❝ᴘᴀx ʙʀιᴛᴀɴɴιcᴀ❞ ᴱᴸᴵᵀᴱ ℒit

An Englishman's Breakfast:

A snack of savage beastie	7.4%	[ 35 ]
A tasty little fanged fiend	6.1%	[ 29 ]
A deliciously advanced roleplay	16.5%	[ 78 ]
Crumpets and tea	24.5%	[ 116 ]
Violence with a dash of chivalry	45.5%	[ 215 ]
Total Votes:			[ 473 ]

[Tummeh Fiend]

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"ℱ ine." Oh, how Bernardo wanted to believe that. Yes, he wanted to take the face value, just blindly agree to keep up the mask that everything was fine. Unfortunately, he was no fool. So instead of complying and nodding in agreement, he narrowed his eyes over his glasses and cocked an eyebrow. "Oh, is this so?" A smile spread across his face despite his efforts to stay serious, and he took another small sip of his wine. Setting down his glass with a resounding crystalline sound, he tipped back in his chair with his arms spread wide. "And I, my good man, am the Queen." His smile turned quickly to a grin, and he was rewarded with a matching smirk. Truly, though he tried to lift the mood of their current situation, he was worried about the young vampire. There was this nebulous veil over the tailor's home, to break this spell seemed almost impossible, a job surely for the test of time. With time, the cloud would lift. Never completely, perhaps, but it it would become less noticeable. The only thing that would admonish the events of these two weeks would be the small glint in Jack's eyes, the one that would come to the surface of those deep green wells if only for an instant to remind him that the past is never forgotten completely. Bernardo once again picked up his pencil and traced his imagination, silver buttons, black lapel. Stunning, it would look stunning on him in the moonlight. He would walk the streets with his head held high, this vampire of finer tastes, and no doubt he would walk beside him under his silvery goddess. He sketched in the details with his keen eye, glasses slipping farther and farther down his nose but with little notice payed by the wearer. He could imagine the spool of black fabric he would use to make this coat, it would accentuate the paleness of his being, especially with the new complexion of his hair. Jack would be a soft figure of grace, troubled though he was, and Bernardo; the dark granite shadow.

"Unrecognizable. Like a chameleon, Jack Fletcher..." he mumbled to himself, that same happy countenance flashing across his face for a moment. Another sip of wine was ingested, filling up his chest with a rich warmth. Somethings were unparallelled in the universe, and the feeling of a choice wine slithering through the senses was one of those things. A satisfied sigh left his lips, evaporating in the thick silence between them all too slowly. The red liquid glinted like rubies, and he was a king. Red, of course, was the color of passion, of hate and lust alike. His dark eyes looked past the brim of the glass towards the blond man across from him before he set it back down. Red; Bernardo's color of choice. A dark red like blood, a light blush on skin, the crimson walls of his bedroom. But green was the color that filled his mind as he made one last dark stroke on his sketch, finishing the outline of the soon-to-be vest. Quite pleased with the outcome, he tucked the wooden pencil behind his ear and passed the notebook over to his companion. On the leftmost page was the outline of the full body; a pair of dark black trousers, which he indicated to with scribbles on the margins. Above that, a loose white shirt, gathered at the wrists in the typical French-style undershirt. Finally, the emerald vest with silver buttons, fitted snugly around the waist. Though Bernardo did not have an extra pair of shoes that were in Jack's size, he always had a variety of Oxfords sitting in the closet for his previous clients. On the rightmost page was the beauty of the piece, the coal black coat sleek as the night sky. Not at all tawdry, but with a sort of subtle, elegant beauty; the coat jumped from the page. Across the chest were two rows of vertical buttons to match the vest, the sleeves billowed out to voluminous cuffs, striped with the glint of metallic. Metallic, to resemble Jack's heart and the key that still scratched like a creature waiting to get out. While the vampire looked upon his new set of clothes, and this was by no means the first sketch he had displayed, Bernardo made it a point to pick up the wine glass again, cupped by his palm, and to spin the gems around the sides. But he never took his eyes off of the others. He inhaled the smell, of his wine and his shop, but mostly the unfamiliar presence that had made his house theirs. The intoxicating smells of the room that swept over him, around him, and it seemed to even permeate his flesh until it was inside of him. Then he had to remind himself that there were alien things in his body, while simultaneously having to repress the urge to reach up to his collarbone and tear it out. Show it to Jack so he knew that it was not at the bottom of the Thames, covered by murky water and slippery seaweed... and a corpse.

Jack was pleased, at least, he was good at pretending to be. The brunette could feel his pride swelling, if not a little, in his chest as he commented, “This is the final one before I start the actual measurements and sowing. I will contain myself, the pencil will cease for now, until you finally have a wardrobe. One that isn't torn or bloody, that is.” Bernardo settled back in his chair, the conversation lulled. He drank his wine, the other drank his brandy.

How conversation was something he could not take for granted, and now denied that thing which he had been so long without, a squirming feeling settled in the bottom of his heart. Though his mind raced faster than his sluggish heartbeat, and just when you think that you have forgotten, your memory does not. All at once, each word they had said to each other entered his mind. The first; a manual on how to handle his pistol. The second; debts, reluctantly spoken by the debtor. How that voice had tried to pluck him from the darkness of his grudge and his life. The soft tremor of Jack's voice tried to break through the hard shell carefully constructed by the past, and not in vain, for a small hole exposed the light of day in his strong facade. He had basked in that minimal sunlight in these two weeks, remembering what it had been like when he was young and nothing had mattered but companionship. Then the one question popped into his mind again, the one that he had not seen coming until it had filled the space between them. Bernardo remembered with vivid accuracy the way his gaze had never faltered, nor his voice, which had compulsively asked, “Who are you, Jack Fletcher?” He had wanted to hear the response, had ached for it. And why? Because he wanted to know if the vampire could feel, he wanted to see what made them tick; but he had not expected the response to be his own. Jack was just as human, and inhuman, as he was. Did he remember it as vividly as Bernardo seemed to? He opened his mouth to ask, impulsive as always.

“Jack...”

But then his face changed from the groggy, apathetic gaze he had been sporting since the night he found Adelaide, to attentiveness. His eyes perked, glowed, and wandered around his head as if looking for the ghosts. Bernardo's voice ceased, not wanting to break the concentration in the air. From somewhere, he could barely make out cries for help, whimpers of pain. The static in the atmosphere was still for a moment before it exploded. Jack burst from his chair, yelling, then pleading. The Were's head swam, ears not quite grasping what he was supposed to hear until the other male started towards the door. Another vampire had been mentioned, and he wanted to close up his walls again. He would have in the past, he would have turned the dying being out on his doorstep with the threat of a bullet to the head. He was going to open his mouth, to protest. Jack was special, how could he not know that by now? Jack was the one that had pushed past his murderous walls, but another vampire would not have such luck, nor be welcomed with open arms. But then that same Jack looked right into his eyes, searched deep down until Bernardo had to advert his own gaze for fear of revealing everything, laying everything down on the table. "If you must, I understand." That was all he offered as his companion started towards the door, intent on leaving into the midnight again. Last time he had made such a brave endeavor, he had returned near mad. So there was another vampire, Christa, who needed him. No doubt this would start a new chain of delusional dreams. He was about to close his eyes, to tip back and simply wait for Jack to return, until hurried words rushed him to his feet. "Come with me." He came as he was beckoned, and was happy to do so. No more being alone, no more silent nights... However, before he ducked out the door after him and his trench coat, he turned back to the kitchen table. Picking up the heavy brandy glass, he downed the rest of the burning drink, dancing demons down his throat. He shuddered, grabbed his plain black coat and his pistol where he had left it in the hutch drawer, and finally exited to follow his ghostly comrade.

__________

They had been running aimlessly, Jack with an obvious sense of purpose and direction, Bernardo tagging along blindly. The lights of the city had cast watery flares across the surface of the cobblestones, highlighting his favorite color in the sewers and drains. It had been murder, a bloodbath, a true war. He had watched from the crack in his curtains, disgusted and ashamed at the complete pointlessness of their feud. It was that same battle that had left the two men in this situation: running after an ex-general who was probably already half-dead. Both of their shoes echoed in the emptiness. This was eerie, there were usually creatures out and about, but there was not even a faint heartbeat. His eyes scanned back and forth, frightened enough to be alert and careful. Especially when the smell of death rose up to meet him. The corpses started to litter the streets, a few stragglers here and there at first, but eventually piles rose up on either side. The mansion that had been so lavishly decorated before was only adorned with the guts and cogs of vampires. The wires, the bolts, scared him the most; a reminder of how completely inhuman they all were. Jack walked with more purpose then, with a gaze so unwavering it was unquestionable. And when Bernardo was warned against the things that went bump in the night, his hand went to the handle of his pistol in his pocket. He did, indeed, keep close then. For himself, but more for the protection of the former-brunette, ready to draw at the creek of a floorboard. It was then that he could hear the muffled sounds of pain.

The woman named Christa was a wreck. Her clothes were ripped, stained, bloodied with a mixture of her own body fluids and others. He pushed his hand up to his nose, trying to filter the smell away. The way that his eyes strayed then, he did everything in his power to not make eye contact with the vampire. She made his blood crawl and boil, but he would behave for the sake of Jack's wishes. Though he dared not look at her, he could feel her eyes on him. Maybe he imagined it, but he felt as though it was a disapproving stare, as if he was not a worthy candidate for her rescue team. As his companion hurried to help his former general, Bernardo turned to the side, resting his back against the red-streaked walls of the room. He swallowed again and again, but in vain, for the ball in his throat would not leave him. He did not want the woman in his home but knew that he could never ask Jack to leave her, nor could he cast him out on the street with a breathless body. He tapped his toes anxiously, fiddled the trigger of his gun, pushed his glasses up over and over. When was the last time that he had felt nervous like this? At his meeting with the fledglings? No, even then he held on to a thin thread of acceptance for his fate. This was not a place he was willing to be, instead, tell him to walk a million dark alleyways and he would gladly do it instead. After a few minutes, listening to them talk, to Jack's worried voice; he finally turned to face them.

"Let's go, I can't stay here any longer. Please, Jack..."

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❝ A man who's pure of heart and says his prayers by night
May still become a wolf when the autumn moon is bright... ❞

[Phoelidae]

In the empty streets of New Londontown, the rain fell in a light mist, as though nature itself was hesitant to tread where the beasts and the vampires spilt blood indiscriminately. And why shouldn’t it be? Nature held no sway here, and had not for many many centuries. Even before the vampires had come, the humans had stripped the land and raised trees of brick and stone instead, working like industrious ants, devastating the very land which gives them life. They had leveled the hills, poisoned the plants, and even tamed the mighty Thames, which now moved with the sluggishness of a drugged old man through the black-ink nights. Humanity had brought nature to heel, and so of course it had forsaken them in their time of need. There was hardly a place even for rain and bitter wind when time had stopped and metal-hearted monsters walked the streets of New Londontown, making a mockery of that most fundamental tenement of nature: that all things must end, all things must die.

