Guys I'm so, so sorry it's taken this long for me to update! Truthfully I just don't have a lot of time for fics lately and I have to prioritise. Thank you so much for all the reviews and favs and a special thanks to the people who reminded me about this fic and requested that I finished it.
We had two nights of planning, waiting and fearing, and then on the third night Ur-Shulgi came. Hollywood burned, it was magnificent and terrifying, flames of gold, crimson and deep orange stretched up to the skies and blackened it with smoke. Stars above and below were lost to the fiery purge as Kine and Kindred alike tried to flee. The Kine of course were fooled, some thought it arson, others nature and some a film set they had stumbled upon. It was indeed a grand performance of horror, madness and death; ordinarily my three favourite things but tonight I found them unpleasant.
The burned child's clan of assassins and converts danced in and out of the flames with glee, slaying and purging as they moved. Isaac and the others fought back with their handy speed and imposing presence whilst I sent out bats and turned bloodthirsty screams to wild laughter. I could not see the burned child but I knew he was out there, I felt his presence reaching out to my mind, crushing down upon my skull and making the voices scream.
The blood sweat came without warning, one moment my blood was within, the next staining my porcelain skin, interrupting my vision of singing cats and evil eyed crows. I stumbled on my weakened knee and was saved from an Assamite's sword swing by Kent's wonderful intervention. He looked at me warily and then gave a howl of pain as his own blood was tore from him in crimson droplets. For the Toreador it was worse as he shuddered at the stains the droplets created as they snaked down his skin and bled through his clothes. I was annoyed but too used to a furred hand and pus leaking eye to be bothered over bloodstains. It was interesting to see my skin red, a potential new look, though perhaps not worth the pain I reflected. I watched as Kent stumbled backwards with a moan of despair, rubbing at the stains frankly and screaming loudly as that only made them worse.
The memories came, colliding and mingling with the shouts on the web. The voices were a mingle, strangers drowning out my beloved companions, shrieking of danger and screaming out challenge over the whispers of elves. I looked for Isaac in the fracas as Kent moved in a blur towards Velvet who was struggling to fight three opponents. The dearest dancer was not designed to fight and was too busy recoiling from ugly wounds to really inflict any.
"What the Hell is wrong with you?" Rob queried sardonically. He tried to sound amused but I saw the unease in his soft, blue-grey eyes. He was looking at my latest painting, a pig headed man being crucified upside down. "Why can't you just draw ponies?"
I looked for Rob as I swallowed down the memory and spied him in his beast form tearing off Assamite heads with glee. He towered above them, wolfish and beautiful, a true monster of the night. It was everything he had feared I would become even before we had known of this dark, dreadful and delightful world. He had talked about a shrink for me to our parents, a conversation they had thought unheard by me. My beloved brother had just not understood me.
I glimpsed the dead phoenix briefly, surprisingly tough with his fists, sneaking in blows as he dodged sword swings. It lasted until the flashbacks were forced upon him, I saw him tremble as the horrors and wonders of his old life flashed before his eyes, the life Isaac had created, corrupted and destroyed. Poor Isaac, he had meant to make Ash a star but Ash had chosen drugs and Isaac had made him the undead instead. Their relationship was more complex than any drama film Isaac sponsored.
I watched as several Toreador and Ventrue soldiers fell, cut down by poisons, blood thefts, curses and swords and swallowed up by the ever growing fire. Immortality, such a deceptive lie. My skin was starting to burn and my hair to singe; it was all around me, a hungry circle of fire.
Silence. It was so foreign to myselves that I did not recognise it. The screams of battle were ceased and yet the fighting continued on. I looked on with interest, wondering if we were trapped in an old movie, caught up in some ancient curse of Hollywood. I anxiously looked for Mr Chaplin but he was not in the crowd. Then there was a terrible sound, the Baron shrieking.
I saw him fall to his knees, my beautiful, strong Baron, crippled by the hand of a burned child stretching out of the flames. Isaac was soaked in his own blood immediately and I was in horror as it began to build before him, hovering in a growing sphere. I moved to go to him, crying out as my cursed knee gave way again. I felt the hollow eyes upon me and then his voice rang through the air, "be purged mad blasphemer." The fire reached out to engulf me as Isaac let out another scream.
