Shrugging the corpse off his arm Amaranth turned to face the other Spiral
Dancers. They were in whatever shape was most comfortable for them, and he
surveyed the pack of twisted wolf-men and dogs with no small amount of
distaste. The three dogs reminded him of the Hounds of the Baskervilles
with their violently bloodshot eyes and mouths frothing with green foam.
They were faster and stronger than any ghouled hellhound kept by the
prince, that much he knew from previous altercations with both. But he'd
rather face them than the wolf-men.
Like their lupine pack mates, these spirals were all deformed, with scars crossing their skin to end in hideous open sores from which a pale green puss leaked. A few of them had withered limbs or other physical deformities, and for the first time in years amaranth was happy that he no longer needed to breath. He could see the hazy vapors of their breathing, and decided upon reflection, that it was best not to imagine what they what they smelt like. Even the Nosferatu generally agreed that Spirals could use a few dozen containers of breath mints at the best of times.
Even before he had finished assessing his foes, Amaranth reached deep inside himself, willing his blood into his arms and legs to increase his speed far beyond the limits of human potential. A small quantity of his blood went into activating his Disciplines of Potence and Fortitude, making his body more durable and strengthening him, but he realized that he could not hope to outlast a pack of wolves, even rabid ones like these, and that his only hope for survival lay in decimating them so quickly that they would never really have a chance to act as a pack and bring him down. Like a lion facing a pack of hyenas, he knew that his death awaited him if he could not even the odds faster than they could bring him down.
He waited for them to attack him, knowing that the others would strike at his sides and back if he struck for any one of them preemptively. He was acutely aware of his bad position, his back to the wall, in the most literal sense of the words, with his foes surrounding him in a semicircle, which allowed them to bring all their attacking power to bear if he attacked. The ideal situation would be for him to be on the other side of the semicircle with them chasing him so that they would spread out and he could deal with them one at a time or in pairs. Thus, he made it his first priority to break free of their encirclement.
His opportunity came when one of his lupine opponents got a little overenthusiastic and launched itself at him before the rest of the pack was ready. He used its face as a springboard to throw himself towards the pile of metal under which they had tried to entrap him. He felt the skull of his foe strike pavement as his foot left it, but than something caught his heel and tore a chunk of it off. He struck the pavement on his shoulder and rolled, coming to his feet near the base of the pile. He had just begun scrambling up when a massive weight bowled into his back like a freight train at full steam.
The force of the impact drove his face hard into the side of the immobile pile, which caused his head to snap back. The result of this was the acquisition of a broken nose and a nasty case of whiplash. The only thing, he knew, that was saving him from being mauled from behind by many sets of razor sharp claws was the unintentional positioning of the nine-foot frame that had struck him and caused it to be something of a primitive shield. This did not make him feel any more kindly disposed to it though.
He lashed back with his elbow, feeling bones shatter at the point of impact. The weight left his back and he pushed himself away from the pile of garbage, feeling his finger nails lengthen into animalistic claws. The wolf-man that had hit him, and been hit in return, was down on its knees, clutching its shattered chest as it coughed up its lifeblood. Amaranth dug his fingers into its eyes, feeling them penetrate through the skull and into the brain, and hurled the werewolf against a wall.
He focused his attention on the nearest spiral (one of the wolves), and charged at it. Caught off guard, it failed to dodge fast enough and Amaranth tore its throat out, sacrificing his ear and a portion of his shoulder to its strike. The wolf that he had used as a spring board earlier caught the side of his legs in its jaws as it leapt for him and ripped out a chunk of his hamstring.
He rolled away from it and struck with his claws, a rapid succession of five blows that forced its shoulders from their sockets, pierced its eyes, and punctured its lungs. It staggered away from him, probably to heal itself, but the last of the wolves clamped its jaws around the wounded's throat and yanked its head backwards, before swallowing the clump of flesh it its mouth and turning its baleful gaze towards him.
Amaranth felt the slight tingling sensation as his body began to heal itself, drawing upon his blood to do so. Even with his mind otherwise occupied with his attempts to free his knife from its sheath, he realized that the wound wasn't healing right. The process was consuming more blood than it ought, and it was too slow.
