The Slasher slipped in through the window using Skills to remain unnoticed and to avoid tripping the alarms.
Weapons and armor, mostly the former, sat in orderly racks. Each was tagged with the owner’s name.
She locked the door and pushed the closest rack against it.
First task done, she slipped back out the window, stepped over the dead guard and climbed back onto the roof.
It had taken almost two hours before the orgy in the backyard pool area slowed down and broke apart.
Most of the enslaved followed their instructions.
They went into the house to clean up in one of the many bathrooms. Then ate and drank water to replenish the energy they had been forced to spend. Special ointments were liberally applied to ease the raw pain in their bodies.
As for the men, most of them took their breaks. They had Skills and spells that gave them much greater stamina than they had in the old days, but those had their limits.
Only a handful kept going.
The Slasher followed one such man, carrying a giggling girl to the hedge maze toward the back of the huge yard.
The maze had a small fountain and seating area in the middle she had scouted out earlier.
The soft rustle of her black cloak was the only sound as she flowed above the hedges and onto the large statue of a naked goddess pouring water from a pitcher into the fountain’s pool.
The man emerged with the enslaved girl in hand.
“Put your hands on the edge and bend over for me,” the man’s voice hungered.
“Yes, sir!” the enslaved girl giggled.
The Slasher felt nothing beyond anticipation for her first of many kills of the night.
She consulted the checklist in her thoughts.
The girl wore a collar.
An innocent to leave unharmed.
The man had been engaged in actions that made him a valid target and was about to resume.
Before he could move, the Slasher leapt.
A dark shadow descended.
The rustle of cloth.
A knife’s whisper against a throat.
She savored the man’s wide eyes.
Two pools reflecting the moonlight slowly growing dark.
She stab him in the chest once and kicked him to the ground.
The enslaved girl hadn’t moved from her position.
The Slasher snaked a thin, but impossibly strong arm around the enslaved girl’s neck above the warm metal collar and squeezed.
She carried the unconscious girl deeper into the maze
Belatedly, she touched a finger to the enslaved girl’s neck and detected a pulse.
When the girl woke she’d default to the personality and general behavior traits that the slavemaster had selected.
This Lord Wildcock wasn’t a diligent man.
The Slasher suspected that the enslaved girl would simply return to the mansion and await new commands.
Task done, she returned to the fountain and kicked the cooling corpse into the fountain, careful to avoid the foulness leaking out of him.
The last thing she did was place a torn piece of clothing with a logo prominently displayed in the center in the man’s hand.
It looked like some kind of animal, stylized as it was.
The mansion beckoned.
Another window, in which she saw an enslaved woman lying under a pale, fat man.
The man had fallen asleep snoring and drooling onto the enslaved woman, who stared at the ceiling with that blank smile that seemed to be the default expression of all those forced into the collars.
Neither noticed the Slasher opening the window to slip inside.
She struck like a viper kicking the man over and plunging her knife into his throat while covering the enslaved woman’s mouth with her free hand.
This one had sucked in a mouthful of air to scream.
The enslaved woman struggled, hitting and pulling at the Slasher’s arm while the fat man choked on blood and steel.
She kicked him off the bed and choked the enslaved woman into unconsciousness.
Not taking any chances she bound the enslaved woman’s mouth, wrists and ankles with the towels piled on the table next to the bed.
She stuffed the fat corpse into the closet.
She stepped carefully around and over the spot on the hardwood floor where the man had voided his bowels.
Two down.
Back out the window.
She cleared several more rooms in quick succession.
Some rooms had multiple targets that she dispatched with ease before any of them even realized that their deaths had arrived.
She choked or struck the enslaved women and girls into unconsciousness.
The last thing she did was leave more torn pieces of clothing in the hands of her victims.
Within an hour all that was left where the men scattered throughout the rest of house and those that had gone back out to the pool. They were all in various states of inebriation and a drugged out haze or amped up on a different kind of drug. The lord liked to provide his party guests with options. Whatever their vice he was proud to provide.
The lord, her main target, hadn’t left his master suite.
She would draw him and the other two men out with the terrified screams of dying men.
Slasher’s Domain: Blood Night.
The world plunged into writhing shadow, dark and red.
A drug-addled man in the hot tub noticed something odd out of the corner’s of his eyes. He took his gaze from the back of the enslaved woman’s neck up to the moon.
