Path of the Vampire forum

He offered to tell her the whole story. There was some conflict on that topic in her. Some uncertainty. Did she even want to know everything? Well yes, but what happens after she does know? How much will it mess with her? And how much worse would it be to not know what it is, letting theories and ideas flood for who knows how long. Eternity? She's immortal now right, after-all. So not knowing seems so much worse. She gave a slight nod and they moved to the sofa. Where he began to explain.

It was clear it was a story close to him as well, as even when he started his cheeks went red. A long time ago. The story began. She listened intently, but a little hard to read. The paladin inside her was telling her that he should have killed the vampire he met. But there was still something in her telling her no, that's not how it always needs to go. He explained what it was like, how he had been fed on first. The way he explained the state the vampire was in, until finally she fed on him.

He explained that's when he was first fed on. The way he acted about it was strange, because it wasn't fearful, it wasn't painful. He said he was doing what he could to help them. But. There was still something so strange. The way he talked about it just seemed..."Do you...enjoy it?"

It was a weird question to ask, it was a weird thing to think. But she had to know the answer. It would gnaw at her if she didn't ask. Even if he refused to answer or redirected the question, she still had to ask.

Elijah doesn’t like to internalise his thoughts too much. His feelings get projected into the world by way of his sketches and sometimes, when he is feeling brave, he’ll pick up a paintbrush and add some colour to his world. That’s why the walls surrounding them are a collage of charcoal faces in various expressions and moods. Eli doesn’t have a photographic memory, so his portraits merge with an air of fantasy when he thinks about the way the person made him think or feel when they were together. It’s natural to be stricter with reality when the subject is sitting right in front of him - like when he first met Mason - but, he still couldn’t help to add a touch of magic to the image. Macy makes him feel like his veins are filled with champagne, but, he’s careful to curb his enthusiasm.

There’s something about Macy that scares him, too. The way she sits there - stony and supercilious - as he bleeds a little of his heart to her, it unnerves him. Eli knows that she’s not cold and that, on some level, she cares about him. Yet, there’s this line drawn in the sand of morality that separates them. It makes his cheeks burn from shame when her glittering eyes watch him, regarding him as a sinner. So when she asks him that question, he can’t help but be defencive. He wants the world to shut down and reboot without that tainted perception of him.

“That’s personal,” he says; his voice lowering an octave.

He shifts in his seat, crosses his arms over his chest, and avoids eye contact. His eyes land on a portrait near the kitchen wall. The young woman has a demure face and her smile is blinding; it curls up around the edges of her eyes and makes them glitter like stars in the uncharted universe. Back then, when the monsters only lived under beds and desire was still a dream as soft and uncomplicated as yellow sunshine on her pollen-stricken limbs, that smile was the one thing that had caught his attention. The memory settles in Elijah’s stomach, hard as a ball, sending out feelers to the distant tendrils of his nerves. It makes his skin itch and his muscles feel restless.

“Uh.” He takes a deep breath and makes to stand. Macy holds his gaze again. “I’m going to grab a drink. Do you… Can you… Drink? Um. Water, Coffee, or something stronger?” he laughs a little.

Eli’s not much of a drinker, but, there is always a bottle of something stashed for an emergency. This feels like one of those moments. Elijah doesn’t like to internalise his thoughts, but, he does understand that by evading her question in the way he did that he’s given her the answer she doesn’t want to hear again. His body feels as heavy as concrete and all the while his heart is trying to climb its way out of his mouth and escape.

She bit her lip at his response and looked down, very quietly but genuinely adding, "Sorry. I shouldn't have pried that far." She remained quiet. That was a bit too much. It was strange really, sometimes a little scary, just how much of a paladin was left inside her. She realized eventually that there was more the a paladin then just the powers, there was a drive. A complete disgust and hatred for vampires. Of course there was, it was a disease, it needed to stop existing. And yet, here she was, one of them.

And here it was, threatening the one of few legitimate friends she had in this freaking city. It was clear he didn't want to talk about it as he moved away, as he tried to change the subject to drinking. She smiled at him laughing a little about if she wanted something stronger than water or coffee, prefaced by if she could at all, she shook her head, "I can't anymore. But thank you."

She wouldn't mind if he did go to get something stronger for himself anyway. He needed to take care of himself, and at this point, in her position, she really wished something like that were an option. If she could make it just vanish with a swig at the cost of a little bit of intellect."I didn't...I don't..."

She let out a breath, "This is not what I should be. I was trying to fight for the freedom of humanity from this nonsense. And now I'm part of the nonsense. What am I supposed to do but continue doing what I was before? I didn't mean to...push you. I just...I don't know. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do, or even be at this point. Whether to trust vampires or not. Wether I can trust humans or not. Whether I should continue my hunt or...what I'd even do if I didn't. This world is freaking insane!" She clenched her hands to her face and leaned forwards, elbows against her knees.

