Wham!
Jezebel snarled into the dark, the stench of salt water and mingled stale and fresh blood burning the inside of her nose. She threw her young body forward again, trying to rip the chains free.
Wham!
She'd been chained up deep in the bowels of the ship for who-knows-how-long, fed nothing, and given only filthy water to drink. She'd been waiting for her opportunity to get free and now, with the ship apparently under attack, was the prime opportunity to do so.
Jezebel threw herself forward again, and again, straining hard at the chains that bound her to the wall.
Wham! Wham! Wham!
With a roar, the young werewolf threw her little remaining strength into one final lurch, the rusted wrist cuffs groaning with effort before at last snapping, her body tumbling forward with her wrists now freed.
She laid there for a moment, panting at the effort of breaking steel with naught but her wrists and weight. Blood flowed thickly down her wrists, slicking her palms and fingers and making it difficult for her to push to her feet. It took several minutes to manage it.
Jezebel shook herself off, hacking and sputtering. The floorboards smelled like piss.
Stumbling almost drunkenly toward the door—fucking fuck she couldn't remember last she'd eaten—she began to growl. She could hear the men running outside her door, and she wasn't sure if they were crewmen of the ship she'd been imprisoned on or crewmen from the attacking ship.
The young werewolf wasn't sure she really cared.
She fumbled at the doorknob, hands slippery with blood. It wasn't locked; it never was. They didn't figure she'd be able to get out of the chains, or if she did, would be too weak to make it to the door.
Jezebel Nightclaw was no fucking pushover. A few days, weeks, without food wouldn't kill her. A silver bullet through the lung hadn't offed her; she was pretty sure almost nothing could.
And now she was absolutely starving.
The instant she stepped through the door, she grabbed one of the running men at random, pulling him into the nook of her door. He went stark white: the pale, delicate-looking elf in the claws of the dark-haired/dark-skinned fanged werewolf girl who the entire ship had sworn was down for the count.
He opened his mouth to scream. She buried her fangs into the soft, tender flesh of his throat and then jerked her head back, swallowing the man's vocal cords before he could utter a squeak. His hot blood sprayed and he dropped, gaping throat wheezing as he began to bleed out. He weakly slashed his sword at her, succeeding only in drawing thin lines of blood that began closing up almost instantly.
Jezebel dropped to the floor with him. She was just ravenous. She didn't even bother shifting—she didn't have enough energy for that. She merely dug her claws into either side of his ribcage and jerking outwards, cracking him open like a shellfish. He had to have felt his ribs split open. He had to have felt her fangs sink into his soft belly, ripping the skin open to feast on the muscle and fatty intestines below. He had to have felt her claws pierce his lungs and he had to have felt—for however briefly—her teeth clamp down on his frantically-pumping heart before ripping the useless organ from his chest.
The pain must have been excruciating. Jezebel relished the thought.
She feasted eagerly on his remains, devouring the hot, bloody meat, crushing the bones between powerful jaws.
She was, perhaps, disappointed: either nobody saw her devouring the elf in the shadowy nook or they were too busy dealing with the invaders to feel like attacking a feeding werewolf.
Their mistake. If they'd tried to attack her, they might have succeeded in taking her down for good. Now Jezebel was well-fed.
And pissed.
Her knuckles cracked as they broadened, the bones in her feet lengthening till she stood on her toes. Thick black and grey fur rolled over her dark skin in waves, and her ribs snapped as her chest expanded. Her tail lashed and she shook her head violently as her muzzle broke into place.
Blood and saliva drooled from grinning black lips as Jezebel's hulking form slouched forward, away from the low ceiling. Her howl carried through the bowels of the ship, and she could taste the tension that settled into the shouts and screams above her.
Duking it out with invaders was one thing. Doing so with an angry feral werewolf on the loose was another.
She crashed into the next elf that bolted past her, grabbing his sword arm in her jaws and shaking it as she would a newly-caught rabbit, till the shoulder joint popped out of place and the skin shredded loose. The elf screamed and screamed in horror as she continued to shake his missing arm around. Finally the noise got on her nerves: her long, deadly teeth sank into either side of his skull. She gave him a short second to know true fear as he gazed down the gullet of the beast, its breath hot on his face, and then closed her jaws and pulled back, ripping his face clear off his skull.
Jezebel's ears perked up and she lifted her bloody muzzle at the sound of men running in her direction. Her lips pulled back from her fangs in a grin and in wolfen she growled out an old joke her father liked to tell before a slaughter:
"What did the mangy cowards say when faced with a proper lycanthrope?"
The men rounded the corner and the man in front went white at the vision of the walls splattered with blood and body parts. "Shit, it's the werewolf!" he yelped in human-speak.
Jezebel gutted him with the swipe of one clawed hand, his entrails spilling onto the floor from the gaping hole. He fell. The man behind him looked surprised.
"How did she—?"
Another swipe and his jaw was torn clean off, and the agony made him pass out. Still leering viciously, Jezebel sank her claws into their chests, ensuring their death, and lifted them both to her face.
"Ah, I see you've heard that one before."
She shook them loose from her claws and dropped to all floors, grinning muzzle dripping and hands slippery with blood and gore. Jezebel shook herself and began loping towards the sounds of fighting above deck.
She longed to sink her teeth and claws into the captain that'd captured her in the first place.