Path of the Vampire forum

The night started out like any other night.

The building had sustained a few damages from the storm two weeks ago, but they hadn’t taken too long to get fixed – a few broken windows and loose tiles, and a whole chunk of the roof had to be replaced. That had been the worst thing, but at least the pub itself had been saved a lot of the damage due to being on the ground floor. Elliot had never been more grateful about their move to Redwood from Gullsborough – at least here, they were far enough away from the river that they hadn’t sustained any water damage after the river’s banks had split.

For a few nights they’d been without power, but Elliot had still opened the doors to the public; he created an atmospheric camaraderie; he’d called all the buskers he knew, and they belted out their songs on a stage with no electricity, but they were used to it. He’d bought the nearest store out of all of their tea light candles. Every table, and every nook and cranny was covered in candlelight, and the fire roared in the grate. There were no cocktails, really, or cold drinks to be served. The beer taps didn’t work. But they had lots of spirits, lots of wine. And whatever they did have that was cold, they had to get rid of unless it spoiled – Elliot was giving stuff away.

Even the kitchen staff had rallied together; some of them had brought in their camping barbeques and they’d done what they could with all the food that was spoiling in the cold room; Elliot turned Lancaster’s into a kind of soup kitchen, where broth and casseroles were served up to any who needed the sustenance. A lot of people had lost their homes, and the homeless couldn’t stay outside in these frigid conditions.

The neighbourhood rallied. Even now, when Elliot wasn’t giving things away anymore, they still came. They remembered what the establishment had done for them, and they chose to support it.

Each night since had been busy. And Elliot was behind the bar, helping to serve the customers. That’s where he was, with a tea-towel slung over his shoulder and a genuine smile on his lips, when he heard a piercing shriek from near the pool tables. It was different to the usual high-pitched shriek of drunk women. This one was blood-curdling. It was true and real fear. Elliot looked up from the beer that he was pouring, and nearly dropped the glass.

There, in the back of the pub, a mass of shadows was forming. Not just shadows. It was almost as if a black were forming right there by the far pool table, and growing out of this black hole was grey skin, pallid and corpse-like; a massive head with teeth too long for its skull, its neck twisted back at an inhuman angle. The thing defied all natural symmetry. It was something straight out of a nightmare – and it had no eyes. Just deep pits of a blackness so deep and dark that they could be endless.

Elliot shouted, then, and did drop the glass he was holding. It smashed on the floor as he leapt toward the trigger for the fire alarm – he smashed the glass and punched the button, and the wailing sirens soon overwhelmed every other sound. The customers started to swarm toward the front doors. Elliot retrieved his sword from beneath the bar, and went against the swarm. With a determined step, he made his way toward the beast, which was now bearing down upon the screaming woman, who could not move out of fear.

Elliot didn’t hear Skylar.

He didn’t hear anything, beyond the alarm. It was a cloying sound, not at all melodic and it grated his sense, but when faced with the Fadebeast, he paid no attention to it. He paid no attention to the staff or to the customers—not when the area was cleared and he was certain that no one nearby was in immediate danger. With one leap he was up on the pool table, grimacing slightly as he imagined the scuffs on the expensive green felt. But, it would be no worse than what the drunks could do while wielding the pool cues, so he let it go.

The beast was disoriented by the noise, too. Disoriented, and probably frustrated, too—which probably made it more aggressive. A surprisingly nimble clawed hand swiped at Elliot’s legs but he leapt higher to avoid being taken down. But the beast was not fast enough. Elliot roared, the sound louder even than the sirens, doing his best to intimidate the Fadebeast, but it didn’t work as he had intended. Regardless, at the same time, he slashed at the monster’s arm; the arm went wide and Elliot aimed for what he assumed was the chest, slicing into meat and shadow, the blade grinding against what had to be some kind of bone. It was a close call, and as the Fadebeast lunged past the injury, Elliot pushed himself from the pool table with a grunt, his usually awkward body now nimble as it avoided a clamping maw to the shoulder. He landed upon the other table, now behind the Fadebeast.

It was at this point that he and the monster did the same thing.

They both realised that they were not alone. That while the establishment was mostly empty, there was one person nearby. Too nearby. A weaker prey, and one that might not give it as much trouble as the screaming bar owner. A smaller prey. Blonde. Skylar. She was far enough away to be out of the way, but that didn’t matter to the Fadebeast.

Elliot shouted again, though this time because he didn’t like the way the beast started to move toward Skylar; it lumbered with a creepy, twitching gait, but it was fast, too. Elliot leapt again, this time landing on top of the monster. His footing slipped so that though he aimed directly for the head, his sword instead lodged into the… well, shoulder. Was it a shoulder? Didn’t matter. It helped Elliot keep his balance, and also distracted the Fadebeast from its new victim. The thing swung wildly, and Elliot was thrown from its back; he lost his grip on his sword, and though he could have been flung against the wall, he instead curled and rolled and was soon standing on his feet again. He quickly slid between the Fadebeast and his childe.

Without looking at Skylar, he gestured violently at the alarm box near the bar.

“Kill the alarm!” he shouted, far louder than usual, to be heard over said alarm. The fadebeast was still moving toward them, the sword sticking out of its massive, grotesque back.

The silence was golden. The music from the juke box could still be heard, but it sounded like a gentle hush of rain in comparison to the alarm, and it didn’t hinder Elliot or his focus. The beast beneath him heaved and Elliot flipped from his back; his hands were slick with some kind of gore. It wasn’t blood. It wasn’t red like blood, anyway. But gooey, like the syrup of something that was way, way past its due by date. The sword slid from his grasp, stuck in the monster’s back, and Elliot had to go without weaponry. At least the creature was already wounded, and thus a weaker target.