The process of getting his knife out was made far more difficult by the wolf-man who had decided to jump into his chest, landing knee first. He heard, rather than felt, his ribs shatter, and a small part of him realized that this was a bad sign as it meant his body was going into shock from the trauma that was being inflicted upon it. He pushed this line of thought aside, finding himself slightly more concerned with the knife the werewolf was raising above its -and his- head.
He wrenched his head to the side and the knife buried its three and a half foot blade in the pavement right up to its hilt. He freed his own knife and plunged it into the werewolf's side just beneath the ribcage. It snarled at him and tried to free its weapon. Then he was pushing back on its chin until he heard bones snapping. Pushing the dead weight off him Amaranth forced himself to stand despite the pain for his not healed leg.
Reaching down he grabbed the silver knife –a Klaive, he remembered other werewolves calling them that- by its bone-carved hilt and ripped it free of the asphalt. He could feel the hunger gnawing at the back of his mind, at the part of him that was him, a warning that he was using up his blood supply fast, and a painful reminder that he hadn't fed in the past two nights.
He swung the klaive at the last lupine Spiral as it leapt for his throat, the blade crashing sideways into its neck, than a red mist covered his sight as its claws tore across his face. He felt one of them tear towards his eye, and he reached out blindly, tearing anything his hands found to shreds.
As if from a distance, he heard the sharp staccato reports of an Uzi, and felt the dull thudding impacts of bullets with his undead flesh, so much like the time when a gang of Brujah anarchs had taken a jackhammer to him. He heard the clatter of the klaive and his knife as they fell from his hands to the pavement. He watched in slow motion as the only member of the pack to stay in human form –Jessie- some fragment of his mind reminded him, dropped the Uzi and ran after the last two wolf-men down the ally.
Amaranth attempted to follow, but the world refused to cooperate. He managed to take two steps before it tilted upwards to smack him in the face. He heard the door to the cab of the truck open and prayed that the driver would stay away. He heard the guy muttering about how bad gang warfare in the city had become. That was something he had never understood about the wolves, was the way that humans would always rationalize something they did and forget about the werewolves themselves. A man knelt next to him. "Are you okay, man? Come on, let's get you to a hospital."
No, get away. Please, leave me. I don't want to hurt you, Amaranth railed at the mortal uselessly inside his head. His mouth wouldn't work right, so all that came out was a groan. Get away, get away, get away, get AWAY, GET AWAY, GET AWAY, PLEASE GET AWAY. He could feel the hunger welling up inside him as the sweet scent of the truck driver's sweat and blood filled his nostrils. He tried to resist it, but he could feel it welling up from deep in the recesses of his soul like a raging torrent that would sweep away anything in its path. The part of him that was still human after sixty years of living the not-life walled itself away in the corners of his mind.
Α Δ Ω
His eyes snapped open at the sound of tiny feet skittering across the ground near his ear. Amaranth sat up, the slight tingling feeling of the new patches of flesh his only clue of where the blood had gone before the nausea of waking with almost no blood in his system hit him.
"Have a rat," A voice said from the shadows deeper down the tunnel. A patch of shadows detached themselves from the walls and began to walk forwards. "And relax. Even though your in the sewers, none of the Nosferatu will hurt you, so long as I tell them not to. At least, not here."
Amaranth reached over quickly and snagged a pair of the rats. He snapped their necks and drained them of what little blood their bodies could hold. Still craving more, he caught seven or so more and consumed those as well.
Leaning back against the wall, he glanced at the man who had stepped into the light. Something was odd here. Then it hit him like a lightening bolt. "You're not a Nosferatu. So why am I here, and why would they listen to you?"
The man smiled. He had flame-red hair and short goatee, and wore his black slacks and a silk shirt (also black), that were covered by a long black trench coat. The well-developed muscles in his arms had probably been developed through hours of practice with the sword, and Amaranth noticed a slight bulge to one side of the jacket that made him think there was some form of a bladed weapon there. The figure looked strangely familiar, but still struggling with the thirst, Amaranth couldn't quite place it.
