Thirst Ch. 06

It wasn't exactly what she'd asked for, but any victory was a victory...any means by which their individual unlives could become a little more tolerable was a service in the name of the grand, shared Requiem of the Dead. The Church of the Damned insisted that the Children of the Night were God's excoriating lash, the first of them created to send the pious to the gates of eternity and to create a hell on Earth for the wicked.

That was pure bullshit of course; their existences were a result of something real and provable, even if it wasn't scientific the way the mortals understood it. The Blood could be tasted...it could be harvested from the living and it could work wonders. It was water for their fields, sealant in the brickwork of their carefully constructed post-mortem lives, the very reason and drive behind their parasitic existences.

In the modern era, thanks to the miracles of refrigeration and plastic vacuum-sealing, The Blood could be neatly packaged and distributed like culture, religion, and sex in this late-capitalist world she'd once struggled fruitlessly against. Neat, perfect little IV bags of ruby-red lifeforce, sitting in stacked beer coolers, had been delivered to the dockyard at precisely the moment the Overseers had promised.

Things didn't seem so bad. In fact, her mood had been quite elevated lately from her usual state of grim, ultra-focused determination - a corpse miming Lenin - to something approaching the enthusiasm she remembered when she could feel the sun on her flesh, before smartphones were a fad. As far as the analytical part of her mind could decipher, there were three reasons for this.

The first, the most visceral and obvious, was the Lupine blood running through her veins. She hadn't felt truly warm in over a decade and ever since she'd started drinking from the werewolf, it felt like she had been thawed from a long winter. It was apparent in the smooth, vital speed of her movements and the ease with which the blush of life rose forth, even solely in the presence of her fellow Kindred.

The second, she knew, was because of the victory she'd secured in the name of the Syndicate. The crate had been marked specifically with their sigil, lowered by a crane-rope over the side of a speedboat onto the dock by the anonymous, enslaved humans that worked for the Ancient Dead. While their tithes hadn't changed, and the "process of redistributing feeding grounds was underway" (how much process could there be? Paperwork was an extraneity and danger for their kind) this proved to be a creative solution to a convoluted problem. The blood may have been cold, but the cells were still alive and tasted just fine to the tongue. It meant less time needed to be spent in the face of danger scrounging the troughs, risking an unwanted opiate rush or Prey turning on the Predator. Hunting was dangerous.

The third was something she didn't necessarily want to acknowledge, but realistically had no choice - the...four, five encounters she'd had with Mizrah in those motel rooms, once at his apartment, had been good. Really good. To her surprise every time, he fucked her amazingly, which was unusual because the sensation of a man thrusting into her was usually not one that she relished...but that was because she'd rarely liked the men thrusting into her. She wouldn't admit to liking him - he was brash, confrontational, cocky and arrogant - but it would be a lie to say he wasn't charming, surprisingly well-read, and warm-hearted. Even when she'd been sharp with him, trying to ward him away from the inevitable danger their union and dalliance represented, he was reeling her back in with his warmth and irrepressible humor. Most other vampires could be serious downers, and even though there'd been a girl she cared about that once made her laugh...well, that was a long time ago. It was different too, having these feelings for a man...but he wasn't just a man.

He was a dangerous thing, a human mind spread like a thin layer of olive oil over a hot, cast-iron surface of animal instinct and danger. There was no doubt, she was partially drawn to that dangerous side of his, and loved the way his powerful body overwhelmed hers...how she enjoyed having to work to fit him inside of her, and those piercings! A rare, incredible find indeed. She involuntarily squeezed her thighs together as she offered a pair of blood-filled IV bags to Samara. The young, skinny little stripling took them with hunger that was all too familiar to her and nearly dropped them onto the concrete dock - the sound of alarm that escaped her throat moved Monroe's thoughts from the debauchery she'd been engaging in.

Carter's hand shot out, snagging an IV sac from sliding to a watery fate and handing it back to the little kindred, who took it greedily and pulled it to her chest. In her wide brimmed hat, ankle-length moss-green woolen coat and drawn, round-eyed face, Samara reminded Monroe of a character from a Charles Dickens novel. "Thank you Carter...dunno what you said or gave, but you're saving us from some bleak shit," came her hissy little whisper of a voice.

