Felicia: Night Prowler by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Felicia-Night-Prowler-1242731803#image-1

Felicia: Night Prowler ANIMATION

The Glamour Beneath

The perfume of the Parisian night—espresso, baking bread, distant traffic—died abruptly at the mouth of the maintenance tunnel. It was replaced by the damp stone breath of the city’s innards, a mélange of stagnant water, rust, and something sweetly rotten. Felicia adjusted the strap of her leotard, the cheerful pink and blue absurd against the crumbling brick archway. A missing persons poster, rain-blurred, was taped to a lamppost; a young woman’s smile, rendered ghostly by moisture and time.

“They always go into the dark,” a contact in the Préfecture had mumbled, handing her a crude map. “Voices call them. Familiar voices. They follow, and they don’t come back.”

Now, standing at the threshold, Felicia understood the allure of the call. Not as a victim, but as a predator recognizing a rival’s lure. She could feel it: a psychic vibration, a hum just below the auditory threshold, promising comfort, love, reunion. A glamour. But where a succubus might promise passion, this was a colder, hungrier mimicry.

She descended.

The tunnel was a vein of echoing darkness. Water dripped a syncopated rhythm. Her bare feet, paws really, made no sound on the slick walkway. Her enhanced senses painted the world in shades of heat and sound. Scuttling rats, glowing like little coals. The slow, cold pulse of water in iron pipes. And then, the voices.

They started as fragments, drifting from side passages like poisoned smoke.

“…over here, my darling, I’ve hurt my ankle…”

“…don’t be afraid, it’s just a little further, I have a gift for you…”

The tones were perfectly human, pleading, gentle. But they had no source. They emanated from the walls, the dark air itself. Felicia’s tail twitched, fur bristling. She kept moving, deeper into the labyrinth.

She found the first victim in a chamber where several overflow pipes converged. A man in a ruined business suit, half-submerged in oily water. He wasn’t dead. He was… being curated. Pale, multi-jointed creatures, like humanoid stick insects forged from sewer muck and discarded things, skittered around him. Their faces were smooth, featureless clay. One pressed its blank head against the man’s chest, and when it pulled away, the man’s own voice issued from it.

“Help me,” the creature said, perfectly replicating the man’s exhausted baritone. “Please, God, someone help.”

The other creatures took up the mantra, a chorus of the same voice, a macabre roundelay. They were harvesting his sound, his emotional signature.

Rage, hot and clean, flushed through Felicia. This wasn’t battle; it was defilement. With a yowl that shattered the watery quiet, she launched herself.

Her first slash tore the mimic-creature in half. It didn’t bleed; it disintegrated into wet slurry and a chorus of fading echoes. The others scattered with clicks and hisses, vanishing into pipe openings. Felicia waded to the man, pulling him to a dry ledge. He was catatonic, his eyes wide, fixed on some internal horror.

“You’re safe now,” she whispered, her own voice a warm contrast to the stolen cacophony.

His lips moved. “Her… her voice was so real. She said she was waiting.”

Before Felicia could ask who, a new voice floated from a large circular tunnel ahead. It was a woman’s voice, rich with affection and musical laughter.

“Felicia? Is that you, my little star?”

Every muscle in Felicia’s body locked. It was Sister Helen. The nun who had run the orphanage where Felicia, a foundling, had been raised. The voice of her most cherished, most buried childhood memory.

“You’ve done so well, my dear,” the voice cooed, echoing beautifully. “So strong. But you must be so tired. Come and rest. Tell me about your adventures.”

The glamour was immense, a tidal pull on her heart. It wasn’t just sound; it carried the scent of old books and polish from the orphanage chapel, the feeling of a rough habit-hem brushing her cheek. It was a masterwork.

Felicia knew it was a lie. Sister Helen was decades gone. Yet, the part of her that was still a lonely kitten yearning for a lap wanted to believe. She forced a step forward, then another, following the voice into a vast, cathedral-like space—a forgotten cistern.

The sight froze her.

The chamber was a hive. Dozens of the faceless ghouls clung to the walls, motionless. In the center, rising from a pool of phosphorescent water, was a Broodmother. She was large
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