The Stillness

[Wendigo]

The Death of Wendell Groom, Part One
Date Unrecorded

There were hiccups in virtually every plan. As he rode the elevator up to the top office, Wendell considered this latest one: his “division” of Groom Industries was going to be rolled into an existing division. He didn’t mind being “fired” and having to start from scratch, but there was too great a paper trail there… starting from scratch wouldn’t be an option. Playing in human commerce had always been a gamble, but that didn’t mean Wendell was actually willing to lose.

Sometimes the stakes are too high. Sometimes when the dealer shows Blackjack, you blackjack the dealer. Even if the dealer is technically your brother. Even if your blackjack is a silenced 10mm pistol.

He was aware of another presence in the elevator now: the Rhyming Man had slipped in somewhere between floors. The piercing eyes and grinning mask criticized him.

“Answers are close, now you cannot hide.
It starts with your attempted fratricide.”

“Not an ‘attempt,” Wendell corrected. They rode upward in silence for some time before he gave voice to something that had been on his mind for a time. “Why go out of your way just to rhyme with ‘fratricide’?”

“It’s you who speak in verse instead:
I’m just the voice inside your head.”

“Trying to dissuade myself?” Wendell asked. The Wraith seemed to shrug in response. Wendell checked the gun for the third time on this elevator ride. “Bad for Vincent I’m not more persuasive.” He leveled his best poker face at the Wraith.

”You think you know Vincent? Quite bizarre.
You don’t even know who you are.”

“Don’t need to know a man to kill him.”

”But this one’s different: he’ll offer a clue.
You don’t know him… but he knows you.”

The Wraith’s words hung ominously as the elevator slowed to a crawl. He moved to the inside of the elevator door: although he had disabled the recordings in the building, he still wanted to go unseen. Everything would be risked if he wasn’t. The doors opened to an empty security station on an empty floor. He scanned each corner as he came to it… down the passageways of the executive level of Groom Tower. He didn’t ever remember actually having come here before he was turned, but he navigated the halls with such familiarity that he was certain that he had. Pushing open the double-doors to the executive office, he faced a lone figure at the desk.

Vincent Groom looked up. There was a long pause as the man contemplated calling security. Morbid curiosity kept Wendell’s gun hidden: he wanted to know if anyone from his human days would recognize him. Vincent didn’t reach for the silent alarm (which Wendell had also disabled), so there was at least some recognition there.

Vincent’s eyes widened suddenly. “########?” he asked. Wendell squinted at the unusual sound: Vincent’s voice seemed to be muffled -- as though he were underwater. “########?” he repeated. “By God! You are alive!” Vincent stood and began to come around the desk.

Wendell had planned to draw the gun at this point and end it, but the sound Vincent made was unusual. “What’s that noise you’re making?” he growled.

Vincent startled visibly and stopped his approach at the inhumanness of Wendell’s voice. “You sound like hell.” He paused. “Are you taller? By God, ########... what happened to you?”

“What is that word?” Wendell demanded. His volume increased uncharacteristically.

“########?” Vincent asked. He was not trying to identify the word, but he had stumbled on it accidently. When Wendell nodded, Vincent looked especially confused. “#######...?” Another nod. “You- Your name? I…” Vincent stepped back as if struck and sat on the edge of the desk, visibly shaken.

“My name is Wendell Groom,” he replied, reaching for the gun.

“Jesus Christ, #######,” Vincent said. “You forswore that name when we were kids. Your dad went by ‘Wendell’… you hated that name. The last time someone called you ‘Wendell’, you were seventeen years old, and you actually attacked him.” Vincent’s head turned. “Don’t you remember?”

Wendell didn’t. He didn’t remember anyone calling him anything but Wendell. And it didn’t explain why he couldn’t hear the word.

“By God,” Vincent said. “I know you told me… but I didn’t think it would be this bad…”

Wendell squinted. “Told you what…?” he paused, realizing that Vincent was talking past him to someone behind him. He spun and pointed the weapon intended for Vincent, but found only his own Wraith in the elevator.

The Rhyming Man remained motionless for a moment, and then approached.

”It’s worse than I told you… it’s worse than you see…
He does not know you, and he does not know me.”

Wendell’s understanding of reality tilted, threatening to let him slide into the abyss of madness. His head snapped back towards Vincent. “You can see it?” he asked Vincent, while using the gun to gesture at the Wraith. “That’s a Wraith!”

“Yes, #######,” Vincent said. “Uncle Dee? We’ve both seen him since we were kids.”

Wendell’s head turned back towards the Rhyming Man, and he looked at the Wraith squarely for the first time in a long while.

Wendell wasn't sure that Dee was his father's brother... Dee might just be another employee the way his father ignored him.

Dee's words always had a kind of poetry to them, a mystery wrapped in a thick Italian accent; like the man himself wrapped in his long black coat. He was two parts allusion and three parts illusion.

He understood that Necromancers sometimes saw these spirits, but he expected them to be... readily distinguishable. This one wasn't; it looked human. How long had he been seeing spirits and not realized it?

Wendell was unsure how Uncle Dee had managed to cross the room while avoiding all that crunchy glass. The man was a ghost.

“Not… No…” Wendell stammered, lowering the gun. “That’s not possible.” Confusion. Emptiness. Maybe even fear? None of it made sense.

Vincent apparently took the dropped gun as a sign to approach. “#######...” he started. “We can fix this. Dee and I… we can help.”

“Back!” Wendell barked, raising the gun again. Vincent appeared undeterred, and took another step forward. Wendell hesitated, and leapt over the table through the heavy glass window of the office. He heard the dismayed shout behind him, but he only fell several meters before the tails of his long coat melted into his arms and became wings.

