Path of the Vampire forum

INVITE ONLY

It was there again, the pounding in the back of her skull. It started as an inch, and then it spread beneath her hair, until she felt more like a watermelon being split open than a vampire. At first, she tried to ignore it. If she pretended it didn’t exist, then it didn’t exist, right? It was a working theory, albeit a idiotic one. She couldn’t ignore the way every light, every sound, every scent threatened to tear her apart. No, so then, she tried to rationalize it. It was a migraine. She had one as a human, hadn’t she? Days pouring over textbooks, nights spent squinting a blaring computer screen as she tried to meet deadline after deadline, but that was different. That was normal. A few pills, a shot of caffeine, and she was ready to continue on with her day. No, what she felt now was unnatural – and worrisome.

This was agony.

Shaking her head, she moved the strap of her Prada bag to her other shoulder, hoping the shifting of weight would help alleviate some of the pain. When that failed to work, she quickly found herself losing hope. The pain had become a part of her, it had seeped into her bones, and had taken permanent residence in her head. With a quick lift of her hand, she pressed three slender fingers to the artfully covered gash on the side of her skull. The flaming red curls hid the sight of meat and bone, but still, her fingers knew how to find it, having traced the path thousands of times since that night. The night the thing attacked, the night it decided to carve out her brains. It was a night to remember, one that she knew she would never forget, even if the thing had become a blur in her memory.

Others told her it had been a paladin. Her family told her it had been a woman – but she didn’t know. She couldn’t remember. All she knew was it was dead – and she was walking with a cracked skull. It had starved her, it had driven her mad, and it wasn’t until she had finally gave in and tasted her first dose of warm blood in over a year, that she had renewed. It had been worse until the feeding, until she had been able to shrug off the negative effects of the wounds sustained – the dizziness, blurred sight, the inability to remember her own name. It had all vanished in the blink of an eye, leaving her with this tormenting pain and the inability for her to stay still, to stay home. She needed to move. She needed to act, to find something to keep her mind off of the pain.

That was how she found herself in at the entrance of the Labyrinth, the words of the Administrator playing over and over in her mind. There was something here, something her kind craved, something they needed – and she wanted it. She wanted whatever it was, the power it possessed, the truth it could hold. She didn’t waste time in firing off a few texts to the most trusted in her contacts before dropping her phone into her bag and descending into the darkness, her pain already forgotten as the first enemy stumbled into her path, only to collapse as a perfectly timed bullet pierced its throat.

The Administrator. The name sounded strong, something that might have spoken of determination, of perseverance, and yet the strength remained a quiet one. The moniker seemed wasted on the masses. No one believed the masked man. No one trusted the unknown variable. Hudson wanted to say that he trusted the Administrator; he wanted to say that he’d placed his chips down on red twenty-three and planned on one clean sweep. He couldn’t. He couldn’t, in good conscience, trust an unknown with the future of his newly obtained family. Trusting the Administrator meant allowing a total stranger control of a game he had yet to fully understand. Yes, Hudson knew the importance of keeping the sirens far from anything related to the veil, the key to vampires returning from the shadow realm. He knew that much. He didn’t trust those sirens. Something just cautioned him against trusting the manipulative little things. But beyond that, Hudson had been thrown into vampire life headfirst. Strengths. Weaknesses. Powers. Enemies. And the Administrator. That one unknown.

He should have been more interested in the comings and goings, but he’d grown used to simply slashing and hacking. He spent most of his free time in the quarantine zone, which provided him the best of both worlds. When he tired of sharpening his blade on the bones of zombies, he sharpened his mind. At first, he’d been too squeamish to kill zombies, but he’d learned. If the Administrator served as an unknown element in the game, then zombies served as an unwanted element, an out-of-place element. Zombies didn’t belong in Harper Rock. They lacked everything that once made them human. They were empty shells. They were nothing more than reanimated corpses. They had no names. They had no hopes or dreams. Hudson deemed them fertilizer, and that was the turning point.

On that particular night, Hudson made the journey from Honeymead to the Quarantine Zone, where he practiced his aim. What he lacked in swordsmanship, he made up for with a gun. There were others in the area, but he did his best to avoid them. Halfway through his rounds, his phone vibrated.

Caligrace.

Apparently, the Administrator had weighed heavy on her mind.

Hudson had the opportunity to ignore the text. He could have read the words, turned off his phone, and returned to his mindless slaughtering, but the sender of that text mattered a lot. It hadn’t been just anyone. Sighing, Hudson turned the safety back on and tucked the gun into the holster on his thigh. His phone went into the pocket of his jeans. Looking around, he captured a mental image of the quarantine zone and thought of his sire. Hopefully, she saw his location. After that, he reached out to her mind.

“I’m coming. I’m coming.”

His words communicated, Hudson took a fadeportal that dropped him in Wickbridge. From there, he went to the station. He went as far as the line allowed, and then he took to foot. When he arrived at the location, he frowned.

The Labyrinth.