But Kestrel Paradin had died. And his sudden end, so strange, so unexpected, so jarring to this city of death, had sent shockwaves through the immortals that echoed in the silence like the toll of a bell struck by a bullet. The whole pulse of the city quavered with it still, the uncertainty, the silence before the thunderclap that would split open the heavens and call down the wrath of the archangels on this city of sin.

But there were no angels and no gods. There was only hell.

An old building stood a couple blocks back from the waterfront, an imposing façade of brick and marble that had once housed gold to fund the roving greed of human men in the golden age of trade. Now it stood empty and abandoned, a monument to fallen grace, inhabited by bats and rats that never had and never would care about the state of the world. Three stories up, a dark figure crouched on a ledge like a gargoyle carved from stone, unmoving, staring out over the city like a sentinel. The purple-gray haze of the rain obscured her features and leeched from her what little lively color remained, darkening her hair to the color of dried blood and hiding her deep-sunk eyes in pits of shadow. She was unmoving and untouchable, impervious to the chill of the wind and even the tender brush of the rain against her lashes and ivory cheek. The demoness that had brought hell to its knees simply crouched there, poised like a statue, and could easily have disappeared then and there, like a nightmare vanishing into the shadowy corners of a room.

Ataraxia was remembering, as she was so often prone to do these days. The man she had fed from had been inebriated to a lethal point for a human being, stumbling through the streets and howling for the devil to come and take him now. So she had. The stale bitterness of spirits had ruined the taste of his blood, but the humans were all hiding like roaches, so it was hard to find meals. But the stink of it had reminded her of the powerful stuff Nihilo would drink – a hold over, he had told her, from his human days. Not that a vampire could get drunk, but he said he still liked the sting of it sliding down his gullet. She could remember, very vaguely, when she had been a very young human girl, too young yet to be trained for her purpose in earnest, and Nihilo had kissed her goodnight on the forehead, and played at being a father to her, a father who smelled of alcohol like she thought her true father might have, if she could remember back over enough centuries. But it had all been a game to Nihilo. He believed in nothing but his hatred, his ancient, bitter hatred, and his insatiable greed for power. And the girl-child he had adopted was no more to him than a pawn, little better than a dog to be trained for the purpose of hunting rabbits. He had exploited her young, naively loving nature, and used it to manipulate her. He had betrayed her in a way she would hate him for until her heart was a pile of crumbling rust, but his voice had haunted her for centuries, the cruel, empty callousness in it as he had ordered his men to “Break the stubborn b***h. Everyone breaks sooner or later.”

She had never broken. Simply because he had said that, really. Whenever she had come close, when she had worn her throat raw and bloody from screaming, when she had been on the brink of begging for mercy, swearing herself to whatever they wanted – she had remembered those words. And hatred, oh, hatred was such a source of burning determination. Someday, after the Jackal was dead, she would find where Nihilo had run to with his tail between his legs, and she would show him how broken she was. He would get to see how in seeking to destroy her, he had made her nigh invincible.

Still … hatred was a lonely, empty sort of existence. It was a fire, burning and burning, but it could no more stop consuming and destroying than it could diminish itself. Hatred bred more hatred, and allowed for nothing else to exist. But part of Ataraxia still could not help but to look for something else, something hatred had not destroyed. Part of her could not accept her own reality as an empty weapon of death, without even the human capacity for feeling. She still looked vainly for something else, for beauty, even for sorrow and tragedy – anything but this black, burning bitterness. But there was nothing. Nothing left in this world but hatred, and anger, and the ugliness of the death those wrought. There was nothing else to feel, because there was nothing else.

Ataraxia crouched there for an interminable amount of time – she did not care to return. She wanted nothing to do with the other vampires, hiding as they were, scarcely better than the human cattle. Why should she care at all? Why should she still feel honor-bound to protect their ranks and serve their cause? But of course, at the end of the day, the “why” didn’t matter. There was no why, but there was that compulsion all the same, some vestige of a younger, nobler, more human woman that she had once been. So when another mind touched her own, the gargoyle figure lifted its head. Someone, she sensed, was calling her, though she might have scoffed at being called anyone’s “lady.” There was a sort of stalwart courage behind the call, a distinct effort to disguise the quiver of fear in favor of respectful deference. Ataraxia unfolded her long body from its crouch and stepped forward, dropping three stories to the cobblestone street and landing with the grace of a cat, save for the slight wave of dizziness, a tell-tale sign that the wound in her side was not entirely healed.

She started down the street at a loping human pace, hands in the pockets of her dark, man’s coat, slightly slumped shoulders giving off the impression that she was not acutely aware of everything around her. She turned once, then twice, heading back towards the docks, sensing the other woman’s presence intuitively long before she came into view. A slight creature with dark, curling hair, dressed in blood-stained skirts and a filthy blouse. An unlikely looking vampire, the taller, more androgynous-looking queen thought, but there was a certain steel in the way she held herself, and her eyes showed something like stubborn loyalty as Ataraxia paced nearer and nearer on silent feet. She stank of fresh were blood, which was more than most of the pitiful vampires could say for themselves of late. And she seemed resolved to see some mission through. Violet eyes swept her up and down, taking her measure as a fighter and a vampire, absorbing her disheveled appearance and the impeccable condition of her gun.

”My name is Ataraxia,” she said finally, when she realized she’d let the silence stretch and should say something. Her voice was soft, surprisingly musical, but it rasped quietly as evidence of all that her throat had endured. ”It will do to address me as such. I am no lady, and I suppose no rank for myself. What is it that you want?” Though it was true that she claimed no rank, she also knew that she had fallen by default into the role of her brother’s successor, and that the vampires were now looking to her for leadership. Soon she would have to hunt for the Jackal, and then someone else would have to take over concerns such as these, but for now she could not justify tossing the reins to some grasping egotist.

She watched the other woman carefully as she spoke, dark eyes intent and face impassive as she listened to the message Julienne imparted. But something else was pricking at the back of her consciousness, some awareness brushing up and down her spine, like the electricity of a coming storm. Something was coming, and it was something bigger even than this vampire’s news. It crept up on her, wrapping slow tendrils around her mind, creeping unnoticed into her awareness until all at once she realized it with jarring clarity.

The Jackal was coming.

Instantly she was alert, alive, eager for the hunt and for blood. Her violet eyes ignited with fire, and the slump left her shoulders as she straightened and lifted her head, forgetting all about Julienne for the moment. Yes, the Midnight Jackal was coming, she could feel it in her bones like a roll of thunder so deep the ears cannot quite catch it. And suddenly Ataraxia knew, without any shadow of a doubt, that Mercia Addison knew that the vampires were hiding on the Thames, and that she was coming for blood. And she also knew, as surely as she knew her own motives and actions, that Mercia would massacre them all to find her. She was not in top condition yet, no, but she could not let that happen. She would have to intercept the Jackal. It was time, at last, to meet the god she was destined to destroy, and the prospect brought her to life in a way nothing else possibly could.

All at once her face was animated and alive, and where before Julienne had been speaking with a dark ghoul, now she spoke with a demon, or an angel, blazing with terrible glory at the prospect before her. It was time for battle.

”Return to the boats,” she ordered the other vampire, authority strong now in her voice. ”The Midnight Jackal is coming, and I must head her off. To take a risk would be foolish, though – relocate everyone on my authority, such as it is – take to the sewers, but do not tell them why lest they scatter in panic. If all goes well, the Jackal will be dead before the night is out – and if she is not, I likely will be. I wish you luck, Julienne Rothschild, and godspeed.

When the Jackal hunts, we all need it.”

[Diglett Chick]

𝓞h, dearest, sweet New Londontown. How she had missed the city, so. The most nostalgic city in the world. She remembered being a young girl and beating neighbor boy, young Adam to within an inch of his life for laughing at her dress when she was five. And there, on the street near the bank, where she had nearly killed a girl named Elizabeth because she called her a beast. Yes, her happy memories of this city were painted with blood. The blood of humans and the blood of vampires. Though she looked chipper enough, behind those thin, pale lips were fangs that would sooner rip out your throat than give a smile. At heart, she was a vicious beast with a lust for bloodshed. People often dismissed her as an invalid, being of no threat to anyone or anything. She only had one eye and one arm; the other was purely mechanical. Alice was a were-beast who had seen more battles than most. She'd lost both her eye and her arm in battle, at the hands of those blasted vampires, both on separate occasions. When she lost her arm, she spent a great deal of time recovering. Once the wound had healed, she immediately commissioned a mechanical arm, custom made. It would have been expensive, but the mechanic would much rather have his life than a handful of silver.

𝓢he wasn't just any were-beast; her mechanical arm and her large red eye distinguished her immediately. She was Alice Wakefield; also known as The Savage. She was a rare were-beast, taking the form of a canine from the wilds of Africa--though she'd never been there herself. She inherited fantastic traits from her beastial counterpart, but her best was her tireless stamina. She could run for miles and not tire, meaning she could fight for hours and the only thing that would stop her would be an incapacitating wound. Something like losing an eye or an arm. She wouldn't stop until every last vampire was dead or she was unconscious and dying. Another of her trademarks was her short stature, making her easily underestimated. Her weapon of choice, a scythe, was nearly as tall as she was. Anyone who had never seen her wield it would think she was in over her head or naive. When she wasn't using it, she strapped it to her back, the sickle blade curving menacingly around her petite form. All over her body, she had numerous daggers hidden. If through some misfortune she became separated from her scythe, she could quickly produce one of these concealed weapons and strike an unsuspecting victim. Even if she was completely disarmed, she could simply remove her harness and release impending hell onto any poor soul.

𝓣he cobblestone roads beneath her boots were soothing and tranquil; even though there was a storm brewing. The likes of which Great Britain had never seen. Her queen was calling them, all of them, to Londontown. Of course, she wasn't officially a queen, but that was how Alice thought of the Were-beast Leader. Without her, they would be a bunch of disorganized beasts, spreading carnage throughout the land. With Mercia, at least they could focus their carnage on those that deserved it. A manacle around her ankle loaned her the image of an escaped prisoner; in reality, it was her harness. The manacle was loose and didn't connect to any chains or anything. It seemed almost decorative, but without it, she was at the mercy of her own rage. Some were-beasts could have a harness as small as a ring or an earring. Alice was not so lucky; her fiery rage could not be contained by just a small trinket. She refused to wear a collar, like some sort of faithful dog. It was degrading enough to have to wear anything at all to keep the beast at bay.

𝓣he presence of the leader of the were-beasts loomed like an ominous cloud, ready to erupt with rain. It was something the were-beasts adored, and they heeded her call. If she had not heard the call, she would not have returned to New Londontown at all. She had no need, but she would always obey her queen. It was nice to return to New Londontown, as gloomy and dark as always. The smell of humans and vampires invaded her nose violently, but it was the faint scent of other were-beasts that she most enjoyed. She had no desire other than to answer her Queen's call, and so she would. Her loyalty for their great Queen was undying, and she would happily give her remaining arm and eye, her legs, and her life to fulfill her wishes. The fact that her wishes were painted crimson with the blood of those disgusting leeches was just a lovely bonus. Because, one did not earn a title like The Savage for nothing. As she tread, she appeared tranquil enough and anyone who didn't know better would think her an unfortunate cripple woman. They would never expect that she was a raging beast and the smallest thing could send her into a frenzy.

