Disclaimer: Vampires: The Masquerade obviously belongs to White Wolf. I don't own any part of it. Please do not sue me!!
This story is very loosely based on Vampires: The Masquerade, anyways. It's very out of continuity with the actual story, and may cause buffs of the actual stories to suffer a minor aneurism with it's painful disregard for the actual story. It follows a Greek in a quick little jaunt through time. This is only chapter one. Enjoy!
Her eyes blazed open and she was alone, the darkness and heat of the night still heavy as her back, drenched with sweat, was pressed against the floor of the slave quarters.
"Who's there?" She asked in her native Greek tongue. Only the sound of her heavy breathing answered her. She had sworn she had felt the soft touch of someone across her throat a kiss that had relieved her pain and drown her in ecstasy until she was a pale trembling mass of pleasure... and then nothing. The rapture she felt was quickly torn away and replaced with power in her flesh and a sense of vitality. It had seeped into her and choked her exhaustion and pain. Before she knew it she was on her feet. Hunger and rage now pooled in her veins, strangling her reason and willpower until she was an animal of passion and hatred. What happened to me? She eased herself back onto the cold stone floor, her hands trembling. Her body shook with the rage that she was exhausting herself to contain. She felt the beast beneath the surface of her skin, waiting to boil through and she knew something inexplicable had happened.
Raising her hand to her neck, slowly, afraid as to what she might find, she fingered two deep holes tenderly with her fingers. Feeling tears form behind her eyes. She had become a demon, a creature of the night! Why her? She knew the myths. She felt herself begin to lose control again; this time giving way to a frantic sense of distress. Why her? Who had done this? She felt as if she was going to burst.
She rose to her feet, quietly against the damp earth floor. I can't stay here. Oh GODS, I can't stay here. Apprehension soaking her consciousness, she began to pace her tiny slave cell until she couldn't take it anymore. Standing before the door, she knew she needed to both leave as well as take revenge on those who had taken advantage of her. The heavy wooden door became tiny slivers as her foot plowed through it. Walking towards her slaver's which lay on the other side of his large property. She felt liquid calmness in the night, as if the Greek moon gave her renewed life and strength. Her feet tangled themselves in the grass; the green blades flowing between her toes. This is freedom. Regaining her focus she made her way towards the extravagant stone house of her master. She opened the door, making sure not to awaken anyone. Her bare feet treading gently on the floor, she made her way to the bedroom, slowly pushing the door open,
Her blood began to flow hot in her veins as she saw him. She may be 'dead' now, but he had killed her years before. She had been a slave's child and therefore condemned to a life of suffering, but one could not understand the torment he had inflicted upon her.
Her hands curled into white knuckled fists as she approached him. It's time to end it.
Her tongue felt as if it was on fire as she lapped the blood from her sleeping master's neck. She just couldn't help herself. The blood was so warm and sticky, flowing down her throat. She drank until she felt his heart stop and still she tried to suck the last of the blood from his bare artery. It was over. Oh GODS, it was finally over. She felt exhilaration knowing that the bastard was dead, although slightly unfulfilled. She felt a thousand deaths, each one three times as excruciating as the one she delivered him would not be enough to please her.
All was quiet now as she kneeled by his bed, white sheets stained red. Slowly, her legs trembling, she took one last look at the man who had dominated her life. Before she knew what she was doing her fists were pounding on his body, and she was screaming. It seemed like hours as she let her fingernails shred his flesh until he was an unrecognizable puddle of organs as well as what blood she hadn't been able to feel on her tongue. Tears now freely falling from her eyes, she ran from her house of shackles. She would never set foot in there again.
