Path of the Vampire forum

The blonde vampiress sat in a large, high back leather chair in a darkened office. Her USB drive lit a bright neon green as she downloaded the required files, then yanked the small device out after everything had been copied over. A satisfied look was evident on her face as she rose, pushed the chair back as she found it and exited the office. Elizabeth closed the dark oak door, without any real concern about leaving fingerprints around. What would they find? Or who would it go back to? No one.

As the woman walked through rows of cubicles, she stopped and peered over the ones closest to her. It wasn't enough that she stole thousands of dollars from under this real estate company, but she wanted more. Something tangible and proof that she was here and had taken something valuable. After peeking over five cubicles, Elizabeth found a very nice, granite silver ballpoint pen with the company's logo on it. With the pen tucked away safely, Elizabeth moved to the elevator and pushed the '1' button. As she waited for the elevator, there was a sound of static in the distance and a female voice. She couldn't make it out, but there was someone on the floor with her. Probably a security guard.

She moved away from the elevator, to the nearest cubicle near her and crouched in it. Just waiting until the floor check was done and it was safe for her to make her way out. She heard the set of keys jangling as the woman walked with heavy steps and a small flashlight beam sweep across the tops of the cubicles, before an, "All clear," was heard. Until the elevator opened and a larger beam of light spilled across the floor. "Kenny, you send the elevator up? You know I take the stairs during rounds." Elizabeth inched down further in the cubicle, as she pulled out a knock out device. Just to be prepared and ready.

There was a long pause and then a code spit out over the walkie talkie system, indicating that the guard named Kenny hadn't done it and that something wasn't right. The woman gave a 'copy that,' and began a more in depth search of the floor they were both on. Her search started with the bathrooms, then at the cubicles closest to the bathrooms.

The knock out device was put away, as Elizabeth decided to take a different route. With two guards knowing something wasn't right, she'll need to be more stealthy. If a guard didn't respond after a couple minutes, the police would be notified. It wouldn't be a big deal if she wasn't on the fifteenth floor. She waited for darkness to cocoon her petite frame before Elizabeth stood and moved to the elevator that was now making a loud buzzing noise because it was being held. It seemed the guard decided to make it so that whoever was inside had to take the stairs.

Elizabeth shook her head at the detail the woman spent trying to capture her. It was impressive and had she no thrall, the blonde vampiress might have thought to enthrall someone so detail oriented. Fingers slipped into her other pocket; the one with the pen in it and pulled out a fool proof escape. Elizabeth tossed the bomb into a garbage bin at the elevator and then bolted for the staircase as various documents caught on fire. Fifteen flights of stairs was an insane number to run down, but she had no choice.

With her tracks covered and the guard busy, Elizabeth went down floor by floor, taking steps two at a time. That was when she felt the building she was in shift and she sidestepped and slid down an entire flight of stairs. She laid on her back, looking at the cement wall next to her as another rumble was felt and sirens were heard. Alarms. Alarms from cars, actually. She got off the ground, put her designer heel on that had fallen off her right foot and kept taking the stairs two at a time, while the building she was in started to crack along the seams of the west wall.

Once she was outside, escaping out a fire escape door, all she could do was stand there and look at the world around her. Alarms and lights were going off. Wire from telephone lines hung from the skies and threatened to electrocute anyone that passed near them. Elizabeth grabbed the tome from her pocket, read the words and waited to be teleported back home to her family house where she would start to get answers and make certain everyone was safe. But nothing happened. She remained where she was. Elizabeth tried again, with no different results. She frowned, tucked the paper away and started to head towards the wickbridge area to catch the train. Only as she turned, a large gush of water came in her direction.

"I loved these shoes." Elizabeth cried when she realized that the best way to make a run for it, was without them. She started running, or more like hopping as she took one shoe off at a time and tossed them over her shoulders as Elizabeth made a break for the first stable building she saw. The Buddhist temple. Once inside, she looked around to see half a dozen or so individuals in the temple with her, all in varying conditions. Some injured, some wet, but most wore fear upon their features. "What is happening?" She asked, as the door closed behind her, and the world outside started to find itself in a form of chaos.

The wind howled outside, even from where Ursa sat - tucked away in the side area of the Buddhist Temple, where she was meditating - it was loud. Even still, Ursa sat facing one of the alters, not one that she used in her apartment or in the court, but one dedicated to this temple. Being born pagan, she was taught to respect all religions. In this case, she was spending time praying, chanting, and meditating like she was now. It was a good thing to do tonight, for the streets were already beginning to flood, the sewer systems she didn't even want to think about. Thankfully, once she was done doing what she came here to do, she would be able to just Tome to the court.

Or at least, that was the plan until all of a sudden the floor shifted. Sitting on the bamboo floor, it was easy to feel. It started with a jolt, quick, exhilarating. Her eyes shot open, just as that jolt became a rumble slowly growing until all of a sudden it was rattling the walls, glass and other things in the temple started to shatter, floor boards lifted from their rooted spots, statues toppled over. It was just as one of those statues started to fall that Ursa noticed and quickly backed away on her hands and feet in a spider-like crawl. The huge statue shattered before her but thankfully missed her.

Though it was only minutes that the shaking lasted, it felt as though she had been up against that wall, staring at the broken statue for hours. However, she snapped out of it, getting to her feet and looking around. Though it was chaos in the temple with the humans running this way and that, she knew that she couldn't risk using her teleporting power to take her home, and she wouldn't even think of Toming in a public place, just to make sure she didn't break the Masq. With that thought in mind, she grabbed her things, reaching for the tome as she started for the door. She would get wet, but she didn't care, at least it was less likely to get her in trouble outside where she could slip into one of the alleys.