It glared down at him in judgment and cast its verdict in crimson light as red as the second smile the Slasher traced across his neck.
The enslaved woman screamed a second after she noticed the hot tub water change color. She stumbled out and rushed into the mansion.
The Slasher allowed her to spread terror.
For with terror came chaos.
A mage blasted spells wildly at shadows that mimicked the Slasher’s shape.
The less-addled men rushed for the room holding their weapons.
Panic and terror made them forget their Skills as they desperately tried to batter the locked, barricaded door down.
She had re-entered the mansion through a window.
The mage was her first target, he was the only one in the living room coherent enough to pose a semblance of a threat.
Slasher’s Stride brought her within arm’s reach of his pale, pasty back.
She stabbed her knife up and under his ribs to kiss his heart.
Enslaved women and girls had scattered leaving naked men on the couches and chairs.
She swept through them in seconds.
They died confused. The scent of their filth was the last mark they left on the world.
She focused on another target, the muscular boxer.
The man had joined the crowed hallway.
“Get the fuck out of the way!” he cried.
They reeked of desperation as the door splintered but remained blocked by the heavy rack of weapons on the other side.
“I can see them!” another man cried. “Shit! Pull the wood out of the way and we can reach them!”
She stepped up to the boxer’s back and stabbed low, in the kidney.
He turned with surprising quickness and hit her with a four punch combo.
Two struck her in the face, while the other two glanced off her shoulders.
The boxer would’ve only seen a writhing, bloody shadow. He should’ve missed all of his punches.
No matter.
Pain was fleeting for the Slasher in her domain.
She cut and stab with even greater speed.
The boxer yelped and fell away trying and failing to keep his guts from spilling to the floor.
Men scattered farther into the hallway.
A few eyed her with wide-eyes while they tore fingers in their mad rush to clear enough space to reach the weapons.
So close to their hands, so tantalizing.
The Slasher swept forward.
Her knife flashed in quick succession.
Fingers flew, scattering like a spilled plate of cocktail wieners.
A stroke of inspiration struck her.
She cut low.
There… franks and beans plopped to the floor.
The sweet smell of fear mixed with the foul stench of death squirting out of the men as they lay dying or dead.
She flowed over them like a dark reaper in pursuit of the others that had fled into the adjacent wing.
“Power Double Leg Takedown!”
The mixed martial artist planted his shoulder into her hips, lifted her up and drove her to the floor, splintering the hardwood and knocking the breath from her.
“Accurate Ground and Pound!”
Fists battered her shrouded face and head.
Until she placed her knife in the path.
The man screamed as he split his fist on the impossibly strong and sharp kitchen knife.
She bucked and rolled him over so that she straddled him.
Thumbs pressed into his eyes.
He screamed as she popped them like grapes.
Soft, gooey, warm liquid ran down the man’s face and over her hands.
Her Skills warned her a second before the fireball would’ve exploded on her back.
Instead, she rolled the maimed mixed martial artist over to use as a human shield.
The explosion momentarily drove away the blood red shadows of her domain.
The dead man in her grasp stank of burned skin and filth.
She took her knife back and hurled it at the mage on the other side of the room.
“Mage Shi—urrkk.”
The man swallowed the blade.
He tried to pull it out but the Slasher forced it all the way down to the end of the handle.
She retrieved her knife from the dead man and swept through the wing for the rest of her targets.
It was easy.
They couldn’t hide when she saw their life essence beating a warm red even through walls and doors.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
They couldn’t fight without their gear and with the way the domain slowly leeched them of their strength and ability to think through the fear it created.
She returned to the central wing of the mansion with a bloody blade and soaked sleeves.
Her lips slowly split into a ghastly smile for Lord Wildcock and his two friends.
She knew what they saw.
A writhing shadow.
The dark, blood-soaked cloak.
Stark white teeth set in a black void.
All within the blood red tinge of her domain where every shadow seemed to be stretching out to grasp them tight and drag them into nothingness.
“Who the fuck are you?” Robert brandished his axe.
The men had managed to throw on some clothes and retrieve weapons.
Lord Wildcock raised a pistol and fired.
She spread her arms out wide angling the knife to catch the glint of the bloody moon through the large skylight.
Bullets passed harmlessly through her cloak.
Her body was never where you thought it was in her domain.
The wide-eyed lord cursed. “Guards! Guards! Guards!” he screamed in a high-pitched voice.
