Path of the Vampire forum

Posted: **13 Nov 2016, 21:41**

“…thirty cc’s from Four, twenty-five from Thirteen, and one-hundred-forty from Zero. Place them in the centrifuge for another four hours.” The gruff voice, brimming with exhaustion, sounded as bedraggled as the man it had belonged to. It was closing in on his forty-third hour on duty without so much as a foot outside, not a wink of sleep, and only a modest meal, sometime around midnight the night before, if he could remember it clearly.

He stood from his desk, letting the white coat fall from his shoulders to land draped across the back of his chair. He stretched, arcing his back with a growl of content before he snatched the lab coat from the chair, hanging it on the rack against the wall. He exchanged it quickly for his own coat, a worn but immaculate black leather duster. The replacement caused the woman settled neatly behind one of the lab’s two microscopes to pop over the equipment and lift her dark brows, perfectly shaped without an ounce of her makeup out of place.

If she put half as much focus into her work as she did into her face, she might be a half decent assistant.

The thought was a bitter lash at the woman’s vanity that went unspoken. They stood in silence for a moment, glaring at one another before the woman finally spoke, the wet, red sheen of her lipstick glittering in the harsh, sterile light of the laboratory. “And where are you gallivanting off to in the middle of the night, while you leave me to do all of your work?” The question was a snap, a harsh lash of a voice he’d grown to resent. These locals were hardly aware of protocol, or of the faintest idea of what it was that they were doing. They were a single rung above trained monkeys on the ladder of lab assistants.

A faint tic in his jaw was all he needed for the girl to see she’d gone too far. She sank into her seat and muttered as he pulled his coat around his shoulders. “Einheimischen.” He muttered the single word beneath his breath, his agitation with the lab tech visible in every motion he made, every syllable of the word. He grabbed his hat from the hook next to where his coat had hung before he turned to the raven-haired tech. “Just do your job, Melissa, or I will contact the University about another assistant for the night shift.” The girl sank deeper into her seat, completely hidden behind the large frame of the microscope as she muttered her apology.

Without another word to the woman, he stepped out of the crisp, harsh light of his prison, and into the sharp air of the late Northern autumn. He took a deep breath of the cleansing air and ran his hand along his coat pocket, finding his crumpled pack of cigarettes empty. He didn’t remember using the last of them, and made a mental note to himself to watch the other techs. Theft was serious in this current line of scientific inquiry. The nature of their work was dangerous, and it required the integrity of everyone on his staff. He couldn’t trust that someone that would steal cigarettes would be incapable of leaking his studies to the public before they were prepared.

Food, he thought, then a smoke, and some rest. I can catch enough sleep in four hours for another night. He nodded, the plan set as he pulled his cellphone from his coat and checked the balance on his research account. The amount of funding that the company had granted him was astounding. He hasn’t expected half of what they had thrown at him. That number, alone, gave him faith in what he was doing.

This could save countless lives, he thought to himself as he headed for the nearest transit station. He reasoned he could find something to eat between here and the apartment. The only question now was what he would find at this late hour to sate him for another night.

Posted: **15 Nov 2016, 09:06**

Routine had set in.

Routine had always been there, in a way. Every night she woke up on the same rooftop. It just so happened that said rooftop now belonged to her significant other. If Eureka had a reasonable thinking brain in her head, she’d have wondered about Aaron’s sanity. The drummer did have a good influence on the red-head, though. At least she showered once a night. At least it helped keep the grime from building up. She even had a brush! She had to admit that the grooming process was pleasant.

Every other night she morphed into, what she had been told, the Lynx. A small big cat, pointed ears, mostly grey but with the red tinged fur. In the snow it was particularly comfortable. She looked like a creature that could be cuddled to death, but if anyone tried they would be mauled.

No one had tried to hug Eureka tonight, but blood still matted the fur around the Lynx’s mouth. A pink tongue lapped at the delicious cruor as the big, furry paws padded back into the city. The route took her directly into a decrepit backyard, but it was a backyard that was occupied, during the day, by living breathing humans. There were clothes still on a line, neglected. Probably now damp, given the humidity and the cold – a strange combination.

The fur was shed for freckle-and-ink-covered skin. The red hair fell over slender shoulders in a semi-silken fashion, but she was hardly a supermodel. She was hardly a Disney princess. The hair, though silken given her vampiric nature and its perpetual health, was knotted and lank. Blood remained smeared over her cheek and chin, sunk into the cracks of her lips and between the grooves of her teeth. From the clothes line she snatched a hockey jersey, which team she cared not. It was white, with red trimmings. The jersey was pulled over her shoulders and hung as low as her knees. Underneath, she wore no underwear. On her feet, she wore no shoes.

While she had taken down a baby deer, the blood that smeared her face was not in any way her nightly meal. The blood of animals was weak. It was like ordering a decaf, when all one needed was a triple espresso.

And so the red-head found her way meandering through the city and into the first train station she came across. When there, she went straight to the nearest bench and sat, pulling her knees up beneath the jersey and wrapping her arms around them. Dirt clung to her toes. She affected the expression of a lost puppy. She even managed to shiver, even though she was not cold. She was far from cold. But she should be cold.

