Hans was looking after his pets, the two females had been quite beautiful once, but after months in his basement, they had lost most of their meat. Their taste had become bland, too.
He was thinking about his Mistress’s orders. If he got rid of those, maybe he could get new ones?
He didn’t listen to their pleas, it was automatic for them, their minds had been broken a long time ago.
“Please stop. Please stop. Ple…”
He felt a gust of wind on his back. He looked at the cold dampness behind him.
The light was on, the room was clear, void of anything except the staircase going to the main floor.
“Strange.”
He cut a bit too deep. “Oh, sorry butterfly, I didn’t want to hurt you.”
But she had stopped saying anything.
That was weird.
He stood up. They were not making any noise anymore. Their hands were held together as if they were trying to hold on to each other in utter terror.
They had stopped doing that weeks ago.
“What happened? Did Mistress hit you on the head?”
They looked away, towards the wall.
“Hey? What’s happening?” He said in a soft voice.
“BROKEN SOULS KNOW HOW TO ACT WHEN FACING THE END.”
Hans jumped away, reaching the corner of the room in an instant.
Where he had just been, at the spot where he always took care of his pets, stood the woman.
The one mistress had brought. No, something had changed.
The woman knelt in front of the pets.
“ROTTEN MEAT.”
She looked at him.
Her eyes were wolven. Her hair was darker.
“Wh..what are you?”
“HARBRINGER OF CHAOS, I AM THE BEAST.”
“You’re delusional.” He convinced himself, even though everything claimed otherwise. How had she managed to break Mistress’s control? Maybe what the others said was true? Maybe she had lost her touch? Becoming too old. Maybe the reason why she was so angry at losing her pelt and the boy was that it was showing her growing weakness.
He stopped thinking.
His pets were not breathing anymore.
One moment they were silent, looking away. The next they were lifeless.
Necks broken.
“What?”
“UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM. RUN.”
In front of him was something else. He knew it now. He used his powers, given by his Mistress, to flee the room. He had to call her, warn her.
The thing did not follow. But terrifying noises could be heard from the basement he just left. Before trying to leave the house, he went to the landline phone and dialed his sire. He truly regretted not following the trend of those mobile phones now.
“WHAT?” His Mistress answered immediately. Noises of a busy road could be heard behind her.
“Mistress, something is wrong with the girl, she…”
He did not finish his sentence.
He could not.
His vocal cords had been ripped out.
He held his neck with both hands, bewildered.
“Whgrrahht?”
For the first time since he was changed, a true feeling gripped his heart.
Certitude of death.
He turned around.
A dark wolf, taller than him, was standing silently behind him.
He forgot about everything and raced outside, black liquid spurting from his neck as he reached for fresh air.
Such a wound did not matter; he was already healing.
He heard the wolf laugh, a devilish sound coming from deep below.
IT began its chase.
Miranda was her name in this era. She had taken the name twice in her lifetime. It was one she used when she wanted to blend in, to live comfortably, without the worries of a high council or the bothersome nature of a coven.
Everything had gone wrong.
It had been barely three years since she had taken this identity, and she was already on the run from the human authorities.
She would need to lay low for decades or change locations completely. America was such a perfect hunting ground; it was unbearable to imagine forgoing it.
All of that because of a Conscient who could resist her influence slightly.
He had been smart, and lucky.
She could still not understand how the police had come so soon.
How he had survived in the woods for so long.
Those were the thoughts that plagued the mind of the one who seemed human, as she was coming back to her child’s semblance of a home.
Police had closed the road leading to it.
She was worried now, the girl had had some strange reactions to her influence, but she could not be a Conscient. Those were extremely rare, one or two every century, two in a row was unthinkable.
Hans did not answer the phone, which could be explained by the state of the landline phone’s condition. Still, after his foreboding words, and now the closed road around the rotten building, she had to be careful.
Everything had to have been orchestrated by a rival, that would explain the situation.
She parked her car in an adjacent street, then walked towards the broken-down house.
Police were not around it, which was good news. Maybe everything was unrelated.
Blood was staining the ground in front of the entrance door. It was dark, smelled like shit, and stopped abruptly when it got to the street pavement.
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Hans had been hurt? He had healed though.
She smelled him nearby, not inside the house.
She followed the trail.
She walked a block before reaching a crowd standing noisily in the middle of the road.
They were stopped by warning tapes, with police written on it.
Blue and white flashing lights were lighting the ending day.
She felt something.
An emotion.
It was too long since she last had, so she did not understand what it meant.
She stepped closer. Her view was blocked, but she just influenced the police officer, and went through the police barricade.
There she saw him.
The child she sired was on the road.
His head was separated from the rest of his body, it was the only recognizable bit. Everything else had been viciously torn apart. Some of it was missing.
Forensics were already working on the scene. Only ten, maybe fifteen minutes had passed since his phone call.
He had not become ashes like in the movies, that could only happen if the body had been exposed to the direct sunlight of a warm summer day.
No rival would have done that. It was a direct violation of the First Rule.
She left the place while sending a message with her phone.
“I have a dead one seen by the cattle. I’ll send you the address, needs immediate attention. Je ne sais pas qui a fait ça. (I don’t know who did it.)”
It felt wrong to rely on the elders, but she had no choice. If she did not report a First Rule violation, even she would not be spared.
The girl was human, so something else had come into the equation. She would have to investigate properly.