In a final act of folly and madness I reached out to the web, stretching up to the spider who had so often tried to ensnare me. He sniffed the dead boy as a unicorn catches the scent of a virgin and he came. "ANCIENT! THE OLD WAYS! THE OLD ONES! I WAS ONE, I AM ONE! I AM ONE AND ALL! THE LEGION!" I had always wondered what it would be like to be struck by lightning, now tonight I would have to wonder no longer.
My voice became a presence in a body; I was too crowded, too full! I snarled and snapped, fought back and unleashed laughter and madness but he was not even wounded. His own laughter was thunder, his madness that of a thousand jesters and fools, he was the madness. My body moved but it was not I, I was a puppet, a Pinocchio ready to be eaten by Monstro. The spider was no longer on the web. He wanted to turn white to black, sanity to insanity, up to down, he wanted to end the fire with chaos. No! I argued back, the Baron! Isaac! He needs us! I tried to look through my eyes, for a moment there was only red, the yellow pus but at last my good eye worked and I spied poor Isaac.
"I AM THE VERY PRINCE OF MADNESS, CHILDE OF THE FIRST KING AND TWIN TO BEAUTY!" the voice screamed through me, my voice, the Clan voice, the master's voice, he was me, I was him, we were one and everyone all at once.
Jyhad, the word flowed through my mind and it all became maddeningly clear. It was all a game; we were just pawns on the grand chessboard Caine had carved out. The eternal struggle between Methuselahs and Antediluvians, at first a battle between Caine's beloved children and their own corrupted offspring, the murder of Caine's offspring had led to many ancient curses. The Giovanni's taking and opening of the box, my turning by a Malkavian, Sebastian's generous sparing of me, all planned! I started to laugh, it became so wild and loud that it was contagious and Malkav, my nameless master, let the sound slip out of his lips. With that single, soft snicker four vampires were thwarted, their heads exploded into bloody nothingness and their bodies became ash. This had all been planned!
I tasted Ur-Shulgi's fear fresh on the night air, bitter to the tongue, not as bad as lemons but not as pleasant as coffee either, it was not something I savoured. The burned boy flung out diseases and curses, turning the Toreador's beautiful flesh to blackening, oozing boils and violent streaks of blood that would scar their beauty. They fell in a tremble of disgust and horror, grasping at their twisted forms and howling in horror. I saw VV drop as her long, luscious red locks fell from her scalp and her limbs became more twisted and deformed than my own. The ancient child knew how to strike the Toreadors best.
'Stop this!' I cried out as I saw Isaac's very flesh begin to melt as his clothes rotted and fell off him. 'STOP! NOT THE TOREADORS! FRIENDS! FAMILY! LOVE!' My words came out more broken than a wounded swan's song as I watched Ash try to rip out his own eyes to banish the ugliness of his friends from sight.
"GEHENNA WILL BE LONG; IT WILL BE AN ETERNITY OF OMENS AND DEATHS! LET THE DAYS BE NIGHT AND WRONGS BE RIGHT!" The ancient mad sire's voice was a roar through my lips. "LET THIS BE THE NEXT MOVE TOWARDS IT ON THE BOARD! IT COULD BE CENTURIES UNTIL THE NEXT PLAY SO MAKE IT A GOOD MOVE!" He laughed hysterically and I watched through his eyes, for they could not be my own as they were healed, as friends and foes alike were destroyed by the mere sound of his voice.
"STOP!" For one brief moment my voice was my own, not so loud, not so powerful but he heard it. The spider reacted to it with a curious pause.
"CHILD ON THE WEB, SPAWN OF THE LEGION!" he hissed at me. "CHILD I MUST DEVOUR! AH BUT TO HURT THE HELPFUL, TO KILL THE USEFUL, IT IS THE WAY BUT IT SHOULD NOT BE! BROKEN VESSEL, SHATTERED LIKE THE MIRROR, HOW DOES ONE SPARE YOU AND DESTROY YOU?"
"ISAAC!" I saw the Baron's face begin to crack and glow with embers as he started to lose himself to the assassin child's might.