Eli nods and offers up a soft, sad smile when Macy rejects the drink offer. It’s an unfortunate curse for a lot of vampires to only be able to consume the blood of other creatures. He can only imagine how distressing it is given how many cultures of the world are centred on food and drink. The thought of being isolated in such a way sits bitterly with him as he moves into the kitchen. He takes a glass from the cupboard, takes it to the sink, and fills it with water. He watches the microscopic beads of oxygen race to the surface of the water for a moment and recognises how some of those bubbles get caught in those tiny, invisible scratches in the glass’ side. They remind him of trapped souls - just like those spirits walking the Earth for eternity. Although he can tip the water out of the glass and free them here, the world isn’t quite that simple. He returns to Macy and the sofa just as she’s cradling her head in her hands.

“Yeah,” Eli says; his voice is as weightless and gloomy as a patch of fog. “The world is pretty messed up alright. The rainforests are shrinking, the ice is melting, and people are killing each other because of ideas. I don’t have the answer for any of it. I don’t know if anyone does.”

“I guess,” he continues, putting a warm hand on her shoulder. “The best we can do is understand who we are, what we want to live for, and keep going no matter how hard it gets.”

Mason glances at him between fingers as he mentions other terrible things happening throughout the world. Yeah, things were definitely pretty freaking messed up. And there was only so much they could do about it, sometimes nothing at all. He put a hand on her shoulder, making one last comment about their own decisions, and their own understanding.

She let out a sigh, trying to keep herself calm, she'd managed to cool down a good bit. Now it was more just a bit of gloom. "I still have a job to do." she said quietly, looking up towards his face, "I'm a...vampire now...too. But that doesn't mean that I should stop. Someone needs to help keep them in check."

Mason looked at the roof, breathing in and out even though it was completely unnecessary, "The Government is trying too. All their restrictions, but for all that, they haven't officially enlisted paladins or people like me. I think it's time we start marking vampires for termination. The ones that go too far, need to be killed or captured. I have to defend humans from the undead and unusual. The vampires, the mooncalves, zombies, the demi-fae. Whatever I have to do. I have a lot of second killings on my hand Eli. They deserved it, but it's there. And I'm going to have to add onto that number. There are people who show up who can't be allowed to keep running rampant so freely. I'm going to have to start killing them, and the government won't stop me because they already have taken away that right of protection. I've gotten more powerful then when we last met. Some of it is time, some of it is that I'm a vampire now. And I've begun to learn their powers myself. I can kill more of them, and more powerful ones."

She breathed again, glancing at him, uncertain, "If I do that, if I kill even more then before. Will you hate me for it?"

“I can’t think about hating you, Macy,” he says.

His lips pull into a smile; tugged into place by his heartstrings. Her eyes are two pools of sea water churning with the chaos of her emotional tide and he understands that frustration; he knows what it’s like to believe in something so strongly and face a wall, to crash against it with all of your conviction. He looks away as well; his muddy brown eyes sinking to where his hands come together in his lap.

“I just find it hard to understand that you can be what you are now and still not see that these vampires you hate are people too,” he says weakly. “And… I know not all people are good people, but, does that give any of us the right to decide that they have to die for their crimes?”

Eli takes a deep breath and then lets it out; the air sags out of his lungs like they are weeping balloons.

“There are groups of people who think that people should die because they don’t like their skin colour, or because they worship the wrong God. It’s these groups of people who think they can own others and deserve to tell them how to live their lives and… that kind of thing, Macy…” He matches her gaze again. “That’s the kind of thing that scares me. It’s not the monster under my bed, or the ghost I can’t see, or the zombie or the vampire or the mooncalf knocking at my door… It’s the people who want to control me and tell me what I should be or threaten me with death if I don’t comply."

"Today it’s one rule to condemn the murder of people by vampires and sentence them to death. But by tomorrow it might be another rule that condemns the whole race, which will include you regardless of your intentions or actions, Macy. Because they won’t care what you say or what you do, you were unfortunate enough to become one of them now. So if you get what you want, the war starts, you’ll end up caught and killed right alongside those people you hate, and you might wonder whose side you were really fighting for.”

Mason smiled, sort of regretfully, as he answered saying he couldn't think of hating her. It was nice to hear but at the same time it was a really hard to accept. There was more for him to answer with though. As he began to speak about what vampires are, wondering about what right is given to decide if there's a right to be killed for ones crimes. Then going to, from the sound of it, compare the hatred of vampire with that of conflicting religions and ethnicities. Her gaze did not shift, not uncertain, listening, though not agreeing. As he spoke about being afraid of that kind of monster. A social monster.