“Bro, they’re dead,” Chandler eyed her over the edge of his shield, sword pointed in her direction.
“My neighbors! No way they didn’t hear any of that!” the lord gesticulated wildly, “they’ll send their guards! If they don’t my father will—”
“Nah, bro,” Robert said. “I don’t think anyone’s hearing nothing out there, look at all this shit,” he gestured at the bloody shadows writhing on the walls, floor and ceiling, “even the fucking moon is bleeding.”
“Yo, bro, you go run to your neighbor and get help while me and Red Rob keep this thing busy,” Chandler said.
“You serious—”
“Ayyy, your lordship,” Robert nodded with a feral grin, “something tells me turning and running will just let him stick a knife through our back just like the poor fucks pissing and shitting all over your furniture. So, get yourself go—”
Lord Wildcock turned and ran like a pig on fire.
Chandler chuckled.
“Cool to party with, but a bitch when it’s time to throw hands,” Robert nodded.
“Same?” Chandler said.
“Same,” Robert agreed.
“Hey! Whoever the fuck you are… you’re gonna learn why you don’t fuck around with Team Alpha Sigma!” Chandler called out to the Slasher.
“Rage!” Robert roared.
His muscles swelled and a haze seemed to waft off his bare torso.
Spittle flew as he charged.
His axe rose and fell on the Slasher only to split shadow and sink deep into the hardwood floor.
Chandler cursed.
Automatic Block quickly turned his shield arm and body without conscious thought.
Knife sank into stout wood.
The force of the impact nearly drove the point into his face.
He shuffled back ripping the knife out of the Slasher’s grip.
“RAARRGGHH!” Robert leapt over him in one bound and slashed down with an overhead chop.
Again he only split shadow.
“Taunt!” Chandler cried out desperately as he turned in a circle chasing shadows.
Everything seemed to be reaching for him.
He could hear whispers from every direction and none at all.
“Spin Slash!” he spun in a desperate circle, sword cleaving shadows.
A glint in the corner of his eye.
He turned toward it and—
Fiery pain for an instant.
Warmth down the front and back of his pants.
Followed by nothing.
Chandler’s body toppled to his knees then face first onto the floor driving the small knife deeper into his cooling brain.
Robert laid about him with his axe in a blind rage.
To him, he was killing a shadowy foe with every blow.
The Slasher watched from a safe corner of the living room with disappointment.
These men had been too easy to kill.
Her leveling would have to come not from the killing but from the impact the slaughter would leave on the city once the sun rose.
The raging Robert was spent after a few minutes.
His arms hung low and heavy.
She approached.
“Weak,” she hissed.
He spat, too tired to speak.
Arm’s trembling he tried to raise his axe.
She stabbed him in the chest and pushed his forehead, toppling him like a tree.
She left the knife.
She left him to die in his own filth.
Slasher’s Stride allowed her to catch up with the lord while he waited for the gate to open.
His eyes widened and he shit himself when he saw her white teeth in his rear view mirror.
Tears flowed down his cheeks as a plea for mercy died on his tongue.
She left Lord Wildcock in the seat of his Lamborghini with his head back and a thin, double-edged dagger in one eye.
A dagger she had stolen from another lord’s office.
The same one that was embroiled in a dispute with Lord Wildcock’s father.
It was too obvious for a rational mind, but such things fled when heated emotions were poked and prodded.
Chaos would ensue and the Slasher would have more targets to fill her hunger.
Her work done, she flowed over the city’s rooftops like a shadowy wraith taking a circuitous route to thwart potential pursuit back to the mansion she called home.
She had senses beyond the physical so she was quite surprised to be knocked into an AC Unit atop an office building by a blow that cracked several ribs.
An extremely pale young woman stood over her.
The sides of the woman’s head were shaved bare. Brown hair on top spiked up like an agitated porcupine.
Her face looked average.
She wore a leather jacket, studded with spikes and open at the front to reveal a small bra and a toned stomach.
Her pants were red leather and her dark combat boots had razor blades embedded in the thick soles.
She flashed a smile to reveal four sharp fangs, two on top and two on the bottom.
“You smell delicious!” she said with hungry eyes.
The Slasher flicked a wrist.
The woman’s hand blurred. She regarded the knife. “Did you get this from someone’s kitchen?”
The Slasher burst into action leaping for the edge of the roof in a bid to lose this woman in the alley.
She found herself yanked back roughly by her neck.