Being the Vulture had a way of changing his perspective, perspective was merely a step: he needed answers. He knew of only one place to start his search… where everything else had started…

The Quarantine Zone.

[Wendigo]

November 23th, 2013

CROW IS DEAD

It wasn't the first time Groom Center had been vandalized: security caught a dozen humans each week out along the riverside with spray paint. The graffiti generally consisted of gang signs, but conspiratorial statements about Groom Industries were not uncommon either. A statement about the Crow, however, might have been personal. Maybe it was coincidental, or maybe it was an anarchist who simply didn't know Wendell well enough to understand that such attacks would never get under his skin.

This did, however, give Wendell pause to consider the failures of late.

He always had to hold himself accountable first. He had done everything in his power, but it hadn't been enough. Opening Fade Windows, linking security hubs to the CrowNet, even using his powers to enhance the Crow's strength. The latter he had done this until he was completely spent; then purchased tools to summon spirits, summoned those spirits, and completely drained himself again... and then offered to summon spirits for anyone who wanted to follow suit for free. No one took him up on his offer. Others simply lacked his resolve.

Tytonidae had failed as well, of course. By all reports, they were coming apart at the seams. For awhile after the Crow fell, the Owls were charging into the night and killing Masquerade violators in droves, but this was not a "better late than never" case. They must have realized this lately -- felt the weight of their utter failure -- because they were holed up in their tree. They didn't even pretend to hunt violators anymore. It seemed as though they were waiting for the end. It would come soon enough: when the army moved out from their encampment in the Mausoleum, he had little doubt that they would strike the Eyrie first. The tree was secluded from the rest of the city and it was filled with vampires that the traitors were anxious to be rid of.

More than all this, however, he blamed the Crow; the Masquerade's absent god. Wendell had never worshiped the Crow, but he still experienced a logical conflict not unlike disappointment. Namely, Crow had every opportunity to turn this around. For one, removing bounties when individuals were crippled had allowed violators to continue their behaviors if they were willing to take a black eye from their friends. The Crow had effectively destroyed its own bounty system with that single move. Refusing to speak on the CrowNet had only raised suspicions that the ravings of Eskoph were true. The Wraith had gone from static to suicidal... and he wouldn't lose any sleep over a Crow that let itself be defeated.

Now, many believed Crow was a Fae, leading vampires to their doom. They likely believed this more from cognitive dissonance than fact: chiefly because there WERE no facts. Instead of accepting that their actions were destructive, they attacked the enforcer as unjust. Typical mewling human behavior. Inwardly, however, Wendell hoped that they were right. If Crow was a Fae, then just maybe the current turmoil would too be justified. If Eskoph, however, proved the deceiver Wendell believed him to be, then Harper Rock might have been lost for nothing.

Wendell left the graffiti on the wall. Cleaning up the graffiti wouldn't change the fact that Crow was dead, and the rest of them were likely to follow.

The time for cleaning up appearances was over, and now Wendell had even more to do than ever before.

[Wendigo]

The Death of Wendell Groom, Part Two
Date Unrecorded

Wendell was not accustomed to loitering… to lingering… he was always in action. He had greater stamina than any vampire he knew in this regard. When his body literally could not walk another step, he would sit wherever he was, pull out the webphone, and work. He worked at business, he worked at trading on the Moonlight Auction Warehouse, he worked at changing minds on the CrowNet, and talking with contacts, discussing hunts. When he was not physically in motion, he was planning to be in motion, or setting the stage for motion. When he could scheme no further, walk no further, or talk no further… he lapsed into the Stillness. All of this work had the fortunate side effect of withholding the Stillness for long periods of time; though part of him wondered if avoiding the Stillness wasn’t the ultimate goal, rather than the side effect.

For Wendell to just stand on the corner in the Quarantine Zone and think was basically a first. He spent so much time in the present and future that he hadn’t bothered to explore the past: he had been turned on November 8th, 2011. He remembered this event clearly… escaping into the night. And then… nothing. There were flashes of memory, but nothing clear until January 5th of 2012: a 58 day gap. He had sometimes mused, based on the violence he did remember, what terror he had wrought in that time. How he had avoided notice enough to stay out of the sights of Hunters… he did not know. Still, it had never seemed important enough to investigate… until now.

Wendell walked from the corner outside the Supermarket where he had been turned, and north towards the Multiplex, hands in his pockets. He ignored the ongoing carnage around him, the piles of bodies, the gunfire… his mind was implicitly fixated on the Multiplex. He wasn’t certain why he drifted this way, but he had often found himself aimlessly walking the streets in his human days. He decided to let his wandering feet take their course, despite the subtle pounding in his head that told him his time was spent better elsewhere.

Most of the Multiplex was in ruin: light trickled in from the bullet holes that pierced every wall, every ceiling, every movie poster from the Spring of 2011. He walked the length of the corridor and turned right into a theater. Virtually every chair had been destroyed the perpetual war of this building. Even now and then, a zombie sauntered through the room: lifeless eyes searching for an easy target. He ripped a chair out of the floor and threw it with sufficient force to dismember the undead thing.

He dropped into the adjacent chair, which groaned in protest under his ultra-dense structure. Looking around, he pondered how zombies even found their way in. Based on the piles of corpses in the room, a fair few had done so, and met their end for it. Perhaps these had just been movie-goers: maybe they were here when Cobb ripped open the Veil… when the dead began to rise? He remembered, as a human, that the walls had gone up so fast in the center of the city that he didn’t have time to go back to the Fire Department to collect his things.