"There are worse things in these sewers than the Nosferatu. For instance, my friends and I. You would be surprised at how easily we get around. Tzimice flesh crafting, combined with my skills and Lasombra shadow mastery, helped along by the way you fools in the Camarilla treat the Nosferatu, will make it so easy to sow seeds of dissention and suspicion among the Camarilla of this city and turn the whole place into a seething blood bath."
"Are you done Loki?" A second figure asked as it stepped out of the shadows. "We really ought to get started if we're going to do anything tonight."
"Ahh, Amaranth, let me introduce you to our small cadre of troops here. This is Jahmal, and those are his siblings, Sayra and Sean. Together they, as triplets, makeup the Cerberus falaqi. Telleroin over there is our Tzimice." Loki had gestured to other figures who Amaranth could barely make out in the shadows. A broad smile split Loki's face, but he quickly changed it into a severe expression.
"But that was just so bad of you. Whatever possessed you to kill the Seneschal's childe?" Loki pointed accusingly to the body lying at his feat in the damp tunnel. "Not to worry though, we'll dispose of the body…"
"You didn't." Amaranth said as his eyes fell on the holes in the neck.
"Oh, but I did." Loki smiled, as his face elongated slightly and his hair became jet-black. Amaranth stared at his mirror image. "Or rather, YOU did."
Author's Note: Okay, I finally finished up this chapter, although it took me awhile to decide how it would end. But here it is. Tell me what you think everybody, please!
Umm, yeah another problem I ran into was how to describe the werewolves in the fight scene. Because the story is meant to be from a third person limited viewpoint, I had to try and confine the terms used to describe them in terms that a Vampire would know and use. Thus, when I speak of wolf- men, it can be understood that I mean a werewolf in crinos form, and when I speak of lupines, I'm talking of werewolves in hispo form. At least for this turn. If anybody has any suggestions of ways to get around this problem, in the future I'd appreciate any advice.
Also the ADW* is supposed to be a section break actually composed of the Alpha, Delta, and Omega symbols. I just noticed that Fanfiction doesn't support these characters, so they show up as gibberish… sorry all, my bad.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and of course, even more so for reviewing.
Like their lupine pack mates, these spirals were all deformed, with scars crossing their skin to end in hideous open sores from which a pale green puss leaked. A few of them had withered limbs or other physical deformities, and for the first time in years amaranth was happy that he no longer needed to breath. He could see the hazy vapors of their breathing, and decided upon reflection, that it was best not to imagine what they what they smelt like. Even the Nosferatu generally agreed that Spirals could use a few dozen containers of breath mints at the best of times.
Even before he had finished assessing his foes, Amaranth reached deep inside himself, willing his blood into his arms and legs to increase his speed far beyond the limits of human potential. A small quantity of his blood went into activating his Disciplines of Potence and Fortitude, making his body more durable and strengthening him, but he realized that he could not hope to outlast a pack of wolves, even rabid ones like these, and that his only hope for survival lay in decimating them so quickly that they would never really have a chance to act as a pack and bring him down. Like a lion facing a pack of hyenas, he knew that his death awaited him if he could not even the odds faster than they could bring him down.
He waited for them to attack him, knowing that the others would strike at his sides and back if he struck for any one of them preemptively. He was acutely aware of his bad position, his back to the wall, in the most literal sense of the words, with his foes surrounding him in a semicircle, which allowed them to bring all their attacking power to bear if he attacked. The ideal situation would be for him to be on the other side of the semicircle with them chasing him so that they would spread out and he could deal with them one at a time or in pairs. Thus, he made it his first priority to break free of their encirclement.
His opportunity came when one of his lupine opponents got a little overenthusiastic and launched itself at him before the rest of the pack was ready. He used its face as a springboard to throw himself towards the pile of metal under which they had tried to entrap him. He felt the skull of his foe strike pavement as his foot left it, but than something caught his heel and tore a chunk of it off. He struck the pavement on his shoulder and rolled, coming to his feet near the base of the pile. He had just begun scrambling up when a massive weight bowled into his back like a freight train at full steam.
