Post by The Mouth on Jul 19, 2014 17:10:25 GMT -8
24 March, 2014
Limerick, Ireland
I had won.
I had Mike and a one armed Yuria stashed along with the truck’s contents. The safe was going to take some time to crack open; but I had the time. Just what I’d found laying about was plenty; Yuria had encoded most of her operations in ledgers. I was going to crack them apart; I’d already found a stash of currency and jewelry worth enough to cover my costs.
My financial costs. Devon Phillips had disappeared. Francis, the Anarch who helped Liverpool convert arrived and had some long chats with MacGooley. Pascek agreed to allow Limerick to join his ‘Anarch Union’ - MacGooley for his part gave a wonderful speech regarding his newfound love for Anarch ideals.
I located Ira’s childe and the three Nosferatu - They were stacked like cordwood in a basement. The house was a safehouse used by Yuria and I found through a cash transfer to a reality holding company that ran… Okay, I just fucking found it.
Managed to get them all sorted out. MacGooley released them, claiming he found them, and took the debts owed him as a result. A toss to the Cousin so he could keep his job.
Almost immediately Grigori started hassling the new regime - They took out one of Clete’s ghouls the following night.
Last night Grigori came home with Margueritte. They walked in the door and they kissed each other the way that people kiss when no one is looking. I smelled the blood of a fresh kill on the two of them, and I stepped out and swung the looted Spatha.
I had been waiting, cloaked, in the shadows, for an hour.
A few hours before that I visited Corbin; he died when I threw him into his own booby trapped stairway; tripwires and pressure plates, and nails with shotgun shells… He really was a genius. But he knew too much; my real face being primary.
I killed Margueritte first. As she was now, it is a mercy. My sword was almost supernaturally sharp, and cleaved through her neck as she danced away from Grigori; grace and beauty and everything a Toreador should be before bouncing to the floor as a dried up husk.
For his part, Grigori did that most human thing I think he could have done. He wept, and cradled her head, stroking the hair as it fell away in whisps. He looks at me, grief on his face, acceptance in his eyes. “Ah, the Great Game. It seems I am to be played in the end.”
He bows his head over his lover, his killing machine, his soulmate. I swing twice to remove his head, but it comes free to rest next to Margueritte’s, a cruel grin settling in.
I leave a message to MacGooley as to where he can find Grigori and that the Sabbat are without informed leadership.
When I get home I put my key in the door and it swings open, unlatched. I pull my gun and step around the corner. My dogs are lying on their sides and refuse to move when I call them…
Hannah is in the kitchen, whimpering. I see her on the floor, blood seeping through her pajama shirt, but no wounds. She doesn’t respond, but flinches when I touch her.
I proceed to the living room and Rabbit is on the couch, listless. Ever since she rode Mike’s mind into the Frenzy she’s been off, savage one moment, terrifed the next. I’m worried she got a taste of Mike’s Beast… But for now she’s listless, drooling, not responding.
I hear something coming from the basement door, down where I sleep.
I come down the stairs, slowly, nothing there, my head comes below the floor level and I see Jory on my bed.
There is way too much blood. Someone ripped off her shirt, her skin is red and scratched where he bra was removed to get access to the wound on her shoulder, but there is more blood from bites and someone has removed her pinky on her left hand.
Liam jumps out from under the stairs. “Ta-daaa Franky! It’s a feckin’ great day.” He’s next to Jory on the bed in a blink. “Have you had a taste o’ her Franky? I was gonna save all three, but I could smell her blood and I couldn’ help meself.” He sucks the blood off her left hand, then nips Jory’s ring finger off at the first knuckle. He sucks on the digit like a child on a sweet.
“Liam, I really need you to step back from her. You can’t have them Liam. They have to go back to their families…” I’m whispering, half mad from fear. Jory is still breathing, shallowly. She shouldn’t be here, she should be at Uni or dating a nice young man from the neighborhood that I don’t approve of…
“Oh, aye, the family. I’ll take em back Franky. You know I will.” Liam screams at me, “NOT LIKE YOU WERE GONNA GIVE ME A CHANCE!” And there are three of him, each moving around the room along with the one on the bed.
“I promised you a taste, and I have it. In a bottle. Just let me save her Liam, let me…”
Liam picks up Jory’s arm, and lets it plop back down on the bed. “Why? I mean, it ain’ like she’s the prettiest, or has the nicest teets.” He gropes Jory’s breast, then licks the smeared blood from his hand.