The woman pulled her cloak and spun her around grabbing her neck in a grip like iron.
Another knife flashed from voluminous sleeves.
A hand blurred to crush the wrist.
“The king just wants you alive. He didn’t say you had to be unbroken. So,” the woman brought her arm up and sniffed the bloody sleeve, “not yours… lots of different people. Who did you kill tonight?”
The Slasher twisted but couldn’t budge the woman’s iron grip.
“C’mon… I kinda like what you’re doing, making the uptight fucks in their mansions piss their panties. They’ve gotten too comfortable thinking that their power’s secure. Between you and me this place could do with a little uprising. So, tell me what your deal is and I might just let you go if I like what I hear. So far you’ve killed a bunch of those freaks with their lame-ass candle ceremonies and a useless wannabe noble or two… or maybe more? Huh? Are there other victims we don’t know about? Did you stash their bodies somewhere else? Maybe in your basement to reenact that family you lost? Or for something kinkier?” the woman bared sharp fangs, “from one night hunter to another, you can tell me. If I like it I might consider making you my childe. Think of how much more of a killer you can be with my class combined with yours.”
The Slasher said nothing.
From where she dangled over the rooftop edge she didn’t have much to lose.
The vampire did as promised and she’d change, but would fundamentally be the same, a hunter, a killer.
Get captured and taken to the king.
Same difference.
She was sure that Cal wouldn’t leave her there if only to keep them from torturing vital information out of her.
So… she shrugged with the one shoulder that could still move.
“Suit yourself… I think I’ll take you home. We’ll question you first,” the woman smirked.
Then the woman was gone.
The Slasher grabbed the edge and pulled herself up.
She looked into the sky.
The full moon hung low and she could see a flailing vampire hurtling through the air.
“Did you accomplish it?”
She greeted the voice with a knife.
Cal.
How did he always surprise her?
“Figured that was you,” Holly nodded toward the vampire. “You kill her?”
“She’ll survive the fall.”
“Shame, you should’ve killed her. She’s a threat.”
“Yeah, probably, but from the looks of it they’re also a threat to the king.”
“I got the Quest done. Lord Wildcock is dead. Obvious evidence planted.”
The chime rang in her ears but she dismissed the notification for later.
“And?”
“Killed everyone in the mansion according to your checklist. No enslaved permanently harmed, some terrified.”
She couldn’t read anything in the man’s face or body language.
He gave nothing away.
“Good job,” he said finally. “Return to base. We have some guests and they’ll be staying permanently, but it doesn’t affect you. There’s pizza, wings and fries. Just have it sent to your room like usual.”
“Enjoy your party,” she said flatly.
“Thank you,” he rose into the sky.
She winced at the pain in her chest as she continued her journey back to the mansion.
----------------------------------------
Bennett slowed when he saw the sign.
The scent of freshly shed blood came from somewhere inside the water park.
Someone had painted over G, the first letter of the park’s name.
He stepped into the shadow under the sign and emerged a short time later underneath a tall, corkscrewing water slide.
Bright light forced him to close his eyes for a moment to adjust back to normal vision.
The sounds of a distant fight rang loud in his supernatural ears.
When he blinked the light revealed itself to be from a single solitary torch burning in the middle of the wide pathway.
Orienting toward the sounds he stepped back into the shadows— to emerge to the sight of a vampire sucking the blood out of a man’s neck.
He was on the verge of dashing forward to save the man when the vampire released her hold. Licking her blood-covered lips with obvious relish, she gently lowered the man into a seated position. “Do take a moment to recover. We shan’t have you faint and crack your skull on the ground.”
The man glared up at her.
“Oh, don’t be like that,” she tsked, “You live, you level and perhaps one day you’ll turn the tables, eh? The hunter becomes the hunted. A classic trope,” she tittered.
“I’m fine,” the man spat as he stood up only to wobble unsteadily.
The vampire sighed and lifted the well-built man like he was a toddler, carrying him to a nearby bench. “Return to the mansion as you please, but do be careful tonight. Blood has been spilled in other places tonight. There are predators out there besides myself and they don’t hold the same fondness I have for you, my little pet.” She turned causing her thick mane of vivid red hair to cascade around her perfect, alabaster features. Hips swaying, she left the man on the bench as she made her way to the exit.
“One day…” the man muttered.
The vampire woman laugh sounded like tinkling wind chimes.
Bennett followed.
