"Gah… Sabbat motherfuckers!" Casey groaned to himself. Vitae slowly ebbed away from his body, siphoned out for the practice of diablerie.
"Curse all you want, fuck-blood. Yer' screams are like music to my ears." A Sabbat Nosferatu chortled, rubbing his disfigured, elfish ears as he finished strapping the fledgling into his metallic crucifix. Casey condemned the creature, and held on to what semblance of consciousness he had left.
His friends were staked, and drawn up like he was. Though the Sabbat were not interested in their blood. Casey's canines were bared as the Beast roared within him.
"Finish the end-of-days talk, martian - what's the goal here!?" He asked, narrowing his eyes on the crowd gathered before him. An elder vampire appeared from nothingness to lead the crowd of hopeful Sabbat clan members. The Tzimisce gave a crooked, vile smile, and walked right up to the crucified fledgling.
"Your… Blood – it is unlike anything I have ever seen in my years of existence. It is simply extraordinary, and beyond comparison to any simple discipline."
Casey sneered, and spat in the face of the blue-skinned monstrosity before him. Andrei chuckled back, and picked up an empty, copper goblet. The Tzimisce used his elongated nails to tear into the fledgling's skin, and, ignoring his grunts of pain, gathered what blood he could into the copper cup.
"This vitae will fuel the Sabbat, neonate. You should be more grateful – you will be put to better use than as an errand boy for LaCroix!" Andrei jostled the young vampire. Behind him, in Hallowbrook, Casey saw a crowd of hundreds of Sabbat shovelheads. An army, ready to lead some souped-up massacre of Los Angeles.
While they chittered, roared, and tore into each other for sport, he screamed. While they celebrated, his team, his troupe, his empire crumbled before him. He could do nothing. All of his work, all of his planning to become the "Lord of the Underworld" he'd thought he'd be, and Casey was for lack of a better term, fucked.
A dangerous glint was lit from across the massive foyer, and for a second, the fledgling had given up hope. Then, flames engulfed the building, spewing in an uproarious, frenzying bark. Four saviours controlled those flames; that reigned-in force of obliteration.
(Months earlier...)
That dangerous glint, it seemed, followed Casey everywhere. It scanned him. Through flash and strobe he could be seen, on the border of a dancefloor, with drink in hand. He was clad in a jacket, jeans, and a keen red shirt dotted with some tasteful, angry art. His friend, Samantha, was busy trying to rip him from his post, dress jostling as he mumbled something about monitoring their coats.
"Oh, come on! Just leave them, come here, shake your ass and get out there, Casey!"
"Oh yeah, my best friend Jenny's out there, is she? C'mon, Sam, she's bad news-"
"And we've been needing a little bad news in our lives, Case! You've been going on and on about needing some shake-ups, so, here's one!" She handed him a drink, and with only a smile, clinked his glass in cheers.
Casey chuckled. "Alright… What's the worst that could happen?"
"You lose a tooth again, or get the shit kicked out of you, but, who's keeping track? Let's dance!" Samantha yelled, pumping what the lord gave her into the nearest lap she could find, egging Casey to do the same.
As it turned out, the worst did not simply happen. The worst strode up to him from either side of the dancefloor, filtering through the crowds like they were born in them. And then, the worst took a note from Samantha, and pressed themselves against Casey, in a gyrating, rocking rhythm. There the trio danced until a few songs had come and gone, until Casey's ears were nice and perforated.
"Hey, Anna?" he smiled, catching a moment of silence, gaining his breath back. He then turned, eyes lighting up as the second woman revealed herself fully. "Liz, Liza… You two know each other?"
"Of course we do, butterballs," Liza chuckled, "we met in AA."
"We'd been telling each other stories about you without even knowing," Anna sauntered 'round to his front, draping her arms across his neck and shoulders. "Like, oh, 'you gotta meet this guy - he's cute' and all that stuff."
Casey blushed in response, sensing no ill will, no thievery or sleight-of-hand coming from either of them. "No kidding."
"Check out the jaw on him, I said," snorted Liza, "he can take glass and still pitch woo like a pretty-boy."