There were three of them down here on the pier - William with his fishy, discomfiting demeanor and Melinda in her perfect suit coat and skirt worked at her side, under the garish floodlights that Harlowe had installed on the warehouse's tin roof. It wasn't like they couldn't see in the dark, but the light made everyone here feel just a bit more normal, everything considered.

Samara lingered...Monroe suspected that she'd been taken by her Sire when she was little more than eighteen years old, caught in a body that was at the end of adolescence but hadn't yet fully entered adulthood. She supposed she should feel fortunate that she'd been swallowed by the Dark in her late 20s. Will noticed; despite his fearsome exterior, cloaked in obscuring sweaters and oversized pants from judgmental, fearful eyes, the Nosferatu had somehow stayed the kindest and most sensitive among them, and gave her a spare nod. We'll take care of things here. It wasn't like there was a lot to be done...there were only thirty three other Kindred besides Monroe who were part of the Syndicate, and this victory had turned them from a rowdy crowd into something surprisingly organized, patient even.

How willing they were to fall-in for the thing they all craved.

Melinda's clarion, southern belle voice rang out when she received the look from William. "Alright ya'll, chairwoman's got business, split yerselves between me and Will and keep it orderly-like." There was a chorus of grumbling but the pale blonde beauty patiently herded the Dead with a resigned ease that Monroe had yet to develop...maybe never would; Melinda's Venture lineage made it easy for her to command obedience, if not to inspire.

"Come on Sam." Monroe's tone was soft as she led the rail-thin little Gangrel back up the pier, away from prying ears and eyes - maybe Samara felt less self-conscious in front of the Syndicate's leader because she jabbed her fangs through the plastic, sucking the cold blood from the bag and giving a shuddery little sigh of relief. She watched as Samara's big pupils dilated so wide they consumed the whites of her eyes, her veins showing through the flesh of her neck and wrists as they pumped new vitae through her body.

"What's on your mind, kid?" she prompted the rail-thin vampire, whose unnatural gaze seemed to...come back, flickering Monroe's way. Gulping down the last of the bag, leaving it clean and clear, she fingered the other IV sac like it was filled with hundred dollar bills.

"Ssso, you remember that problem I had?" Samara began - at some point the bag of blood disappeared either up a sleeve or into a coat pocket - "you know the one." She made what the Brujah might describe as a 'creepy-crawly' motion with her hands. "Did you make any headway on it with the lords and ladies?"

Monroe did, in fact, know what she was talking about, because the spare little thing rarely complained about her lot in unlife and had been elusive from the very first when approached about asserting themselves with the Overseers. "Yeah...you talkin' 'bout that thing you said was haunting your troughs. They said they'd look into it, but you know what that means. It gettin' bad?"

Samara's answer came in the form of a long, quiet stare out along Cromwell Drive. Cromwell ran along the shoreline, past acres of industrial wasteland in which the weakest of them were forced to make do...like Little Samara, whose sliver of trough ran through the old, closed down weaving-houses and dye plants, where the neighborhoods were low-slung and violent. It was part of the greater swath of The City that Mayor Karve's administration had given up upon, like the Calderon dynasty before him. Older, stronger Kindred might have been able to handle whatever was making problems for her, and if the Overseers gave a shit about them at all they'd send those fancy beghouled soldiers of theirs in to clean it out...would have months ago.

Monroe knew how to handle herself in a scrap, and she could easily dislocate a man's limbs or simply smash down a locked door to get at prey, but she wasn't a natural born warrior and killer - few of her kind actually were; violence between Vampires was the last thing any of them wanted. Of course, there were things out there that responded to nothing but...and she had the feeling they were dealing with something of that nature. "Come on Sam. I'mma need details if you want me to act on it, much as you can remember, you feel me?"

The push in the young Brujah's voice made Sam's head swivel toward her, reminiscent of an owl, big eyes closing one after the other. "It comes out on clear nights. I can hear it...when it's coming out from somewhere, down there." Samara pointed a finger toward the pier, where the gulf was patiently lapping at it.