Or did he?

He’d revisited the locker in the Fire Department the night he met Chematt and found it empty. Certainly everything valuable would have been stolen from it, but the pictures? The magnets? Only he would have been so thorough as to take junk, right? Had he come back in the 58 day gap? If so, where were those items? He could almost imagine himself scooping the things into a box, though he couldn’t imagine a purpose. Was it a real memory, or was it imagined? His head actually hurt… begged him not to consider the matter further. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt such salient pain.

He stood, pacing the aisles where he could, and kicking corpses beneath the seats where the going was narrow. This, too, felt familiar… though he seldom any prolonged period in the Multiplex. He stooped to check some of the bodies. Cause of death: marks left on the ulna indicate subject was probably bitten; wounds seem to be from self-defense. Likely deep enough to cause subject to bleed to death. Multiple post-mortem lacerations in torso suggest subject rose as zombie, was put down by an individual with a narrow blade and a sloppy swing. He drew similar conclusions about several others. Many more the initial cause of death was unknown, but the state of decay was so much greater that he supposed these individuals were dead long before the Veil tore. He never knew how this knowledge came to him… only that it was accurate. Generally, he was calm in response to these thoughts of uncertain origin, but they unnerved him after the events of the last few hours… even if he’d regained much of his composure since then.

The calm, however, was short-lived. In the far corner, beneath the emergency exit, a corpse caught his attention: propped up against the wall into a seated position. No human body would fall like that, nor could death claim to clutch a man in such a way, ergo the body must have been moved shortly before or immediately after its death. He knelt down to examine the figure: rotted to the bone at virtually all points, most of its possessions in tatters. He was about to abandon it when he glimpsed a ring on the finger. Despite the instinct to snap the finger for a closer look, he removed the ring gently.

It was a fine gold ring, with an onyx inlay. Etched carefully into the black stone was an image. It would have been impossible to make out had Wendell not already known what it was. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out an identical ring: one of the few possessions he still had from his human life.

”Entwined fates and bloods and memories past,
now we come to the gravest answers at last.”

“You…” Wendell he said hollowly, without turning his head. Perhaps it would be worth exploring this supposed reality. “Dee… who is this?”

The Rhyming Man… his uncle… his imaginary friend… his Wraith… whatever he was moved in close, kneeling down next to the vampire.

”He is questions, and answers, both long overdue
from the only one who can offer them:
you.

[Wendigo]

September 14th, 2013

A week had passed since Maxwell Abbott died at the hands of a party of vampires led by Wendell. Normally, he would be watching the morgue for the familiar figure to emerge: vampires generally run straight to safe ground after they returned without considering the consequences, and Wendell would use that information to root out Abbott all the faster if he appeared on the list again. He still didn't know what Abbott had done to earn the largest bounty he had ever seen, and normally this would bother him, but he had another matter to attend to.

Abbott, at first, seemed to have been found by some mixture of instinct or dumb luck. One minute the trio was rummaging through a warehouse with a cold trail, and then Wendell found himself with the information. Not a vague sense or perception, but specific knowledge and images of the man's whereabouts. He guessed first that his Wraith was to blame, but the Wraith had been with him; furthermore, it probably wouldn't miss a chance to attempt to annoy him with a terrible rhyme. Perhaps, Wendell considered, it was a message from the Crow. Crow had placed an inordinate amount of money on Abbott's head... maybe Crow was actually taking the initiative to interfere? If Crow was a powerful telepath, perhaps such things were possible.

It was also possible that Wendell was tapping into some latent Telepath power. When he first ventured toward the arts of Necromancy, he had started to be able to vaguely sense blood. This, however, was much more specific and precise.

"From bloodline, fortune, focus, wrath...
not every power stems from one's path."

Wendell turned towards the Rhyming Man. "Other powers?" he asked. "Exp--" he started again, but the Wraith was ahead of him.

"'Explain,' he says. How typical:
he depreciates the inexplicable."

"You're saying there's no answer?" Wendell asked. "Then why beg the question?"

"Too many answers, not enough questions.
You're prisoner to your erroneous impressions."

This wasn't the first time the Rhyming Man had accused him of not asking the right questions. He supposed that the Wraith expected him to ask for the question, or to ask any question at all, so he attempted to preempt the know-it-all with, "Well, I don't suppose you'll be telling me."

"So close to truth, you always back down,
mayhaps you'll find truth the long way around."

As the Wraith drifted away, Wendell was given pause. There were so many questions about his existence that he never really pursued: the Stillness, the lapses in his memory, the inconsistencies in his memory, the impossible events, and the mysterious knowledge. He had no real means to investigate them after all, and he discussed these things with no one. He had worked hard to create an organized and prosperous existence, and part of that was projecting that image. However, if one could really step back and see the big picture, his life was a portrait of madness. Of chaos. The illusion was probably perfect to an outsider, but inwardly he felt hollow. Crumbling.

All these inconsistencies... he didn't even acknowledge them; always throwing himself back to work instead. There was no time for questions without answers. He always found himself doing something else. He suppsoed that this was precisely what the Wraith had been accusing him of. Being as he was, he told himself that the illusion was for business rather than pride... that he had no sense of pride to fear losing.

But then why was he so afraid to ask these questions?

[Wendigo]

The Death of Wendell Groom, Part Three
Date Unrecorded

It seemed now that there were several Wendells in the room, based on the overlapping arguments and accusations echoing inside his head. He locked his fingers behind his head, exasperated, and willing them into silence. Too many questions. No good place to start.