Casey snickered then, darting his eyes between the two. He thought on Cass, and how she'd unnerved the Christ out of him. "And now's the part where you tell me I've been selected to enter a cult. No, sorry, not a cult; a religious experience with your leader, Archdeacon Oppenheimer. He'll make us all take a big drink of the chantry's 'wine' and before I know it I'm waking up tomorrow with a sore ass."
"Damn, you can read us like books," Anna swooned, moving in to nibble at Casey's ear, making him gasp in shock, in pleasure. "Like the filthy, smutty books we are."
"Only difference being," Liza hugged him from behind, grinding her hips against his, taking the free side of his neck, "you're not the one waking up with a sore ass tomorrow."
There was a pause as the music quieted, as a haze enveloped Casey's mind. He breathed, feeling his heart pump as clear as day, feeling blood renew in a single pump of his organ.
Casey could tell even Anna and Liza were quiet now, just focusing on him breathing. He felt odd; the safest he'd ever been, and yet, as if he was standing on the very edge of oblivion. Staring into the gaze of the abyss and watching it wink at him.
"...A-Alright," he laughed, giggled even, "bring me to the Archdeacon, please."
(…)
The night blinked by in phases after that. The two lovely, almost ethereal women guided him from the dancefloor to the lap of two other hauntingly gorgeous ladies. He felt so small beneath them all, as if he were but an insect beneath the heel of titans. But they did not strike him down, no, they cradled him in their essence, their raw power. One of them, he thought to be their leader, and a face he'd recognised from the Empress, spoke to him.
"Casey, dear, we want to show you something… Would you like to come with us?"
How does she know my name?
"O-Of course," he breathed, eyes then darting back to another. "Cass?"
They strode from the bar he and Samantha had ended up at. Casey spared a passing thought to her before Liza began whispering things back into his ears. Simple talk. Sweet talk. Sex. Awful, degenerate things. Debasing and disgusting acts she intended to make him do, to make him witness. In between them Casey heard an honest-to-god admission of infatuation, cloaked behind other, hidden words.
Cass took his hand, squeezed it tight. Suspicion just melted from him. He would've been alarmed if not for a preternatural calm that just enveloped his soul, that stemmed from the four ladies. They found themselves somewhere else, too quickly. Casey almost thought he was slipped something in the drink that Samantha gave him, but shook the thought from his mind, continuing forwards. The Empress. Past patrons, past some more, thudding, throbbing music. Into the upstairs area - a VIP lounge - no, a VIP bedroom.
He was thrown to it before he could think, Liza's rough hands upon him with feverish, predatory glee. He bounced, giggled before he could question, before critical thought could come to his mind. The room was pristine, lit with a dull red light, smelling of roses and sugar. Like turkish delight. It struck something in him, and Casey backed himself against the headboard of the bed, cock rigid with arousal, feeling only desire emanating from the four angels that had abducted him.
Anna and Cass sauntered to his sides, flanking him with practiced precision and pressing themselves against his form, moving so very slowly. As they moved, the red-dressed goddess they'd given him to crawled on the bed, towards it's head, straddling the lad. And it was there Casey gasped as Liza tore at his leggings, freeing and teasing his cock.
He sputtered, rising before being laid back down, gently. "W-Wait-"
"-Gwendolyn," she introduced herself. Allure dripped from every word of hers, voice almost unbearably smooth to the man's ears. "Call me Gwen. You've met Annabelle, Cassandra, and Elizabeth - and we've been watching you, Casey."
"What?"
She peered into his eyes, as lips pressed against the tip of his dick, making him moan. Cass's strong hands did away with his shirt, tearing it in two and allowing Gwen to run her hands up and down his chest, so very tenderly. The way she caressed him, the way Anna licked and sucked at a little spot on his neck made him realise all too late how much they knew about him.
Yet despite the stalking he no doubt had been enduring, he felt at peace. Incredibly rigid and on the edge of bursting, but, at peace.
"Why me?"
Gwen smiled. And in that smile, he saw fangs.
