs so much, thanks for being friends and letting me do these little stupid drawings

[raevenlywrites]

new ficlet up

Cat Nap

Summary:

Turquoise is trapped in a nightmare of her past while sleeping in the courtyard with Jaguar during Midnight Predator. Content warning for trauma nightmare, implication of sexual abuse, and descriptions of pain and knives/scarification

Trapped in a nightmare. One of the worst I’ve had in a long time. I’m used to the running, calculating while my pulse pounds, fleeing through the tight geometric lines of indifferent streets. No one ever comes to help me. Even my dream self has learned to stop asking. Just keep moving, even as the logic of dreams and city planning corral me back to the starting point.

I don’t even cry out when I’m caught again. The familiar, too big hands seizing by the shoulders, jerking me down from the fence I’m failing to climb with a strength I could never hope to resist. So I don’t try. I just let him take me, and save my fight for a moment when it might actually make a difference.

I don’t smell in dreams, but I taste. The sour metallic knife of his tongue always tastes of death, no matter how faint. The inhuman strength of his hands and the rotting taste of blood always reminds me that he is Hunter, and I am Prey.

I taste, and I feel. Every excruciating inch as he lifts my nightgown, a small, lacy thing that I would never wear of my own accord. I try to use that disconnect to distance myself, to remember that this is a dream, and it isn’t really happening. It doesn’t help. Because it may be only a dream now, but it did happen. Over and over and over again.

“You’re mine.” His breath against my neck is hot and fetid, turning my stomach. His fingers find that spot on my ribs, right side, two up from the bottom, hardly the size of a quarter. But-

Pain

A hot shriek lances through my entire side as he presses his thumb into that one spot, tender and never allowed to heal. Even when I’m awake, even when I’m years older, it still hurts. Whatever he did to it, whatever he’s doing to it, it changes me forever. I will never not carry that aching weakpoint.

I struggle. I can’t help it. It hurts and there’s only so much discipline available to my young-- to my sleeping brain. I am not trapped back there again. I am only dreaming. This is only a night terror. If only that would help me wake up.

His body is a long, heavy line against my back, one arm an inescapable band across both of mine. He’s too big, too strong, I can’t stop this-

“You will always be mine. You will always bear my marks.”

The pattern of it flashes before my eyes, dream logic putting us before a mirror. Better than my childhood bedroom. I look into the reflection and try to see myself as the adult I know I’ve become-- strong, hard-muscled – taller than he ever was, as strange as that is to think. The dissonance isn’t enough to break the dream, but it is enough to remind me of the shape of my actual body, and distantly, I start to become aware of that, too.

It is also being held down.

That’s not so surprising. I can’t bear to sleep uncovered – far too vulnerable – but heat always makes the nightmares worse. Doubtless I have spun myself into a stupid cocoon of sheets and sweat. Hot, so hot. Can’t get away. Grip too tight.

The first trace of the knife bites into my skin and I scream. I can feel it building up in my real throat, feel how hot and dry my mouth has become. I long for a cup of hot coffee, the bitter wet rush of morning. It will take time to brew, time I will have to be alone in my skin, locked in this stupid nightmare half-world as I wait for my panic to drain from me. But at least I am not in a Bruja house, where a fellow hunter could learn of my weakness. No one knows about my night terrors but me, and--

“Look at me!”

His voice has lost its polish, rage revealing the monster underneath the elegance. Costumes and niceties can never cover up that they’re all monsters, but they all love to drape themselves in the pageantry of them anyways. He is always “Lord” or “Master”. Always with capital letters. He can hear it in my voice if I don’t. Just as he could see in my eyes that I was somehow slipping away, slipping his grip. That won’t do. He is teaching me a lesson. I must be present.

The pattern of his mark flows over my shoulder, electric fire where it passes over my bones. Like the spot on my ribs, the mark burns, like liquid metal being poured over my skin. Branded. The marks on my wrist – incidental remnants of past lessons, not deliberate like this – mark me as his to any who know his work. But this mark, this flowing, looping line, is his signature. He is an artist, and an artist always signs their work.

I struggle again, willing my dream self to wrench free. I know my phone is nearby, if I could just wake up enough to move, to call someone--

Who would I even call? I don’t have any friends.

Cathy had friends.

I will never let myself be Cathy again.