“How can this be me?” he asked finally.

”Is a man his face or is a man his mind?
One of the two did you leave here behind.

"Then..." he paused for three full minutes while the Wraith waited patiently. "...who am I?" The Wraith "jumped" to his feet, if such a thing were possible for a Wraith, apparently pleased.

"Yes yes! So close! And now getting clearer!
Now how do you answer without use of a mirror?"

Mirrors wouldn't work on vampires, but cameras did. Certainly there were cameras all over his buildings, but he almost exclusively watched the live feeds when the sensor alarm pinged: there had never been a reason to watch the screen while he was standing under a camera. Wendell paused for a long time, and then reached for his phone. Pointing the phone's screen away from him, he pressed the button on the side. The camera produced a familiar shutter sound which he’d never found a way to disable. He turned the phone over in his hand.

The image on the screen seemed fuzzy, but he knew it wasn't. He had experienced this phenomenon before, generally when looking at business records. It felt as though his eyes were straining, and that his vision wouldn't focus. He generally wrote it off to fatigue, but this time he was more determined. Slowly, the horrible image came into view.

His grandfather had correctly foreshadowed his future: making the weapon was easy and looking at himself in the mirror was impossible.
Perhaps if he could have seen what he was becoming, his path would have been different.

He stared back at the face on the screen: both familiar and unfamiliar. His hand shook in very human fashion, and the phone clattered to the ground. “Dee...” he started weakly, unsure of how to phrase the question. “Why am I in my son’s body?”

”Good question. The question. Now asked and done.
The answer is: Wendell Groom Jr. never had a son.
Into Gambondale thrice... once missing, twice died,
but once in-between when they did both coincide.

A Quarantine against what? He had heard only fantastic rumors... and they wouldn't let him even see the body. For all he knew, the coffin being lowered into the ground was empty.

“I went in after my son died,” he said resolutely. “I definitely had a son.”

Dee glared back at him. The Wraith apparently was not keen on being called a liar. After a hard silence, he started up again:

”Do you have a son, or does a son have you?
Water flows downhill from only one point of view.”

Wendell felt fury building in the back of his skull. “You –“ he started accusingly, but then he paused, flashing back to the memory of meeting the Guide Revyia:

"Blood is blood," the Wraith Guide had said. "Spilling it is controlling it, but one does not necessitate the other. Across generations and ages it flows, and it is all the same."

Wendell shifted, sitting against the wall next to the corpse. He looked at it, staring at the ring it -- he -- wore. His family crest... or was it? “Dee, you were a vampire once,” he started, unnecessarily prefacing the question he didn't want to ask. The Wraith nodded in return. “If I drink a man dry… especially if I were low on my own blood... could I... become that man?”

”Drink a man dry? You’ve seldom done such a deed.
Even quite low, a whole man’s more than you’d need.”

“But I think... I know... that I would drain a man to turn him,” he said. “And, I might have thought... at least back then... that I could turn a man to...” he paused, his voice lowered to a mere whisper of its normal growl. “...to save him.”

The Rhyming Man appeared to shift back down to the floor, as if to get more comfortable. It was another unusual behavior for his Wraith, and it made its interest quite apparent. The Wraith gestured for him to continue.

“And maybe if a vampire could... absorb memories through blood?” He looked to Dee for unnecessary confirmation. Holy ****... of course he could! Saying it aloud made it seem so obvious. For years he’d been picking up inexplicable knowledge... all the medical knowledge, the Latin, the weaponsmithing, the location of Abbott... where else would it be coming from? He had been draining people’s memories through their blood since Night One! “And if I were low on my own blood... and then I drained all of someone else's blood... then...” His mind stopped. He felt suspended in uncertainty.

Seldom had he hesitated to be anything other than what he was, but now he felt conflict. It was as though he were really two people: the child in the limousine and the hardened father who sat across from him.

“...then I would become that person.”

”Quite so! And bravo! --“ the Wraith began.

Wendell didn’t hear the rest. He felt ill. It was though he had been poisoned. Possessed. Violated. Even now, he felt the scream that brought him out of the original blood haze building into his throat as his skull threatened to split from within. But with the pain came clarity. Years of inconsistencies were falling into place... as if he suddenly realized that he had been looking at the backs of half the pieces of the puzzle he had been trying to construct.

He had been turned by Ariadne, while he was cornered in the Quarantine Zone... not there to avenge his son. No... he actually was his son. The one who had been posted to the Quarantine Zone. Ariadne found him fighting for his life, and turned him into a vampire. And his father, the man he had spent the last three years believing he was, couldn’t accept that his legacy ended... went into the Quarantine Zone... was mortally wounded... and was found by his now-vampire son. Who drained him dry. Who tried to turn him to save him from his injuries. And in so doing, became him. Remembered an entirely different origin... rewrote his very memories... his identity...

He wondered what would be left of him if he became his father. Was carrying his father's legacy even possible, or would the attempt simply destroy him? He didn't know it yet, but the answer to both questions was "yes".

And then he remembered the night the Rhyming Man was revealed to be his Wraith. Dee’s words had been:

"In your dreams alone have I played ghost,
but I'm not the only one you host."

“Damn you,” Wendell hissed, feeling genuine rage for the first time in years. “You’ve known all along. You and Vincent! Watching me stumble around thinking I was someone else!” The Wraith clearly began to protest, but Wendell waved him off. He wasn’t really angry with Vincent or Dee: he knew that he would have never believed any of this without coming to it on his own. He was really angry, he realized, with his father... himself? The man so obsessed with immortality, that he had framed it above the fireplace in Groom Manor: non omnis moriar. Not all of me will die.