𝓣he air was cool, as always, and her breath fogged in front of her face. However, the crisp quality of the cold air made every scent stand out that much more. She froze in her pursuit of her Queen as she sensed something. A sudden uneasiness and commotion; she sensed it seemingly with every sense but sight. The scent was unmistakable, and it forced a vicious growl from her deceptively thin lips: the leeches seemed to be making an exodus. She could hear their movements; some as loud and clumsy as a human, others as light and calculated as her own. She could hear them, no matter how silent they tried to be. That many bodies moving, it was impossible for them to not make a sound, even if all of them stayed silent. They were out of her field of vision, hidden somewhere in the labyrinth of New Londontown. She wanted to taste their blood in her vicious maw, but knew better to attack when she was outnumbered so drastically. No, the only thing that mattered right now was finding her Queen.

𝓢he followed her senses obediently, completely ignorant of where in the city she was. However, as she moved, she felt herself growing anxious and, as if to comfort herself, she drew her beloved scythe off her back and held it as she walked. Its weight was a comfort and the shine of the blade was a reassurance. Her nose was flooded with the smell of vampires, and she grimaced with displeasure at the disgusting smell. It saturated the air more than usual, and it was then that she realized her search had led her to the vampire stronghold. She could sense her Queen strongly, but she sensed something else with her. A quick sniff told her it was not a threat to her life, and so she continued with her calm pace. The scent trailing Mercia was another were-beast of the avian variety. The scents of the different kinds of beasts were as varying as their forms. All thought was interrupted as the deceptively thin frame and mane of blonde hair appeared. The scent of death clung to her, and it made Alice grin viciously. Behind her was an unfamiliar face and, as she watched him, it became obvious he was blind. She couldn't help wondering if his affliction was natural or the result of the merciless vampires.

𝓐s the Midnight Jackal approached, Alice bowed before falling in tow with her Queen. Even though she was in the presence of her beloved Queen, she still felt that uneasiness in her gut. She'd spent plenty of time fighting to know that her gut should never be ignored. However, it was too soon to tell what her gut was trying to convey. For now, it was just an apprehension with no face. Instead, she focused on the scent of death that clung to her lady's form like a cloak. It was an intoxicating scent, because it was the scent of the death of a vampire. She felt her uneasiness had subsided a bit now that she was in the company of her Queen and that another were-beast was in her company; even if he was blind.

[Blitzkrieg_Baron]

Fig ① Regere 1840+++++++++++++++

It was strange. They prided themselves on being so much more sophisticated than the Were, so much more refined. They scoffed at such brute savagery, telling themselves that the Were were no better than aniamls. But a vampire was just as much a beast, just as much subject to the laws of rank and leaders, and baring of throats before the stronger-than-you. The silence stretched taut and tense, quivering on a knife edge as Ataraxia took her measure and Julienne forced her shoulders straight and her hands still. It stretched and stretched until finally broken with “My name is Ataraxia; it will do to address me as such. I am no lady, and I suppose no rank for myself. What is it that you want?"

“Ataraxia, then. Forgive me; the etiquette is a difficult habit to break.” Julienne exhaled sharply. “Before he died, His L--” damn, but the titles had been too deeply branded in. Too long spent being too proper, and now they slipped out unbidden before even a hated name. “ Kestrel,” she spat “sent word to the vampires of the Continent, asking for their…aid. This cost me a great deal at the time, speaking to all of them, but suffice to say that they agreed. I bring word from Don Ibrahim el Moro, who leads the vampires of Cordoba, Seville, and Cadiz; Sabine DuMal of Paris and Orleans; and Herr Gottfried Koing, who speaks for Prussia and a handful of the other states. They are coming. The vampires of Europe are coming.” Julienne paused and gestured expansively with her free hand. “They will be some time in coming; the Catholics have loosed the Inquisition, that drunken rabble which calls itself France cannot seem to hold itself together for more than four years without rioting in the streets, and, as ever, the German states are too many for any kind of swift action. But they are coming. No matter titles you do or do not wish to claim, it would seem that you lead us now. And they swore loyalty to Kestrel, not to you. ”

For a moment, it seemed to Julienne that she had again been ignored. Ataraxia blazed like dying star, bright and terrible, but her ardor was not for the message, it was for—
The Jackal.

God. The world was ending, that was the only possible explanation. Kestrel was dead, the city was collapsing, and now the Jackal was coming, and one—no, two others with her. She could sense them now, a carrion reek of blood and feathers, and another, unfamiliar, strangely tinged with the hot tang of metal. Julienne had passed beyond fear now, settling into a bone-deep weariness on the other side. She wanted very badly to end it, all of it. It could be arranged: lure all the Were to one place, gun them all down en masse.

“Return to the boats, The Midnight Jackal is coming, and I must head her off. To take a risk would be foolish, though – relocate everyone on my authority, such as it is – take to the sewers, but do not tell them why lest they scatter in panic. If all goes well, the Jackal will be dead before the night is out – and if she is not, I likely will be. I wish you luck, Julienne Rothschild, and Godspeed.
When the Jackal hunts, we all need it.”

Julienne bowed her head, grinding the heel of her hand into an eye. She looked like a wreck, and she knew it, battered and bloody and desperate to just be clean again. There was a hot Prickle of shame squeezing tight around her ribcage, constricting her lungs. Good. The shame was good, the anger was good, the gorge rising in her throat at the scent of the approaching Jackal and the bitter truth that they had been reduced to fleeing like rats into the sewer tunnels was good. It was all good, anything that kept the fear it bay. When she met Ataraxia’s gaze again, her eyes had gone hard. “Thank you. I’ll get as many of us off the streets as I can. If they’ll listen. If they can get as far as my home, just outside the city, I can arm them.” She turned on her heel, striding briskly away.

Julienne pulled up short. Looking back over her shoulder, she opened her mouth as if to speak. Words faltered and withered prematurely on her lips, dying aborted, unspoken. At last, she sighed sharply and said “Ataraxia.” Julienne brushed her tongue across her lips softly. “Rip her apart.” Then she was gone, loping at speed towards the oil-slicked waters of the Thames. Her skits flared raggedly behind her as she ran, the chill wind whipping her hair into a dark halo about her face.

The sewers of New Londontown were a sort of vile, reeking art. No mere tunnels, they wound through nearly every inch of the city, a labyrinth of blind turns and double-backs constructed seemingly at the whimsy of some mad Daedalus years and years ago. They criss-crossed over and under through one another with endless fractal complexity, the sluggish arteries of some great beast. And they were disgusting. They were rank with the odor of sewage, overpowered now by the sickly-sweet, cloying arome of blood and corpse-flesh. Supposedly they were closed off, as well, to everyone mad enough to try and get in. But there were way, nonetheless. There always were. Julienne drew up to a raised grate by the water. Iron bars, rusted into broken uselessness gaped open before the yawning black of the tunnel beyond. She curled her lip contemptuously, baring her fangs in disgust. “The things we do to stay alive” she muttered ruefully. “You know that they’ve found sharks down here? They’ve dug up crocodiles. Whales. Lions under Charing Cross.” Doubtless there were Were down here as well. Were-rats. She scoffed at the thought. Still, just in case…

Julienne snapped her revolver open. Two shots were gone; one to bring that whining dog to the ground, antoher to shut him up. Five left. She slipped one hand inside her blouse, fingers groping for the handle of the straight concealed in a hidden pocket sewn just below her breast, where the drape of fabric would hide it. Her fingertips brushed cool ivory, and she smiled grimly. Five shots, and as many throats she could open before the blade dulled.

Julienne Rothschild knew the value of good steel. Her blades stayed sharp. Say one thing for war, it did make decision so blessedly simple. Kill or be killed. “If you’re here,” she hissed, “come and find me.”

But to business, to business! There were vampires out there still, somewhere: the General, Jack, others. Julienne moved deeper within, wincing at the slightest noise. Her footsteps were act-quiet, but she could dull the endless ticking of her heart, and it echoed loudly through the hollow dark. Julienne drew to a halt in the center of a wide platform. The tunnels began to merge there, six or seven all coming together at this single point before they branched again. She closed her eyes. Then Julienne flung open the doors of her mind, calling out urgently to anyone to who might hear

“Off the streets! Get off the streets! It is not safe, get off, get away. Go down to the sewer tunnels. I am waiting there. Please, if you hear this, get off the streets!”
.

Tab XLII.Eq.Ach.Z
Tab XLII.Eq.Ach.Z

[Berylis]

These being the words of Asa S. Danforth....

"Not beer alone, but spirits too are proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

Asa Danforth sat back in his wooden chair in his rented room, holding a glass of whiskey in his cold, pale hands. God, he loved that stuff. The very smell of the spirit was reassuring, even though it could no longer pass through his lips. It reminded him of his youth spent in New York, frequenting the dangerous dives among the amalgam of humanity. Boorish paddies, snooty Brits and Germans, Scotsmen who still congregated in their own clans, escaped slaves from the barbaric South, free northern blacks still stuck doing menial work, the ianatores, bartenders, chimney sweeps. All come together in one bar that was a microcosm of the city.

He could see it now. The leaders of the city’s gangs, sitting in the back with their cigars cocked, the best dressed men amidst the stinking squalor of humanity. The thick smell of chopped onions, stale beer, and sweat. Hazy-eyed Chinamen in a corner by the fireplace, smoking their long opium pipes, selling their godly papaver somniferum for low prices for those foolish enough to partake.

Asa had seen what happened to those people. Men freshly processed through Ellis Island, men who knew what the pipe was but not its attendant dangers. They would smoke for a time, until the sleep-bringing poppy lived up to its name. Because some who took that substance, that remedy from God, never woke up… After the men had passed into a catatonic state they were carried into a small room in the back of the bar, where they were robbed of everything on their person and ejected naked into a back ally, lucky if they ever woke up.

Ah, New York. How strange it was to be homesick for such a foul place, how strange it was that Asa had survived such a youth, hanging around such dangerous locations. But the boy had been tolerated. He stayed out of the men’s business and instead quietly observed.

Twelve years old, he had first come to the bar, having taken a wrong turn on the way home from a new school. The white haired Asa watched in wonder as he saw a man hurled out into the alley, stark naked, and the door slammed shut behind him. What had possessed the boy to approach the castaway? Asa had crept forward, algebra book tucked under one arm.

“Hey sirrah,” Asa had said, out of curiosity rather than concern. “Are you all right?”

The man was lying face down, his body mussed with dirt and stinking, but the odor wasn’t that noticeable above the foulness of the streets.

“Sirrah?” he echoed, not only a few feet away from the man. He could see the matted hair, the curve of buttocks, the gray-tan flesh unhealthy from weeks spent in the bowels of a boat, which marked him as one of the recent immigrants and easy prey for the Chinamen.

No response. The child poked his shoulder, grasped the hair on the top of the man’s head and pulled, hard, for although the weight of the head was only twenty pounds, the corded muscle of the man’s neck made it most difficult to lift up.