"MY SISTER'S OWN," my mad father murmured softly, "CURSED BEAUTY, THEY ARE SELFISH AND YET GIVING WITH THEIR LOVE, THEIR MADNESS IS MORE COMPLEX THAN OUR OWN. I PITY THEM AS I PITY YOU FOR BEING TRAPPED BY IT, LOST IN A MAZE OF TOREADOR HATE AND AFFECTION. VERY WELL, UNTIL THE NEXT MOVE NEEDS MADE!"
Dementation, it was of course only appropriate that he used the gift so unique to our clan. Bedlam, I watched it reach out to all our enemies like a whisper, sending them into crazed laughter, turning them upon one another and themselves and sending them into the flames in self-destruction as they ran from their own fears. Ur-Shulgi was last, I watched and saw what he saw, the master in the shadows, the Dark Father come with all his wrath, his face marred with disapproval and in his hand he carried a head, the rotting skull of Haqim. It was too much for the eternal child who always needed an eternal parent, without his father he was lost, alone, an orphan trapped in a ruined body.
He screamed and it was the cries of a lost child, the monster in him had deserted him with his father. My hand that was not my hand and yet strangely was lifted my bloodstained katana and I moved with a speed I not possessed since the marring of my leg. One swing and it was done, the boy's head tumbled off his burned shoulders with ease and as his body fell in clumps of ash his deadly fire faded away as the remnants of his army continued to destroy themselves in a fit of insanity.
I was sucked back within the hive and for a moment all boundaries faded away and I saw him. "I thought you would be taller," I lamented, "and wear a hat, why no hat?"
His body was marble, the perfect sculpture though I'm sure the Toreadors would disagree, picky poets and artists that they were. His hair was messy, thick and spiked, dark with streaks of red and gold through it, and his eyes were orbs of madness, one a bright turquoise flecked with purple and the other bronze flecked with emerald green, he was neither young nor old, lean and wearing the sumptuous garments of noblemen in the period films Isaac was secretly fond of.
"I forget if this is me or not," he murmured, his voice soft and dangerous like a tiger's purr. The play had been made, there was no need for theatrics any longer, and I did not need to be impressed, though I would have liked fireworks and candy floss anyway. "I crossed the boundaries, things became different then, but wonderful, the things one can see. It makes me proud my children see it too but also jealous, the madness was a gift to be guarded and now it is spread too thin, a web to contain me." His expression darkened, a shadow crossing over his face. "It is why I must kill you all eventually, my darling children; I love and despise you best. You should fall to me now but it is unkind to betray one who helped, unexpected however." He grinned showing me his beautiful, jagged fangs. "I like the unexpected."
I quivered as my vision turned black, then gold and then red. He was leaving me, I felt him flow out of me, it was painful as if I was being ripped inside out. I screamed out of pain and loss, the voices were going, I was going. It was tearing my body and my mind, everything was going out, and I was being torn with it. I burned and blazed, light surrounded me, blood and tears flowed from me and my voices slipped away with screams and moans.
Darkness engulfed me as I hit the ground and jolted back to reality with the pain. I shuddered and sucked in a breath. A breath! I opened my eyes, they both worked and yet they did not! I could see out of both but it wasn't right, nothing was crisp anymore, everything was faded, it was not blurry and yet it was not clear. It was dim, hard to see, night was no longer day. I sucked in another breath and my chest throbbed with the effort, this was not right! I tried to cease it and felt my chest tightened as I stretched out both my palms and looked at them in surprise. They stung from several cuts inflicted upon them and my right wrist threatened to bruise. There was no fur!
A hungry hiss and several snarls snapped my attention upwards. Eyes glowed out of the darkness at me, feral eyes on the point of frenzying, the gaze of vampires barely standing, starving for all the blood they had been drained of. Bump! Bump! Bump! My heart! I clapped my left hand to my chest in horror and a gasp escaped me, it was beating! I felt it there beneath the tatters of my shirt, pounding feebly against my breast, struggling to start a forgotten habit. A form came at me in a blur and I knew I could not move as nimbly as before. My body felt heavy and slow, I would never make it.
BANG! The blur became solid as it jerked back with the blow of the bullet. I saw Kent's arms flail up as he just managed to stop himself from falling and instead stumbled back awkwardly. He gave an angry snarl and glowered behind me with thirsty eyes.