He gets this enlightened look. “Oh, she’s yar favorite. Sorry Franky, but feckin her’ s’ gonna be off the table soon. I know you’re a ghoul and all, but it is a bit sick for yeh ta fuck yer own granddaughter.”
He spits her finger tip out, having sucked all the blood out of it.
I scream and bring the gun up to shoot him when it goes black. It looks like a Shroud, feels like a Shroud, but isn’t a Shroud; it doesn’t have any sense of Liam about it and every piece of Obtenabration in some way is reflection of it’s user.
Doesn’t stop me from getting knocked in the head from four different directions. I went down in a tangle; Jory’s rich blood filling the room.
The lights came back on, my gun was snatched from me, the spatha was taken from my hip and both thrown next to my lab bench.
“Come on Franky, don’ be like this. You want te fuck yer descendants, fine. Just help me find the rest of them and you can have as many as ye want,” All the Liams are moving across each other’s paths.
On the bed Jory opens her eyes, focuses on me. Her mouth moves, but no words come out. She starts convulsing and thrashing about on the bed.
“Aw, ye feckin broke her Franky.”
That moment, when the Beast and I found an agreement in the warehouse against the Legatus Licinius Paulus, when we agreed to make war on someone…
I begged my Beast to come. Liam was too far gone to catch the little details, I told my Beast. All I did was tell it which Liam to go after, the one with the bloody hands. Then, I let go.
I still only remember snippets; I’d told Liam I was more than a ghoul, but he thought I was bluffing, or had forgotten in his blood intoxicated haze. Liam hadn’t believed me, so much.
My Beast shrieked a war cry and Liam, suddenly terrified with it’s Presence, tried to flee.
My Beast chased him up the stairs, and threw him back down.
My Beast leapt on top of him and beat his skull into the concrete. I know that from the dents Liam’s skull made in the concrete until bone cracked and shattered.
Still hissing, still driving Liam…
The spatha was used, because Liam’s black blood was on it. Apparently Liam’s flesh needed a hole in it.
My hands are covered in black blood, and Liam is below me. I’ve ripped his heart from his chest. I remember this.
Judging by the spatter on the walls and the ceiling I probably ripped open his belly and bit and tore what ever I found there. Hard to tell; all the blood on my face could be anything.
But his heart? That rich, gristly, blood rich organ? Yeah. I ate that. Then I ate him.
Then I, It, went to splatter Jory over the walls.
I figured all this out from a few memory fragments and the observations in the room. My talents make it hard to hide even my own sins. Especially my own sins.
Hannah and Rabbit stopped me; Rabbit is giving Jory CPR and Hannah is a giant wolf creature that is smashing me into the floor.
“Let me go!” I scream. I feel powerful, godlike, for all of ten seconds, then I register that gods don’t scream at giant werewolves to stop hitting them.
Hannah drops me, snarling. I scramble over to Jory and Rabbit, Hannah goes to stop me, and I scream, “I can help!”
Rabbit is barely holding it together. I stop her, and take over the chest compressions. “Rabbit, bleed me, use my blood for power. Heal her.” She scrambles to get a flask from the bench, she finds one that is still relatively intact.
She takes the compressions over, and I bleed into the glass.
“It’s going to hurt, it’s going to hurt you.” she pants at me. Hannah comes over and is human again. She is crying too.
“Think of your mothers, their magic. The are linked by blood.” A quick slash with the glass and Hannah bleeds a little into the glass, Rabbit does the same. We manage to squeeze a little from the sheets on the bed for Jory.
I keep up the chest compressions and beathe into Jory’s mouth; her eyes are open and staring. Live. Live. Live.
Rabbit starts a chant, holding Jory’s hand and Hannahs. Hannah starts the chant a short while later, the vessel of blood at Jory’s feet. The vessel takes on a glow and the blood flows out of the vessel and becomes a ball of light. The light baths Jory and my skin blisters; burns. It is warm, and my bloody tears sniff into puffs of blackened soot as they leave my face.
My left arm shrivels under the heat and flame that is this attempt at life; transmuting my dead essence and power into… Something.
The flame sinks into Jory’s chest, my left hand on top catches fire. I scream in pain, the Beast struggling to flee but I refuse it. The flame flows into Jory and I collapse as her body arches, and she breathes deeply.
I collapse, gasping, the left side of me is a ruin, charred and burnt.
But Jory is breathing, is getting pinker and healthier. And I would have let the fire take me whole to get this far.
In the pit of my stomach, full of stolen blood, of a stolen life, I think differently. I’ve just committed a horror, one that will condemn me in front of the Elders…
My family is alive.
And now I have to leave them.