"Because of the songs you sing, even when no one listens," he heard Anna say, whispering into the crook of his neck.
"Because of your will," Cass crooned. "Challenged, but undisturbed."
He choke-gasped as he felt Liza's cold hands clamp at his thighs, cock spurting a dribble of precum down it's veiny length. She giggled, and from behind Gwen, poked her head out to smirk at him.
"Because of that little glint in your eye… And the punisher between these thighs."
Casey then snapped his gaze back to Gwen, eyes wide and starry as she kissed him, imparting a sacred link of lust between them. She leant into that embrace as Anna, Cass, and Liza resumed their ministrations, attacking his limbs, his sex, drawing him to a cacophonous roar of pleasure. When Gwen finished suckling at his bottom lip, tasting him for every bit he was worth and then some, she broke from him, shivering herself.
"You are here because I felt something within you, Casey," she told him, his eyes glued to those glorious lips of hers. "You are here because I believe you have the power in you to bring life to the dead, to be made better than our peers, better than us…"
In unison, the Four spoke. "...We'd like to show you something."
(…)
Casey awoke, some time later. He didn't realise he'd slept, nor did he completely recount whatever the fuck had followed the embrace - he just awoke. His eyes hurt when they opened, and he found his mouth beyond dry, which led to him stumbling upon some arcane, bestial hunger. He rose from the bed, as his sires were sat around him in keen observation, eyeing his every movement.
Before he could speak, though, before he could ask what the fuck had happened and what they'd done to him, the room was invaded. The door was thrown off its hinges, wooden beams flying in quick succession. Cass was impaled to the wall, but managed to tear the stake from her hand and launch back at the attackers. Anna and Gwen launched up in the seconds afterwards, before being stunned themselves, shocking Casey and Liza.
Liza went to block the next stake aimed at him, but was yanked by some unseen force, and there Casey felt himself go limp. Jutting from his chest in a gnarling screech of pain was another wooden stake; keeping his limbs limp and his eyes wide, horrified. He heard a distinct noise, the sound of something sizzling and crumbling, like fine paper. Terror gripped his wounded heart, the cackling menagerie of bedroom-invaders scuttling his body and the Four's, absconding them from the Empress.
He blinked, somehow. And found himself on a stage, in a theatre of the undead. Pale, stale faces leered at him - and he could look now! - and his sires. The stake was taken from his heart, his body felt no worse for wear beyond that startlingly powerful hunger that ate at him. He saw some monstrously massive hulk of a being to his right, wielding a sword that was easily as big as him, staring dully towards the audience.
Behind the Four, were retainers - and frantically whipping his head around, Casey laid eyes upon some primped-up ponce of a princess. She wore a clean, tailored suit that barely shifted under her deathly visage, her unmoving human form. It felt wrong to him; like an animated mannequin, with precisely controlled movements and a haunting face. She cracked her neck towards the bound, kneeling vampires on stage, and adopted some halfway-look of sadness, a ruse.
"...It pains me to announce the sentence, as, up until tonight, I'd considered the accused as upstanding, and loyal members of our association. But as some of you may know, the penalty for this transgression is death," she intoned, stalking from Casey's left to right, giving one final look to the Four.
What!? Casey found himself questioning his surroundings again. Hungry. So god damn hungry. What the hell have they done to me? Who is this chick - these people? Why do they…
"Know that I am no more adjudicator than I am a servant to the law that governs us all. Let tonight's proceedings serve as a reminder to our community, that we must adhere to the code that binds our society… Lest we endanger all of our blood," she continued, feigning some somber echo of emotion as she stared at the crowd, before turning back to the bound sires.
Vampires, Casey thought. Fucking vampires. Did they make me into one of them? They were hunting me this whole time? A whole society within Los Angeles… Wait, what is she doing?
She knelt, the princess did. Staring down their eyes, at the sheer fight in all of them.
"Forgive me."
Instinct gripped Casey. With a look to the massive man-thing, the princess stepped away from the Four, the ladies that had just roofied him or something, that had dragged him into hell. Instinct told him that they were not to die this day, that he had to get one fucking word from them, and so his body tensed.
