Storytime

[Zodiac]

She lay on the floor in front of the fireplace and read from the copies of the ancient pages. A small fire burned within despite the heat of summer outside. Zodiac loved the ambience of the lit fireplace regardless of need. Only the size of the fire changed with the seasons.

The pages had been reproduced at great expense from the remains of old journals her Nanna had been given by her own mother, who in turn and been given them and so on. Their condition did not make for causal reading, so she had copies made and began the process of translating them. She was not an expert at this by any means, but she had no one she felt she could trust with this project. Besides, it was her family history she was dealing with. Among the passages were spells unlike she had ever seen before and she imagined she would be taxed beyond her skills to try and make some of these work. Magicks her own ancestors had managed and passed on in time now to her.

But it was the accounts she was focused on now. Current events urged her to begin consulting these more than just a passing hobby. Too many 'elders' saying too many things and never the entire story. Only what they felt they had to reveal to the masses in order to insure co-operation. The rebellious streak of her human blood line still filled her as she knew a con job when she heard it. It was something no one wanted to say aloud. Especially Velveteen's sire. Zo always had the feeling that man would never tell you the entire story even if it was a fairy tale. Nanna had told her as a child their people were once servants to a vampire lord in history, so somebody had to have written about it.

In the page fragments of her great, great, great grandmother: Mischa Ferenk- she finally found something.

"….When we first heard, we did not believe it. Who would dare to oppose the Lords and Ladies is such a way? But the rumors and words persisted as our paths crossed with others. Something had happened or changed. What I never found out, but men had finally had enough and defied the masters of this world. In Europe, the great houses were under siege, supplicants being freed or killed and the offsprings and the sires of the lines were being destroyed. One by one they were falling and rumor insisted this was happening in other lands as well. Even among us who were living yet loyal to the Ferenczy, rebellion had broken out.

The Lords and Ladies were always divided against each other. We always heard whispers of the great Houses plotting and scheming against each other. Brothers and sisters of the moment against some, only to be rivals and traitors the next to each other. The Derandana against The Nobles, Pariah against Ferenczy, and The Grigori against who knows at any given time. United they could have held the world in a grip of iron, yet they played games with each other and ignored us. Supplicants speak to others when paths crossed, for our own laws were as old as those of the vampires. Hints and secrets if one was patient enough to put together told such a tale of them fully, perhaps beyond even their understanding of themselves. Men learned slowly, but they learned.

How to enter, how to leave, who to trust and not to trust, to defy, to hurt, and finally to destroy.

Most of them probably did not understand what was even happening to them. How suddenly the winds had turned against them. Perhaps some rallied to band together to beat back the surge of rebellion among their food, but it was for naught in the end. Their castles and homes burned as they were expelled from this world into the hell reserved for their kind…."

Some of the names stood out boldly to her as she read. She wondered if she could trust one of the 'elders' with this volume then decided against it. The idea of The Doctor locking this away and suddenly saying it did not exist floated in the back of her mind. Copy the pages perhaps, but never the originals. Words from her original 'bloodline' describing the 'holocaust' all of them went on about from a viewpoint most would hold in contempt. Her own ancestors had helped in this, and it sent a dual feeling of pride and fear through her as she read on. It was only a general story sadly and no details of how some of these things were done. As far as she had gathered about Mischa she was simply one of the many under the eye of their Lord. Not a thrall, but a witch who may or may not have served him in such a manner.

She read on. Eyes glancing back and forth between the copies and the volume of translating these words to English. She was getting better, but slowly.

"…All of them were eventually disposed of. Even the Kinder Lords and Ladies…"

Zodiac focused more now. Kinder Lords?

"…When the rebellion came, no distinction between those who fed upon us the way we feed upon the beasts of this earth and the ones who fed upon each other were made. Vampire was vampire, and thus all must die. Those who served these other Lords and Ladies were divided on attacking or defending them when the rebellion came to their lands. These lords did not prey on their servants but on the others of their own kind…"

"Now we are talking business!" she decided and began to jot notes as she absorbed the words from the past. The scratching of the pen against paper and the soft crackling of the fire all that broke the silence of her apartment.

[Zodiac]

"…The Kinder Lords were much the same as the true Lords, yet inspired loyalty in unique ways. Since they were not a direct threat to the living in the matters of feeding and turning, they were not feared as the True Lords were…"

The more she read, the larger the hole in Zodiac's logic began to grow. She was suddenly on the wrong side of the issue as far as Mischa's words went. There was no danger to humans from these Necuratists (outside of physical attacks meant to injure or kill) because they did not feed on the living anymore. To humans, they were what the words roughly translated out to be. Kinder Lords.

"…In time, the most trusted of their supplicants gained special gifts from their masters and mistresses. They too learned how to feed from the Real Lords and their childers and for a time were like their masters with powers at their command. Stronger and faster than a normal man, but yet when the sun would rise they stood as mortals and guarded the hiding places and keeps of their masters while seeking out those trapped by the darkness…"

In the margins of her translations Zodiac wrote the term 'blood thieves?' and circled it several times. Was this the origin of them as well? With her current experiences, there was little else it could be. No wonder the originals were so dead set against them all. An army with all of their positives and none of their weaknesses lead by one or more who grew in strength and skill far easier than they could. Plus, their armies were not slaves or servants. A degree of loyalty no bondage or beguilement could ever hope to create would be in the men and women who followed a 'Kinder Lord'. Broussard's group was forged from a desire for power and profits (making them no less dangerous) but when she considered this in Mischa's time it was more clear the dangers the elders were trying not to admit to.