"Outta the water? Like some Black Lagoon thing?" Pressing the quiet vampire for details - Samara shook her head patiently, pointing again and hooking a finger like a claw.

"No. It's never wet...smells like salt, wind, ammonia. Not water. There's a section of the wharf where I am. It's crumbling, down, down, splish-splash into the sea. From its belly." Samara demonstrated by bending forward and making a motion with her hands that seemed to mime entrails falling from her belly.

"Alright, so...what makes it something we can't just leave be and let live?" That was the best way for their kind to make it after all; there had to be a reason beyond simple disdain to take action against another creature of the night just trying to make it in the dark.

"It's...scary Monroe. It doesn't just crawl..." she checked her left and right before stepping closer. "It flies."

Tossing her rainbow braids over her shoulder she waited a moment. "...and?"

Sam squirmed...Monroe couldn't help but wonder how, exactly, she managed to feed - she was so used to drawing prey in with the force of her personality, while Little Samara barely registered to the senses. "And it also drinks from people, but it fucks them up too. Like...real big bites, not the Kiss. I don't think it's one of us, Carter."

"Sam, I know you don't like...creepy-crawlies, but if it's a threat to the masquerade we'll get Kippy on the papers and blogs and - "

"It went after me Monroe!" She blurted out. Samara cast her eyes downward, tapping her steepled fingers together, finding the will to make herself heard to the patient leader of the Syndicate. She fixed her owl's gaze on the other Vampire, tearing it from the water as desperation pushed the words forth. "It flew after me, screaming and shrieking...chased me down an alley, it's a canny pilot of its own body. Barely got away, I barely made it and it's still there - look." The smaller woman's voice quavered...it wasn't often that she heard fear - actual, true fear - from another of the Dead. Samara rolled down her black, expansive hoodie to reveal the bone of her clavicle. There, dug into her dead, paper-thin flesh and still healing...a trio of brutal claw marks that looked like they came from something big, like a tiger. Carter felt her gums throb with rage at this attack on the smallest, the most vulnerable of her Syndicate.

"Carter...maybe, you and Will," Sam began furtively, in a tone that reached the dead corners of her heart, "could you guys...maybe find a way to deal with it?"

She felt the weight of responsibility creak upon her shoulders, slabs of concrete need tinged with fear and hunger; there was little choice in the matter, since one of the things the Syndicate swore by was that its members would protect one another. This promise had, of course, been made under the assumption that this meant a united front against the Elders, but their sires weren't the only danger to The City's unquiet dead. "Yeah. I'll talk to him." She ticked names off on her fingers. "Corra...Vorath. They're best for this. Can't promise I'll see it done in one night."

Samara nodded, crestfallen and picking at the tips of her spidery fingers. Still afraid, clearly; her face was so young, even though the other vampire had been dead for a good seven years. She still relied so much on others, her coterie either ashed or in torpor somewhere after The Cull...like an orphaned kid.

Absent the Blush, the sympathy that crossed Monroe's pale, leering face seemed out of place. She dug into her back pocket and withdrew a single key from the brass ring, dangling it before Sam's bright eyes. "Here. You can stay on my turf, and if you want you can even Dayrest there. It's fine, seriously."

Little Samara's mouth opened, revealing the piranha sharpness of her teeth, involuntary exhalation of corpse-cold breath from her lips across the Brujah's fingers. She took the key delicately, cradling it like a treasure...because that's what it was. It was an incredibly rare thing to allow another Kindred into the place one rested, but the Bonds of Death were strong and went beyond mere territorialism. "Carter...that's...you don't gotta - "

"Shh. Take it." She dropped into Sam's palm, closing her fingers around the metal. "We watch one another, that's what we swore."

Monroe Carter, rhymes with martyr.

Just because they were dead didn't mean they couldn't have compassion for one another. Samara held the key close before it disappeared into her coat. She gazed up at the other vampire with those big, sad eyes of hers. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm not strong and decisive like you all are. I wish I was more like you or Nettletongue."

Oh Sammy...