What the child saw next was nothing for a boy to see: blood pooling from the eye socket, running down the man’s face, the eyes themselves unseeing, the jaw slack and grotesque. Teeth were shattered and the lips were torn, the face bruised purple and cut. This man is dead! child Asa realized with a start, but the revelation that should have terrified him served only to intrigue him.

The boy spent over an hour examining the body, for he had never seen a naked adult male before, the form so different from his own immature, healthy body. The muscles on the back and arms were enormous in the boy’s estimation, and he held rough, calloused hands cracked from manual labor, examining the shape of the filthy fingernails. These features of the corpse’s anatomy were all facts of curiosity.

Through a dirty window the bartender watched Asa, at first disturbed and then curious about the child who played with the corpse. Perhaps it was the bartender who had said a word to the regulars, or maybe it was the gangsters who saw him as they left the bar. Regardless, his presence was tolerated.

And there were many more corpses for him to examine in the future.

***

Crazy as a loon, they must have thought me. By Jupiter, I myself can’t believe I did those things! He swirled around the whiskey in his mouth for a long moment, ignoring the temptation to swallow it, before spitting it back into the glass. In the back of his mind, he fantasized about bringing a small bottle of whiskey to the University College hospital in which he worked the night shift, mixing it with the patient’s medicine and then exsanguinating the body. To feel that rush again! Whiskey.

But it was not whiskey which his dead body craved, no. Morphina, the drug which had prolonged his life, before the liver disease and Dr. Fingal Evelgold had finally conspired to kill him. Asa was still addicted to it, in a way very different from the pleasurable memories of being drunk as a mortal. There was an aching need to feel it flow through his undead veins, to see the world through the orange-red glow of the wonder drug. To be without it was agony, and though he was surrounded by the stuff in the storerooms at the hospital, he could no more distill it into laudanum and swallow it than he could insufflate cocaine or drink his favorite American whiskey. Thankfully, that craving had been sated a few nights ago, one of the benefits of working in a hospital among the dying. If Dr. Asa Danforth gave out more of the costly morphine than most, was that not just a sign of his own sympathetic nature?

That was what others thought of him at least, for they would never in a million years believe the truth. And Asa was careful. So much more careful than he had been when he was first created, in those first Hellish weeks when he had committed the sin of Cain. Murder. So many dead! Dr. Evelgold had thought it a supreme irony to loose his fledgling childe in the same district in which he had found him, the street surrounding that criminal hole-in-the-wall where Asa had first begun his investigations into human anatomy, before going to medical school. And Asa had tasted the humanity, the blood flowing into an amalgam of all the ethnicities of New York City.

When reason descended upon him again, Asa had booked passage from the city and fled to London. It had been a surprise to him that his Jewish first name and American origin had been an impediment to his finding employment, although he should have guessed that the majority of the hospitals were run by the Church – but University College needed professionals to staff the hospital of their new medical school, and Asa found a shift as a night doctor. The pay was mediocre, but the hours fit his schedule. And there was always morphine infused blood, free for the taking, so long as no one was looking…

[Raie S. Kaiku]

"The victor will never be asked

if he told the truth."

-Adolf Hitler

Death washed over him dulling his keen senses to a mere mortal’s state. His nostrils were tainted with the rot of flesh, and his eyes blurred from the toxic fumes. If a mortal were put in this position they surely would be screaming for relief. Perhaps that is why his Queen desired his presence…hoping to hear his voice cry out for the Jackal to end this misery. The fleeting thought sent a cold, ominous shiver down his spine. Not that he had any remorse though. After watching the vampires descend into chaos, why, it was all intensely amusing for him. All his life he wandered aimlessly with no true idea of how the world of immortals functioned, and now, their world is the very definition of mayhem. Of course, the apathy that coursed through his veins pleaded with him to leave-that all of the death and destruction was simply too much trouble. Several times over the last two weeks, William, admittedly, contemplated returning to the states, but he couldn’t leave her. His silver eyes flickered up to the door of the ex-Leech King where his lady lay in complete distress. It was verging on disgusting the way she cradled his dismembered body like her child, but he dare not say such words to his Beast Queen or risk becoming part of the history of the mansion.

He could hear her whisper sweet, crazed nothings to the empty vessel. His eyes narrowed while simultaneously contracting the muscles and tendons in his hand into a fist of pure agitation in reaction to the affection and pain that permeated each syllable. Jealousy was a mean monster, and William found that he was having more difficult each day. Would she mourn for him the way she mourned for Kestrel? William wanted to believe that she would. Mercia would cry until there were no more tears in her eyes, and the loss of him would simply kill her; however, William was no fool, and nothing escaped his observant eyes. Mercia was queen of his kind, and he was a peon. How much could he actually mean to the Jackal? And even with this knowledge William follows without question or regret. If his obedience and desire to win her over was anything like finding a mate…well, William didn’t want to think of the things he would do for that woman.

The rustle of the silk sheets pulled him from his thoughts, and his head cracked up to attention. It was the first time in nearly two weeks that the Jackal had made any noise indicating movement. His muscles hardened, and he froze-a statue that mimicked the stillness of the mansion. Her scent caused his body to tremble with excitement, but the emotion dulled quickly as his heightened sense captured the rotting vampire lord. It took all his willpower not to release the agony of the tainting of her scent. She was too beautiful and deadly to smell so foul. But William did not want to show weakness to his queen. He wished to be everything he could for her whatever that meant. She flew past him silently, his presence gone unnoticed by her. He was as alive to Mercia as the dead bodies around his feet. His eyes flickered over her semi-naked body, his stomach churning in sick pleasure. She was even beautiful covered in Vampire stink and gore. The deadly, killer look worked very well for his Queen, and it pleased William to know the joys of her body. While his thoughts swam further and further into a reverie, apathy instinctively replaced William’s human emotions, and he closed himself off to his feelings as he did with any situation requiring more emotional input than William was willing to invest. And yet he followed Mercia several paces behind, the click of his boots the only indicator he was present. The last thing he wanted to do was to awaken the beast within her. No, he would let something else do that for her.

William had been so concerned with his surroundings he had not heard the faint tick-tock from the cellar. “Curious,” William thought, quirking an eyebrow in slight interest. What had his queen found that he had missed altogether? His senses immediately returned to their heightened state as they descended into the cellar of the mansion. He would not be caught off guard again. Still slightly behind his queen, William only heard the door slam open, and a quiet conversation between his Beat Queen and the General…or ex-General, of the Vampires. William hastily made it to the opening of the door in time to see a woman fall to the floor with a solid crack in her leg. It made his bones curl in sick delight, and William felt the leather straps tightened against his neck to the point of discomfort. He wanted to end the Vampire for what they have done to this world. The Were narrowed his eyes taking in the female’s features fleetingly. The pain was printed all over her timeless flesh. Her leg was rigid from the fall, obviously broken. He took a few steps towards her, and bent at a 45 degree angle-just enough for her to see and hear him. He ran a strong hand through his messy blonde hair a small, seemingly polite, smile pulling at his lips. “You’ll be fine,” he muttered with a false gentleness ignoring the pooling blood of the young girl which was beginning to permeate the cracks in the cellar floor filling the rectangular outlines of the damp, humid stone. William tilted his head lazily to the left his dirty blonde tresses caressing his perfectly smooth, immortal features. William eyed the broken General, and he chuckled at the pathetic sight before turning on his heel and striding out of the cellar at a speed that would make a mortal dizzy. He had no reason to stay any longer, and the smell of the child was growing bothersome.

Mercia’s spoiled scent floated heavily in the air making her easy to track, but William was content with leaving her out of his sight…for now. She could take of her own a**, and William was in no mood to babysit any longer. He was just happy knowing she wasn’t lost to her insanity, and even though subconsciously he was worried about Mercia, he would never admit it. The Were meandered into New Londontown, the insects infatuated with the dim streetlights the only sign of life on the eerie street. His hand slid casually into his pockets as the depression of Mercia became weaker, and William’s mood lifted slightly. Perhaps he would go to a bar and greet a few mortals with a strong handshake and a good fight. There was nothing more relaxing to the Were than to be the reason for a fight, and the current chaos wouldn’t keep him from spilling blood if given the chance. Over the past two weeks there has been more bloodshed than William has ever experienced in his young, immortal life, and two weeks ago William began to desire bloodshed…not only that, but he thrived off the death and destruction he caused. The young gentleman has been a key role in the anarchy since the death of Kestrel, and Mercia’s right hand man since the last Were General committed cowardly suicide. He has heard rumors of his quick rise through the ranks, but William ignores them. He is no general, and he has no desire to own up to that kind of responsibility. The power without the title worked well enough for William, and he was not going to complain about the attention Mercia gave him. Why would anyone complain about that?

The still air enhanced William’s senses. He could taste the tension in the town a dormant volcano on the verge of exploding. His youngling instincts flared, excitement burning in his veins. The itch for a fight was growing exponentially each second he stayed in the open…almost vulnerable. Part of his conscious wanted the streets to stay silent unwilling to expend the energy for a fight, and another part only wanted to tear a Vampire’s head clear from its shoulders. And then, subtle as a pin drop, was the tick tock of his nemesis. At first the pitter patter was isolated, and then more and more began to echo within his ear drums. William snarled, startled by the abrupt onslaught of noise slamming against his sensitive ear drums. The fiendish smell crept into his nostrils causing his nose to wrinkle in retaliation. The dislike of the odor was plain on his face, but William did not seem mentally phased after the first thirty seconds of exposure. His mind was organizing those smells into folders, memorizing each component. There was a momentary pause between William’s breath where the air seemed to be readily waiting to conduct that electricity into deadly lightning.

He was pulling the top to a sewer hole off before a mortal could realize that he had left. The metal lid was no match for his sculpted musculature. The iron creaked beneath the grip with which he held the cap before being tossed carelessly to the side. The ominous wet below sent shivers of anticipation down his spine, and, with no hesitation to evaluate the situation, he descended into the darkness of the sewers where he knew the Vampires were accumulating.

[Pax Britannica]

He Lives Again

"They're all following you, you know." he whispered into her mind, his voice coiling around her thoughts like a snake ready to kill. Mercia looked down to her hand, where a bloody, stinking, stained pillowcase carried the head of the vampire who was now speaking to her.

"You're dead." she whispered, her eyes flat and impassive. Her voice was like the flap of a pigeon's wing against the air. Almost as intangible and soft.

"I was dead when you met me. I was dead when you walked into that back alley and we fought for the first time. You didn't seem to mind then." his voice was just as seductive and twisted as it always had been. Even now she could see him smirking in the blackness of her mind's eye. He was sitting on a dais of skulls, a goblet of blood wine between those long pianist fingers. She hated him. She wanted him back.

"I'm not avenging your death, I'm just going to kill another vampire. Another filthy, abomination. I'm not seeking justice..." her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth as she said it. Others moved up behind her just then. Like ghosts of power, slinking up behind her. Their eyes were on her and she could feel the heavy weight of them. They looked to her now as they always had.