How do you fight an army of the willing? One brought together by a common need or goal. They - the elders- all claimed bloodlines of devotion, but Zo had seen herself how easily those lines would shatter and tear over the smallest disagreement. But an army of the willing, united by bonds that could not be inspired by even the most charismatic vampire? Perhaps that is what they fear from the Necuratists. The potential power they could eventually have not as an individual, but as the leader of an organized, devoted hoard that could fight both day and night. Also, who may have inspired the revolution if not a Necuratist? It backfired on them apparently, but she could imagine one or more stirring up enough discontent to inspire humans to do the classic 'I'm mad as hell, and I am not going to take it anymore' bit and the end result being the holocaust they so loved to go on and on about.

A percentage of this was simply conjecture unless she found something that would collaborate Mischa's descriptions of the time. Personally she did not doubt her ancestor's words a bit, but unless she was able to set them next to something more accepted as the truth then she would be laughed out of any gathering of the elders. Plus, who could she approach that she felt she could trust on such a matter?

Velveteen might have access to some of it, but she had no desire to put her friend in a lurch if her sire questioned her on the hows and whys of her actions. Habren and Elizabeth came to mind along with her friend Isabella. Too bad Tempy's adoptive uncle Etenene was not about anymore. And what of the silent pair in this town. Quartermaine and the Vedarian lady-Keara? What secrets might they know if one could find them and get them to speak? She briefly considered the head of her own bloodline and dismissed the Worthington patriarch at once. Tempy's sire came to mind as well, but she felt whatever secrets he would have would remain so unless it suited him to share.

Another possibility was the sole survivor of the original holocaust. Cobb had been slain before she was even turned, but might such an individual have had records as well? Was his lair within this town ever found after his demise? What truths might be sitting in darkness right now waiting to be brought into the moonlight and what surprises might be waiting in the records of the last son of the house of Pariah?

She sat up and rubbed her eyes for a few moments. This was starting to sound like an adventure movie now. "Indiana Zoey and the Seekers of the Lost Vampires" she laughed to herself. She looked at the clock and was surprised at the amount of time she had invested so far and had only begun to get through the first parts of Mischa's journal pages. Plus she had others to check as well and this did not include the spells scattered through the pages either. That was another project by itself.

Carefully she marked her place in her copies and put the folder back into her desk. A little progress nightly was all she could hope for. It would make no sense to begin asking questions of others until she had it all laid out. She locked the drawer and yawned. The sun was up outside the shelter of her windowless lair already. Zo laid down on her bed and patted the mattress to call Ginny up, but was asleep before the cat made it to her side.

(To be continued)

[Zodiac]

"…Damnation to them and those that follow in their lines! Like animals they came. Intent on destroying what our Lord had made and like animals they were whipped and scourged, but there was far too many even for us…."

Apparently, not all of her family was pure human supplicants Zodiac noted. She had given Mischa's journal a break and tired another, but unlike Mischa- Deresdi (her great, great, great-aunt) was pro vampire. Probably a thrall of the master they both spoke of or one of his children.

Or more.

"…We who had been blessed were tested like no other that night. Seven against a mob, but what a mob. We stood between the hoard and gates to his abode and used the gifts our master had given us. The stolen strength and powers of his own kind burned brightly within us as we fought back. But even that was not enough. The mob knew the ways and were skilled. One by one we were taken down. Karl, Angela, Nikos, all fell to the sword, the stake and the fires. Each time we retreated, they grew more confident. Their movements quicker, more sure and steady. Gina, Torgo, fell next. Then it was my turn as the masses bore me down to the floor and held me fast. I hissed in defiance as they prepared, but the roar of a challenge from Bergor and 2 of the master's true children caused my executioner's aim to be off. The sword pierced, but not properly. I laid their wounded badly as the fight moved on. Finally summoning up enough energy to crawl to safety…"

The journal ended a few pages later. Evidently Great Aunt Deresdi was a blood thief and the last pages described a painful death. As her powers faded, so did the ability to heal rapidly. With no one to feed from to regain her stolen powers-including rapid healing, the sword pierce became more fatal and her words reflected it. Another style of writing sat on the bottom of the next blank page that announced her son, Gris, had found this book and her remains and had brought it back to Mischa. When she compared the images in this bit of text to what she had actually seen, Deresdi and the others she mentioned had to be some kind of last minute thing this 'lord' has tossed out between himself and the humans coming for him. A percentage of the modern ones had a bit more resilience to them than what she saw here, but to be fair there was no police and ambulances here to assist them, giving those who sought to put them down all the time they needed to make it final.

Zodiac put the little book back in the strongbox she had kept all the originals in. It had held up better than most of them, so she had not had it scanned. Deresdi had some spells written in hers as well, but Zo had just marked the pages for future reference. She had compared two small spells found in the texts of both women and found them to be exact. Either the pair had worked on them together or the one that taught it knew them both.

Two views of a legend. Mischa who was perhaps a servant, but still mortal, while Deresdi slipped into the middle between mortal and what their modern day descendant had become.

She went back to Mischa's papers again after a break, and for the next few nights immersed herself in the story. It chronicled how the tribe pulled itself back together and began to return to the traveling way of life that still existed to this very day. The references to the vampires grew fewer and fewer as more pressing issues began to take president in her life. Eventually she took the copies, made her final notes on them and put them away. As much as she loved to read such things, the information she sought had dried up in her account.

There was only 2 other books to consider now. This pair had finally been brought back to her Nanna just before Zo's mother was born. One was large and bound well with metal hinges and a lock to which no key was present. It had taken the mystic only a few moments to pick the lock but could tell by the first few pages it was a grimore of arcane knowledge, so she set it to the side. She turned her attention to the smaller, leather bound volume that contained the words of one of her great ancestors who apparently had dwelled in the Americas during the time in question.

Canada to be exact.

She opened the book and slowly begin to pull out the words of Magda Frencze. A cousin of her direct line who also had dealings with the night.

(to be continued)