At least, that had been the plan. When she got outside, she saw the storm had gotten even worse. She moved to just off to the side of the temple and tried the tome... it didn't work. Ursa blinked then and tried again... again it didn't work. That was when she tried to send a text to Jesse, Renee, any of her family. Yet that was when she noticed the lack of a signal... any kind of signal. The towers were down. That's when she decided to move back into the temple, hoping that it would keep her dry enough. Ursa moved to lean against one of the walls, a large crack beside her causing one brow to arch. That was when a blonde entered and asked what was happening. That was the $20,000 question wasn't it? What the name of the gods had happened? Yeah, she could cause a little tremor... but what had just happened had been huge... Unbelievably huge. She was shocked that the temple, light damage aside, had survived as well as it had.

With a sigh, Ursa shook her head. Wither she was answering the woman's question or her own thoughts - even she didn't know. Yet what was happening was clearly someone's bad Karma times three billion. Perhaps the entire's city bad karma just coming back to bite it in the *** because of all of the darkness and evil and bad that happened. That thought amused her a bit, because realistically, she was one of those dark, evil creatures... all she had to do was walk over something living and it would grow weeds that would wilt at her touch. Of course, she hid this well with being nice and friendly with people when she talked to them. But she knew, those weeds, that wilting touch of hers... were just physical aspects of a dark and sinister soul.

Husband, where are thee? The blonde vampiress called out to him as a tinge of panic started to strike her. Was he alright? Was the family alright? There were too many to speak to individually, so she pulled out her cellular device and started typing a group message to them, but as she did this, the screen on her phone went black. She shook the phone, then smacked it and frowned. Did they not pay the phone bill this month? That was next to impossible as she had it directly withdrawn from her account every month. A frown rode upon her features before she heard a masculine 'hey,' thrown in her direction.

She looked up to see Athanase. "Good evening." She said, though it wasn't all that good anymore, was it? "Hello, I mean. Do you happen to have a cellular device? I was trying to send a message to some people and mine died? in the process?" She was uncertain if that was the correct way to use those sets of words together, even though she had heard it been used before upon the television. One could heard that uncertainty in the tone of her voice as she asked him that. "Do you know what has happened?" Elizabeth put the phone in her coat pocket before lowering her voice. "Is there a war?" Her blue eyes doubled in size at the font.

"I cannot tome home, and going outside is not an option at this moment. If we have to make do with our surroundings, and stand our ground here, we should work together." Elizabeth continued on. "I am not as weak as I appear. Though a woman I am, frail I am not." She assured him. No, she might not be as strong as her 'sibling' was, but Elizabeth did not lack in the area of trickery and deceit against foes. "If we are at war, we could survive. I was one of the last elders standing before, well, you know." She said, her mouth drying as she thought about another potential holocaust upon her doorstep again. "It is really the only option we have, I believe."

Athanase seemed to be in agreement with Elizabeth, which was fine with her. The fact that her husband hadn't responded back, slipped into the back of her mind for now, as she listened to the male that shared a sire with her. She made a note to install a land line in the family home, in case such a thing were to happen again, since she just acquired some new knowledge from her 'sibling.'

"Do you think she is alright?" Elizabeth said quietly after nodding her head at his suggestion of finding an office or any place that had a land line. "Your beloved that is." Elizabeth added because it seemed to be a random question thrown at him after the conversation about a land line and the lack of usages with the cellular devices. Her mind wandered, temporarily to that of her husband to assess his current state, which seemed to be normal for the man, due to the question posed. With her mind at ease, Elizabeth refocused on what it was they were going to be doing.

"I was here about a year ago. Maybe less than. There are bedrooms on the top floor, with beds stacked upon the other. Two to each bed frame." She obviously had no idea that the common term was 'bunk bed,' so she described it as best as she could. "Mayhaps one of those rooms may have what you are referring to?" She only knew because Elizabeth had been looking for a vampire that she believed to have been in the building after a quick search through the city. One that was connected to her through one of her childre. This was not important to share, and so she did not share this information with Athanase.

"Can you teleport? If so, you could mayhaps teleport me somewhere else in the city and I could summon thee. The streets are too flooded to even attempt walking, I believe." She gave him a simple roll of her shoulders along with her opinion. "Do you know anyone else within here? We may need the assistance, depending on the state of beings upstairs or if we have to hunker down for a while here." Once again, Elizabeth's eyes moved around the room, and away from her sibling so she could see who, if anyone was injured and if there were others in here that were connected to them in some way or another. She could see there were some vampires within the room, but who they were, she knew not.

Ursula blinked for a moment, coming out of a random moment of brain fart. She had been completely out of it mentally speaking even though she had not closed her eyes or been wounded in some way, not that it mattered if she had - the perks of being able to heal herself. No, this was just her not thinking of anything, her mind completely blank of thought. Now though, she glanced around. The lady who had been wondering what was going on wasn't where Ursa remembered her being and had found someone that she was talking to, and then she spotted Calix. She had met him once or twice at his attempts to get her to go to family gatherings she felt she was not truly part of anymore, but that didn't mean that she didn't find the guy's presence at all unwelcome. He was glancing at his phone and that made her reach for her own, glancing at it and realizing it was for naught.

The earthquake no doubt not only knocked out the power, but the cell towers as well. That is when she heard what the other two were talking about and she had to smirk, what the guy said was close to being out of a movie she had seen. She had to wonder if that was actually true. That said - or rather, thought - she turned her ice colored eyes on Calix once more and eased her way over to him. "No service for you either huh?" She asked, and then felt silly for asking it, it was an obvious question. "I don't suppose you have any freaking idea what is going on any more than anyone else here does, do you?" She asked in a quiet tone, glancing around. Being here for any length of time, using any power, would likely get them seen... The temple was just too busy, with too many panicked people to do anything odd.