-Ovid
Chapter Twenty: Unholy Rites
If Vera still had a normal heart, it would have been thumping about her chest. She was kneeling and manacled in the middle of a vampire chapel in front of a cavalcade of fellow blood-suckers. Every instinct in her brain screamed for her to leap up and bolt toward the door. Somehow, she stayed put to see her vampire testing through.
Mistress Xia and Master Arnold approached the altar, accepting a small object from the attending familiars – what looked to be a small ceremonial staff. Though, when Arnold pulled his out, it was revealed to be a slim blade, perhaps eighteen inches long, sheathed in an ornate scabbard. Its metal was dark, but it glinted in the chapel's dim light. Vera forced herself to look forward, trying to convince herself that she wasn't about to get murdered in front of a watching group of vampires and their servants.
"Ow! What the fuck?" Lisa said.
Vera was about to respond when she felt her own lancing pain – a sharp pain in her back, followed by an uneasy roiling of her guts, and then another sharp pain in her belly. She looked down in shock, spotting the dark tip of the blade poking an inch past the fabric of her dress.
"My dress!"
She waited for Arnold to remove the blade before casting an angry glance in his direction. He carefully wiped the blade clean – there wasn't much on it anyhow – sheathed it, and returned it to his familiar before nodding his affirmation to the Lady and stepping back from the altar.
"Let it be noted: they are pure of body. This, we have seen."
"So mote it be," the other vampires replied.
"The final test is Purity of Will. With our purpose, our Lord gives us strength to overcome those who would oppose us. The only shackles that can hold you are those you impose upon yourself. So free yourselves, sisters, and prove yourselves worthy of our order."
Vera glanced to Lisa. She shrugged. Vera shrugged back. She lifted her wrists, still bound in manacles, above the altar and gave them a good tug. The things must have been rigged to break, because when she tugged, they shattered into a dozen pieces, little bits of metal clanking and pinging around the room. It hadn't even been that hard of a tug – a strong human might have managed it, though probably not without hurting themselves. Lisa raised her manacles and did the likewise, her restraints cracking open, little bits of metal flying off and getting stuck in her mass of hair. The remains of the manacles dangled around one wrist like a bracelet for a moment before clattering to the altar.
"Let it be noted: they are pure of will. This, we have seen."
"So mote it be," the other vampires replied.
Sophia leaned across the altar and placed a palm upon the top of each of their heads. "The required thirteen have assembled. They have voted upon your admission, and they have witnessed you pass the tests. I, Lucretia Clandest, Lady of the Nocturnal Order of Abbadon, invite you to take our oath. It is an oath steeped in blood, and an oath that shall guide you through the centuries and unto the end of history. Take the oath and take our Lord into your heart forevermore, take your rightful place in this fallen world, or else refuse and be cast into the pit. Do you accept your Lord?"
"I accept," Lisa said. Vera repeated the sentiment a fraction of a second later.
"Good, then repeat the oath after me:
I recognize that I have been freed from the curse of corruption,
bestowed a gift undeserved but nonetheless accepted,
and I swear fealty to great Abbadon, who has bestowed it upon me,
and to the Lady who speaks in his name.
My hand is yours to direct, and your purpose is mine to fulfill,
and I pledge myself to your service forevermore, great Abbadon.
I await your command. I await your reawakening.
I am a servant of the night."
Vera recited the oath and Lisa, kneeling beside her, spoke them, too. Vera tried to reduce the oath to mere words, to let its meaning pass over her in the hopes that she wasn't committing to an irrevocable oath. She tried to direct her own energies, whatever those were, toward the Triune amulet that Gloria had given her, those three jade-green stones etched in ancient runes that Maxie promised could absorb the dark power of their oaths. Throughout the oath, though, Vera felt something strange and horrible brooding over the vampire chapel, and it didn't seem pleased. Whether that was 'great Abbadon' or just her imagination, Vera couldn't say. She could say that the whole thing was creepy as fuck.
"Good," Sophia said. "Your words please our great Lord... and, having sworn your fealty to Him, and to your Lady through Him, I now demand a sacrifice. The cost of our reward must be paid in blood, and it cannot remain long slaked. Therefore, I command you to sacrifice these mortal lives to your Lord and to feast upon their blood as he feasts upon their lives." She gestured to one of her familiars. "Bring the sacrifices in."