Interlude: Liam
By Ben Vaughan
Limerick, Ireland
I had won.
I had Mike and a one armed Yuria stashed along with the truck’s contents. The safe was going to take some time to crack open; but I had the time. Just what I’d found laying about was plenty; Yuria had encoded most of her operations in ledgers. I was going to crack them apart; I’d already found a stash of currency and jewelry worth enough to cover my costs.
My financial costs. Devon Phillips had disappeared. Francis, the Anarch who helped Liverpool convert arrived and had some long chats with MacGooley. Pascek agreed to allow Limerick to join his ‘Anarch Union’ - MacGooley for his part gave a wonderful speech regarding his newfound love for Anarch ideals.
I located Ira’s childe and the three Nosferatu - They were stacked like cordwood in a basement. The house was a safehouse used by Yuria and I found through a cash transfer to a reality holding company that ran… Okay, I just fucking found it.
Managed to get them all sorted out. MacGooley released them, claiming he found them, and took the debts owed him as a result. A toss to the Cousin so he could keep his job.
Almost immediately Grigori started hassling the new regime - They took out one of Clete’s ghouls the following night.
Last night Grigori came home with Margueritte. They walked in the door and they kissed each other the way that people kiss when no one is looking. I smelled the blood of a fresh kill on the two of them, and I stepped out and swung the looted Spatha.
I had been waiting, cloaked, in the shadows, for an hour.
A few hours before that I visited Corbin; he died when I threw him into his own booby trapped stairway; tripwires and pressure plates, and nails with shotgun shells… He really was a genius. But he knew too much; my real face being primary.
I killed Margueritte first. As she was now, it is a mercy. My sword was almost supernaturally sharp, and cleaved through her neck as she danced away from Grigori; grace and beauty and everything a Toreador should be before bouncing to the floor as a dried up husk.
For his part, Grigori did that most human thing I think he could have done. He wept, and cradled her head, stroking the hair as it fell away in whisps. He looks at me, grief on his face, acceptance in his eyes. “Ah, the Great Game. It seems I am to be played in the end.”
He bows his head over his lover, his killing machine, his soulmate. I swing twice to remove his head, but it comes free to rest next to Margueritte’s, a cruel grin settling in.
I leave a message to MacGooley as to where he can find Grigori and that the Sabbat are without informed leadership.
When I get home I put my key in the door and it swings open, unlatched. I pull my gun and step around the corner. My dogs are lying on their sides and refuse to move when I call them…
Hannah is in the kitchen, whimpering. I see her on the floor, blood seeping through her pajama shirt, but no wounds. She doesn’t respond, but flinches when I touch her.
I proceed to the living room and Rabbit is on the couch, listless. Ever since she rode Mike’s mind into the Frenzy she’s been off, savage one moment, terrifed the next. I’m worried she got a taste of Mike’s Beast… But for now she’s listless, drooling, not responding.
I hear something coming from the basement door, down where I sleep.
I come down the stairs, slowly, nothing there, my head comes below the floor level and I see Jory on my bed.
There is way too much blood. Someone ripped off her shirt, her skin is red and scratched where he bra was removed to get access to the wound on her shoulder, but there is more blood from bites and someone has removed her pinky on her left hand.
Liam jumps out from under the stairs. “Ta-daaa Franky! It’s a feckin’ great day.” He’s next to Jory on the bed in a blink. “Have you had a taste o’ her Franky? I was gonna save all three, but I could smell her blood and I couldn’ help meself.” He sucks the blood off her left hand, then nips Jory’s ring finger off at the first knuckle. He sucks on the digit like a child on a sweet.
“Liam, I really need you to step back from her. You can’t have them Liam. They have to go back to their families…” I’m whispering, half mad from fear. Jory is still breathing, shallowly. She shouldn’t be here, she should be at Uni or dating a nice young man from the neighborhood that I don’t approve of…
“Oh, aye, the family. I’ll take em back Franky. You know I will.” Liam screams at me, “NOT LIKE YOU WERE GONNA GIVE ME A CHANCE!” And there are three of him, each moving around the room along with the one on the bed.
“I promised you a taste, and I have it. In a bottle. Just let me save her Liam, let me…”
Liam picks up Jory’s arm, and lets it plop back down on the bed. “Why? I mean, it ain’ like she’s the prettiest, or has the nicest teets.” He gropes Jory’s breast, then licks the smeared blood from his hand.
He gets this enlightened look. “Oh, she’s yar favorite. Sorry Franky, but feckin her’ s’ gonna be off the table soon. I know you’re a ghoul and all, but it is a bit sick for yeh ta fuck yer own granddaughter.”
