Ch.34
Bruno the Bouncer had looked like a six-foot, six-inch tall musclehead before, but if you counted the two ebony black bull’s horns jutting out of his forehead, he was actually closer to eight feet tall!
You know, now that I could see him for what he really was!
Nature Lore was telling me that he was probably some kind of a Faerie, maybe some kind of a Fae hybrid, maybe a Fae crossed with an Ogre? Perhaps a Fae/Oni hybrid?
Oni being a highly magical Ogre variant, of course.
Nature Lore wasn’t giving me exact answers, though. Bruno was actually seven feet, four inches tall without the horns, maybe 500 pounds of beefcake? He had horns, claws, fangs, shoulder length neon blue hair and he had a third eye in the center of his forehead that was currently closed. His human form looked like it was wearing black work pants, black leather combat boots, a black t-shirt, and a black vest. The only one of those he was really wearing was the boots. Aside from them, he was wearing a white muscle-t and bright blue Hawaiian surf shorts.
Some kind of innate Glamour ability? A magic item? I’m staring. Why am I staring? Stop staring, you fucktard! I forced myself to look away, turned, and walked down the street. The last thing I needed was for him to expect I had seen past his Glamour!
Whew. Looks like he either didn’t notice or he just doesn’t care. I exhaled with relief.
As I walked away from him, my Acute Senses suddenly began to tell me that there was the scent of fresh blood coming from the alley next to the Rock-’n-Bowl. I covered the distance in seconds, with Sense Supernatural still active.
Chris was there, at the back of the alley pressed forcefully against the wall and in the embrace of a woman! She appeared to be nibbling on his neck, in what was very definitely not a sexual manner.
Despite her... enthusiastic bites, Chris looked like he was in the throes of sexual ecstasy! His eyes were rolled back and wide open, his face locked in a rictus of ecstasy!
The alley was maybe 50’ long. It didn’t go all the way through to the next street over. There were a few emergency exits back there, four large dumpsters, and a stack of pallets leaning against the wall.
There were two other men in the alley, both seated on top of the dumpster, watching with a look of bored detachment.
The smell of blood was coming from the woman and Chris. Sense Supernatural showed what I could only describe as an aura of death, blood, and hunger around the two men and the woman embracing Chris. The feel of it was different from the zombies, skeletons, and ghouls I had seen up until now, but my Lore: Religion skill was screaming at me that it was unmistakably an aura of undeath!
That all three of them were undead!
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going on here... not even I was THAT dense! “Take your filthy paws off my friend, lady!” I announced as I strode forward.
Yeah, giving up a surprise attack is stupid, but I was more concerned about getting her to stop drinking my friend’s blood!
Her entire body jerked in surprise, like she really hadn’t expected to be interrupted. She turned and looked over her shoulder at me with a look that would have curdled cream. “Oh, look boys. Tall, dark and yummy volunteered to be dessert after all!”
That was when I recognized her as the hot Goth girl I’d danced with earlier, Jenny Foreman.
Shit! I’m a goddammed DUMBASS! She bit me and drew blood through DR 7/-! How the FUCK did I not realize that? She’s a fucking VAMPIRE! I was furious with myself and couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed. She really must have had me good!
Vampires all have the innate ability to magically Charm pretty much anyone they want to, with a VERY high Charisma to go along with it. Vampire magic and special abilities are based off of Charisma, and they can use the ability as often as they like its what’s called an At-Will ability for them, meaning they can just keep on using it until you’ve become their eager slaves.
She’d gotten me, obviously, and only the fact that she attacked me like an idiot by tearing a chunk out of my lip let me get a new Will save to break her Charm effect! THAT was why my instincts were screaming at me! And because I’d been too busy being confused between my anger and my boner, now my best friend was about to become a trio of vampire’s dinner! ‘MY FAULT! IDIOT! AAAAAARRRGGGHHH! GODDAMMIT’
I was furious! It took a real effort to not go into an utter freak out rage mode, only my self-preservation instincts keeping me from completely losing my shit on the spot!
Even then, only a deep-seated NEED to protect Chris let me keep my shit together!
I summoned my Mind Blade as +2 undead bane and my Mind Armor as +2 undead defiant, slipped into Iron Palm Stance and activated Dragon Style and Jabbing Style.
The looks on the three vampire’s faces were positively amusing when a suit of golden psychokinetic armor snapped into place and my mind gauntlets oozing an undead Bane aura coalesced.