"Not another step poet."
I looked back in surprise and delight, the disobedient grave guardian, somehow standing amidst the carnage, armed him with his faithful shotgun now aimed at my friends who would make me dinner. I staggered up to my feet and did not know whether to feel joy because my knee was fixed or grief as my body hurt to move and was sluggish.
"What...what is she?" Isaac struggled to speak. He was near Kent; I could not resist glancing back to him. He was dirty, bloodstained and burned but it would all heal in time with rest and feeding. His gold eyes were not friendly as they lingered on me though, there was no gratitude, only the feral thirst that crippled and cursed us all. Us all? I stretched out my pale arms and turned them over, they were bruised and battered but I could still pick out some veins flowing beneath the smudges and stains, my body was pumping blood, my body was living. "She smells...of food!" he marvelled.
"Blood," VV hissed as she staggered up behind the Baron, one heel snapped, her corset lopsided and her hair in tattered clumps. It too would fix itself; it would grow back quickly in the night if she fed well. "She bleeds!"
"Behind me sugarpuss, now," Romero commanded firmly as he clicked his shotgun warningly.
I obeyed, hurrying to the loyal grave guard and staggering behind him. "What's happened?" I croaked in horror.
"I don't know," he retorted as he kept his dark stare on the vampires, "I sat the battle out, but I couldn't leave you all, just as well really seeing as how they need supper and you seem to be breathing."
"I..." I lifted up one cut finger and suckled on the blood tentatively, it was hot, salty and disgusting on my tongue. There was nothing nutritious about it and nothing in me that craved it.
"Isaac you don't want to do this," Romero called out to the snarling Toreador. "There are other Kine to feed upon, go and find them, she is still Ariadne. I'll take her, just let us go."
"Go now!" Isaac hissed back, his voice deeper and more bestial than usual.
Romero turned quickly and gripped my hand with one hand, pulling me up the ruined streets hastily. We did not have to go far and yet every step hurt as my feet were bare and I felt the rough ground beneath them. There was a battered, old, black truck up ahead which Romero urged me towards. He cocked his shotgun, tugged out the keys and urged me in. It took a few precious seconds before the engine chugged to life and we were able to flee from the death and carnage.
The ripped, leather seat was cold beneath my skin and I found myself shivering as the icy air of the night started to get to me. When the truck rolled over a speed bump the vomit came up splattering onto the dirty rubber mat on the floor.
"Well that's going to be hard to clean," Romero mused in his usual sardonic manner.
It was comforting to find him unchanged and still on my side. He was the only one who had never once betrayed or abandoned me, even when it had earned him the Baron's wrath. He had put up with my madness, my amnesia, my blood thirst, my ugliness and more and all with just a tired smile and a roll of his eyes. "Rob?" I remarked hoarsely as I wiped the vomit from my mouth with the back of my hand. "Was Rob there?"
"Yes and he looked fine kid," Romero answered calmly, "well he looked like a bloodthirsty monster but that's probably about right for him."
I leaned back against the chair and turned my attention to the window, my reflection was there, faded and pale, she looked ordinary and I hated her. "He had to destroy his children but I helped him so he undid me," I murmured quietly. "He took it away when he left, I'm...human." The word was like an ill taste upon my tongue and I felt sick to speak it.
"It's not the worst thing in the world," Romero murmured as we hit the main road. "Look, I'm going to get us out of here and then tomorrow night I'll give Isaac a call. You were turned before so you can be turned again, if that's what you really want. Personally I'd suggest you find out what a sunrise is again before you make that choice."
"Sunrise," I retorted nervously, "bright and beautiful, it must be heavy for Apollo to pull. Do you ever see one?"
"Sometimes," the grave keeper replied wistfully.
"Where are we going?" I asked as I sank into the uncomfortable seat wearily.
"Santa Monica, where I should be," he answered moodily, "and where red is."
'And my family,' I thought achingly, 'and home, could I go? It's not taboo if I'm human, right?'
"Romero," I addressed him quietly, "will you stay with me?"
"Of course," he answered and when I looked his way he flashed me a smile. "Life's dull without you crazy cat."