Path of the Vampire forum

Harmony’s feet hurt. Her and Valentine had been walking for hours and still hadn’t found a farm that had the exact color chicken that lovely Atabei wanted. The young girl was tired, very tired and her feet were dragging with each step that she took. All she wanted was the comfort of her bedroll and the tattered ragdoll that Valentine had salvaged from a bag of toy someone had put out on the curb for the garbage truck. Harmony had seen the doll and fell in love with it. She’d never had a doll that she could remember and that one seemed to call to her, begging her to save it from a terrible fate. She’d named it Nancy, and the doll was as important to her as Valentine was.

Finally, they had some luck. Valentine had managed to get the chicken but the farmer had been alerted to trouble and came out with a gun. Harmony was afraid, very afraid. She could hear the farmer talking, and the clinking of the chains that held the dogs. Her heart was racing in her chest and she wanted to cry. She could hear rustling and finally her savior’s voice was in her ear, urging her to run. Harmony had never ran so fast in her life. The lessons that Valentine had instilled in her came to the front of her mind, as they did in dire situation and Harmony seized onto the wisp of memory. When being chased, head to the water. So that's exactly what she did.

When the barking of the dogs became a sound off in the distance Valentine halted their progress. Harmony was grateful for the rest. She was more tired than ever but they weren’t finished with their task. The Dark Queen needed them to get these things and neither Harmony or Valentine were going to let her down. So when Valentine urged them on, she grudgingly followed. He led them back into the city, stopping before a building that had a flashing sign with a word Harmony didn’t understand. What she did understand was the delicious scents wafting from the building itself causing her stomach to rumble with hunger.

She listened closely to Valentine but none of the words really took hold. Her mind was worse when she was tired, but this task was important so she followed him inside without protest. Valentine allowed her to chose the item and she picked the one that had the most coconut on it. She wanted the treat for herself, she wanted it badly but it was for the Dark Queen. Her mind wandered for a few minutes, until she caught sight of the sly glance that came from her beloved companion. It was her time to shine only there wasn’t much shine to what happened next.

When the young man denied Harmony her treat, her eyes filled with tears that rolled down her cheeks in great big drops. Her hands balled into fists at her sides and an unearthly wail rose from deep inside of chest. That wail turned into a shrieking sort of scream before she turned and started grabbing whatever she could get her hands on. Items were tossed all over the shop, be it food, or napkin holders - it didn’t matter. Nothing was safe from the rage that Harmony had unleashed on the poor, unsuspecting bakery attendant. While he crouched behind the counter for protection, Harmony grabbed the paper bag from off the counter and once it was in her hand, they both fled the shop. Sirens wailed in the distance but the pair were long gone and on their way back to the graveyard before they could be discovered.

While she waited for their return, Atabei looked up at the moon in the night sky, attempting to judge what season it was, fingers still splayed across the letters on the crypt. Hahnee had special names for the moon during certain times of the year. For example, the harvest moon always seemed to be around the time the crops should start being collected and gathered by the human folk. The pink moon was always around the time the salmon appeared in the rivers not far from Hahnee’s people. The human folks she was related to once upon a time.

The moon wasn’t pink tonight, and it wasn’t a tinge of orange either, which made it almost impossible to tell the season. She reckoned it was either winter, or spring, judging by the wet earth and the dead grass pressed to the mud beneath her bare feet. With no leaves on the trees, the woman from Hispaniola was willing to bet autumn had passed some time ago. Not a single leaf could be found on a tree or on the ground near one either.

Wet fingertips brought Atabei’s attention back to what was next to her, believing to be bleeding from a cut from the outline of a letter as she ran her fingers over each one that had been carved in the cement. The woman gawked at the tiny cut on the tip of her middle finger, before turning her attention to the culprit; an jarred piece of cement that had broken away from the letter ‘w,’. Atabei saw the bubbling of a thin liquid substance pooling at the bottom of the letter, a trait long forgotten about. Passed to her from her sire Hahnee, like the others she had sired before Atabei.

The foamy droplets sparked a plan in the mind beneath the coil of corkscrew looking hair that sprouted on Atabei’s head. The hand with the superficial injury was blanketed over the locked metal door knob, and twisted at it again. The results still the same. Her finger roamed between the spindle and the hub, allowing the acidic blood that flowed through her body, and out of the small cut to coat the metal and slowly eat away at it.

There was a loud clang as the knob in front of her fell at her feet, followed by a mirroring sound behind the closed door, as the second fell away, the blood still corroding away at the hub of the door. Atabei used her other hand to push the door open, the heavy thing creaking from years of being closed and never getting much use out of it. Her hand waved at the opening of the door, trying to clear some free falling cobwebs before the woman turned her back to the crypt and saw two figures in the dark, not far from the entrance. “O’er ‘ere.” Atabei hissed above a whisper, coaxing the two of them over to her with a frantic hand that was draped in a cobweb before the woman pulled the sticky matter off her palm and shook it to the ground.

When Valentine and Harmony came closer, Atabei smiled, her eyes gleaming at the both of them. “Dis es whur da magic gun take place.” She said with a small cackle before hopping down a cracked step, to land on smooth, dingy surface of a familial vault of some strangers Atabei never knew or met. “Nun’ o' yous be squeamish, is yous?” She looked between Harmony and Valentine, eyes resting on Harmony lastly as she waited for their replies and to see the sacrifices to be given to the almighty lwa.