"Let the penalty commence."
He leapt as the monster drew it's blade. "No!"
Vwoosh, went the sword, rending flesh and bone. It cut with such strength and weight that it was instant, clean and deadly. If it had hit the right target. Casey erupted with a vile roar of pain as the Four scrambled beneath him, breaking free of their captors and speeding away before the monster or the princess could react. He was left on the floor as he reeled, yowling into that stale, bitter air, abandoned.
"After them!" Yelled the pale woman. "They… They will be hunted. For violation of our third tradition, the Four of Nine shall be hunted," she ordered, swiftly regaining her composure.
Casey opened his eyes, without realising he'd closed them in the first place. He snapped them to the source of the pain - his legs - and found them bubbling at the ends, separated just below the knee by the monster's blade. His blood was pooling on the floor beneath him, and that agony of his was receding, if slowly. Upon looking at the putrid sight, Casey gasped as his blood congealed then, as his parted legs shifted themselves back into place and reconnected to his body, sealing nerves and vessels and skin in a horrific way.
The princess cleared her throat as the bloody mess abated. "...As for the ill-begotten progeny-"
"-Fuck!" Casey roared. He was brought back to his knees, and silenced with a cupped hand, glaring at the audience. In his seats he could see a few sympathetic faces, some unbothered, some seething at his state.
"...Without a sire, most childer are doomed to walk the earth, never knowing their place. Their responsibility and most importantly, the laws they must obey. Therefore, I have decided that-"
"-This is bullshit!"
A raucous rabble stirred in the crowd. People rose from their seats as the woman to declare bullshit so, jumped. Casey got an eyeful of her; shaky though it was, though blinded he felt. Short black hair, a set of necklaces, some dirty two-shirt getup, and a furious look in her eyes that quelled the princess on stage. There was a pregnant pause in the theatre then as crowd grew wilder, louder, and then, it was stopped.
"If… Miss Rodriguez would let me finish," the princess pepped up. "I have decided to let the kindred live."
(...)
"...Don't come back, until you do. Good evening."
Casey wouldn't figure certain things out for a while after that night in the theatre, in the Empress. Why he was chosen, why Rodriguez spoke up for him, why his "sires" had to be hunted, why the princess decided then to choose his sentencing, why he was still able to think and feel if he was truly dead… Why him?
The rest of the night followed in some harried blur. Kindred this. Blood that. A hunt and such thusly, and a job, a task, what would become an enraging and unending series of busywork. LaCroix, the princess called herself - no - the Prince, as she was known, gave him a rundown of why half the vampires of Los Angeles were now out for the blood of his "sires". He was told then to head to Santa Monica, to find a person named Mercurio, to continue this errand.
She woved words carefully but still managed to irk him, and Casey found it hard to see why. She was polite, by her word she'd saved his fucking life, and she was gorgeous in a back-from-the-dead way. But when she implanted the weight of his life upon hers, as if she'd done him some grand gesture of charity by saying "don't chop his fucking head off", it made him grit his teeth.
Fangs, now, too. He had to mind those. Yet still Casey nodded and played along, eager to see the emotions play out on the woman's face; if she could show any. He was on autopilot. Hungry, thirsty, blood-driven autopilot that brought itself to odds and got pissy. It confused him for the first few hours of his unlife, taking a backseat to the animosity behind him.
It didn't help when he met a man named Jack. Jack was a dirty, greasy, pirate-like fellow who enjoyed smoking; though, Jack would assure Casey it was "just for show". Jack lowed down with him and threw him through the basics; the act of feeding, stealing, breaking and entering, and a super-powered dose of murder. When all was said and done, Casey had committed sins he'd never indulge in his mortal life.
Well, save breaking and entering. But that was different - and if he thought about it, likely set the fuck up by the vampires who "sired" him. His anger, his hunger abated in that brief moment of ecstasy when he tasted a mortal's blood, sunk his fangs into skin and drank deep. And when he came down from that high and barely managed to tear himself from a yuppie's throat, Casey had to take a minute to calm down.
