InsaneJournal

And the Children Shall Lead (4/4)
Title: And the Children Shall Lead
Chapter Title: Sprout
Rated: hard R
Pairing: none
Fandom: Danny Phantom
Danny Phantom belongs to Nickelodeon and its associates.

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This story is a dark fantasy involving vampirism, vore, blood, evil, and death. Emphasis on dark. It is a sequel to And the Children Shall Inherit the Earth.

It was written the middle of 2007.

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School ended and Tucker and James knocked politely on Lancer’s office door. Door opened and boys were ushered inside. Quick glance around, no one paying attention, close the door with an ominous click. Lock the deadbolt, keep them out, away, keep them from hearing, they mustn’t hear…

“Is this about Mother?” Tucker asked.

Lancer sat at his desk, hidden in shadow. So pale save for the dark lines just beginning to show on his arms, black vines growing beneath the skin. “No, my dears,” he said quietly. “It’s about you. It’s about you and the lives you carry within you…”

“We’ve done all we can to keep them hidden, Sir,” James said. “We’ve made sure no one knows. But… what would they do if they found out?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Lancer asked. “They’ll kill us. We might be lucky enough that they’d try to save us and that leads to the worse fate of being dissected alive. Their own good intentions will kill our swathes and eviscerate our hosts and then there will be nothing left of either.”

“So we have to hide this,” realized Tucker, “or we’ll be destroyed.”

Lancer chuckled darkly, a laugh of self-hatred. “If only things were that simple…” He held out an arm, let the light illuminate his secrets. Under the skin of his forearm a thin black vine wriggled. Faces leaned closer in horrid fascination as the vine breached the surface, as a blood-covered tendril grew from skin and a tiny red and white rosebud unfurled and opened. Blood dripped from its petals, blood Lancer coaxed up with his fingertips and licked up with relish. “Things are never that simple,” he finished.

Tucker and James stared at the little flower in horror. “I-is that going to happen to us?” James asked.

Lancer examined the little flower almost lovingly. “Yes,” he murmured. “And more, so much more. This is only the beginning…”

Tucker’s expression of horror deepened, suddenly changing to a grimace of pain as something was burrowing into his head, screaming in his mind, so loud… A voice…

Lancer darted forward and caught Tucker before he could fall, held him while he thrashed and seized in agony, as the swathe within him took control for the first time… James backed against the door and tried not to scream…

Tucker’s body tensed up and siezed before falling limp and Lancer gently stroked his head and murmured sweet nothings. James stayed pressed against the door, panic rising. “And is that going to happen to me?” he asked in a small, panicked voice.

Lancer graced James with a smile. “It will,” he said. “Tucker’s swathe has finished reaching tendrils into his mind. They are one, now. Nothing short of death can separate them.”

“A-and is this going to happen to you?” James asked.

“It already has,” Lancer said, voice full of sweetness for a beloved child. “It happened faster for me because host and swathe… we feed each other more than you or Tucker.”

“That’s because mine wants fish,” James said with a face of disgust. “I hate fish.”

“Mine feeds on blood,” Lancer revealed.

James went pale. “Man, that’s gross. I’m sorry for you.”

“I didn’t want to eat that dog,” Lancer continued, speaking to no one. “But it was there and I was so hungry… I couldn’t stop myself until I’d killed it and there was no reason to waste the blood… Never taken blood from anything living before…”

Realization hit as James put the pieces together and stared in horror at his teacher, at Pooky’s murderer. “Y-you’re the one,” James whispered. “You killed Pooky. You’re the one who ate Dash’s dog!”

Lancer gave James a look filled with logic and disgust. “Rather Dash’s dog than Dash himself,” he pointed out. “Eating a person would cause suspicion. The dog elicits no investigation.”

James pulled himself up and fumbled with the lock. “That’s sick,” he whispered. “How could you stand to... to…” He pulled the door open and ran down the hall to the bathroom to empty his stomach.

Lancer shrugged and kept vigil over Tucker. Soon the boy would wake up and then…

Then he would belong to Father.

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James finished retching, reached up to flush the toilet when feet showed themselves from under the stall door. “You okay, man?” called the owner of those feet.

Dash.