You can feel it when a Bane weapon attuned to your species is pulled out; it DOESN’T feel good!
At all.
It’s a combination of the feeling you get when you hear nails being drawn across a chalkboard and how a deadly predator snarling at you makes you feel, in all of the worst POSSIBLE connotations of both of those things!
My gauntleted fist crashed into the chest of the nearest guy, who I assumed to be either a vampire or a vampire spawn (which is essentially a newborn vampire); it was as brutal of a hit as I could land.
4d6 +31 base damage, +2d6 Bane, +1d6 Iron Palm Stance, +2d6 Sneak Attack. Oh, and the hit was definitely a crit, so all of the damage was doubled but the sneak damage.
16d6 + 62 crashed into vampire minion number one’s chest. He was immediately blown into his mist form... which gave me a Cleaving Finish.
The second attack wasn’t a crit, but despite its lack of flash, the sidekick I smashed into vampiric minion number two still blasted him into mist form immediately as well.
From the look on her face, this was NOT how Jenny expected this encounter to go. She pointed a finger and fired a beam of pure flame and heat at me.
Was that a freaking Scorching Ray? Weird. How in the heck does all of this keep coinciding with L&L!? Maybe the Great One choosing L&L really wasn’t some weird coincidence?
My Defense/AC was pretty damned silly, though, so she missed by a foot ball field. Still, she had managed to fire two of them, which told me that she’d be at least a 7th level spell caster if this was L&L, and my Lore skill was telling me that I was probably right about that. That was actually pretty damned scary, because it meant that, because of her Vampire template, she was at least a 9th level, and probably more like an 11th level encounter or HIGHER!
I grabbed her, tossing her to slam into the wall, then tagged her with a Stunning Fist as she rebounded off of it. That obviously left her stunned. I was more than a little bit surprised by how easy it was to manhandle a vampire.
But if she’s primarily a magic user, is it really that surprising she’s not a great fighter? No, it really isn’t. It really isn’t at all. Even if she had a 20+ Strength, she doesn’t have the Feats or attack bonus to compete with my maneuver bonus to Trip!
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There was an empty wooden shipping pallet leaning against the wall. I broke a piece of it off with ease and then grinned maliciously at Jenny with a sharpened wooden stake in my right hand.
I slapped my left hand over her mouth, confident that my psi-construct Shield Gauntlets would protect me from her bite. Without hesitation, I rammed the stake forcefully into her chest, right through her heart!
In seconds, she had shriveled up into what looked like a desiccated mummy version of herself! Since she was still stunned for that whole time from Stunning Fist, she didn’t even get a chance to cry out.
I hurried to Chris, and immediately spent two points of Qi into Qi Regeneration to heal him! The bloody chunk around his neck, where she’d bitten him, started to close immediately.
Glad and relieved, I pumped another couple of Qi into healing him over the next few rounds, healing him as quickly as I could.
After about fifteen or twenty seconds he groaned and started to come around. “Chris, I need you to be quiet.” I told him, my hand gently but firmly covering his mouth and nose.
His eyes snapped open and he looked up at me. Then he nodded at me and I released him. “What... what just happened?” he asked, softly, obviously still out of it, shaking his head to clear the cobwebs from it.
“You almost got eaten by a really hot Goth vampire girl.” I told him, nodding my head in the direction of Jenny’s staked body.
He jerked away from me and the body, eyes wide.
“What the fuck, Ray!” he asked in a whispered hiss, eyes wide with shock as he stared at the desiccated body of his would-be murderess. I was impressed he managed to keep his tone down in light of coming face-to-face with a desiccated corpse!
“She was a vampire, Chris. She was literally drinking your blood. My Qi healing power can be used by touch on others for double cost, so I healed you. But if she’s a vampire, which she almost definitely IS, I'm surprised you’re alive. She should have been doing Con drain and leeching levels when she bit you.”
Chris just looked at me, a bit dazed, then shrugged. “Maybe she was enjoying her meal and didn’t want me dying on her too soon, so she was intentionally not using those Drain abilities?”
I shrugged at him. I had no idea if that was even possible.