His victim - truly a fucking victim and with no other way to phrase it - was happily, blearily dazed and stumbling after the act. He'd taken lifeblood and vamp-roofied the poor bastard, and felt disgusting afterwards. Power, what felt like power surged through him as that blood filtered through his system and animated him anew, but Casey bore the cost. Even in self-defence the murder was still murder - the animalistic, feral foes that came his way in those dank alleys meeting bitter, ashy ends.
When his mind cleared, when Casey took into account that every single vampire under the theatre's roof that night engaged in the same acts - some much less humane than he - he balked. And his suspicion grew. Then his chats with Jack grew shorter, choppier. He couldn't trust them, not a fucking sucker under their ranks, including 'ole Jack, the anarchist group, and his sires.
Jack was kind enough to call a cab for him, though. And the princess - Prince - sorted him with some accommodation. And Casey slept. He slept deep, and long, and so very hard that he felt it - the sweet lie of death - only to have it torn from him as he awoke, the next night.
Casey had hoped that the night before was some sick, long, drug-induced nightmare that simply faded with time. He had hoped that his life and lifeblood weren't just fucking signed away by four beautiful vampires. He had hoped, to God above and Satan below, that when he awoke, he would be in his old apartment.
And those hopes, as they so often did in Santa-fucking-Monica, burned like ash before his very eyes.
On a ratty bed, did he awake. Green, smoke-stained walls awaited him, as did a mouldy carpet reeking of piss and decay. The windows were boarded up, sealed hastily, by a mind scared out of its fucking wits. And a malaise, a general feeling he could quite pin down enshrouded him. Like a cloud. Some vile, foul, poisonous cloud that defiled all it touched.
There was no question about it. His consciousness remained, his eyes continued to stare in a bland horror, and his face still swelled with impotent rage, but he had died. No blood that was his own flowed through his veins. It was theirs, the four "sires". Or whoever the fuck they'd stolen it from. He stared at his hands, once tools, now weapons, and felt tears crack at the back of his eyes as he noticed the dried blood on them.
"No," he murmured to himself, "no fucking way… This is a joke… Some stupid god-damn joke!"
He cried out in anguish, clutching his head so hard that his fingers began to dig into his skull, probing the flesh with little resistance. And stopped quickly. His eyes then darted about. Scanning. Any remnants of his past that had followed him to this shitty little hidey-hole. And Casey felt his breath hitch as he found something - his guitar. Did he bring it with him? Did someone deliver it?
Quick, he thought. Play something, anything to calm your nerves. Classical Gas, no, fuck, fingers are too shaky. A flamenco, no, damn it, too rigid. Smoke on the fucking Water, surely - no! Just… Strum a chord. One. Three fucking notes at the minimum. Play something that doesn't sound as fucking dead as you are.
He kept trying. Kept plucking, strumming, even as his fingers began to split, skin parting under the frantic chords. No, that didn't sound right. No, too fucking basic, too fucking textbook. It was too robotic - no rhythm found him, no groove took the guitar as it usually did. No soul. Nothing. Dead.
"Fuck," he breathed, "fuck. God damn it all to-fuck!"
He roared as he slammed the instrument into a wall, lodging it deep into the decaying fibre board. Casey wept as even the fucking life of his skill, his art, died with him. His spirit was gone, ripped to shreds and stomped six feet under the dying Earth, and what could he do? How the hell could he continue like this? What was the point in going on?
No, he told himself. Maybe he was still dreaming. He kicked down the door to the bathroom, and stared into the mirror. And kept staring. And jotted down the hauntingly still features of his own face. His skin was brighter than usual. Eyes a little duller. Lips, thick as they normally were, showing signs of pinkness. He blinked, and, when thinking to just breathe to calm himself, Casey realised he hadn't been, at all.
He was staring at a corpse. And he didn't quite like it. In fact, Casey's dislike for the pale visage that glowered back at him drove him to such rage that he indented the mirror with his fist. Then cracked it, then shattered it, going beyond the bathroom cabinet and into the cockroach-infested wall. He then screamed, Casey did.