The force of the impact drove his face hard into the side of the immobile pile, which caused his head to snap back. The result of this was the acquisition of a broken nose and a nasty case of whiplash. The only thing, he knew, that was saving him from being mauled from behind by many sets of razor sharp claws was the unintentional positioning of the nine-foot frame that had struck him and caused it to be something of a primitive shield. This did not make him feel any more kindly disposed to it though.
He lashed back with his elbow, feeling bones shatter at the point of impact. The weight left his back and he pushed himself away from the pile of garbage, feeling his finger nails lengthen into animalistic claws. The wolf-man that had hit him, and been hit in return, was down on its knees, clutching its shattered chest as it coughed up its lifeblood. Amaranth dug his fingers into its eyes, feeling them penetrate through the skull and into the brain, and hurled the werewolf against a wall.
He focused his attention on the nearest spiral (one of the wolves), and charged at it. Caught off guard, it failed to dodge fast enough and Amaranth tore its throat out, sacrificing his ear and a portion of his shoulder to its strike. The wolf that he had used as a spring board earlier caught the side of his legs in its jaws as it leapt for him and ripped out a chunk of his hamstring.
He rolled away from it and struck with his claws, a rapid succession of five blows that forced its shoulders from their sockets, pierced its eyes, and punctured its lungs. It staggered away from him, probably to heal itself, but the last of the wolves clamped its jaws around the wounded's throat and yanked its head backwards, before swallowing the clump of flesh it its mouth and turning its baleful gaze towards him.
Amaranth felt the slight tingling sensation as his body began to heal itself, drawing upon his blood to do so. Even with his mind otherwise occupied with his attempts to free his knife from its sheath, he realized that the wound wasn't healing right. The process was consuming more blood than it ought, and it was too slow.
The process of getting his knife out was made far more difficult by the wolf-man who had decided to jump into his chest, landing knee first. He heard, rather than felt, his ribs shatter, and a small part of him realized that this was a bad sign as it meant his body was going into shock from the trauma that was being inflicted upon it. He pushed this line of thought aside, finding himself slightly more concerned with the knife the werewolf was raising above its -and his- head.
He wrenched his head to the side and the knife buried its three and a half foot blade in the pavement right up to its hilt. He freed his own knife and plunged it into the werewolf's side just beneath the ribcage. It snarled at him and tried to free its weapon. Then he was pushing back on its chin until he heard bones snapping. Pushing the dead weight off him Amaranth forced himself to stand despite the pain for his not healed leg.
Reaching down he grabbed the silver knife –a Klaive, he remembered other werewolves calling them that- by its bone-carved hilt and ripped it free of the asphalt. He could feel the hunger gnawing at the back of his mind, at the part of him that was him, a warning that he was using up his blood supply fast, and a painful reminder that he hadn't fed in the past two nights.
He swung the klaive at the last lupine Spiral as it leapt for his throat, the blade crashing sideways into its neck, than a red mist covered his sight as its claws tore across his face. He felt one of them tear towards his eye, and he reached out blindly, tearing anything his hands found to shreds.
As if from a distance, he heard the sharp staccato reports of an Uzi, and felt the dull thudding impacts of bullets with his undead flesh, so much like the time when a gang of Brujah anarchs had taken a jackhammer to him. He heard the clatter of the klaive and his knife as they fell from his hands to the pavement. He watched in slow motion as the only member of the pack to stay in human form –Jessie- some fragment of his mind reminded him, dropped the Uzi and ran after the last two wolf-men down the ally.
Amaranth attempted to follow, but the world refused to cooperate. He managed to take two steps before it tilted upwards to smack him in the face. He heard the door to the cab of the truck open and prayed that the driver would stay away. He heard the guy muttering about how bad gang warfare in the city had become. That was something he had never understood about the wolves, was the way that humans would always rationalize something they did and forget about the werewolves themselves. A man knelt next to him. "Are you okay, man? Come on, let's get you to a hospital."