"You can't convince yourself of that any more than you can convince me...Look at them following you. Do you think any of them care for you? Do you think any one of them would mourn your spilled blood? Not like I would. They can't ever love you like I did, Mercia Addison. No one will ever love you. No one except me. You are...alone. We are alone together."

Something about those words made her blood run cold like ice. Love? What was such a word? Had she ever said that word aloud since the deaths of her loved ones? Had Mercia ever uttered such a thing? No. It was foreign. It was of a different language she ken not the tongue of. And yet something about Kestrel's words made ice form over her heart. It was as if, in saying it, he had made it real. She didn't know enough of what feelings were to understand what was happening to her.... He said, off the cuff and with only a hint of amusement. In death, he was more of a b*****d than in life.

Wouldn't you just know it?

Her tiny feet didn't make the soft pit-pats one would think. She just floated down the bloodstained corridors of a broken-souled city. Her pale fingers were curled around the bag. Her breath was a puff of white air in the frozen twilight. She looked like a survivor, a victim of some horrible crime. When people were brave enough to peek an eye out of their shut windows, they thought she had been ravaged by some vampire or beast. This slender blonde--did she have blood on her thighs? Had she been raped? What was in that bag?

Finally, Mercia decided she couldn't comment on Kestrel's words. For the first time in a long while she extended her supernatural telepathy. She scented the air. She tasted their scent on her tongue. There was a bird. An eagle. He was angry, she could feel it against her skin. It was as if his strong hands were on her body, painting his anger all over her skin, over her collarbone, down her spine, between her thighs. His anger was enough to warm her. His anger was red and it curled around her marble skin. And then, there was another dog, but not a wolf. Something with large, round black ears. For some reason Mercia, in her mind saw this beast as a dog, hungry-eyed, following her like a dying animal. Loyalty was strong and surging through this beast. Warrior's blood thick in the dog's veins. She wanted death. As do I. Finally, she sensed the presence of another. Another avian. But she could not see this one in any sense. Sightless. She felt nothing there but an empty void. Not a broken soul but a non-existent one. He was a blank spot in her mind and in her telepathic senses. She might've wondered if he was truly alive at all...

These were her people...

"Don't delude yourself. They care not for you or for this war. Selfish. All manner of beings are selfish at heart. Look at us, Mercia. Look at how we razed the world just to delight in the torment?" His eyes burned on his bone-dais where he sat, his long legs dangling off one side, laid back, his eyes boring into hers, gaze sweeping over her body. He licked his lips. "We are all selfish. You were selfish in keeping your body from me while I lived. I am now banished to an eternity of wondering what you might taste like. Ah, well...I will content myself with destroying your mind until you are able to join me. I want you...I will always want you...she can't have you. I will kill you first."

She clutched the pillowcase tighter.
She believed him. Utterly.

Her progress was slow. Not even the smirk she customarily wore when she heard screaming, running, fleeing, could please her. Like death, she was only performing a duty. And yet, as she neared the Thames, the docks, the vampire nests, she sensed something. Her blood ran thicker. Something was out there. Some force calling her. It almost smelled like...Mercia's golden, beautiful eyes flicked down to her hand where she carried Kestrel's head. It couldn't be... He was dead. He couldn't be...out...there...and though she told this to herself, the wind carried to her a scent that demolished her reality. It was him...

And yet, ever the warrior, ever the cool mistress of death, Mercia stayed her path, walking with slow deliberation toward the Thames. She was almost there. "She's going to kill everyone!" The cries were familiar, and almost made her smile. But those cold, flat eyes never wavered. Not even when she took the first step unto the moss-green, dirty docks.

Kestrel. Kestrel was close. She could feel him. She could feel the whisper of his auburn hair against her cheek. She could taste his blood. His scent was everywhere. Perhaps he wasn't merely a vampire but a god. The Deathless one. Oddly, hope didn't flare in her chest, and the cold steel of her eyes never warmed. Kestrel had never stopped being her enemy. Never had she sworn love to him. And even now, in his hellish throne room, he taunted her, with his fanged grin he played upon all of her deepest weaknesses. He was in her head now, and could twist her every thought into a horror. She heard him suck in a sharp hiss.

"No. Leave this place. She approaches. She is watching you. She will never have you!" His voice was a frantic scream now, and she saw Kestrel's eyes roll back in anger and terror at what was going to happen. Mercia couldn't have understood.

Mercia's lips moved. Chapped and bleeding, pale as death she stood, a lone figure on the abandoned docks of the Thames. She was alone. A lamppost from some feet away illuminated only her shadow as she stood there, looking no more than a filthy teenager, clutching a stained pillowcase containing the severed head of the vampire who once desired her. The sea was quiet, as if to provoke her. With a single hand, she curled her fingers, signaling the beasts who followed her.

I kill alone tonight, she told them all. The one who killed Kestrel would need to die by her hand and her hand alone. There would be no interference or foul play. She would fight the glorious battle and die as Hector. It was the night of reckoning. Mercia felt her soul slowly start to leave her body, making ready for the departure to the Somewhere Else. She was starved. Hadn't fed. Mentally wrecked.

Was she at her weakest?
Or her most dangerous?
Time was the only victor in things like this...

From her lips The Midnight Jackal let loose with a terrible, low howl, deep and ravenous. She called the vampire murderer from the bowels of whatever hell he crawled out of. A figure cut through the heavy, rolling London fog. Tall like him. Her breath caught in her throat as she anticipated seeing Kestrel just saunter out of the fog of death and give her that smirk. Mercia held the bag tighter, refusing to let go...as his killer...finally...stepped out of the mists...

[Jencity]

Something of a whimpering groan sounded from the brunette vampire as she pulled herself closer to the wall. It was insane reasoning – or not quite reasoning at all – but Christa wanted her back firmly against the almost damp stone of the cellar. If she could feel each individual stone behind her then she would know that no one could creep up behind her. Mercia could not sneak behind her like she had done upon their first meeting. Insane reasoning, indeed, for her eyes never left that door, the only door that lead down into the basement of the mansion. Trained, too, on that door was the barrel of her rifle. Her hands and fingers trembled in a terrible way – either due to lack of blood or rest or fear – and she could see the firearm shaking in her all too firm grasp.

Her leg felt like it was on fire. Christa had, by this time, become accustomed to dealing with a variety of injuries. Broken bones, however, was an exception to this rule. Normally, her skeletal structure would be slightly more impervious than to allow itself to snap so easily. Though, she imagined, being tossed onto the stone floor by the queen of beasts would be the one thing that would make her bones crumble – if only in submission. Needless to say, Christa was in more than a little discomfort. Bullet wounds healed fairly quickly and rarely did much damage to begin with. Amputated limbs – to put it kindly – felt less like an actual injury and merely an emptiness. The priest could remember trying to flex her hand only to find her whole arm missing. The pain never registered; the shock of it overruled any physical… discomfort. The broken bones were unbearable. Every time she moved her leg, if only in the slightest manner, it was as if the jagged bones dug deeper and deeper into her flesh.

Christa finally worked up the courage to rip away a portion of her trouser leg to expose the broken limb. The vampire was relieved to find the bone had not punctured the skin. This meant the break would heal soon enough – despite the overly painful process. She removed her tunic and bundled it under her knee to support the already healing leg. After almost a half hour’s work, Christa could sit in some semblance of comfort. That rifle, the only of its kind in the vampire mansion sat across her lap as if it, alone, would protect her from all the dangers that lie just on the other side of that door. One hand forcefully gripped the barrel of the rifle, holding back only enough so she did not actually damage the thing, the other fingered the trigger as if it were daring someone to come through that door just then.

Then.

She heard them.

First she heard only the footsteps. There were too many, and too loud, for it to be Mercia. Christa immediately thought humans had come into the mansion to ransack it for all the monetary worth within it. She placed the butt of her gun against her bicep, aiming it toward the door. Christa knew she would have only one shot, for the thing was barrel loaded; so she would have to make that one shot count. Then she could hear the voices. There were two voices: two men. And Christa could tell that they were coming nearer and nearer to her. Almost as if those disembodied voices were seeking her out. Dark eyes watched in the dark room as that door handle turned and the door opened. Christa readied her shot and-

She stopped.

”Jack.”

Christa breathed a small sigh of relief at seeing the familiar man. Or… She studied the vampire in the barely there light that came from behind him. His hair was lighter. Much lighter. Something that happened only through chemical intervention. And his face – it looked cleaner, clearer. It was as if a shadow or burden had been lifted from him. This man no longer appeared to be the same vampire who had enraged her so entirely only weeks before.

”Thank the Lord for you, Jack.”

Christa placed the butt of her rifle against the blood covered stone floor and leaned upon the firearm to lift herself into some semblance of a standing position. Once he was within reach, she then slipped an arm around Jack’s shoulders, leaning heavily on the man. The priest hissed vehemently as she placed weight on the still fractured limb. ”We need to get out of here.” Her voice was obviously strained by pain. She gripped a handful of Jack’s shirt trying to balance on the one leg and move toward the exit while avoiding putting any unnecessary pressure on the wounded limb. ”You know… I’m sorry.” The pair of vampires hobbled towards the exit slower than Christa would have liked. ”Right now, I’m regretting ever fantasizing about your liquefied brain matter.” Whatever smile may have been developing on her lips instantly died as Christa looked back up at the entrance.

Her eyes glanced back toward the exit to find a wolf standing there. Had it the means to do so, her heart would have pounded harder within her chest. The man’s cool eyes glared at the pair of vampires as if Christa’s distress call had interrupted some important engagement. The werebeast’s expression clearly bordered the fine line of annoyed and murderous that werebeasts and vampires, alike, seemed to walk constantly. Worse than that, this wolf looked at her with the same angry contempt that many a female had whenever she stood too close to Kestrel. It was a special kind of jealousy that Christa had never felt, yet found herself victim of time and time again. It unnerved her this time more than any other. Christa was not used to seeing that look on a man’s face. When did Jack fall into the trap of debauchery? Christa ignored the werebeast as much as she could as she and Jack worked their way through the mansion. The wolf, undoubtedly, had followed Jack with little or no intent to assist either of them.

The scent of death hit her as soon as they were in the mansion proper. Not just death. Rot. It was the putrid, reeking stink of rotting corpses. Cadavers that had been left out, bloating and fermenting in the worst way. Christa almost stumbled as the sheer wall and force of it hit her. Only the strength of Jack kept her in a standing position. Dear Lord. It tore at her to see her home destroyed by the bodies of those she had considered friends. ”Wait!” Jack was, sensibly, pulling her toward the door, but Christa jerked away from him. Doing so brought her to her hands and knees in the mess of death that filled the room. ”Can’t leave. Not yet.” Christa pulled herself into the study despite the uselessness of her leg and the broken pieces of mechanical hearts that cut into her hands and knees as she scrambled into the next room.