It was deliberate. He knew this undoubtedly. His father’s memories had – in the missing 58 days – crept into his consciousness and systematically destroyed his son’s – no, his -- mind. He had never thought the boy worthy of him, so he stole his son’s body: became him. To continue his legacy. It was the single greatest crime the old ******** had ever committed against his son.

"No," his father's -- his -- voice echoed. He couldn't tell if the voice was in his mind, or if he was speaking involuntarily.

"Not the great crime that was committed. Is."

[Wendigo]

December 20th, 1976
Condition: Human (age 16)

Wendell leaned further back in the chair until it was on two legs. He'd thrown the baseball too high, and when he reached to catch it, he toppled. Unfortunately, his feet swung up under the table, his ankles hooked onto the crossbar of the folding leg, and he brought the whole table down with him.

Silence.

Even the piano player at the north end of the floor lapsed briefly before resuming the Christmas music. Wendell untangled his legs from the fallen table, pushed a plate of half-eaten cheesecake off his chest (it landed cake down on the carpet), and sprang to his feet. "Got it!" he exclaimed with the sort of false merriment he'd learned to project through practice. He made a point to straighten his distinctly messy suit coat, and pretend to care that his shirt was untucked beneath it. No one would be fooled: it had been untucked for hours.

The various "elites" who had gathered for the Groom Company party were not amused; least of all the man who grabbed his arm from behind.

Pushed through the glass double doors toward the riverwalk, the man turned him forcefully into the wall. There was a brief pause, and then the man gave him another shove before letting go. "You ridiculous ***," the gruff voice chastised him. "You insignificant, worthless piece of ****!"

Wendell Jr. grinned, but had suppressed it by the time he'd turned to face his father. The older man loomed inches from his son's face; blue eyes as hard and cold as the frosted concrete of the building at his back trying to stare him into submission. His hot, cigar-foul breath was visible in the Canadian winter, and it seemed to roll and puff out everywhere. The old man's fists were pressed into the side of the building near his son's shoulders; pinning him in. Wendell Sr.'s imposing figure and strength was to be admired for a man his age. Compared to him, his son was scrawny at best: the boy just never built muscle.

"Heard it before," Wendell Jr. feigning nonchalance, ducking under the older man's arm. "Sorry to ruin your party." His father swiftly grabbed the back collar of his suit and pulled -- lifted really. The teen heard the seams in the fabric popping as almost all of his weight hung by the cloth under his arms. The jacket dug into his sides uncomfortably.

"This isn't about me, boy!" his father hissed, throwing him forward onto the stone walkway. "Those people in there... you'll need their support to run this company one day." He pointed for punctuation. "Their innovation. Their business. Their money. And they're not going to buy **** from an insufferable, undisciplined little piss like you."

"Well, maybe I don't want to sell guns, dad," the boy retorted. His hands stung from the road-rash of being tossed, he turned to sit on the ground and face the man. "Maybe you can give the company to someone who doesn't care about murder... or otherwise gives a rat's *** about business. Find someone like you."

"Oh, I would... but those people aren't me, my son, or my legacy..." Wendell Sr. said.

"Well, I'M NOT ANY OF THOSE!" Wendell Jr. yelled, leaping to his feet.

"And that's a ******* pity," Wendell Sr. said matter-of-factly, straightening his posture. "You'd be lucky to be half the man I am."

"Bull-*******-crap," the younger Groom retorted. "What did the last person who tried to be you get, besides a chest full of --"

Wendell Sr. cuffed his son, knocking him back to the ground. "Don't you dare disrespect your older brother, boy. He was twice the man you might ever be." He paused hard. "What are you even doing with your life?"

Blood in his mouth. His father didn't generally bother with the physical abuse unless he was losing the argument. It was a familiar taste associated with the only sort of twisted form of respect he ever got from the old man: he was learning to enjoy the taste of it. "Dee said --"

"Take some goddamn responsibility for yourself!" Wendell Sr. roared. "Grow the **** up!" His father stepped back as if he might kick the boy, and Wendell flinched. The kick never came. Perhaps his father felt that his son had been sufficiently cowed, but Wendell Jr. would decide later that his father was probably more concerned that one of his precious party guests might see. "Get the **** out of here," he said finally, his tone lowered. "Go home. Or drown in the ******* river for all I care." He gestured to the nearby water. "I've got a company to run." He straightened his jacket and walked back inside.

Wendell Jr. sat for a long time, observing Groom Tower. He hated that building, that company, even more than he hated his father. As he sat shivering, equal parts rage and cold, a plan began to take root in his mind. He hadn't understood what Dee had been telling him about "taking on his father," but now he thought he did.

If Wendell Sr. only cared about the company... his legacy... then that's what needed to be taken from him.

[Wendigo]

The Death of Wendell Groom: Part Four
Date Unrecorded

The vampire who sat across from Vincent wasn’t sure if he was Wendell Groom Jr. or Sr. He wasn’t even sure how he could make that determination... his memories were all jumbled together. It was impossible to tell where one man ended and the other began. Thank whatever fortune he had that he had mostly bled Day instead of drinking him: it was already too crowded in his head.

His normally rigid posture was slouched, as if defeated. Vincent sat, staring in silence. When Wendell had returned for answers, Vincent tried to offer comfort and support, but Wendell waved him off. Now Vincent patiently waited; the problem was, Wendell only wanted answers, but he wasn’t sure which questions to ask. Which questions would he ask if he were Groom Jr. versus Groom Sr.? A conundrum to be certain. The part of his mind that was Groom Sr. probably wouldn’t ask questions... it seemed to hold most of the cards. As ruthless a man as their father had been, it was reasonable to assume that...