He spits her finger tip out, having sucked all the blood out of it.
I scream and bring the gun up to shoot him when it goes black. It looks like a Shroud, feels like a Shroud, but isn’t a Shroud; it doesn’t have any sense of Liam about it and every piece of Obtenabration in some way is reflection of it’s user.
Doesn’t stop me from getting knocked in the head from four different directions. I went down in a tangle; Jory’s rich blood filling the room.
The lights came back on, my gun was snatched from me, the spatha was taken from my hip and both thrown next to my lab bench.
“Come on Franky, don’ be like this. You want te fuck yer descendants, fine. Just help me find the rest of them and you can have as many as ye want,” All the Liams are moving across each other’s paths.
On the bed Jory opens her eyes, focuses on me. Her mouth moves, but no words come out. She starts convulsing and thrashing about on the bed.
“Aw, ye feckin broke her Franky.”
That moment, when the Beast and I found an agreement in the warehouse against the Legatus Licinius Paulus, when we agreed to make war on someone…
I begged my Beast to come. Liam was too far gone to catch the little details, I told my Beast. All I did was tell it which Liam to go after, the one with the bloody hands. Then, I let go.
I still only remember snippets; I’d told Liam I was more than a ghoul, but he thought I was bluffing, or had forgotten in his blood intoxicated haze. Liam hadn’t believed me, so much.
My Beast shrieked a war cry and Liam, suddenly terrified with it’s Presence, tried to flee.
My Beast chased him up the stairs, and threw him back down.
My Beast leapt on top of him and beat his skull into the concrete. I know that from the dents Liam’s skull made in the concrete until bone cracked and shattered.
Still hissing, still driving Liam…
The spatha was used, because Liam’s black blood was on it. Apparently Liam’s flesh needed a hole in it.
My hands are covered in black blood, and Liam is below me. I’ve ripped his heart from his chest. I remember this.
Judging by the spatter on the walls and the ceiling I probably ripped open his belly and bit and tore what ever I found there. Hard to tell; all the blood on my face could be anything.
But his heart? That rich, gristly, blood rich organ? Yeah. I ate that. Then I ate him.
Then I, It, went to splatter Jory over the walls.
I figured all this out from a few memory fragments and the observations in the room. My talents make it hard to hide even my own sins. Especially my own sins.
Hannah and Rabbit stopped me; Rabbit is giving Jory CPR and Hannah is a giant wolf creature that is smashing me into the floor.
“Let me go!” I scream. I feel powerful, godlike, for all of ten seconds, then I register that gods don’t scream at giant werewolves to stop hitting them.
Hannah drops me, snarling. I scramble over to Jory and Rabbit, Hannah goes to stop me, and I scream, “I can help!”
Rabbit is barely holding it together. I stop her, and take over the chest compressions. “Rabbit, bleed me, use my blood for power. Heal her.” She scrambles to get a flask from the bench, she finds one that is still relatively intact.
She takes the compressions over, and I bleed into the glass.
“It’s going to hurt, it’s going to hurt you.” she pants at me. Hannah comes over and is human again. She is crying too.
“Think of your mothers, their magic. The are linked by blood.” A quick slash with the glass and Hannah bleeds a little into the glass, Rabbit does the same. We manage to squeeze a little from the sheets on the bed for Jory.
I keep up the chest compressions and beathe into Jory’s mouth; her eyes are open and staring. Live. Live. Live.
Rabbit starts a chant, holding Jory’s hand and Hannahs. Hannah starts the chant a short while later, the vessel of blood at Jory’s feet. The vessel takes on a glow and the blood flows out of the vessel and becomes a ball of light. The light baths Jory and my skin blisters; burns. It is warm, and my bloody tears sniff into puffs of blackened soot as they leave my face.
My left arm shrivels under the heat and flame that is this attempt at life; transmuting my dead essence and power into… Something.
The flame sinks into Jory’s chest, my left hand on top catches fire. I scream in pain, the Beast struggling to flee but I refuse it. The flame flows into Jory and I collapse as her body arches, and she breathes deeply.
I collapse, gasping, the left side of me is a ruin, charred and burnt.
But Jory is breathing, is getting pinker and healthier. And I would have let the fire take me whole to get this far.
In the pit of my stomach, full of stolen blood, of a stolen life, I think differently. I’ve just committed a horror, one that will condemn me in front of the Elders…
My family is alive.
And now I have to leave them.
Interlude: Liam
By Ben Vaughan