He screamed, until his vocal cords gave out, until he could bear the weight of this crippling reality no longer, and collapsed to the bathroom floor. Casey spent a while feeling sorry for himself - of course, who wouldn't? - and seething. Burning a hating fucking gaze into the walls of that shitty little speck of an apartment, until his eyes hurt. The thought of killing himself wandered, flirted with him in his own head, until Casey rose.
He beat the feeling down, the rage. The insecurity, the vulnerability, and the unending apathetic tide that rolled into his heart at the thought of prolonging his existence. Dead though he was, and pale though he appeared, he couldn't let it defeat him. No, instead, Casey made a vow of many things that night.
He vowed, in no particular order, to find his sires. To see his family again, ma and ba and his brothers and sisters. To see Sam, in all of her resplendent joy. To break from this sudden servitude. To master his condition, to make music once more, and to see if there were any among his kind with his mindset. Casey vowed on that black night to become the upheaving bastard that the kindred would forever remember.
So, his vampiric journey began with a step outside. It was a street only vaguely familiar to him; with dull, buzzing overhead lights, cramped alleyways, trash here and there, and the homeless. So many of the lost and the damned. He didn't even question the poor fellow outside his door, begging for a couple of bucks - there went some cash. Casey went by his emails and looked for Mercurio, in the next building over.
"About the deal - I mean it. You tell anyone about this, and I'm dead. I'm beggin' ya."
He found a man on a couch. Distinctly a man; not a vampire like himself. Mercurio was bleeding, beaten and broken, recoiling on a sofa and sucking in sharp breaths as he imparted some irritating news to Casey. He looked and sounded like a sleazeball, dressed in some jeans, jacket and purple-shirted combo that screamed "sexpest", and yet, Casey felt sympathy for the suffering soul, offering his services above and beyond what he was asked to do.
Astrolite. Explosives, painkillers, the Sabbat, some counter-organisation to the Camarilla. It came back to Casey now, in waves, that information. He settled first for getting some painkillers for Mercurio, and therein found himself saving a life. He didn't know what it was exactly, but the dead and their servants seemed to seek each other out.
"Aw, man!"
In particular he found some jock-type by the name of Knox, a "ghoul". Bitch-boy to a vampire; likely what Mercurio was, too, and so very chatty. He spoke of the blood's power, how it could bond one to another in some mind-riding brainwash that made Casey sick. It concerned him in speaking to Knox, though he kept the conversation short and friendly. Casey felt as if the information was being fed to him, as if this ghoul was attempting to form a single favour he could request from Casey at the end of it all.
He left before said favour could materialise. And entered the medical clinic, psyching himself up for a lie, to ruse his way past security and into valuable materials.
"Hi," he greeted the overworked, overtired nurse at the front counter. "I'm from IT, I need to check your comms cabinets up top - all good if I pass through?"
"You don't look like IT," the nurse challenged, her nose upturned in disbelief. "You're too well-dressed and way too polite."
Casey chuckled, shrugging his shoulders. "And thank you for the compliment! After hour's work is a drag, isn't it? Anyways, all I'll need to check is if the servers are still running, the internet-uplinks aren't fried…"
"Of course, of course," she sighed, "here, keys to the cabinet, I'll clear you for security…"
Well, he thought, skating past. That was easy. Casey instilled within himself a confidence enough to pretend like he knew where he was going, feeling slimy at the thought of infiltrating something like a clinic. Though it reminded him of his freedoms now - jail was becoming a more and more mortal concern. He was fucking dead - what's the worst a cop could do, kill him again?
And just as sin wouldn't be punished so easily, Casey bore the fact that any good deed would go unheeded. But he was okay with that; especially considering the mangled mess of a woman he encountered immediately after darting past the front desk. In some emergency room, upon a stretcher, laid a lady, calling for her grandmother and weeping, plucking his soul in a foul note as he stared at her, frozen for a bit.
"Please... G-Get a doctor!"
He nodded. "Hang on, just a s-second."