Wait.

“Who are we?” Wendell – whichever Wendell – asked. He gestured between them. “Before... when we were talking about names... you said my father went by Wendell, not our father.”

“########,” he started, making the noise Wendell couldn’t recognize. “Wendell was my brother. Half-brother, at least. Much older than I… in fact, I’m actually a bit younger than you.” Vincent absently rubbed his nearly-bald head. “Thaddeus was, well, you know how they get.” Wendell wasn’t sure what ‘they’ referred to, but Vincent kept speaking. “My dad barely paid me any mind, and Wendell – your dad – he wasn’t much of a brother. I can see where you’d make the mistake: I always fit in better as your brother than Wendell’s. It was always you, me, and T.J.”

Wendell winced inwardly at the name of the son he reportedly never had. T.J. – Thaddeus James after his... Christ, he couldn’t keep track of the relationships. What Vincent said made sense though: the memory of the funeral belonged to father, and the unopened – empty – coffin belonged to the son… him. He remembered T.J., his not-son, but for all his straining, he couldn’t put a name with the coffin. He hadn’t considered it much, and chalked not ruminating on his mortal life to detachment. “T.J. was my brother then?” Wendell asked. “Not my son?”

Vincent blinked, perhaps beginning to realize the full extent of the damage. After the immediate shock, he rummaged on his computer and turned the monitor around. It was a picture of the Groom men at some formal event based on the tuxedos, and at least twenty years ago by Vincent’s hairline. On the far right, himself – no, Wendell Sr. – armed crossed, looking dour. On the left with their arms around each other’s shoulders, T.J., Wendell Jr., and Vincent – clearly all about the same age, and all smiling. Part of his brain tried instinctively to smile, but the facial muscles didn’t obey. Wendell leaned back in the chair. “I don’t remember that,” he said.

Vincent looked stunned. “You don’t remember?” he asked as calmly as he could manage. He looked past Wendell, and Wendell followed his gaze, to Dee standing in the corner. Dee simply shook his head as if sad.

“So, I didn’t have any sons...” Wendell mused.

“No...” Vincent began, frowning with apparent disappointment. “No, you didn’t.”

Wendell sensed more... perhaps a reference to Vincent’s sons to explain the disappointment, but he felt obliged to stick to important matters. It was a full minute before Wendell spoke again. “So, we did this to the company?” he asked, gesturing about. “We don’t make weapons anymore?”

Vincent nodded. “Right. Wendell didn’t like it, but we basically pulled the Board out from under him. It never sat well with us – even T.J. – what we did; where the money came from. After T.J...” Vincent paused. “You and I resolved to do something to heal the family legacy.”

“Biomedical,” Wendell said. “We became healers.”

“Well, you did,” Vincent started off-handedly, and then he paused waiting for confirmation that Wendell didn’t provide. “Dear Lord, #######. You remember being a soldier, don’t you? A failed drill sergeant turned firefighter?”

Wendell could only nod. At least Vincent was catching on.

Vincent left the office and returned a few minutes later with a box. “When you sent the request to storage, you didn’t claim these,” he said, setting down a box clearly full of frames. Wendell hadn’t remembered leaving that box behind, but what use would he have for a wall full of pictures anyway? He only needed enough to blend in.

“You knew I sent for my things?” Wendell asked.

“You never sent for your effects, #######,” Vincent corrected. “You sent for your dad’s. He barely maintained an office here after we took over. I had your office kept just the way it was, in the hopes Dee would bring you back.”

“Sounds like you’ve been better informed than I have,” Wendell said, a touch bitter.

“Dee has kept me pretty well apprised,” Vincent admitted. Wendell turned to look at the Wraith, who didn’t respond. “He said that you were confused, and that you needed time. I tried to see you once or twice, but he always led you somewhere I wasn’t... I think I understand why now.” Vincent paused. “He told me about the Wabash persona... #######, tell me you didn’t...”

In Wendell’s mind, it was still no different than picking out a cow and then wearing its skin afterward. Wendell was not capable of – nor compelled to – spare his brother’s feelings over the human he had scouted, stalked, murdered, buried in the words, and assumed the identity of. He had, however, mostly relearned which topics were and were not appropriate in polite company, so he began flipping through the box Vincent had provided rather than answer.

Most of the items here were of little interest: pictures of him with various people he didn’t recognize. He tossed these aside haphazardly. Some, however, were not attached to a memory, but did help to explain things: a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Harper Rock helped to explain his instinctive memory of the place. It was surprising to see his name – “Wendell G. Groom Jr.” on a degree when he had long thought of himself as a high school dropout, but he supposed that it had been sometime since the army had actually taken dropouts. Several academic papers followed before Wendell slid one out of the box to look at it more closely. After several moments of inspection, Wendell turned it to face Vincent.

Vincent had slumped down in the chair, hand partly over his eyes, apparently distraught by the news that his brother – though technically nephew – was a murderer. Inwardly, Wendell began to wonder if Vincent suspected, or had been told, the scale of Wendell’s reach. Vincent glanced up. “Yes,” he replied simply. “That’s yours too. Took the oath to do no harm and everything.” Vincent seemed a bit bitter about the last part.

Wendell’s eyes widened slightly as he looked at the framed Medical Doctorate in his hands. The medical knowledge, the anatomy, even the ability to inflict extraordinary pain... it was explained by the document in his hands. In the center of the document, just between the words “Wendell” and “Groom Jr.” there was a long smudge. A middle name? Another something part of him didn’t want to see. Tilting the document to get a better look, the glass covering glinted, catching an image that – for just a moment – seemed to be his own, impossible reflection.