He began to clarify more on what may happen with vampires and people, the consequences of the future and where she would fall in it. Bringing up the question of what would happen to her if it went as far as it could potentially go. Mason hadn't initally looked at this with only philosophy, but that didn't mean she didn't have it. She'd been afraid at first, which was why she became a paladin. But that fear quickly turned to a sort of anger or disgust. And even as a vampire, the reasoning and many of the emotions that began as a paladin, remained.

So she had something to start off with, "If my death would result in the end of vampirism. I'd give it." she said, locking eyes to make sure he understood she was quite serious, "Not all vampires are evil at heart and action. That's true. But that doesn't mean they get the same treatment as humans. Fundamentally they're different. It hasn't happened to me yet, because I haven't fully died. But it will eventually. Vampires don't stay dead when they die, they come back. I've killed enough to know that. At least not in Harper Rock. And humans, whatever their skin color, don't usually forcefully drink blood from other humans. Killing a vampire isn't the same as killing a human. It's a sentence, but not an end. I know exactly who I'm fighting for, the innocent humans that get caught up in this insanity. I can't fight for everyone, nor can I fight everyone. I don't intend to try. I go after the vampires I know have committed crimes bad enough, and who likely will in the future even if they don't get caught. If vampires run free, people will die. I don't want a war, but I also don't want freedom. And if the price of containing vampires is me having to deal with the same restrictions, so be it."

Eli looks at her incredulously; his eyebrows arch and his forehead knots almost painfully. His mouth opens to say something, to respond, but, nothing but air punches out of him at first. The last thing in the world Eli wants to do is start a fight. He doesn’t understand why she can’t see his world view: that people killing people is just as bad as vampires killing people. They abolished capital punishment in Canada over 50 years ago. Now, when murderers get caught, they get a fair trial, there’s evidence brought to prove that they actually did the crime, and then they receive due punishment - usually jail time - for the atrocity. What Macy spoke about was old fashioned, Iron Age vengeance and brutality. It wasn’t justice, it was tribal warfare to keep your rivals down by any means possible: oppression, sanctioning, sterilization, torment, abuse, murder.

“Are you telling me that because you can’t predict which one is going to be good or bad, your answer is to kill them all?” he pauses, his breath is pushing out of his chest in swift puffs and his heart is beating quickly. “You can’t be serious, Macy. Would we be having this same conversation about people if vampires didn’t exist? Would you want all the blonds dead because they have more fun and a new rule comes out that fun is no longer allowed?” Eli coughs on a laugh. “I’m sorry, but, this is how insane this sounds to me.”

He pushes himself up from the sofa and walks into the room. He paces. After a moment, Eli pauses and glances across to Mason, only to cover his eyes with his palm and sigh.

“I’m sorry,” Eli repeats in a softer, graver tone and his hand slides down his face. When he looks to Macy again, exhaustion wears plainly in his features. “I’m sorry. I don’t hate you. I don’t. I just don’t understand.” A lock of hair is tucked behind his ear.

She heard his prompt. He brow furrowed at his response, clearly emotional, and she felt defensive automatically. Not just because she felt her job was important, but because he was already misinterpreting her. She swallowed, but the response that came out still sounded more aggressive than she intended it to, "Don't push that onto me! I didn't say any of that!" she argued, "What the **** does fun and blonds have to do with murder? In what way did you go from, 'I think vampirism shouldn't exist' to 'people should die permanently because of hair color!'"

Macy ran her hands through her hair and stood up gesturing angrily as she continued, "They're not even dead! And I didn't say I'd kill them all! I said if I had to die for vampirism to be gone I'd do it. They need to be controlled and the only way that happens is by sending them to the shadow realm! You can't contain a vampire! Even I can teleport across this whole freaking city without breaking a sweat and I've been one for mere months. I could probably clear this whole dang building in an hour if they were all human! You can't jail them or sentence them, the only sentence a vampire has is a week or so in the shadow realm where they can consider what they've done. Then guess what, they're back! Not even a year! People have gone through so much worse for so much longer for so much less!" She sat down, swallowing and crossing her arms, and pulling her knees up to her chest on the chair. Her eyes just slightly red. She spoke quieter now, "Someone has to do something. If it means people hate me and try and kill me for it, then fine. If it means I end up alone, and called insane...at least I know I did what I had to do."

He might say he didn't hate her. But even he didn't really believe she was sane. There was so little left to hold on to already.

==========AUTOMATED RANDOM EVENTS SYSTEM==========

The group stumbles upon a wild individual who seems to be carrying a smaller unconscious figure.