Her coat, amazingly, still hung on the back of that chair sitting in front of the ever present fire. Christa wasn’t sure how the mansion had managed to not be burned down, but she would have to wonder about that later. Dragging her useless leg behind her, Christa made her way to the bookcase. Ideally, she would love to take each and every volume with her. The priest, however, seemed to doubt that neither Jack nor his friend would appreciate carrying the bookcase to wherever they may be headed to. Instead she picked up two of the thickest tomes from the bottom shelf and clutched them to her chest. ”We need these.” The books were not only useful, but the vampire lore was the last shred of their culture – if they, as vampires, were willing to say they had such a thing. Aside from the recent coup, the human threat was still very much a reality and something the vampires would have to prepare for. The notebook was tucked into the waist of her trousers, and with these two books, Christa could discover what the humans were planning.

”We should hurry now.”

[Berylis]

These being the words of Asa S. Danforth....

"I shall create a kind of mithradatum to lessen the fear of fire, which is most inconvenient in my present position, and line of work."

After he had finished his whiskey (or at least what he had wished to taste of it) Asa had gone out walking. There was much to discover about London. The doctor’s clipped New York speech marked him as a Yankee if he spoke, but, Asa had an ease around criminals and vagabonds, which he had acquired during his youth. And when the doctor stated his profession and offered his services, most accepted, for society’s ne’er do wells were rarely well in body. Nevertheless, Asa tried not to carry morphine or other drugs on his person, which might tempt the unsavory elements of the city to renege on their word.

Ah, yes, and there was also the possibility to meet other men. The shared code of mandrakes, the lifted eyebrow, the lingering gaze held between the men. Asa’s short stature did not endear him to many of the lily-livered kind, but he dressed well enough, and his white hair and red eyes got him what his unremarkable stature could not.

It is said that the blood of an albino is magical, that it can cure all wounds and even raise the dead. Fingal laughed when he created me, saying that I could now claim that the legends were true, if I wished to risk my life by creating another of our kind. And then he loosened me from his grasp and introduced me to the Beast, the bloodlust that drove me to murder every man, woman, and child in sight!

Asa’s lips lifted in a horrified smile, imagining how the prostitutes hanging from the bowers of dilapidated buildings and drunken college men on the streets would react if they should hear his thoughts, or know the truth of them. Like Lucifer, the lightbringer, suffering trails in my wake. The murderer of man, a solitary monster. Indeed, other than Dr. Fingal Evelgold, Asa had never met another of his kind.

He caught the eye of a young John leaning against the wall, his legs crossed. A rentboy, available for the night, if Asa was willing to pay. Tempting… if only he had saved up more money from his job at the University Hospital, he might very well have taken the man up on it. Whatever manner of creature he had become, the lust for the sins of Sodom had not left him, and his eyes passed regretfully over the shadow of the man’s features as he continued on, his final destination unknown, for Asa was taking the lay of the land.

Now a breath of quietness, a district of shops where the middle class spent their hard earned pounds to line the pockets of the rich. In the far distance there was a night-watchman atop his destrier, meant to look imposing as he guarded the livelihood of the wealthy—a modern day ianator, door guard for the new class of nobilitas. And financed on the public dime! It was ingenious, the way the nobility was able to get its way in a country which was, at least in name, a republic. Not that it had ever been different back in America, no matter how much the founding fathers claimed otherwise.

He snorted, shaking his head. John Winthrop’s ‘City on a Hill’ had been at least as oppressive as the one that the colonist had deserted, with a new name and a new religion. Indeed, after the founding of the American democracy, that hallowed ‘right to pursue happiness’ did not extend to non-Christians such as himself. The city of New York had only given Jews the freedom to build a synagogue within the lifetime of Asa’s father, and only because the Jews had done well for themselves, and money was fast becoming an important qualification of the new ruling class, just like race, which many doctors understood as species. Now that Asa had become something different, it was hard for him to subscribe to the old ordo naturae, but dwelling on his former prejudice seemed petty when he thought of the many murders that he had committed.

If only this night guard would go to the filthy streets around Asa’s hole in the wall apartment, where women were raped and children beaten! Were there were no innocents, only criminals and victims who traded roles by the day. Asa would know, for he treated their wounds. He even committed the ultimate Christian sin by discreetly providing abortifacients to the women who requested them, knowing that if he did not, the women would use other, less sanitary means of fixing the problem, or worse, contribute to London’s overpopulation problem, bringing another child into misery and squalor.

This side business of his had brought him a nice supply of extra cash, with which Asa hopped to eventually use to open his own night clinic, set his own hours. But for now, his job at University College was sufficient to suit his unique needs…

Asa smiled again, lost in thought, until a woman’s shriek pierced the empty night air: off the streets! Get off the streets! It is not safe, get off, get away. Go down to the sewer tunnels. I am waiting there. Please, if you hear this, get off the streets!

Asa knew the sound of truth when he heard it. Whatever this woman said, she wholly believed, but the doctor wasn’t frightened, merely intrigued. Here’s something new, something I thought would not happen in a locale such as this. What will become of our pig, then, atop his menacing steed? The doctor’s thoughts had been unsympathetic as he searched for the worried woman, but he did not see her , nor did he see the entrance to the sewers. Then his eyes shifted to the gutter cap on the street, and Asa lifted an eyebrow, knowing that it was only sheer curiosity that compelled him to continue forward.

With great effort, Asa’s small frame forced the gutter grate off the sewer, and he climbed down the metal ladder, his red eyes adjusting easily to the dim light. The gas torches lining the walls brought a distinct sense of unease, for he hated to be so close to the flame since his transformation. The gift of Prometheus to protect man from the animals, from me. Thankfully, the torches were small, and he could keep his distance from them if he walked in the center of the tunnel.

“Hello?” he called, his Yankee tones echoing loudly through the sewers. “Hello, Nemina?” The doctor was playful, calling her ‘no one’ in Latin, for as of yet he had not been able to see or sense her. It was his great surprise, then, when he came in the sight of another man, the doctor jumping backward at the sudden appearance.

"Sirrah?" he asked, his open curiosity showing his complete ignorance of William's nature, "What emergency is this?"

[Phoelidae]

The faint, drizzling rain had given up falling and settled instead into a thick, hovering fog lingering over New Londontown and muting all sound, even that of the sluggish river beneath her feet. She could taste the half-condensed water on her tongue, see where the tiniest drops clung to her lashes, but she could not feel the heaviness of the damp air against her skin. She heard Julienne’s call in the back of her mind and felt the last of the vampires scurry like rats into the sewers, leaving the docks empty. The Jackal was coming, and they were afraid. Then again, they had every right to be – she was afraid too. But it was the most exhilarating sort of fear, thrilling and awakening, setting her metal heart pounding in her ears and sharpening every sense to the point almost of pain. Maybe afraid was the wrong word for this state, but there was no better word for it, for so few ever experienced the feeling … she was going to meet her destiny, the purpose she had been bred for, the task which none of her immortal kind had ever and could ever accomplish. She was going to meet Mercia Addison. There were no words to describe the feeling that electrified her to the point she thought she must surely be incandescent.

She did not move like her brother. She paced through the fog with stealth and purpose, her strides and manners showing the precise deliberation of a predatory cat instead of Kestrel’s peacock flamboyance. The thick pearl-gray air closed around her so that she was utterly alone in the world, in a sort of limbo, a place that was no place, where even the ground beneath her feet couldn’t entirely be trusted. She knew she was getting closer, she could sense it with something beyond any of her five keen senses, and as she walked she removed her long coat, casting it aside in the darkness so it would not hinder her. Her brother’s naked sword gleamed at her hip. She wore a black tunic, black pants, black boots, black gloves – a svelte shadow-spectre moving like an illusion through the mist as she readied the wires attached to the fingertips of her gloves. A unique weapon, swift, deceptive, and deadly enough to counter the Jackal’s exceptional speed and agility. Ataraxia could still smell nothing but the heavy wetness of the fog and river, but she could hear the cool air passing her lips, rustling her clothes and hair gently, the barely perceptible sound of her boots on the pavement, the lapping of the river beside her, and – there! ….

All at once the Thames exhaled a breath of wind, and the fog lifted for a moment. Ataraxia Paradin stopped. There, not fifty feet away, stood the Midnight Jackal.

She was … she was … chaos. She was death, she was beauty, she was war and tragedy and terror embodied. But no, she was not merely any one of those things, nor even all of them combined – she was something rawer, wilder, older and more primal; she was the Fall, she was every light that had been consumed by the depraved, mad blackness of this place. She was Eve cast from Eden, no, she was Lucifer himself, too gloriously proud to serve any God, doomed to fall and dwell forever in shadow for the shadow that dwelt within him. She was beautiful and terrible, lily-white and black as an obsidian blade, distant as the stars but closer than the air she breathed, cold as the deepest depths of the Atlantic but burning burning burning …!

Ataraxia sucked in a breath, and was almost knocked flat on her back by the scent that wrapped around her. It was intoxication of the highest form, drugging, befuddling, exhilarating. It was the scent she’d caught before, the night she’d killed her brother – the scent which, she suspected, must be that of her mate. Only that individual could so ensnare her senses, and fill her with longing a thousand times worse than the empty gnaw of hunger. And Mercia … Mercia was absolutely saturated in the scent, to such an extent that for a moment the vampiress could smell nothing else on her, not even the characteristic dog-stink of a were. Fear raced like lightning across her mind, strange pressure constricting her chest as she wondered, instinctively, where her mate was, and if she was doomed before the fight began … but no. The Jackal was here. And she was here. They were alone here, together, in this slice of time that she had waited for all her immortal life. She took a breath and opened her eyes, and this time really looked at the Jackal. Not at the overwhelming aura around her, but at the person, the beast, the woman, the body that would soon lie dead and bleeding in this street.

She was … dirty. Ataraxia realized it with a sort of bemused curiosity. She had never imagined that – in her mind, the Jackal was pristine, untouchable, impervious to the filth in which she waded. And she seemed so, the way she held herself, strong and tall like a man, immovable – but in truth she was covered in grime. Her delicate ivory features were shadowed with smears of grime and rusted with dried blood … all over she was covered in blood. Not fresh blood, either, but old blood, that caked her slender feet and graceful hands, that ran in gruesome dry tracks up and down her forearms from mangled slashes at her white wrists. Even on her legs there was blood – her long, pale, graceful legs, bare beneath a filthy, tattered, male shirt that might once have been blue before it was dyed that same rust red. She was built flawlessly feminine, sleek, elegant, but sensually curved, with a long neck and beautiful proportions. She looked so strangely fragile, standing there in the depthless gray darkness, her long, matted golden curls bleached almost silver in the light, tumbling around slender shoulders and that graceful body, so poorly clad in a dead man’s shirt.

Ataraxia stared. Just stared at the vision before her, unable to understand what she was seeing. It seemed almost like she was looking at two different images, superimposed on the same petite figure – one of power unspeakable, fiery destruction, the scourge of a race, possessor of limitless wrath and dealer of insatiable death; the other – a figure lost, exhausted, broken, hanging onto a few tattered strips of her soul, torn to shreds by forces she had stood against for far too long. Clinging to a … a … bag …

She knew, even before the scent confirmed it, the heavy, round contents of that grimy pillowcase. But it was impossible … surely not … But she could almost hear Kestrel laughing as the dungeon door clanged shut, she could almost hear his voice, dooming her again, somehow, foiling her greatest purpose … It was his head. She could smell the stink of her twin’s rancid blood and decaying flesh, his immortal looks finally beginning to reflect his age and his debauched soul. His head.