And Wendell involuntarily lapsed into the Stillness for the last time.

[Wendigo]

April 17th, 2013

Most hackers a relatively simple-minded breed when it came down to it. Spend enough time circumventing the law, and you started to see yourself as being above it. Succeed long enough, and you started having delusions of grandeur. Not unlike any other species of criminal, really... just more specialized. Once they had their cause in mind, it didn't matter who they inconvenienced or hurt to accomplish their goals.

He'd once fired an IT specialist for allowing the system to be hacked, and the young man killed himself later that week. Some anonymous hacker had ruined a fellow human being just to snoop in the Groom Industries database, steal a few hundred dollars' worth of files, and paint propaganda on the home page. That Wendell could be to blame was beyond him: in his mind, the true sociopaths were the hackers.

This hacker had been spreading Wendell's identity around... putting his name and picture in police databases and various emails. Unfortunately for the hacker, Wendell knew better hackers. Rather than let them take care of the situation, however, he went to defuse this one himself. He had the sense this hacker wanted to be found.

His contacts pointed him to an apartment not unlike the hundreds of others that dotted the town. Confronted, the hacker took a smug tact: reporting that he had "expected" Wendell, and that Wendell would pay him $250,000 to stop. Wendell simply drew a gun.

The hacker clicked his tongue. "Don't you know how a hostage situation works?" he demanded. "If I don't enter the correct algorithm every day, your picture goes GLOBAL. Put away your gun now."

Audacious for certain, but Wendell could also smell fear. He kept the gun leveled. "No," he said simply. "Erase everything you have. Then pray I don't kill you anyway." For good measure, he allowed the weight of his Allurist training to seep into his words.

The hacker blinked. He was probably accustomed to blackmailing businessmen... maybe even politicians. People with the resources or the fear to cave at this point. This was likely the hacker's first attempt at a vampire. "You ***!" he stammered, pointing at the screen. "Hostage!"

Wendell's eyes flitted to the monitor behind him. "Already killed your hostage," he growled, setting up the bluff. "Thought you only cut off a finger, but now this identity is damaged goods."

"This identity?"

"Think I'm Wendell Groom?" he asked. "I'm the thing that ate Wendell Groom." He took a step closer. "If my identity is damaged... I'll need new identity. New face. Maybe..." he shifted his form to match the hacker's. "...your face?"

The hacker paled. Faced with a supernatural creature wearing his face and pointing a gun at him, he clearly realized he was out of his depth. "I --"

Wendell contemplated giving him a lecture on evolution: not survival of the fittest organism, as most suspected, but the survival of the fittest genes. How it didn't really matter if the individual lived or died, because the genetic material was all that was important. He wasn't sure where this momentary compulsion came from -- he didn't generally waste words on his enemies -- and he wasn't even sure the information was accurate. After just a momentarily lapse, he produced the only words that were necessary: "Fix it," he demanded.

From that point on, the evening progressed as planned. The hacker deleted Wendell's files from several networks and computers, and the identities of several other vampires for good measure. Wendell couldn't follow everything that was going on, but it seemed files were being deleted. Any progress was a step in the right direction.

Wendell left the hacker's unconscious body strewn across the keyboard. Walking out, Wendell carried the CPU under one arm and a pocket full of jump drives. He nudged the door shut behind him, the smell of natural gas already filling his nostrils, and walked back down to his truck. From the parking lot, he heard the fire alarm and saw the flickering flames. He stopped briefly to watch.

Okay, maybe there was room to call them both sociopaths. Wendell was just better at it.

[Wendigo]

The Death of Wendell Groom: Part Five
Date Unrecorded

The Vampire found himself in a dark, familiar space. Even before he was able to see it, he knew that it was not a physical space, but an inky black expanse of spirit; much like the Shadow Realm was in parts. Distantly, as if he were being roused from sleep, he could hear two men arguing: a middle-aged man and an older one. He shifted and found his body had been wrapped in some kind of chain. The noise of clinking metal apparently drew the attention of the others, who stopped.

"Look who's awake," the older man remarked flatly. It was a condescending tone that the Vampire found familiar. He opened his eyes to see the figure of his mortal father... or was it himself? He was having a hard time remembering. Wendell Senior... whichever one that was. "Someone almost slipped his leash," the old man chided.

"Leave him, dad," the younger man said. Wendell turned his head to see the man he had previously thought was his son. He couldn't recall this one's name, but he recalled that this is the face he had recently discovered he had been wearing. The second man had the quiet, confident demeanor of a medical professional. He wasn't quite as old as the father: middle aged. To the vampire, however, the second man was still behaving like a subservient child in the face of the clearly superior will of his father.

"Look at my boy, vampire," Wendell Sr. said, "You're a monster, and yet he defends you as though you weren't some animal." Wendell the Vampire snarled at him instinctively, and Wendell Sr. laughed. "That's all you are, isn't it?" he asked patronizingly. "All you were when you Turned was a mindless killing machine."

"I had it under control," the other man interrupted. "Until you wrestled me out."

"Good thing I did too," Wendell Sr. said. "Look at this thing. How long do you think you could have controlled it? This isn't a human being, Junior. It's not even a domestic animal. It's a beast, and it needs to be chained up."

"I suppose the fact that it makes you immortal and gives you great strength doesn't factor into it?"