I won’t be her, but I can’t be me. Too trapped in the past to remember how to twist, how to use my meager strength effectively--

Something I have never felt before rasps over the back of my neck. It is rough, and wet, but somehow also soft and dry. It isn’t soothing, but it is rhythmic, and it is different, so it is welcome. I focus all my thoughts on that steady, strange rasp, trying to use my figuring it out to wrench myself from the dream.

I am still held down. I am still trapped by a body so much stronger than my own.

A body.

I always sleep alone.

The rasping is joined by a strange rumble, deep and gravely. I feel tiny rocks against my skin, the grit of the outdoors. Did I fall while on a job? Do I have a concussion? Am I dying? There’s grass, the foreign green smell of growing things, and a musk that makes all the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

A neck that is being licked.

By a jaguar.

I don’t even know if he’s actually a jaguar. Neither of my lives had any real reason to know the difference between all the various big cats. He could be a panther or a leopard or even some kind of maneless jungle lion I’ve never heard of before for all I know of the family Felidae. Class? Doesn’t matter. It’s such a Not Daryl thought it breaks me free, and I am finally starting to wake up.

Starting to. Mortal bodies are treacherous things, and they don’t like to change gears well. In a vain effort to protect me from myself, my body has flooded itself with whatever chemicals keep me still and motionless in my deepest sleep. Today – and it is wild to realize that it is today and not tonight – it has probably saved my life. If I tried to fight back against my new master, even in my sleep, it would doubtless not have gone well. No matter how kind he has so far seemed.

I don’t know why he’s in cat form, and I don’t care. I don’t think I could have stopped myself from fighting if I’d woke to him as a man. As a vampire. I can’t let myself fall into the trap of thinking of him as a man. I know far too well how good they are at wearing that gentle mask.

But his tongue on the back of my neck feels good, and there’s no denying that it saved me. The purring-- purring, that’s what that weird rumble is-- is also alien, like the tongue, and all these novel sensations allow me to fully separate from the past. The dusty, cave-like smell of vampire mixes with green and sun-warmed fur smells of Jaguar, giving my brain new context for old danger signals. I hate that on him it smells good, complimenting the muskiness of his cat self. Hopefully on his human-shaped form it will smell like vampire and only vampire.

Why am I so obsessed with smells? Because it is the one sense that never fails me. Even in the dark, I have learned to smell danger, tapping into wealth of information that human kind has long abandoned. And again, in my dreams, I never smell. So I know I am awake, like touching the glossy screen of my smartphone usually wakes me, an anachronistic sensation to my pre new millennium childhood brain.

I don’t have a phone right now. I have a big cat.

He licks and purrs, clearly trying to soothe me. Is he awake, or is this just some feline instinct, common to all kitties no matter their size? I don’t care. I need the comfort, and the novel sensations, so right now, just for an instant, I allow myself to relax back into it. Into him.

Later, there will be questions. Later, there will be discussions of how I came to him, what his plans for me really are, negotiations that are merely part of the game for their kind. I am weak, and could never hope to enforce any contract they no longer wished to keep. I am weak, but I am no longer Prey. I know how to think, know how to fight, know how to run. I know how to wait. So I let his rasping cat tongue lick away the sweat of my nightmares, wondering if they change how it taste. I will use the comfort he’s offering me to ground myself, and I will learn what I can of this new place. I am not Safe, but I am not back there, either. It’s a start.

[iamfitzwilliamdarcy]

yknow i still have a quarter written essay on taylor swift and sex

[arcanigenum]

WELCOME TO THE DARKNESS, MY FRIEND. YOUR EYES WILL ADJUST IN TIME.

A horror based multi-muse OC blog that doesn't belong to any fandoms (except for that one Witcher and Predator OC). 😎

Currently consisting of: the demon/angel named Azazel, the Norse gods named Loke and Ull, the Messiah named Jesus, an elf Witcher OC, an ex serial killer, an evil scientist vampire, a himbo monster, a were-dog priest, a human-alien hybrid, an immortal human, two Swedish trolls, a small elf, a predator/yautja OC, and a kind witch.

Some of them have human-only verses. Some do not. Nearly all crossover to other verses. Some may or may not pose as a threat to your muse.

+21 only. Untagged, disgusting themes are present.😘

I’m Michelle, +30, Sweden. My motto is make it work.

(if the above link doesn't work pls use the link in the header instead)

[rowdyluv]

Guyssssss🥺 my really cute manager bought me a preds vs canucks official puck at the game last night😭😭😭

probs should just start a tag that’s called cute manager chronicles

anyways… hey siri play labyrinth by taylor swift