Mercia Addison, the Midnight Jackal, the infamous force she was destined to destroy … was carrying around the head of her dead brother, in a pillowcase.

Her head buzzed with the realization, and she felt sick, disappointed, furious, confused. What was going on? Was this the Jackal? How could it be? How could the Midnight Jackal be so … well, vulnerable? But it had to be her, no one else could so gloriously singe the very air in which she stood. But then … then Mercia Addison was suffering from despair. That would explain it all, the filth, the blood, the shirt, the head … but what explained the despair?

Ataraxia knew the answer, though she refused to think it for a long stretch of heart-ticks. Kestrel. KESTREL had done this, brought the magnificent beast queen so miserably low, into the trenches of blood and filth. HOW?! How had that lecherous, conniving, back-stabbing, narcissistic, soulless b*****d done it? How had he robbed her of her destiny by turning her destined foe into a shade? Was there nothing he would not take from her, even in death?!

”Did you love him?”

It was a long, terrifying instant before she realized the words had lodged in her throat; they had not escaped. She stood utterly still, unmoving, all but choking on the question she had almost asked the Midnight Jackal. Did you love him? Did he seduce you, charm you, enchant you? Did you fall under his spell, as everyone did, knowing but not caring that he never had a heart to give, even as a human? Mercia Addison, did you love my brother? Do you hate me for killing him? Do you carry your broken heart in that bag with his lifeless head? These thoughts were unthinkable, but she couldn’t unthink them. The Jackal was wearing his shirt – she could see it in her mind’s eye, the sort of decadent bed her twin would have had, could imagine them twisting together beneath the sheets as he pierced her neck with his steel fangs and she, the Midnight Jackal, moaned like any of his whores, clawing at his back. NO. No, that went too far, the Jackal would never do such a thing, lower herself to lie with a gutter-rat like Kestrel, but that head was in the bag, stinking and stinking and it was probably his blood all over her and his shirt covering her naked flesh …

She wanted to scream her fury to the moon and bathe in blood until there was nothing but raw thirst to consume her. All wrong, this was all all wrong! She had seen it so many times in her head, the glorious battle of gods that would change the world forever, the heroic, tragic beauty of the Jackal’s death by her hands, the strange mixture of dignity, hatred, and respect as the light left ruby eyes …

And there was … this, instead.

Yet strangely, perversely … she was even more entranced. Such a strange, strange contradiction! How could the Midnight Jackal be both of the things she saw before her? And how could she have fallen under Kestrel’s spell? It made Ataraxia want to kill him all over again, and shake the Jackal until she snapped out of it and saw the Leech King for what he had truly been. This was unacceptable. Her twin had not deserved this beautiful, strangely fragile side of Mercia – it gave the Jackal tragedy, depth, made her that much more extraordinary in Ataraxia’s eyes, that much more beautiful. Even the delicious scent of her mate was not as intoxicating as the draw she felt toward the Jackal, tempting her, offering up some strange intimacy that in a twisted way she had always craved with the rival she had so long obsessed over and studied…

”Kestrel.” The voice was soft, ragged, hoarse, sensually husky but cruelly frigid, even as it was disbelieving and uncertain. Ataraxia felt almost a physical pain in her gut to hear the Midnight Jackal say his name in that tone, so soft, almost longing, and for a frozen instant she did not know what to do. Any wish she had to fight the Jackal, in that moment, was gone. This was not the enemy she had envisioned. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she could not kill her until she knew. She could not kill Mercia Addison until finally, at long last, she understood her. It was simply out of the question.

And she saw, in a flash of brilliant insight, the one way to get near enough to the Jackal to learn about her. As much as some part of Ataraxia recoiled at the thought of what she was about to do, she took a How step closer to the Jackal and spread her hands out from her body, revealing empty palms as she bowed respectfully at the waist. Not one of Kestrel’s mocking, flourishing bows, but a simple, genuine bow to someone worthy of true reverence. She lifted her head and her eyes, and for the first time met the Midnight Jackal’s gaze.

Her eyes were golden as a dazzling dawn and red as a blazing sunset, the beginning and ending of everything, the very color of molten passion. And as Ataraxia looked into those ancient, eternal, devastated and devastating eyes, she was self-aware enough to realize that she had just lost something of herself to the Jackal, something which she would never get back. How could this woman be not at all what she had expected, and yet be even more? How could the discovery of this vulnerability in the mighty Mercia Addison make her seem not weaker or disappointing, but even more compelling, more fascinating, more … dangerous? Ataraxia did not understand. And she wanted to understand, so badly that she inclined her head, as though in affirmation, and extended her hand toward the Jackal, still holding her gaze and saying, very softly, without knowing why she chose the title she did, ”We meet again, Lady Jackal.”

[Blitzkrieg_Baron]

Fig ① Regere 1840+++++++++++++++

She is exhausted and there is an iron bar of tense weariness bearing down across her shoulders, scapulae like the wings of bird caught in quick lime drawing painfully tight. Her eyes are burning and blurring the way his must have; she cannot keep them open. Her head falls back. She sighs. Her father who can see her now only through the eyes of memory (his own have betrayed him, weak as they are) looks across to her and he says ‘My child, what is wrong?’

And she tells him that she is not sleeping, and he smiles softly and covers her hand with his own (dry and papery between the calluses and it seems to her almost terrifyingly frail) and he says ‘We are the makers of terrible things, my daughter. Our excellence is measured in the number of the slain. Easy sleep is not for such as us.’ She shakes her head and tells him ‘No, of course not. I know that. That is not what concerns me.’ And he is, perhaps, just a little afraid of her now, his daughter who sounds so sure as she tells him this, and he is briefly glad that he cannot see her face before he asks her ‘Then what?’ Her hand in his is very cold.
‘If they see me weary, they will think me weak. And if they think me weak, they will have no faith in me. How did you do it for so long?’ He squeezes her fingers, brings them to his lips. ‘It is a simple enough thing. Never be seen weary. The seeming is the thing.’

Years and years and years later, she stands in the dark and the filth with a gun in her hand, carefully putting herself back together. Smooth hair, ready bullets, careful clothes. She must not be seen weary.
---------------------------------
They were coming. By ones and twos, in thin battered trickles of the once-human, they were coming. A slim, doe-eyed youth with the corn silk-haired halo of a Botticelli angel approached her. A raw gash limned in bruises marred his cheek, and he was dragging a stern-faced lord behind him by the wrist. Presumably he was the boys’ sire, at least his lover, now seemingly powerless to protect him. The older mans’ aquiline features had lapsed into a dazed, childlike blankness. He followed docile as a sheep. The boy spoke, his voice jarringly deep, and strangely calm.

“Where do we go from here?” His gaze was steady. For a moment, at least. He was still new to walking before; his strength yet wavered a little under scrutiny Julienne met his eyes squarely, then turned away to look over her shoulder. She gestured with her revolver to the tunnel beyond.

“In and along. Three turns should get you to Charing Cross. You can follow the rail lines from there; the tunnels follow them underneath. There is a shop-front a ways down, Rothschild and Shrike. You can arm yourself there, if you like.”

He nodded curtly. They could hear the faint of echo of a bone-raking howl far above. It was a crazed, desperate sound, a hellish note like the protesting shriek of rusted hinges, which set the teeth on edge. The fallen nobleman buried his chin in his collar, squeezing his eyes closed as if to block out the noise. The boy stroked his hand absently. “What’s going on up there?” She looked grimly upwards, gun pressed to her jawline.

“Blood.” Julienne answered flatly. “None of it good for the drinking, and some of it yours, if you aren’t careful.” His lips (girlish, dark, too pretty for their own good, she noted idly) twitched ruefully, and he drew away with his patron in tow. The time passed then in a series of vague, half- remembered faces.

Twins with only one voice between them passed to either side, their identical bloodied smiles gleaming in the dark, and called out to her laughing as they went. They told her that they would go on to Whitechapel. They said there was blood there, for those unafraid to take it. They promised to make somebody pay. She wasn’t sure who.

A uniform approached; it was an older man, who seemed to her distantly familiar. An army Captain (Lieutenant? Major?), she thought, a man she knew and vaguely recalled from past dealings. He nodded gravely to her in recognition; she told him where they kept the cartridges that would fit the carbine slung over his shoulder and sent him along.

A woman, pale and bridal and lovely and starting to come apart at the seams spent several minutes huddled with in urgent conference. Julienne let her hand graze against the other woman’s waist, let it linger just a moment too long atop her shoulder, leaned in ever so slightly too close to point out the way to go. But no. There was no time, send her on, send her away, she needs must leave. Even the sewers would not stay safe for long. Send her on, send them all on.

“Hello? Hello Nemina?” Well. An American. Now that was a beast most wondrous rare to find in the sewers of New Londontown. And an educated American, no less. God. How long had it been since she had heard Latin? She must have been a schoolgirl, still, all knees and elbows and too-long neck. Yes, a schoolgirl, with that bitter old shrew of a woman, practically a Gorgon herself, breathing down her back ready to call down the very wrath of the furies themselves on they who sinned so boldly as to confuse the dative and ablative case of the First and Third Declensions.

“You’ll forgive me if I reply in English. Memories.” She called back. Julienne back to approach the voice, but no sooner had the words left her lips, no sooner had she begun to move, than she heard the thud of boots landing and the voice came again.

“Sirrah? What emergency is this?”

Two of them? Another vampire, perhaps? Julienne’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. No… No, that couldn’t be right. A vampire would have announced himself, would have wanted some explanation and sought her out. But there were two people now, there must be, barring the possibility, of course, that the American was simply mad. She smirked. It was a disturbingly likely possibility these days. Then her eyes widened abruptly as a faint scent came to her, the unmistakable perfume of the enemy. It was the scent of a Were. She whisked her skirts up out of the damp and lit off, hurtling down the tunnels like a woman possessed. The voice had come from –

There A flash of paper-white flesh under the murky gas light caught her eye. There they were, an albino who echoed with the same reassuring mechanical tick of her own heart and a leanly muscled blonde whose chest resounded with a dull, tellingly living throb. Julienne kept her gun trained on the blond Were as she drew towards the other man. “I would move away from him, Herr American, if I were you. He is no friend to us, I assure you”. She glared across at the Were, one pale finger tightening on the trigger.

“Do not think that I won’t.”
EDIT
They were frozen. A line stretched between them, the axis from the revolver's gaping muzzle to the Were's burning eyes. Time warped and dilated around it; a moment passed, or an hour or an age. Then it shattered. He was lunging forward, all savage grace and animal rage, she was drawing back with mechanical precision. There was an echo.

Her hair wreathed in cordite and gun-smoke, Julienne lowered her gun with grim satisfaction as the Were collapsed limply. A bloody, black star burned in the space that had been his right eye. She turned brusquely to the American. I have four shots left before I start needing to slit throats. We can't stay here The Were never travel alone; if he found us, more will come." Julienne grimaced. "And I, for one, am sick unto death— past death, of this filth. So, Herr American, have you anywhere to go?"