She felt no sadness about the death of her child. Actually, she would have felt grateful if she could.
She came back to the house.
It was eerily silent.
She entered.
Blood in front of the landline phone, but nothing else.
No one else was inside. At least nothing alive.
Nor the pets, nor her hostage.
Another feeling came onto her, but once again, she brushed it aside, not knowing what it meant.
She went to her room in a blur, but nothing was amiss. The girl was gone.
She moved towards the basement.
There.
Something was wrong there.
She decided to descend slowly, making her movements deliberately human. A sudden acceleration would be more effective in a fight rather than raw speed.
She had lots of experience engaging with supernatural beings.
Not that it would be needed, nothing alive was down there, she repeated to herself.
The light bulb had been smashed.
She could distinguish the lifeless bodies of the pets, but not much else.
They were still full of blood. Hans was not the one who had killed them.
She felt the feeling again.
A shiver.
“What is it…?” She asked herself out loud.
“HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN FEAR?”
She stood still.
The voice sounded like a human girl. But was neither human nor feminine.
Miranda did not know where it came from. Whatever it was, it had chosen a place with echo, to hide its voice, and one which hid its smell too.
Under the floorboards over her head.
It’s where she would have hidden.
She stepped back into the main living room, wooden planks creaking. She could have made no noise, but she wanted the assailant to underestimate her.
“Where are you?” She said, acting like she was scared.
It was there somewhere. It was taking her lightly; she was going to find it.
With no warning, she plunged her hand at her feet, breaking the rotten wooden boards, driving straight into flesh.
“Got you.”
No reaction.
“Are you dead?”
She realized her mistake.
Her hand had pierced one of the pets.
It had been dead already. The unfortunate soul was looking almost peaceful. Ironic considering the hand bursting her heart open.
“But…” She had seen two bodies down there.
Shivers again.
There was only one body. And someone else. So perfectly still, having rubbed itself with the dead girl so much, its essence had been replaced with death.
“Are you a dog?”
No answer.
She went back to the basement. Only one corpse was there. Her enemy had moved already.
“Shit.” She began walking back.
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”
She turned around.
The single corpse was rising.
“But…”
“COME. UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM AND RUN.”
Only a few minutes had passed, how did the second pet disappear? The room was too dark. Vampires did not have night vision, and she cursed that that part of the mythos was not true.
She walked towards the woman. It was the hostage, Igris, she soon guessed. But with golden eyes.
It brought back a memory, an old myth to her mind. She had no time for those.
“You’re going to be dead. That’s what you are.”
“IT IS OUT OF OUR REACH TO DIE.”
She was a demon worshipper. That explained how she killed Hans and resisted her influence. Being immortal was the desire of every demon worshipper she knew. She had killed plenty of those cult witches.
Her mind made; she drove into action.
In a single moment, the vampire jumped forwards with all of her strength and speed, her sudden movement untraceable, unavoidable.
In her path fell a dead body.
It had been stuck on the ceiling with bones, brought down with dangling intestines.
She crashed directly into it, bursting it into pieces, but it slowed her down and obstructed her view.
She felt her legs give out under her, and she hit the basement’s stone floor violently.
“Shit.” She tried to get back up but couldn’t.
She had no legs.
“What?” Pain came, but she did not care about that. It was not the first time she lost her limbs. What she did not comprehend, was how it had happened.
Trap, bait, she saw now, but how was it executed? A demon worshipper had not the power to hurt her so badly, so fast.
Only an elder, a true demon, or something very, very old.
She was beginning to regenerate. She had to win some time, then flee and change strategy. She may even need to ask for some help.
“What are you?” She had lost the girl from sight but could still feel her presence in the room.
“I AM THE BEAST.”
The vampire shivered. She recognized that feeling now.
Terror.
“That’s impossible. We killed it. I took its fur.” It had taken vampires and hunters. The only time the natural enemies had ever worked together. That was the symbol of that fur.
The fur that had been lost. She ignored the thought.
“I THANK YOU FOR CARING ABOUT ME DURING MY SLEEP. I HAD EATEN ENOUGH.”
The vampire was swearing heavily inside her mind.
“Ray. You took over Ray when he stole you.”
“HE DID NOT STEAL, HE CLAIMED BACK.”
“What does that mean?” Her bones were there, only the muscles and tendons left; the skin could wait.
“HE HOLDS US. I CANNOT HUNT AS I WISH ANYMORE.”
“I could help! I’m old, I’ve got contacts! I could try to find a way to separate you two.”
A burst of soft laughter echoed inside the room, feminine but animal in nature.
Muscles were done.
“PETTY LIES.”
Tendons would not take long now.
Soon, very soon. She smiled.
It faltered when IT spoke.
“ARE YOU STILL NOT DONE? WE WANT TO CHASE.”
The vampire finally understood what was hunting her. What she had brought on herself.
She remembered the beast from the past, and it wasn’t as powerful.
It had changed.
She could not escape from the truth anymore.
The myth of the Conscient was no myth. It had taken flesh and was in front of her.
“It’s not the first Conscient you’re fusing with, isn’t it. They found each other?”
“YES”
“Don’t you understand what it means?”
“SO. MUCH. CHAOS.”
That voice, and how it seemed to relish doom itself, had been enough.
For the first time in five hundred years, the one who was once called Jeanne ran for her life.