The doctor nearby was inundated with patients - the only man on deck that night. He was dealing with his own crisis, leaving Casey to console the woman again. To wait. He crouched, clutching her quickly paling hand, and stroking her hair.
"C-Can someone call my grandma, please?"
"Stick with me, c'mon, just… You've got this," he said, own voice shaking.
She made an awful noise then. Sounding as if her spirit was departing from her weary body, as if life was leaving her form and letting her die, thanks to some dickhead crashing into her. Casey struggled at that second with a choice; to feed his blood to the woman and have her bound to him, or to see her die an untimely death before his eyes…
...He couldn't stand by, he reasoned. Not when he had the powers to save her. So, slitting his wrist and imploring her to drink, he positioned his arm at her mouth. And so she drank. And drank, and, until Casey began to feel spent, he stopped her, letting her fall back onto the stretcher with an exasperated sigh. In seconds colour returned to her form, body shivering in such ways that made him question his decision, up until she spoke.
She blinked, warily, narrowing her eyes as she stared around the room, at him. "I… Who… Who are you? What did you do to me?"
"Miracle cure," he jested. "I'm just an IT guy."
"N-No," she said, weakly grasping at his wrist as he attempted to leave. "You… I kissed your wrist, and… I can feel it inside of me… What did you do?"
"I've got to be heading off. Just lay back and rest."
And so she did, a small smile appearing on her lips. "I feel like… I've always known you. Like you've always been here…"
He felt good. But wary. Feeling as if it would come back to bite him in the ass. Securing painkillers after the fact was a simple matter of swiping one bottle out of three on someone's desk and peeling out the back door, and there he made an emergency drop to Mercurio. He was off to clean up after the ghoul's ambush, but, found himself stopping as he came across a clique of wanderers, the downtrodden.
Casey didn't know why, but he felt like striking up a conversation with the shirtless dude. A pale shirtless dude.
"Hey."
"Oh, look, it's like we told you types a thousand times before, we know we can't hunt 'round here, right? We're minding our own business - no reason to hassle the weaklings," the man greeted, in all of his tired, Australian brogue.
Casey looked taken aback, clearing his throat. "Oh, sorry. I'm Casey, Casey… King," he greeted, holding his hand for the vamp to shake. "Is everything alright?"
"You mean you're not here to run us off?"
"Why would I be?"
"Oh," the man chuckled, genuinely shocked at Casey's nicety. "It's just that… Well, you fellas have a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later. It's been like that since… Since, well…"
"...Your embrace," Casey finished for him, nodding. "I'm sorry to hear, I can't imagine what you've been going through."
"Not just me mate, the folks behind me, too."
He went through and introduced the lot - E did - with a certain expediency. There was Rosa, who they called crazy, Julius, the stammerer, and Copper, a lad scared witless. Each was left without direction, called thin-bloods and hunted by the Camarilla for reasons they weren't advised of. They were given less clemency than he was, and Casey still had to deal with the Prince damn-near spitting at him behind her polite veil.
Casey sympathised with them, he truly did. The more he heard of their plight, the less joy he felt about being part of the Camarilla. Sarcasm aside, he had a gut feeling then that he was still only being shown a single limb of this bloated bureaucracy of vampires, how the young and weak were tossed aside, and, in his case, abused. Just how much longer could the thin-bloods keep up their lifestyle? How long could they persist without access to the Camarilla's law and guidance, simply because their sires fucked up?
He came to blame Lily, E's sire. And by extension, he found his desire to find his own sires marred by a sudden spike of spite. Of course Lily tried to tell E of her blood, but knowingly sentencing a person to an eternal hunt out of love, or whatever she felt… Casey hated it. Was it not better to let someone go in that case - butterflies and all? Or was he doomed to fall into the same covetous behaviour, like his sires, with someone like the girl he saved in the clinic?
Eternal unlife was not worth the downsides they'd experienced so far. And from the sounds, E had months of experience over him. Lord knew how long Copper, Julius and Rosa had been at it, either. For Masquerade or Jyhad, whatever the fuck kind of conclusions vamps drew to commit this kind of suffering, it tasted wrong to Casey.