And then she waited. Eventually, someone would try to offer her help. Eventually, she would have her meal.

Posted: **17 Dec 2016, 02:03**

“Zu spät für alles gut,” he murmured to himself, eyes passing over the window of the usual joint he sent some unfortunate intern to in search for food, most nights satisfying his hunger with an unhealthy wad of greasy beef on a toasted, buttery bun. It was hardly appetizing, but it was a solid bit of fuel that kept him going for long stretches between his scant meals. It was typical for one intern or the other to get everything wrong; to botch the entire ordeal, and he had grown accustomed to enjoying the food, regardless of their incompetence to regard a simple request.

He strolled brusquely past the windows, his attention grasped longer than it should have by a face that was growing more and more familiar by the night; a face that was asserting itself into nearly every facet of his life outside of the sterile walls of his laboratory. It was unsettling to think that such a feminine mask might hide something sinister, and he could find no good in following someone like himself, as he was sure that this woman must, as she turned up nearly everywhere he appeared. Even now, he heard the ring of the bell against the diner’s door, and the familiar sound of her footsteps as she strolled onto the sidewalk, matching his gait easily.

It would hardly be the first time that a rival of Vantom Laboratories would have sought his life. It would hardly be the first time that they had failed, either. He knew that his research was valuable, but with the mounting danger to his person, he began to fear the true reaches of this information, the potential that it really held, and what someone less benign may see in his studies. He turned his head, cocking an ear to the sound of her boots as he pushed his way into the service station, the crisp light of the fluorescent bulbs harsh, but familiar. The gentle hum of machinery was a sort of tune he had come to know well, and it didn’t bother him in the least as he pulled a wrapped sandwich from the hot box, and moved to the counter, waving a hand at the cigarettes behind the counter.

“Just whatever.” he grumbled, watching as the cashier grabbed for the most expensive pack she could find. The entire exchange was made in a sort of angry silence, and he was standing in the night again in moments. He glanced back up the street, and saw it empty, as well as the way that he had been travelling. It appeared that his shadow was going to be more inconspicuous for the rest of the evening. He mumbled beneath his breath and shoved the cigarettes into his pocket as he tore open the wrapping on the sandwich, biting into the piping hot gas-station food.

It was far from gourmet, but it would do. As he closed on the transit station, he paused to toss the empty wrap into the trash bin at the corner, before wringing his hands into a disposable handkerchief and tossing it away also. He sighed, and shouldered the door to the station, sweeping past the stationmaster with a flash of his metro card, before he paused, spying a young woman huddled into one of the benches facing the platform. He rarely noticed the transient, the commonplace people that dotted life everywhere, but the shock of coppery hair in the bleak station had caught his eye. The way she trembled turned the corner of his mouth down.

She appeared too young to be fending off the cold on a station bench, hoping for a few moments’ reprieve before the stationmaster rushed her back into the street. He sighed to himself and moved to sit on the bench adjacent to hers. Quietly, he sought for something to say, before he shrugged, and glanced over at her. “You look cold.” he said simply, and reached into his coat for the scarf that was folded and tucked into a pocket. He drew it free, and held it out to her. “This could help. A little, at least, I suppose.”

Posted: **24 Dec 2016, 14:16**

The redhead closed her eyes.

It was something she did often; she indulged in her other senses, taking sight out of the equation. Sight accounted for so much, and the other senses were taken for granted. There on the platform she could feel the eddying hot and cold of the breeze amidst the chilled atmosphere. The heat came from the tracks and was tainted with the fumes of the trains, the steam engines on steroids. Here, on the platform, in the immediate surrounds, it was quiet. A voice over the loudspeaker announced the arrival of the next train, five minutes, northbound, platform two. The breeze fingered at Eureka’s hair, red and wild as it tickled her pale, freckled skin. She could smell humanity. How many men and women had passed to and from this platform? Some freshly showered and perfumed, some homeless and rank. Some drunk, some pissing onto the tracks, some vomiting at the end of a long night of revelry.

And it was all cleaned by the tired, hard-working janitorial staff who hadn’t the skills nor the credentials to get another job – or who were perfectly skilled and far too good for their jobs and there was nothing available for them. Whatever the case, they cleaned the platform to the best of their ability, but really the scent of bleach and pine only masked the scent of humanity.

But Eureka didn’t mind it. She was wild, but born in the city. The city was her wilderness. As much as she sometimes preferred the trees and the dirt, the city was where her heart lived. It was where she found her prey.

Footsteps soon approached, and her blue eyes opened to regard the ground, spotted with old chewing gum black now with age. The voice came not long afterwards; her gaze shifted to take in the shoes, and then the pants, the torso, the chest, and finally the face of the stranger who awkwardly offered his goodwill. Eureka stared at the scarf before slowly unfolding her legs and standing.

”I’m so cold…” she said, and with no shame, no qualms or hesitation, she slid her arms inside the stranger’s jacket. She pressed her smaller body up against his chest, hugging him close, revelling in his warmth as if she really were suffering from mild hypothermia. Pressed this close, she could hear the beat of his heart, hot and wet. There’d be cameras, she knew. But she did not care.

The train would be there soon. She would have to be quick.

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