As I looked at him, the consequences of what had just happened began coming to me now. “Shit. We need to get out of here, Chris, like NOW. She had two lesser vampires that I blasted into their mist forms. They’re gonna be heading back to their coffins now, and if my Lore is right, it’ll be at least an hour after they get back there before they can do anything at ALL, but they probably know who we are, man. There’s no way I’m not gonna whack this bitch, so we’ve got problems with a vampire clan coming after us, soon. If I thought leaving her alive would stop that, I’d consider it, but she was talking to me about us like we were unruly cattle that had annoyed her. I’m pretty sure you and I are nothing more than a side of juicy meat to her... and I can’t imagine any other vampires feeling differently, can you?”
He shook his head, his face becoming grimmer with each word out of my mouth.
I was proud of Chris. His eyes got really wide for a second, but then he took a deep breath. “So, we need to get the hell outta dodge... and figure out what we’re gonna do about her.” he said nodding his head at the vampire staked form.
“I mean, the river is like eight blocks away from here. I can cover that distance in under a minute. Shove her under water, pull the stake out, let running water do what it does to a vampire, then meet you back here?”
Chris shook his head immediately. “I’m not gonna lie, but I don’t feel safe with that idea, man. I think I should stick with you.”
“Ok. I’m gonna stick the vampire in one of the garbage cans so I’m at least not seen carrying around what most people would think of as a dead body. Go check out by the street and make sure no one’s headed this way; that bouncer is some kind of Fey half-breed monster.”
Chris looked sad. “Not Bruno? He was so cool, though!” When Chris and I had walked in earlier that night, I again remembered watching him tip the doorman a twenty-dollar bill for letting us in through the VIP line.
I grimaced. “Yeah, sorry man. It was Bruno. Check and see if he’s still out there. That fight wasn’t exactly quiet, I’m surprised no one came to check.”
Chris grinned at me. “Really? The old, ‘Go check around the corner’ bit from L&L?”
I chuckled. “What? It totally makes sense to have a lookout when you’re doing something that someone might mistake for shady... unless you want to deal with the staked undead lady?”
He grinned, shook his head, and walked down the alley, going for pretending to be nonchalant, taking a drag from the vape pen in his hand, and calmly stepped out of the alley.
He was two steps past the end of the alley, in the middle of inhaling from his vape pen when eighteen inches of sharpened bronze slid between his ribs, angled straight at his heart.
He never even saw it coming and I saw it far too late to do anything about it! He simply collapsed bonelessly to the ground with a surprised look on his face. A moment later, Bruno stepped around the corner, a grim look on his face.
He sighed. “Damn. I actually kind of liked Chris.” He looked at me. “I’m gonna need you to step away from the lady, buddy. This doesn’t need to get any uglier than it already is.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was so mad I simply couldn’t speak. My body was frozen as I sat there thinking of how many stupid decisions I’d made tonight that had led to this point.
Time seemed to freeze as my mind replayed the evening, and the more of it I went over, the more it became impossible for me to deny it. Every crappy thing that had happened tonight, one hundred percent of it, was MY FAULT!
It was completely undeniable. I had fucked up, over and over all night long.
I could have used Sense Supernatural at any point in the evening, and none of this would have happened. Three seconds of my time, max. Why? WHY?! Why didn’t I check!?
My mind felt like it was on fire!
Why? Why in the fuck hadn’t I bothered to do something so simple?! It would have taken two FUCKING seconds! Even noticing that the stupid bitch had managed to draw blood through my fucking Damage Resistance would have been a dead giveaway!
Why had I been so STUPID!? So oblivious!?
WHY? Time still seemingly frozen around me, my mind flashed back to the day I met Chris. The first day of 6th Grade and the first day of Middle School for both of us. Helping him with a bully problem that first day, for no other reason than the bully looked more fun to beat up than Chris did.
I was incredibly angry back then; it was only months after my parents had been killed. Chris had followed me around thanking me. It had annoyed me at first, but he had been so genuinely grateful and friendly he had managed to overcome even my overwhelming rage at everyone and everything in the whole damned universe, had made a chink in the armor of hate and depression that had ensconced my soul, and weaseled his way into my heart with sheer persistence, cheerfulness, and nerdiness!
We’d become friends at first, then best friends. We started gaming together. If Kai Hale had been the father figure that had saved my life, that had taught me responsibility and how to control my anger, Chris was the friend whose shoulder I’d leaned on. He’d convinced me that I wasn’t alone in the world.
And now he was dead... and it was absolutely my fault. One hundred percent. Indisputably.
I might as well have held the sword that had just killed him myself.