It had been 90 years that she had been living in a nearby when she felt the presence. Her brown hair was disheveled and her beautiful olive skin tarnished with mud, she had never been as happy as she was now. She was free of the manacles of mortality, and most of all, free of her horrible master. Although she did miss some things, looking at her soft features reflected in the water and had no desire to drink of it. Or the sight of a sunrise, but now she now craved only the lifeblood of others. She had been living by feeding on animals, and whatever people had the misfortune of being in those woods, but now, there was something tugging her towards the unknown. It pulled her towards the amazing power of something that felt so familiar, yet so foreign. She spent nights trying to ignore it, slowly going mad until it became an all out obsession. She didn't know what the presence was, but she hungered for that knowledge.
At night, she left, in what direction, she had no idea, but she would find what ever haunted her dreams. Under the cover of night, she ran across fields and through forests, her arms spread as if she was ready to soar. She was free of everything that had slowly eaten through her and now she was almost whole. The last piece of her lay before her, and she hungered to claim it.
At the end of her journey she discovered not what she had been seeking, but instead, the great city of Rome. Everything was a swirl of foreign languages; dirt streets filled with merchants yelling unfathomably, alleys that overflowed with people of this place, the screaming yelling warriors. Towering buildings and towering men were all that awaited her here, but as soon as she approached this city, she could feel the presence, so near to the city… overwhelming, but calm. A powerful sleepwalker.
Taking in the new civilization was a great challenge at first. Although only a slave in the Greek world, she had to admit she liked it much better than these barbaric fighters, piling into their coliseums to watch others die. She thought them violent and foolish, where her people had taken pleasure in math, science and the arts, violence was this people's love.
Also, there was so many things that took adjusting to, the taste of the human blood again, the new language and the way the men on the night streets looked at her hungrily, it reminded her of her master, and made her blood boil with fury. It was only after she had begun to pick up bits of the language spoken softly by vendors before she fed on them or the great powers that invited her to dine with them that she became aware of the power in her beauty. She learned to manipulate and control those who in turn controlled the world of the roman night, and soon it was her pulling the strings. She began to use her connections to search for her kind, look for any shreds of insight that would explain the great presence, but there was nothing. Only night and decay. In time, she would nearly forget what she was, and who she used to be. Her life was now one of power and extravagance, her past and the presence almost forgotten. She spent her days in her windowless mansion, just outside the city. Her nights, which she spent inside the city walls, were a blinding flash of tooth and red wine.
The night was warm and humid on her tanned skin as she passed through the streets before a girl's cries permeated the night air. She was back to when she was 14, her master's calloused hands pressing themselves on her fragile body. Suddenly she was frantic; her blood was a flowing fire through her veins. A slave girl? Where is she? In her new life, she had ignored the slavery business in Rome, but now, it was right in her face and her mind was swamped with memory. Her rage began to take over and she felt power flow under her skin. And she saw... not them, but shadows of them… their thoughts, their emotions, the radiance of the girl's terror and of the man's rage gushed through her consciousness in brightly colored auras that awoke the night air. The slaver towered over the child's body, which was curled up against the alley's wall, racked with sobs. The curses that had been given to her that one night had brought her some gifts, it seemed. For when she approached them, she was an olive skinned ghost, floating above the ground, her hair moving with wind and lightning conjured from the hells themselves. Potent terror claimed both the slaver and the slave's faces as she descended upon them, holding her hand out, palm facing upwards, a look of pure hatred on her face. There was a cry as the man erupted in flames, falling to the ground in a screaming pile of charred flesh and lifeless ash.
The one who had sired her had been powerful indeed.
She turned her attention to the girl. She was a 12 year old shivering mass of blood and dirt, Tear stains that had cleaned the dirt away in neatly curved lines on her face. The aura of fear still emitting from the child; the olive skinned vampire acted purely on impulse. She leaned towards the child who was still crouched in the dirt alleyway and pressed her lips to her neck. A yell of pleasure shot through the night air and was soon replaced by the gentle lapping of the child at her wrist.
"What is your name?" She asked the child. No longer tears in her eyes, the girl replied "Mahsa" with a sweet voice and heavy Persian accent on her tongue.
"Come with me, childe. I will make you whole again."
They would spend their days in her windowless palace until the fall of Rome.