Path of the Vampire forum

“Ah yes, you do.. and always will unless you get the power that allows you to throw off sleep and walk in the day.” Pi answered, looking towards the stage at Elliot again. He slept like Charlie, and she assumed most vampires did. Not that she’d had the chance to know for herself. She had only slept with one and he was at this moment crooning up on stage with his mouth close to the mic and his attention squarely focused on the music. “I don’t sleep as you do, and sometimes when…” Pi paused, unwilling to say what kept her awake some days when others, Elliot, slept. They were her own demons that drove her and when they did sleep, even the deep sleep that they all indulged in wasn’t proof against. “I can .. and do walk in the day.”

Pi wondered if it wasn’t a curse, her inability to sleep the deep sleep. She did, sometimes, but not always, not near as often as she would prefer. And when she woke in the day, she couldn’t lay still, she had to move, even sluggishly, even with hats and long sleeves so she wouldn’t have to think about what kept her awake. None of this Charlie needed to know, and none of it Pi spoke about. But the power to stay up, that was something she could share, because she wouldn’t know if Charlie would one day gain that ability for herself or not, and despite her own demons driving her, Pi knew Charlie should know she could, if the power would be hers one day, walk in day like Pi did.

“It might be something you can do, as you grow into your own.” She added. “There is a lot you may gain as you develop… in time. I had hoped, eating… might be something I could one day do.. given … time.” She joked, even though she didn’t believe it. “Ahh to eat again, even just a little.. would be nice.”

“If you’re going to stay a while longer, then you can enjoy the music a bit more. I will be checking on my… Michael.” She was going to say thrall, but she tried not to refer to the male human she’d made her puppet in those terms. It seemed disrespectful to refer to him in terms one would allocate a pet they had. He was, despite what she’d done to him, still human and in his way, was a human still. She’d got that from Elliot too, an awareness of morality. They were what they were, but that could not mean they should lose sight of what they had been. Even if, what she had been was something more vicious than she was now. Consciousless-ness is what she’d been and it seemed the ultimate of ironies that becoming a vampire had been the catalyst in her life to finally question that moral perspective.

The night was winding down, people shifting to quieter talk. Many had called in their last drinks and sat nursing those they knew were their last. Soon a good portion of people would sip their last, stand and leave for homes that awaited them. This place was only a stop in their daily routine, a small oasis before they retreated back to their own spaces and lived their normal lives. And Pi knew she’d slip out soon too. To see Michael, to check on the Caverns where she spent some of her nights.

Before she left though, she wanted to speak to Charlie about what Pi would give her later, to help her, an entrance to the place her and Elliot had built to serve as an oasis of another kind, for those in their lineage. “Later… soon.” She said. “I’d like to make you a tome so you can come to our Den… a place we created. I’ll spend a few days making the tome for you and then I will show you around our.. place.”

Pi smiled at Charlie’s words. “Oui.” She answered simple. “Yes, we do.” Yes, they had time, so much time, eons of it if the histories were to be believed. Then again, there was also the holocaust, and like those creatures who came before them, who also believed they had eternity, maybe hubris was something to consider. They had eternity, up to the point they themselves didn’t **** it up and create for themselves another holocaust like the previous .. generation.

It was this that Pi disagreed with Elliot about on a very fundamental level. His belief being that humans wouldn’t, couldn’t be that bad, and all out slaughter in order to protect an eternity we didn’t realise was threatened seemed.. overkill. And it could well be he was right, but even as Pi smiled at Charlie’s words, she considered that maybe, they didn’t actually have as long as they believed. In human years, Pi had yet to reach 40, had a few years to that point. She couldn’t test the reality of her agelessness because she’d hardly aged enough to realise the true benefits of permanently smooth skin. But she believed that would be the case… she just wasn’t entirely certain she’d be there to meet that eternity when it came.