The man seemed okay and he needed to gather more information about the vampire woman for both himself and the overall plan.
He tamped down his excitement at discovering the first person that was like him.
The vampire woman moved leisurely, sure-footed on high heels.
“Do come out… I won’t bite,” she teased.
Bennett slowly stepped out of the shadows with open hands in front of him.
“Are you the one that’s been hunting in the city?” she looked up into his red eyes with her own.
“I haven’t hurt anyone,” he said after a moment’s struggle to find the words.
The vampire woman oozed presence in a way that made him want to do anything for her, anything she wanted.
Her posture, her voice, her perfect face, those eyes.
Anything for her.
“Yes, that rings of the truth to my ears. Hmm…” she tapped a manicured finger to her chin, “I do smell blood, as I’m sure you do as well.”
“That’s why am here. I tracked down your… hunt?” he searched for the right words. He had so many questions and he didn’t want to burn his chance before he could ask them. “That man wasn’t wearing a collar and yet he didn’t seem like a fully willing participant.”
“Because he isn’t,” she grinned, “but, that said, he benefits. He’d be in a collar otherwise. Isn’t it better to be a valued pet than a slave?”
“I say he should be neither. He’s in a cage even if it’s a better one.”
“Well… why don’t we debate this in a more comfortable setting? I invite you to my home,” she tilted her head lower and bit her lip as she kept her eyes on his.
Something made him want to jump at the opportunity.
The eagerness to fall into the vampire woman’s gaze was overwhelming.
He remembered what he was here for, what he had seen.
Breaking the gaze with immense effort he shook his head. “No.”
“Okay, be that way,” she pouted. “Still… you’re the first one of us that I’ve encountered and I shan’t let you go that easily. How about a little game? You ask one of those questions I can see struggling to leap from your tongue and then I’ll ask one of my own?”
“I agree to those terms.”
“So stiff,” she smiled, “relax! Like I said, I won’t bite… unless you ask…”
“Sorry, but… no. How are you, well… you.”
“I imagine the same way you became you. I luckily killed the gremlins on that first night and somehow managed to reach the closest spire and… well, here I am,” she ran a hand down her body.
He kept his eyes on hers.
That dress was entirely too revealing.
Much of her perfect alabaster skin was on display.
“My turn,” she said. “What clan do you belong to?”
“None…” he blinked.
Was that a thing?
He thought back to his character sheet in the spire.
There wasn’t any mention of a clan.
“Well, what disciplines do you possess?”
Again he pictured his sheet in his mind’s eye.
Nothing about ‘disciplines’.
“You’re abilities?” she rolled her inviting eyes.
“I’m quick, fast, strong. Tougher. Healing,” he ticked off the list on his long fingers, “sharp nails when I want, fangs. Um… I can do stuff with shadows, supernatural senses, command ani—” he stopped.
The corners of the vampire woman’s mouth turned upward slightly.
“Clearly, you’ve got some kind of supernatural charming ability. Please don’t use that. I might get offended.”
“I cannot help being me,” she shrugged bare, perfect shoulders. “Hmm… you’re the same as me with the only differences being in your disciplines. Mine are Presence, Celerity and Auspex, there a fair trade. It seems that we have one in common. Your other two sound like Obtenebration and Animalism. An odd combination no clan starts with.”
“I don’t know about clans or disciplines. I picked my abilities from a skill tree. It looks like a branching… well… tree.”
“The spires, our classes, everything is as we perceive it, which accounts for the differences,” she nodded. “Then that means I didn’t need to be locked into my discipline set. We’ve been trying and failing to learn more. Perhaps with your help…” she batted her long lashes.
“Lady, I don’t even know you’re name.”
“Ironic,” she tittered. “You may call me ‘Lady Velvet’. And you?”
“It’s ‘Bennett’.”
“Well then… Bennett… I must insist on hosting you at my home. The others would love to meet you and we can have a mutually beneficial chat about our classes. As far as I know, we are the only four vampires in existence and we simply must stick together. Prove your worth and an invitation into our coterie may be yours.”
“Thanks for invite, but I don’t know anything about half the terms you’re using. And I’m going to stop talking because I’m finding it hard to concentrate and keep my mouth shut, which, I’m sure, you know exactly why.”
Bennett stepped back into the shadow of a large tree.
“Next time then!” Lady Velvet watched him leave with the intensity of a tiger staring at a newborn fawn.