No, get away. Please, leave me. I don't want to hurt you, Amaranth railed at the mortal uselessly inside his head. His mouth wouldn't work right, so all that came out was a groan. Get away, get away, get away, get AWAY, GET AWAY, GET AWAY, PLEASE GET AWAY. He could feel the hunger welling up inside him as the sweet scent of the truck driver's sweat and blood filled his nostrils. He tried to resist it, but he could feel it welling up from deep in the recesses of his soul like a raging torrent that would sweep away anything in its path. The part of him that was still human after sixty years of living the not-life walled itself away in the corners of his mind.
Α Δ Ω
His eyes snapped open at the sound of tiny feet skittering across the ground near his ear. Amaranth sat up, the slight tingling feeling of the new patches of flesh his only clue of where the blood had gone before the nausea of waking with almost no blood in his system hit him.
"Have a rat," A voice said from the shadows deeper down the tunnel. A patch of shadows detached themselves from the walls and began to walk forwards. "And relax. Even though your in the sewers, none of the Nosferatu will hurt you, so long as I tell them not to. At least, not here."
Amaranth reached over quickly and snagged a pair of the rats. He snapped their necks and drained them of what little blood their bodies could hold. Still craving more, he caught seven or so more and consumed those as well.
Leaning back against the wall, he glanced at the man who had stepped into the light. Something was odd here. Then it hit him like a lightening bolt. "You're not a Nosferatu. So why am I here, and why would they listen to you?"
The man smiled. He had flame-red hair and short goatee, and wore his black slacks and a silk shirt (also black), that were covered by a long black trench coat. The well-developed muscles in his arms had probably been developed through hours of practice with the sword, and Amaranth noticed a slight bulge to one side of the jacket that made him think there was some form of a bladed weapon there. The figure looked strangely familiar, but still struggling with the thirst, Amaranth couldn't quite place it.
"There are worse things in these sewers than the Nosferatu. For instance, my friends and I. You would be surprised at how easily we get around. Tzimice flesh crafting, combined with my skills and Lasombra shadow mastery, helped along by the way you fools in the Camarilla treat the Nosferatu, will make it so easy to sow seeds of dissention and suspicion among the Camarilla of this city and turn the whole place into a seething blood bath."
"Are you done Loki?" A second figure asked as it stepped out of the shadows. "We really ought to get started if we're going to do anything tonight."
"Ahh, Amaranth, let me introduce you to our small cadre of troops here. This is Jahmal, and those are his siblings, Sayra and Sean. Together they, as triplets, makeup the Cerberus falaqi. Telleroin over there is our Tzimice." Loki had gestured to other figures who Amaranth could barely make out in the shadows. A broad smile split Loki's face, but he quickly changed it into a severe expression.
"But that was just so bad of you. Whatever possessed you to kill the Seneschal's childe?" Loki pointed accusingly to the body lying at his feat in the damp tunnel. "Not to worry though, we'll dispose of the body…"
"You didn't." Amaranth said as his eyes fell on the holes in the neck.
"Oh, but I did." Loki smiled, as his face elongated slightly and his hair became jet-black. Amaranth stared at his mirror image. "Or rather, YOU did."
Author's Note: Okay, I finally finished up this chapter, although it took me awhile to decide how it would end. But here it is. Tell me what you think everybody, please!
Umm, yeah another problem I ran into was how to describe the werewolves in the fight scene. Because the story is meant to be from a third person limited viewpoint, I had to try and confine the terms used to describe them in terms that a Vampire would know and use. Thus, when I speak of wolf- men, it can be understood that I mean a werewolf in crinos form, and when I speak of lupines, I'm talking of werewolves in hispo form. At least for this turn. If anybody has any suggestions of ways to get around this problem, in the future I'd appreciate any advice.
Also the ADW* is supposed to be a section break actually composed of the Alpha, Delta, and Omega symbols. I just noticed that Fanfiction doesn't support these characters, so they show up as gibberish… sorry all, my bad.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and of course, even more so for reviewing.