Turning her gaze from Charlie for a second she let it wander to the stage again. Then again, she had something more to live for now than she ever had. “Hrmm..” Pi hummed I reply, pulling out her own tome to show the woman. It wouldn’t be the same as the one Pi would make for Charlie, only her and Elliot received the tomes that put them directly onto the portal floor, but it would look like it, work exactly like hers did.

“The tome, like this one… is charmed. Using a ritual so it can be used to transport you back to our… faction location. We call it the Den, and it sits behind a hidden wall in the Training Room, but the only way to get into the place is to use the tome I’ll give you… or powers. The doors below remain… locked, to everyone except me and Elliot. So if you want in, to use the portals, shops, banks, ritual circle, crafting table and.. well, so much… then the tome is the way to get in. I think.. once you learn to use it.. you will enjoy the freedom having the city opened up to you can… give you.”

Pi answered fully, her words coming out much like those of a museum guide whose brain knew the stories she’d told a million times over. And she’d told this story enough, to many others she’d given the tome to. But none had chosen to use the location like she had, hadn’t figured out the benefits inherent in having every part of the city at your fingertips. The only thing missing in the Den right now was a forge, and that was only because she’d run out of room. A renovation, or extension, was definitely in order. “Once I have the tome made, we will use it together and you can see.. then I or Elliot will give you the guided tour. Sound good?”

“Yes, that is a good idea. We will work out a time and then make it happen?” She answered, nodding in agreement. The bar crowd was slowing up, the conversations quieter as the night stretched out. The responsible ones in the friends group had already left leaving the stragglers behind to nurse the drinks in front of them. The not so responsible of the friend group weren’t nursing their drinks at all, but hauling them back and making another circuit to the bar to get the next. But it was nearing the quiet time, when only the die hards stayed, clinging to the dark corners of the bar. Pi smiled at Charlotte.

It was time for her to go, that time of the night when she left the pub to haunt the deep caverns below the city, seeking out the being that lurked there, keeping her skills as a hunter honed to a sharp point.

Even now, when she hadn’t cause to kill, she ensured she was as sharp as she ever was as a human, better now, more deadly, more accurate, faster. She liked that about what she had become, the speed and agility that came with being vampire. There was no guilt at killing beings like those she found in the caverns. They were an ends to a means, a community service in a way, just as it had been a community service to hunt the Paladins & Hunters in the sewers.

“I’m about the head to the caverns.” She said, nodding towards the door. “If you’d like to come along….or are you still going to hang out here?”

Pi smiled, a genuine one, (which was rare for her but she was getting better at it) it reached her eyes and she reached out a slim hand, touched the other woman’s elbow, a small touch, something a friend would do before leaning forward and pecking their cheek goodbye, except Pi didn’t follow through with the kissing on the cheek (even if it was something almost natural for her). Instead she let the smile linger and dropped her hand away.

“It has been… when you have time. Call me. I’m looking forward to showing you around the portal room. I’m quite proud of what we have put together.”

It would have to do as a form of departing, a touch, a smile and words that expressed the right amount of pleasure (and it had been, quietly comforting) at meeting the woman before she took her leave.

She stared up at the stage then, lifting her hand so Elliot could see her before touching her watch. Routines worked like that, the time you did things and in the order in which you did them. They owned this pub together but this was only one of many for Elliot, enterprises he kept careful watch on, bolstering their profit with his time and his effort. Splitting hours here, and there and the other place. Soon he’d get up from the stage, make his excuses and then he would work at Bunk, or Curlew. For Pi, this time of the evening heralded her own routine. Breaking down her gun, the movement almost completely by muscle memory alone. Her fingers moving over barrel and action with little thought on her part. Then she would oil her sword (again, because a weapon required caring for) and only once all that was done would she don her holster over her front hip and the other along her back for the sword and like Elliot she would move onto her second job, blood letting.

"Bonne nuit Charlie." she said quietly, before turning.

Slipping away with a small nod from the man on the stage Pi slipped out the door, waiting for it to slam behind her before using the portal directly into the Training Room.

Her night, had just begun.