Out of nowhere came a swarm of angry insects; Elliot had never stopped to observe exactly what kind of insects came at his call, but they buzzed furiously around the had of the fadebeast. Maybe the thing didn’t scare the insects. They themselves would look like monsters if they were blown up to human size, so this grotesque excuse for a living thing wouldn’t be a deterrent to a bee or a wasp. Whether or not the insects managed to actually do any harm, Elliot didn’t know, but at least they succeeded in confusing the Fadebeast. It was confused long enough to be distracted, so that Elliot could attack with the full force of his frenzied fury. Almost as if he had turned into one of those insects, but rather than just bite or sting, his goal was to render and tear.

The fingers on his hands had elongated to sharp claws, and he used them to rip at flesh and break bone, shouting all the while. Even though he sustained a gouge in his shoulder and a similar rip in his thigh, he didn’t feel the wounds until the monster was dead at his feet; he grimaced and rolled his shoulder as he wrenched the sword from the beast’s mangled corpse. He was covered in gore. He would have to get both this mess and himself cleaned up as soon as possible, if he was planning on opening up again any time soon. Which—his head snapped up and he gestured to the front doors, knowing that Skylar was still nearby.

”Can you lock the front doors please? Just for a bit,” he said, before his gaze shifted upward. There could still be people around—either in the toilets, or upstairs at the backpackers. He didn’t worry too much about it, but he could at least stop a deluge of fresh customers.

Elliot opened his mouth to answer, but had to close it again.

At first he assumed she was asking about the Fadebeast; what the **** was the Fadebeast, and where the **** it had come from. Had he had this conversation with her? As awkward as it probably was, he was certain that he had told her that Fadebeasts were products of vampire unions—or vampire human unions. Whichever way they went about it, Fadebeasts could be the outcome. But had she ever seen one before?

The musician wasn’t thinking about his staff at that moment. For a few seconds his thoughts were derailed. Whose baby had he just killed? Had he inadvertently, somehow, exacted some kind of revenge for the mother that it had killed? That this kind of monster could be the product of vampires doing only what comes natural to humanity had to be solid proof that vampires were unnatural. That they were freak products of nature that should be eradicated. Elliot shuddered.

No, he couldn’t let himself slip into morbidity. He to internally slap himself. As much as he disliked what he had become, he could not condone the mass slaughter of those he cared about, as the majority of those he cared about were vampires, too.

At this point, Elliot might have pushed his long fingers through his hair. It was a habit of his that most often came about when he was feeling uncomfortable. Or anxious. Maybe he could have laughed. To be considered scary was a laughable thing, right? Instead, he just nodded.

”Yeah. I know,” he said, somewhat dejected.

He followed Skylar to the bar and went to the sink, where he very thoroughly scrubbed his hands and arms up to the elbows. It didn’t do much for the gore that covered the rest of him, but at least he could drink a glass of whiskey without having to smell the stink of Fadebeast flesh every time he lifted his glass to his mouth and thus his hand to his nose. The atmosphere between them was jagged—the bitter aftertaste of fear and adrenaline.

”That was a Fadebeast,” he said, choosing to interpret Skylar’s questions the wrong way. He could, because he still wasn’t entirely sure. ”I know they are birthed from vampires but how it got in here? I don’t know,” he said, waiting for Skylar to pour his whiskey so he could swallow it in one gulp.

Elliot should have been irritated. He did not like it when Skylar talked about her relationship with Ric, and she should have known that if Ric were to ever knock her up, if she were to die due to a creature that he had put inside of her, if he weren’t around to actually deal with the consequences and prevent her death? No, Elliot would not go to him to tell him Skylar hadn’t run off. Maybe it would come up in conversation. But Elliot was pretty ******* sure he’d tear Ric apart just like he’d ripped apart that Fadebeast. Tear into the stomach, first, to pull out his guts. Just to show him what Skylar would have felt in her last moments alive. Pure agony. Though there would be no satisfaction in showing Ric just what the physical pain felt like. Surely there would be mental pain, too. This thing, this life inside that should have been a miracle, something wanted, something beautiful created by two people that love each other—something Skylar might have been able to have, were she still human—was instead a monster intent only on slaughtering its mother. How could he possibly inflict that kind of psychological damage on Ric?

Elliot had to shake himself out of his thoughts, had to try and push that murderous urge to the edge, smother it, push it down, deny it. He had only minutes ago indulged in mindless violence and it was colouring the rest of his thoughts and his emotions. His eyes widened. Maybe the emotion had only lasted a second or two. Maybe it had been lingering on the surface ever since he’d that beast had fallen dead at his feet. Maybe it had only surfaced as soon as Skylar mentioned Ric. Whatever the case, it was clear, there out in the open.

His enjoyment of it.

And he realised that Skylar would feel it, too. That for however long she would touch upon that one thing that Elliot worked so hard to control and keep hidden. Shame quickly doused the flames of his sudden violent fury. He quickly raised the glass to his lips and swallowed his whiskey—one shot after the other.

He wanted to tell her that he was all peace and love but he couldn’t lie.

He wanted to tell her that he would go and make things right for her, with Ric, but he couldn’t lie.

So he slid the shot glass toward the sink and backed away. All the truth was out now anyway, if Skylar were paying any attention. What point would there to be to answer with words?

”I should go start cleaning up. Let people back in, soon. This isn’t good for business,” he mumbled near incoherently.