The Vampire realized that he had heard these arguments before... maybe hundreds of times. When the mind was occupied, the son would speak up, and then his consciousness be pulled back here. Each time, the old man would win, and each time he would press back the memory. When the Vampire woke again, the arguments faded quickly, like a dream. This time, however, was different: this time he realized who these men were, and that this was no dream. Summoning his will together, he raised his face squarely to the others. "Enough!" the Vampire barked.

Both men stopped, and turned to face him. The son was the first to speak up. "Did-- did he just speak?"

"Barely," Wendell Sr. said. He approached the chained up Vampire calmly. "It's not an intelligent thing, boy," he said. "It might imitate us, but that's all it is. Just another beast we ascribe our expectations onto... remember that dog you brought home--"

The old man's story was abruptly ended as the Vampire leaped forward. Even chained down as he was, Wendell Sr. had gotten too close, and the Vampire headbutted the older man in the chest. The man slid, stunned, across the inky blackness. Instead of being on his knees now, the Vampire was crouched on the balls of his feet, and pressing upward against the chains.

"Stop him!" the old man gasped. The son looked back and forth between the two, and then defiantly took a step backward. "Junior? What are you doing!?" Wendell Sr. wheezed.

The Vampire snapped free and charged at the old man on all fours, pieces of chain still clinging to him. The old man shrieked weakly as the monster tore into his neck and drained him. Face still smeared with blood, the Vampire looked at the remaining man.

"You killed him!" the human said, with a mixture of surprise and relief. The Vampire stood, looking at the desiccated corpse; the old man's memories were his now. All around him, in fact, he heard the hints of the voices of thousands of minds he'd sampled through their blood: some much louder than others, and the old man's loudest of all. For the moment, however, he willed them into silence as he dealt with his new partner.

"Yes," he said simply.

The son paused. "I... know it had to be done," he said finally. "He was the real monster here. The things he did with your powers." The Vampire didn't comment. "If we are going to right the wrongs he committed, he... he would have found a way to stop us."

"Right the wrongs?" the Vampire asked.

"Yes. Now that he's dead, we can work together. Finally do some good."

Yes, perhaps that was a solution. This man clearly had the expertise he had been drawing on. With his knowledge, the Vampire might be able to pass in human society again. Use the influence to build a better business and a better vampire community. It could prove an acceptable understanding, but there was another problem: "Dead maybe. Not gone." the Vampire admitted. I can still hear him."

His partner paused thoughtfully. "Well... we'll cross that bridge if we come to it," he replied finally. "The important thing is that you're hearing my voice louder than his."

And there it was. The previous notions of a partnership crumbled. The man was certainly tactful, but he still was no match for the instincts of a vampire. The son had dethroned the father, and now planned to sit in his place. True, the new master might be kinder than the old one, but a master was still a master. "What is your name, human?" the Vampire asked.

Without the old man's interference, the Vampire was able to hear it clearly for the first time. "Gabriel," he said. "Wendell Gabriel Groom, Junior." Gabriel sighed, as if being able to finally say it aloud brought him some peace. After a long silent, he spoke up again. "Why do you ask?"

The Vampire wrapped his hand around a length of chain that still hung to a manacle on his wrist. He didn't answer aloud, but his intention was clear. There was, after all, another way to gain this man's knowledge.

Gabriel stepped back as the Vampire approached: the distance between them closed as the human attempted to retreat into the infinite black expanse. "No, wait!" he shouted. "Listen!" He held out his arm. "You were two people, and now you're just me! Who are you if you kill me?"

The Vampire raised the chain back to strike. He had never been accustomed to answering his victim's desperate questions, but that was more the influence of Wendell Sr. It was certain practical: he might adapt it his own. This once however, perhaps to prove to himself that Wendell Sr. was no longer in control, he felt the need to make an exception:

"I am Wendigo."

The Vampire lunged forward.

[Wendigo]

January 18th, 2014

Wendell had imagined that taking control of a human mind would be like riding a horse: that they would generally be compliant, but that they would also maintain awareness and a sense of self-preservation that made them resistant. He wasn't sure how he knew anything about riding horses, but he knew that they could be stubborn at times, and that stubbornness required persuasion. A horse wouldn't, for example, readily jump a high wall unless it was properly trained and coaxed.

To his surprise, he found humans much more docile than horses. It momentarily gave rise to the notion that humankind could be domesticated if the logistics worked out. Whereas animals like horses had limited awareness, it seemed humans were crushed by it. Taking over their minds was less like applying force and more like removing a burden from them. He saw it in the eyes of the first one he enthralled: the brief twitch of discomfort followed by serenity. Shoulders no longer hunched, brow no longer furrowed, the wariness and pain of everyday life removed and replaced by a sort of blind acceptance. These humans didn't serve out of love, they served because they were puppets waiting to be filled by a guiding hand.

It was... disappointing. To have to exist in secrecy from these cows. The realization of how far beneath him they were made him feel like he was hiding in a rock garden for fear of the stones. Still, he could only manage one at a time. The humans were simply too numerous, and even if a single stone isn't dangerous, he reminded himself that an avalanche undoubtedly was.

He went through several that week. Experimenting with them... pushing their limits... trying to find a point of resistance. Mentally, socially, physically, psychologically. Nothing. Several died. The coroner would undoubtedly chalk them up to suicides and heart attacks. Several he released back into the wild like animals kept for observation. He made a passing mental note to see if there were any lasting effects of the mental intrusion, but knew he would be unlikely to follow up on it.

The purpose of all of these experiments, of course, was simple. He didn't need a hundred disposable puppets, after all... he needed only one of importance.

And he could ill-afford a mistake when taking the mind of his brother.