Tab XLII.Eq.Ach.Z
Tab XLII.Eq.Ach.Z

[Hamletmaschine]

The smell upon opening the door was a little overwhelming. Death... rotting, decaying death... and fresh blood. Jack's senses heightened, his throat drying quickly and his eyes flickering violently around the darkness. Dear god, it was a momentary frenzy. When had he last drank blood? Adelaide's. The flash of memory of the single moment caused Jack to return to reality. But helplessly, Jack half expected to see her dead body among the rest, or a shimmer of her ethereal ghost from within the darkness. He shuddered and made the mental note to feed at earliest convenience, for the safety of all of them... and for his own sanity.

"Jack."

In all his life, he never thought he'd hear such a sigh of relief from Christa's lips. But, there it was, and his name floated upon it. She looked like a disaster, merely remnants of the headstrong, conservative leader he recalled her to be. She was shattered and torn, dropped into this twisted reality, and dressed to match. But, weren't they all? Reality had finally turned on it's head and to anyone, this was all seemingly a dream.
Taking a couple of steps down into the darkness, and holding his breath, Jack came to Christa's side, uttering a soft, "Come here." while bending down so she may slip her arm around his shoulders, his own cautiously finding her waist and holding her lightly against him. He moved them back up the steps slowly, making sure she was able to carry her own weight with his assistance.
Her strange apology managed to slither a smirk onto his pale lips and his keen clear eyes peered down to her own, "Then know that I, too, am sorry... for dreaming impossible dreams. And living the Fool." It wasn't as witty, but it was what was on his chest, and Jack needed for Christa to know it. He gently squeezed her into his side, hearing a not so distant plead from Bernardo outside the door. Bernardo was correct, and Jack's heart twisted to know he was placing him in much discomfort.

The second Christa and Jack were outside the cellar door, Jack nearly witnessed sparks fly. The heat of the connection against each other was white hot. His eyes darted from Bernardo to Christa in a moment, and he frowned deeply, clearing his throat and shifting Christa slightly against his side as they climbed more stairs up to the main floor.
To the both of you, there are no enemies in my presence. I have no sides. And while I play mediator, I want the same rules to apply to you. No remarks, no shots, no violence.
He understood that the two were still in the enemy mindset, no questions about it. But the look Bernardo gave Christa was something more, deeper in threat and malice. Perhaps it was merely disgust. And Christa's gaze was not hatred, but fear, and he couldn't blame the woman. The tortures she must have endured at the hands of the Jackal could only have been horrific. And to be spared... She was very lucky to be alive.
Jack pursed his lips slightly as they reached the top landing, and taking one more glance around the foyer of the once grande and majestic mansion. With a large breath, and his strength low from lack of blood, Jack pressed on towards the front door. But the twisting of Christa caused him to slow as she slipped off of his shoulder and onto the littered floor below them. Jack winced for her and went to kneel to assist her up, but she crawled and ordered a pause, heading quickly into the darkness.

Slowly finding his true height again, Jack took a deep, and slightly regretful, breath in and looked down for a moment. Straightening his back and shoulders, he glanced to Bernardo with empathetic eyes, "Do forgive me for this." he uttered softer than he had imagined it would have been, "Know my conscience aches to place you in discomfort like this... But I promise you, I need her. And once she is healed and a plan of action has been reached, she will be gone to be with what is left of our race. It is what is in her nature. Only then can my conscience on this matter be clear." he took a step forward to Bernardo, tilting his head and placing a hand on the man's shoulder. Watching Bernardo's eyes, it was difficult for Jack to deny that he needed this man just as badly as he needed Christa. And it tormented him now, that he knew he would do nearly anything to keep him alive just to know he was there.

Christa reappeared shortly, struggling to stay afloat, especially with the two large tombs clutched to her chest by a death grip. Jack squeezed Bernardo's shoulder before releasing and heading over to the female vampire and scooping her up into his arms. They would move quicker this way, and she would have a harder time with those volumes. Together, Jack lead them out the front door cautiously, and did not look back to the mansion. The place would remain burned into memories for many years upon years to come. He needn't one last reminder, now.
Her weight in his arms was manageable, to which Jack was thankful for. He would be hard pressed to expect Bernardo to take a turn sharing the load.
Upon reaching the street, slipping through the front iron gates, a distant echo reverberated off the wind and into their souls. The Jackal called. Jack glanced to Bernardo and Christa in turn and swallowed as he glanced down the dimly lit street, "I think we can all agree to be on our guard. If she is on the loose for blood, so will others." He muttered grimly. Beginning at a brisk pace, Jack set forth towards Bernardo's home, "Our safe-house is on the other side of the Thames. Which... is dangerous. Vampires linger by the docks, and Weres on the streets. We will be lucky to make it back without interruptions..."

The rain had lifted to a dense fog, making Jack uneasy of this return. He was thankful for Bernardo's presence, because with his hands full, he wouldn't be able to really defend them from potential threats. However, the first small while of the journey was quiet, of course eerily so. But as they drew closer to the Thames, more shadows began appearing. Rustling within the alleys and movement from within the fog. Jack at any given time could pinpoint the presence of how many there were... and it was never more than they could handle. But his muscles ached, and chest was tight with tension of the moment, constantly listening and watching, and occasionally switching tempo of his pace to hear Bernardo's steps against his own. That, alone, was comfort.
Leaning his head down to Christa's ear, Jack whispered softly, "I feel them... Mercia and Kestrel's killer... And beyond them lies the bridge and our safety." He licked his lower lip and turned to Bernardo, "I want to stay far from the docks. We will have to deviate three blocks over to avoid the bloodshed, and then return to beeline over the bridge. Through the alleys, watch my back, and I will be our eyes. Once we're at the bridge, you can lead us home." Jack nodded curtly and waited for Bernardo's approval of the plan.
It was dangerous no matter which way they went, but as long as he kept them true and clear, they would be fine... or so he dearly hoped.

[Berylis]

These being the words of Asa S. Danforth....

"The blood of Cain runs through every man, woman, and child, just as the sin of Eve has damned us all. My wicked nature has surfaced: tomorrow, we shall see yours."

Incredible! A flash of light and a spray of blood, proteins arcing in the air to splatter, cells wriggling against the stone floor, salinizing in the filth, apoptosis imminent. And all around them the wicked, Hellish glow of the torches! Heady, leering, threatening. Asa’s fangs bared themselves, he let out a roar that seemed bigger than his small body could produce as he fought against himself. Not in front of the lady!

The red terror of the fire encircled Asa, his heart hammered ferociously in his breast. There was the life-giver, pooling, wasting away at his feet! The aroma from the corpse was overpowering—he could hear the faint beating of William’s heart, still commanded by the man’s brain stem, which Julienne’s bullet had not pierced. Madness slipped over him, and the vampire shrieked helplessly.

“Blood! I must have blood! Fifty soaking pounds of flesh, or five gallons a week!”

And then Asa’s teeth were tearing into William’s jugular, shearing the arterial walls like newspaper, sucking the blood from the corpse like a ravenous babe at the teat. There could be only one agenda in this lethal room, lit by hideous fire. Secure the milk. The nectar. In the blood is life.

In less than a minute Asa’s frenzied sucking had completely exsanguinated William’s corpse, leaving only the water left in the body, the gray skin and hideous bullet wound the Were had taken to the head. If he were not a doctor, if he were not a vampire, if he were anyone other than his own self, he would have vomited at the gruesome sight, but all that Asa felt was embarrassment at his lack of self control. He looked up from his awkward crouch towards Julienne, licking the blood off his chin self-consciously, releasing a sigh, cheeks flushing red with blood and shame.

“He was not human either,” Asa said, his tone distraught. He pushed himself nimbly to his feet, brushing the dirt off of his dark trousers, talking very fast. “I am a doctor, Nemina. I would examine him to increase my understanding of the genus Homo.” The regret in his voice was a clear sign that he understood that he could not.

The thin presence of the obsidian surgical knife in a holster inside his long coat reminded Asa that he could, indeed, remove a limb for study later, but he shook his head at the unwanted thought, disgusted by himself. No. No! Non carnifex sum! Despite the laws that prohibited mutilation of corpses, in America physicians and anthropologists could do whatever they wanted with the bodies of the deceased, so long as the dead were of low social station. And from his work at University Hospital, Asa had learned that the situation was much the same in Britain. In life, he had expressed his dislike for these men, who showed such little respect for human flesh. Autopsies were an acceptable practice, when permitted by the next of kin, but the dissection of the human body, as if it were like that of any other animal!

Jupiter's balls, it tempted Asa, almost as strongly as the smell of William's fresh blood, stronger and more powerful than that of ordinary humans.

Asa listened to Julienne’s insistence that they needed to leave, a thousand questions running through his mind. A were? My god! “So there is another gens of Devil, then?” Asa replied, a trace of disgust in his tone, for he hated the fact that creatures such as himself existed on the surface of the earth. “You make sense, madam. I have no wish to begin my eternal slumber tonight!”

A laugh, but his red eyes glimmered with revulsion at this new knowledge, and regret at the need to leave William’s corpse unexamined. Although he hated himself for what he did, Asa's eyes flicked around this location in the sewer so that he could remember it and find his way back to it tomorrow evening, provided that he made it out of this death-trap alive, which his companion seemed less than certain about. That is the difficult task, Asa. Set your mind to that!

“Lead on, then,” he said pleasantly enough, his mood restored now that he had set his mind to assisting Julienne in whatever fashion that he could. “I am in your service – I do believe I owe you my life.”

Asa kept one hand near his knife, should it become necessary to use it, but truthfully the vampire knew that he would be utterly useless in a fight. The attendant fear that should have come with that knowledge was strangely absent, and he wondered about that silently, as he followed his still-unnamed companion.

I am a chirugeon, it is only natural that I should be resistant to all that I have seen. Nemina killed that man, not I! Still, I remember that horrible day I made all the corpses in the streets of New York! And my lips were pressed against those pale necks, I drank viciously, just as I have done tonight. That was the only time he had ever slipped into shock from all that he had seen, and even though he did not feel that pulse-pounding terror threatening him – indeed, its absence was somewhat disturbing to the vampire – he nevertheless made an effort to slow his breathing, to fore the thoughts of fire and impending danger and death from his mind.

“Do you use these tunnels often?” he asked, trying to make conversation, in the hopes of maintaining that precious calmness that had settled over him. “I have just come to London, and I went out on a midnight stroll—I work by night, for obvious reasons, and I thought it wise to get the lay of the land.”

Asa became aware that he was babbling just a little bit, but it did not bother him, not really. He was more concerned that Julienne should see him as someone whose life ought to be preserved, for his unique skill set, at least.

“Is there anything that I could do to help you?” Asa asked, “There are many things that I know how to do, and I would do all in my power to facilitate our clandestine escape.” He smiled again, gently, feeling adrenaline from the were’s blood begin to affect his system, doubtlessly induced by the stress of meeting the vampires. This increased energy made him itch to do something, feeling useless as he followed Julienne, his pale fingers digging into his palms.
--
Latin:
-gens {clan, here used more like "type"}
- Non carnifex sum. {I am not a butcher.}