The Labyrinth lay before him like temptation embodied. The place beckoned him closer, whispered words directly into his mind, and then receded, like a beautiful tide. He didn’t know how long he stood there, waiting, but he eventually forced himself to take those few steps forward, to venture into the labyrinth. Armed with two handguns, a sword strapped to his back, he looked as if he were going into war. The unknown world called to him, as if he, too, belonged within its halls, mixed in amongst the other creatures dwelling there. Caligrace hadn’t been too specific with her text message, but he knew that the labyrinth was like any other untamed land in Harper Rock. Vampires went there to sharpen their blades and unleash their bullets. They went to the labyrinth when they wanted to hone their skills. The strongest went there. And Hudson, though he loathed to admit it, wasn’t anywhere near that point in his timeline.

At first, he had a peaceful walk through the corridors. He stopped to try and text his sire, but that was a mistake. First, he had no signal. Second, something lurking amongst the shadows decided to make itself known. He didn’t have time to dart out of the way, nor did he have time to come up with a counterattack, so he dropped low and swept the legs out from under the skeleton. Unfortunately, the bones didn’t break. He’d been honing his skills with firearms, not with any type of martial arts, so that move was probably the best he had in store. When the skeleton recovered from his attack, Hudson had a gun in each hand. The creature actually growled at him, something that creeped him out, and then came charging. Hudson didn’t try to dart or dodge. He raised his guns and fired. Two bullets from each gun. Four in total. Two headshots and two wasted. The skeleton stopped, swayed, and collapsed.

The allure of the labyrinth had faded.

The temptation had vanished.

Hudson wanted to get the **** out of there.

Replacing his guns in their holsters, he walked over to the fallen skeleton and stomped on the skull until it shattered. Then, he kicked at the bones comprising the rest of the skeleton, scattering them across the floor. If the creatures reformed, that one would take quite a while. Good riddance, he thought. He hated to continue, but somewhere, amongst the halls of the labyrinth, his sire was waiting. And he’d gotten better. He’d grown accustomed to handling weapons; he’d grown accustomed to fighting. He just had to admit that he preferred mental pursuits. He wasn’t a natural fighter. After all, he’d been roadkill only how long ago?

Red hair. Vibrant, like a fiery sunset. That was his sire. Nothing described the way he felt when he saw her there. Relief. Anger. Joy. A lot of joy.

“We’re getting the hell out of here,” he immediately said, no greeting following. “This place is a death trap.” He had dust and bits of bone fragments over the bottoms of his jeans and the front of his brown henley. He’d been dressed for hacking into businesses, not hacking into skeletons. “Let me guess, we’re going to find Freyja.” Immediately, he retrieved one of his two guns and turned off the safety. “Let’s go.” His seemingly one-sided conversation gone, he waited for his siress to lead the way.

Trouble, as if they all hadn’t found enough trouble to last them through the rest of the week. At least, he felt that way. Hacking into the police database, slaughtering zombies, Hudson thought he’d had busy days, but no. He wanted to hang his head. As if he expected anything different from Freyja. As if he expected anything different from Caligrace. In his short time with both women, he grew to know, and admire, their ability to stand up for themselves, both together and alone. They were strong women, so to speak. And while Freyja wore her strength proudly, Caligrace had a quiet strength. Hudson? Well, he wasn’t so sure about himself. He didn’t think of himself as a strong guy, unless he could count mental pursuits -- in which case, **** yeah, he was the man. Realizing he’d been lost in thought, he forced himself from mental images of himself standing atop a pile of fallen foes. Be realistic now.

Be aware of your surroundings!

“So we’re not getting the **** out of here.” He sighed, raised his right hand, and pinched at the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t leaving them, obviously, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to drag them out of there. He wasn’t a physically strong man, as he’d admitted, so the labyrinth represented a mountain he couldn’t climb, a never-ending barrage of enemies far beyond his skill level. And, really, did any of them know, with absolute certainty, what existed in the darkness? He thought the creatures in the catacombs were bad! He let his hand fall and he looked between the women, a serious expression on his face. “How far have you gotten? Have you had any luck?” He addressed Freyja then.

Something started moving around in the darkness. He tried his best to pinpoint where the noise came from, but he did what he did best, in the end. He fired blindly. Hudson hit a few times, missed a few times, and killed another zombie. The skeleton collapsed onto the hard ground, its bones scattering in all different directions. He probably should have asked if they had any others around, but the thought hadn’t formed yet. He chose to shoot first and ask questions later. And he had a lot of questions.

Have any of the others shown up? He assumed that the others were informed in the same manner that he’d been informed, but he could have been wrong. Were they setting out like the next Donner-Reed Party? He hoped not. He wasn’t eating Freyja. With that thought, he eyed the woman. No, she didn’t seem appealing at all.

“That Administrator person. Is he or she your reason for being here?” It was a pointless question, but he wanted to believe they were searching for something worthwhile rather than bonding over bullets and bones.