The entire time, I stood there staring at Bruno the Fae bouncer, holding an obviously enchanted bronze short sword that looked more like a kitchen knife in his huge hand. I was frozen, unable to do anything but scream internally in outrage at my own laziness and stupidity!
The answer to Why is so simple, though. I was too damned busy thinking with my DICK! I wanted a night out to relax, to try to get laid! I didn’t want to think about the consequences of what I found out with that video about the Federovs. I wanted some time away from grinding those stupid undead! I just wanted a single night to go out with my buddy and have a good time! Now, because I was fucking horny. Lazy and STUPID, my best friend’s DEAD!
It felt like a bomb exploded in my brain.
Something inside me snapped.
My Mind Blade and Mind Armor snapped back into place around me. My Halos also snapped into place, a Red ring and two Gold rings of psionic energy visibly seething with my wrath!
I vaguely remember covering the distance between myself and Bruno in a flash of explosive speed. I hit him with my biggest current attack, Lightning Vortex. I maxed out its charge with two Pneuma bringing its damage to +10d6, and I triggered a Halo Strike, for another +1d8+2d6.
The discharge of lightning and psionic energies was pretty damned catastrophic and so was the effect on Bruno. The punch, halfway between an uppercut and a hook, hit him in his floating ribs on his left side. It probably would have cut a normal human in half or blown them to bits, to be honest.
Instead, it just blasted him through part of a second story brick wall on the opposite side of the street, almost 100’ away!
To give you a comparison, being hit by a LAW rocket, something designed to blow up tanks, is around 10d6 worth of damage! Well, a LAW rocket also ignores the first 10 points of DR or hardness on the target it hits because of its directional charge designed to blow through armor, so it's not EXACTLY the same, but still...
The blow was thunderous on impact, AND it was a TON of damage! I only had eyes for Bruno’s face at that moment, and the look of surprise and fear on his face was immensely gratifying.
The look on his face and noise of the blow also snapped me out of my berserker state. In the place of that fiery rage, I felt ice cold instead. I was still furious, but I was now thinking with perfect clarity, even if my focus was completely single-minded.
There was only one thing I had on my mind.
Kill Bruno.
The thunderous blow had smashed Bruno through a window on the second floor of one of the businesses across the street, and I followed him at full speed.
No way I’m letting you get away!
I still had my Mind Armor active; its helmet covered my face, thank goodness. Which was a big relief when I noticed that over a dozen people were standing around outside the Rock-’n-Bowl as I followed Bruno across the street.
As I was moving, I changed my Mind Weapon to Fey Bane and my Mind Armor to Fey Defiant.
A leap from the street to the second floor was jokingly easy for me. Bruno was slowly getting to his feet, one side of his chest badly burned and cratered inward more than six inches. He looked like shit in general, too.
Whatever he is, he’s got some kind of regen or fast healing. Not that it’ll matter twenty seconds from now.
I was definitely gonna kill this fucker. I was certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I’d never be able to sleep again if I didn’t!
He looked at me, fear clearly written across his face. It redoubled when he saw the aura now playing around my armor and gauntlets. He held up his hands, pleading, “I didn’t know! I wouldn’t have done any of this if I knew! Please! It's not my fault! I was just doing my job!”
I wasn’t sure what he was referring to, but I didn’t really care, either.
For a second, some part of my mind considered thinking about feeling sorry for him. I simply couldn’t be bothered. The cold rage bubbling up inside of me left me furiously numb to anything other than my desire to kill this murderous fuck!
I had no clue what the fuck he was talking about, but I didn’t care. Looking at him, my fury urging me to action, I calmly, coolly told him, “Chris was my best friend and you murdered him in cold blood you piece of shit. You’re getting off easy.”
I used Versatile Unarmed Strike to turn my hands into sword blades using my Qi, and I hit both sides of his neck like my hands were a pair of scissors, chopping his damned head completely off!
When I stepped out of the ruins of the second floor of the building, I was annoyed to see that not only were there people out there watching, still, but there were at least six or seven people recording the whole thing on their phones!
Not that it would be terribly useful to anyone, as I had consciously formed my Mind Armor so that its helmet completely covered my face. It was a psionic construct made from my personal energy, so making it one-way transparent had been no problem at all.
I flipped the people recording me off with both hands and then ignored them.
Thirty seconds later, I’d crossed the street again, grabbed Chris’ and the vampire’s body, and then run straight up the side of the building and gotten the hell out of dodge.