James sat on the dirty bathroom floor and pulled the stall door open. “Dude,” he said, raspy and quiet. “I know who killed Pooky.”

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Tucker was slowly waking up when very suddenly the office door was pounded on furiously. It stopped for a moment then a body threw itself violently against the door until the lock broke and light flooded the office.

“You wanted something, Mr. Baxter?” Lancer asked, calm and collected.

Dash stood in the open doorway, hands shaking and chest heaving. His expression was one of pure rage as he regarded the murderer of his beloved pet and tried desperately not to kill him then and there. “You…” he growled, the best he could do at the moment.

Lancer pushed Tucker up and made sure the boy was able to collapse in a chair. “Me, what?” Lancer asked, getting to his feet.

“You… killed… my best FRIEND!” Dash screamed before leaping at Lancer, fists aiming for the man’s head.

Lancer ducked, aimed a counterattack at the underside of Dash’s jaw. The quarterback stumbled as fist caught under his chin and threw him back into the corridor. Dash growled and tried again, fist slamming into the door as Lancer ducked out of his office into the more open corridor.

“You… you monster!” Dash screamed before charging again.

Lancer reeled back as Dash’s charge connected with his chest, shoved Dash away and tried to pin him against the lockers. “You have no idea,” Lancer purred.

Dash kicked and flailed. “You sick freak!” he shrieked. “Pooky was my dog, my friend!”

Lancer succeeded in the pin and used his body weight to try and keep Dash still. “Better him than you, don’t you think?” he asked.

Dash responded by bringing his knee up into Lancer’s crotch. Lancer doubled over in pain and backed off of Dash. He looked up just in time to see the fist contact with his left eye and fell to his knees as the world started going dark.

“I’ll kill you for what you did to him!” Dash swore before aiming another punch to the kneeling man before him.

Lancer’s vision went dark and his skin writhed with vines as his swathe took full control. He glared up at Dash with eyes turning red with blood. Anger, fear, they all bled away until one emotion remained.

Hunger.

In his rage Dash didn’t think much of the black lines growing under Lancer’s skin. Or of the blood red eyes. But when Lancer arched back and screamed in agony, when four long, black vines tore out of his back, when those vines dripped blood and 3 inch thorns unfolded under needle-sharp leaves, then Dash took notice. And thought for an instant that maybe Pooky wouldn’t be as alone in death as he’d feared.

Dash ran. Or tried to. He got maybe three steps before the first vine wrapped around his ankle and a spine jabbed into him. He screamed as it pulled him back, pulled him back to the monster masquerading as his teacher, back to those murderous vines. Dash struggled, screamed but time seemed to slow…

He felt himself being lifted into a standing position. He felt the vines entwining around him like a lover, their thorns spearing into him at every pulse point he had, felt Lancer’s arms hold him up, Lancer’s body pressed behind him.

Felt the plant’s venom as it coursed through his veins, replaced his blood as it drank deeply of him. Heard Lancer moan in pleasure as the swathe within him fed well for the first time in its life…

Lancer’s tongue licking a path up his cheekbone was the last thing he felt before his world went dark.

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The bloodrose finished drinking its fill and slowly pulled its thorns out of its still-living victim. The victim would survive, it was willing to make sure of it in order to stay hidden, undetected within its host just a little while longer. It spat a coagulant out of its thorns as it pulled out of the boy, sealing his wounds.

The body was dropped to the floor and the boy moaned. It glared at the pod-traitor down the hall, at the flytrap unable or perhaps unwilling to control its host. The humans are weak, it thought, unwilling to believe that maybe the human had overpowered the flytrap.

The bloodrose made its host walk back into the office, kneel in front of the ivy and its host. “My host tells me your host is capable of technological skill,” it said.

The ivy’s host nodded.

“Good,” purred the bloodrose. “Take the surveillance on this corridor offline and alter the past few minutes. Create any monster you like. We must remain hidden if we are to survive.”

The ivy’s host nodded again. “I’ll get right on that,” he said before getting up and running to the security room.

The victim in the corridor stirred as the bloodrose retracted thorns and vines back into the host’s body. It sauntered out into the corridor and dragged the victim into the office.

Need to keep it hidden. Need to stay safe.

End chapter 4