Monroe was usually real good about not letting herself be moved beyond her duty, beyond her responsibilities - even when she was one of the Quick, she always worked at her wage, never beyond...she never did favors that weren't unrequited...compassion always had a price, but for the Hungry Dead the only real thing of material value was the Blood, and there simply had to be more to an unlife than that. "You don't gotta be like anyone but yourself. We come with what we got, and we support the Cause with what we have so we can all have more." The two dead women smiled at each other, the unnatural things beating in their chest remembering something of sisterly closeness.

The chairwoman, as she was known, returned to help Will and Melinda finish up but by then almost all of the crimson treasure had been distributed. To her surprise, they'd waited for Monroe to return - a sign of respect, gratitude? - before dispersing into the night, back to whatever mundane or disturbing existences they led.

"Good job Carter," called Manny, grinning his bulldog grin and chomping down on that cigar of his between his dry, bloodless lips.

"Yeah...way better than what we was gettin'." Vorath agreed, nodding in comity with his old rival-turned-ally. He held their allotments close to his belly, round green-lens glasses reflecting her visage back at her.

Melinda's cornflower blue eyes regarded her with fond admiration; in Will's inhuman, slitted gaze was the simple gratitude of someone who'd been desperate before, but was less so. It was in their adoration and their gratitude that Monroe found her motivation, and this was her greatest guilt because she knew that she was a simple, selfish creature...a parasite that fed on blood, desire and the needs of others. What if she grew bored of the needs and wants of the Syndicate's members, fickle thing she was?

So instead she said some bullshit words about solidarity. She raised her fist in a bullshit show of strength that the other Dead mimicked because they had no other source of faith or hope, now that the Elders and their endless hungers had sucked those things dry. Later, when she wasn't feeling truthful with herself, she'd insist in her own mind that The Cause was the most important thing in the world.

When the others had been dismissed, she called on scaled, powerful William; wily, perceptive Vorath; and quick, deadly Corra to stick around and discuss the...flying thing in Samara's territory, what sort of interventions they could provide. The usual bickering, the banter and back-and-forth was easy for her to fall into - outside observers might mistake the intensity with which they debated for hostility, ideas both workable and absolutely ridiculous floated and shot down.

William, for all his fearsome appearance may imply, was the first and the last to suggest a diplomatic approach, or at least to try and capture whatever they were dealing with rather than simply killing it outright...but whatever it was, it was killing messily and even went after Samara. A tradition violated, and a line crossed - it had to die.

Vorath the Thricefold had little reservation for murder, and had stapled more than one Lupine head to the Overseers' walls when they'd asked it of him. Normally relying on the band of hooligans he exercised some loose command over, Vorath was more than enthusiastic to bring hot lead, sharp steel and his own personal inquisition into Sam's territory; two of those three were appropriate, given Little Samara's care for discretion.

Corra...she had few ideas of her own to contribute besides simply tracking it, isolating it, ambushing it. She had the aspect of a needle, coated with poison, pinched between two skeletal fingers. The Mekhet made little secret of her disdain for Vorath's or William's methods, and while the dusky Alabama-girl didn't exactly endear herself to Kindred and Kine, her idea of luring the beast out with potential prey and springing an ambush was the most practical.

Monroe wore her mask well; the image of sharp-tongued, collected leadership, whipping these fanged, bickering parasites into some semblance of cooperation to stalk and eliminate a threat to one of their own, but...truthfully she had little idea what she was doing. Hunting down humans, other Kindred? That was something Monroe understood, and she knew how to get a crowd of angry people on her side. Like most Vampires, she was a creature meant for a niche existence, not to track down nameless, mostly unknown horrors and hope she could kill it before it killed her.

The other members of the Syndicate bid her farewell; William slid back into the river, paddling through the waters to the flooded Union Corners. Vorath, unsurprisingly, growled away on the back of his thundering Harley toward Koreatown while Corra simply walked to the River District to hunt.

Now that the business of the night had been resolved, she could finally turn her attention toward her own needs...well, desires. She was, as of yet, still flush with the blood she'd taken from her trysts with Mizrah - he insisted he could take it, and likely the pleasure-hungry wolf thought he could but she worried his love of the Kiss overrode his common sense the same way his blood, his voice and his sheer sexual potency smothered hers. Already, her phone was in her hand, and she was scrolling to his message thread, feeling simultaneously guilty and excited.