Chapter 6:
Her initial approach went unnoticed, hindered by the freezing hail and biting wind. Alexandria did notice that the more bat-like creatures seemed to be more aware. Whenever he drifted particularly close, one or two of them sniffed the air, looking rather confused.
They gazed into the howling sleet storm around her but didn't seem to notice her as whenever they looked she exercised the power over her body and became unfathomably still. One or two would have seen her but their eyes, much like the humans she suspected they derived from, were made to detect movement.
She closed the distance swiftly, as the small group, about twenty of the bat creatures, interspersed with humans and several 'prisoners' started up a mountain path. She waited, hovering just out of sight for a long moment. Her desires came to naught, however, since the humans and creatures seemed content to speak little beyond occasional monosyllabic words that were unfamiliar to her without further context.
It was when they were midway up the mountain path that she decided to actually find out more. She drifted closer, floating above them and to the side, before darting in and hooking an arm around the neck of the furthest back bat-thing when it moved its attention from behind the group back to the front.
Her strength insured there was naught released but a startled hiss and she was gone back into the howling storm. She did manage to hear startled cries as she moved out over the ravine the group was traveling along, where they could not see her.
She held the creature in a tight grip, it struggled viciously for a second, trying to twist and bite at her, but her grip was too great for a creature which seemed to warrant only a mild brute rating. It stopped when it realized it would sooner tear its own skin off than actually escape her iron grip.
"What are you?" Alexandria asked the creature, which still continued to attempt to flex out of her grip. She obliged it by loosening her hold just enough that the creature could figure out where exactly they were. As in, floating in the open air. It gave a startled growl and finally deemed to answer her.
In a Guatemalan Mayan dialect. A relatively isolated language with up to 21 different dialects.
This was unfortunate. Either she was in some parallel world where the Mayans ruled the world, or she was in South America. The possibility that these were just members of a cartel or worked for a drug gang also came to mind. Alexandria dismissed them, not all South Americans were drug runners, obviously, she had learned that much in politics.
"You speak Spanish?" She asked, her Mayan was extremely limited, after all, enough to recognize but not to carry out a conversation.
"Si," the creature growled, renewing its squirming in her grip.
"Then answer me, what are you?"
"Red Court," the creature snarled, snapping at her arm, she tightened her hold on its throat as its claws on both feet and hands scratched at her suit, in essence shredding them. Her modesty remained and the creature seemed to become more fearful when she did not even deign to notice its attempts to harm her.
Red Court. It sounded pretentious, like a gang. It also could be paramilitary of some kind, which the presence of the man in Colombian fatigues would indicate. It could also be some kind of NGO, non-governmental organization, but with such a name it was unlikely. Court brought to mind images of nobility which also implied strict hierarchy, which in turn meant that it would have trouble dealing with outsiders, outside the court.
"You were human once?" She decided to satisfy another suspicion. Originally she thought that the creatures were the local equivalent of a bio-tinkerer's work, but she had darker suspicions.
"Yes," the creature gnashed its teeth and tried to hit her face with a prehensile tongue, she grabbed it with her other hand, loosening her hold on its body with the other. It squirmed, being held up only by its tongue and a loose grasp on the scruff of loose skin on its neck.
Alexandria wavered a little as she felt something weird. The weird part was that she felt anything at all, the saliva glistened and seemed almost erotic for a moment before it passed. She shook her head, where had that thought come from? The tongue twined around her hand, the creature seemed almost more shocked now at her non-reaction, its pupils expanded massively in its brown irises.
"And you were changed into this 'thing,' she released her hold on the tongue, allowing it to slip back into the creature's maw, which glistened with drool. It struggled for another moment, its taloned hands grasping at the hand that restrained it.
"It's a blood meanie," her little pixie finally decided to weigh in, peeking her little blue-haired head up from Alexandria's pocket.
Alexandria frowned, looking at the creature in a new light. 'Blood meanie'? What exactly did that mean? In conjunction with the appearance of a bat…
"It drinks… blood?" She asked the pixie, shooting a glare of disgust at the creature, "Its a vampire then."
The creature, possibly a very weird take on a vampire, had completely stilled on the appearance of the little pixie and now it renewed its struggles, "Red Court," it muttered like it was actually important.
Alexandria dithered for a moment, then the Red Court creature made a swift handed snatch at the little pixie. Alexandria batted its hand away with her free hand, hearing the snap of bone as its elbow bent in a way it wasn't supposed to. She regarded it coldly for a moment before, just, simply, opening her hand.
It screeched as it fell into the maelstrom at the base of the ravine. It continued for a long moment, before becoming a pain-filled scream and then silence.
Alexandria decided that a more efficient use of her time was to confront the whole group. Yes, the vampire thing was able to use some kind of esoteric saliva-based attack along with its natural weapons but that had no effect so it was likely that the others attack would have similar effects. Plus the only other weapons she saw were normal, submachine guns and the jaguar warriors obsidian toothed club.
She quickly found the trail and followed it back towards the group she had been stalking. She heard them long before she saw them, they were speaking in the distinctive sound of the Mayan language. Their tone sounded worried, and she smirked, evidentially they discovered one of their members was missing.
She floated around the stopped group arriving at the front where the Colombian military officer was speaking to the Jaguar Warrior. She waited a long moment and then sat herself down on the surface of the snow, letting just a little bit of her flight keep her from breaking the surface, no reason to ruin her pants, as tattered as they were with snow.
She stepped out of the storm into the view of the two men. They each startled in different ways. The Jaguar Warrior's eyes bulged and he inhaled deeply, looking extremely confused. The Colombian officer's eyes darted to the scorch mark first and the unblemished flesh underneath and then to the rips and rents in her suit.
He spat out a word, raising a hand, in a gesture Alexandria was long accustomed to, a blaster.
"Ah Puch," the Colombian officer said and Alexandria juked sideways, a bolt of purplish-white energy leaped from the officer's hand and swerved sideways after her with uncustomary swiftness, where it impacted her shoulder. Instinctively, right before the bolt hit she raised a hand to cover her little pixie companion.
There was nothing for a brief moment, and the Colombian officer gaped like a fish, and then the threads of Alexandria's suit unraveled from the area splashed. A beach ball-sized circle was laid bare right on her side, leaving only the back of her suit still attached and the little pocket around the pixie that had been covered by her hand.
That attack was unexpected. It seems they did have an equivalent to capes.
The crack of the sound barrier breaking disturbed the two lead vampires in the next instance, as Alexandria seized the Colombian officer about the neck and rocketed into the air, up and up. Finally breaking the cloud barrier of the storm above. Then Alexandria let go.
A brief glance around at the sudden stillness, shock still on the vampire's face as it took in the sight, and then horror and despair as he started to fall.