"Christ, I'm sorry you're going through this," Casey said. "Look, I'm just a fucking fledge-whatever, but, I'll see what I can do to give you guys a hand, okay? God knows how long it'll take, but, I'll try to help."
E nodded, sighing. "Not that I don't appreciate it mate, but we won't be holding our breaths. Not like we've got a choice, really… But if you can back that up, then… Well, I'll be in ya debt. Good luck with the yobbos on the cliff."
Said yobbos were a tough bunch to crack. Charm didn't work on them, neither did a bribe nor a flirt. So, Casey had to pull out the big guns. And those big guns; angry, harmful words and a glorious fuckup of intimidation, served to get him shot. And beat. And shot again, leaving him riddled with a pile of bullet holes and gashes. It was as a thug rushed and stabbed him with a knife that Casey decided his pacifist ways were getting him nowhere - and so he bit.
And drank. And managed to scare the shit out of the humans before him, sending them scrambling. One by one, and, patching up the wounds as he went along, Casey hunted them to death, clearing the den and securing Mercurio's stolen funds as some blood-fuelled beast. With explosives in hand, Casey leapt off the cliff's side and onto an escaping dealer's back, crippling him.
In front of the thin-bloods, he sucked the soul dry and left his corpse for the seas, covered in blood, tatters, and panting, staring to the skies.
E yelled. "Christ above!"
Rosa backed away from the sight, and as Casey calmed, she approached him, laying a hand on his cracking, fixing shoulder. He locked eyes with her, and sighed, before eyeing the beach house on the cliff.
"This is how you begin it, and this is how you will end it," she said. "Bathed in blood. Shaken. Taking a life."
Casey nodded to her. "Thanks, Rosa. And E?"
"Y-Yeah mate? You alright?"
Casey nodded again. "House is all yours. Any trouble from the gang, if there are any more of 'em, and you let me know, right?"
E scoffed in disbelief. "Y-Yeah... Oath. Cheers, King."
A smile came to Casey's lips as E patted him on the back, and as the rest of the thin-bloods followed suit up the seaside grating. He'd have to protect them. It was the only way he could console the putrid powers he now held and the responsibility that came with them. But there were more out there, Casey realised. More of the weak, the sick, the homeless and the lost… Helping them all wouldn't be possible, but, if he found more places like the beach house, little hidden things where no-one would dare look, then Casey could set up beacons.
King, that spur-of-the-moment cover name that would definitely be blown away immediately, that came to mind, as it was instinct to say it. He'd use that as cover, Casey would. Build on it, make a name for himself, and harbour those who couldn't harbour themselves, who couldn't hunt. He'd build them up until they could go out into the world themselves and encourage them to help the world in the way he did.
The way Jack spoke of it - he was a super-powered badass running on the greatest drug in the world, so, why not put those powers to use for good?
Fuck Jyhad, Casey thought. Fuck LaCroix, fuck the suits and the psychos.
A King had been born.
When Casey returned to Mercurio - when he got news that he would soon have to seek out the Nosferatu known as Branwen Tung, he took that moment to rest. Interrupting his thoughts on his shitty little haven, Casey took note of something jutting out of his mailbox. In the box, a package, and in the package, a phone, with a full battery and a note. He read the note, finding the letterhead to be all-too-familiar, and felt a bitter rage swell within him.
It read, simply;
A thousand apologies-
And he crumpled the note before his eyes could lay on any of the other words. Fuck them. They killed me. He thought of destroying the phone, too, but dared to poke through the messages, finding four texts from an unknown number.
Any more verbose, and they'll know. We're sorry.
Don't get angry. Don't let it control you.
Talk when you can. There's so much to tell you.
BUTTERBALLZ. SOZ.
Oh cool, he thought. His sires were being hunted, and here they were leaving a little trail of hints for him, in the midst of hiding underground or running from the city's vampires. He didn't quite feel like talking to them, but left the bitterness aside, focusing on the mission ahead. He needed to get resources to establish this network of his, and he needed whatever the fuck the Prince would give him to do so.
What would a King be without his Prince, after all?