Four burly familiars brought them in – two people, a man and a woman, bound and gagged but struggling against their captors. The woman was crying through her gag and there was an animalistic fear in the man's eyes. They were brought before the altar and lashed to it, and Vera got a very good look at them from her vantage less than a yard away.
Both of them looked to be in their forties, about the age of Vera's parents. The woman was a redhead, the color a bit too red to be natural, perhaps Vera's height and a bit overweight. Her earrings were little metal fish skeletons that glittered in the dim light. The man was rail-thin with salt-and-pepper hair and spectacles that somehow hadn't fallen off. His button-up shirt was ripped and his lip was already a bit bloody. The two of them might have been college professors. Maybe they were married. However they'd gone about their lives, the pair had the dubious distinction of winding up as unwilling sacrifices at a vampire sabbath. The four burly familiars lashed them to either side of the altar with a fumbling uncertainty that made it clear that they didn't do this sort of thing too often. But they had the pair secured before too long, regardless.
The man had managed to move his gag out of the way, and he plead: "Please... please. Oh God, whatever you want, please don't kill us, I swear I won't tell any-" and then the familiar gagged him again.
"Neophytes, you've said your oath, now make good on it. Say: I offer this life to Lord Abbadon, and then feed until the mortal expires."
Vera and Lisa couldn't offer a life sacrifice to Abbadon. Maxie had been pretty clear about that. Unlike the words they'd said earlier, a life couldn't be absorbed by Gloria's Triune. If they sacrificed these people, she and Lisa would be bound by whatever horrible process connected the other vampires to their demon. But Sophia's directions had given her a glimmer of hope: she was to feed until the moral expired... but what if the mortal expired from other means? She shared a second of eye contact with Lisa... she brought up her finger and tapped it against her fang.
The man was on her side, and the woman on Lisa's, so it appeared that those would be their respective victims. Vera leaned over to the man and whispered into his ear: "I'm sorry."
The other vampires could hear her, of course. Their hearing was about as keen as hers. And Mistress Xia even offered a sympathetic nod: she didn't find it especially pleasant, either. Vera felt terrible about it – there was nothing she could do to help these people now. Even if she refused to kill the man… at which point, the vampires would almost certainly kill her… these poor people were still doomed. But Vera might be able to deny Abbadon his prize... because, as she whispered to the man, she made a little nip along his neck and injected as much anesthetizing venom as she could. She hoped that Lisa had picked up on her cue.
The man's heartbeat slowed... slowed... da...thump... da... … thump... … … da... …
"I offer this life to Lord Abbadon," Vera said, and she bit as close to her first bite mark as she could.
The man's heart stopped not long after she started drinking, but she still got some blood out. Plenty of blood really, probably close to a pint. Enough to sate, though not for long. It wasn't quite as good as spurting, quickly-pulsing, totally-fresh blood, but it was still pretty damn good until she encountered a gooey clod and almost spit it out. She sat up, wiped her mouth, and looked to Sophia – nobody could say she hadn't fed. The Lady of the coven looked pleased, a triumphant smile creeping across her face.
"Welcome, sisters!" She said. "Let us rejoice!"
+++++
While vampires could party all night, they usually didn't. The social gulf between the older and younger vampires, especially, was quite salient. The difference in social sensibilities between somebody who'd become a vampire during the 1960s and today wasn't too big – if they'd kept up with modern music and media, chances were they acted pretty apparent-age-appropriate. But the difference between somebody who listened to Vivaldi and watched Moliere in their formative years and somebody who listened to Zapota Flair and watched Real Housewives was a square you couldn't circle. The older vampires viewed the younger ones as children and the younger ones viewed their elders as stodgy. But they all had to get along for a while. They milled about for the better part of an hour, mingling with the other vampires and making introductions. Lisa, of course, was a subject of great interest, but Vera was subject to almost as much attention – roughly half of it dealing with her theft of juvechrome.
"So... you just, like, walked out with it?" Vivian asked – she was one of the 'younger' vampires, which still gave her a decade on Vera's mother. She looked late-20s at most, golden-skinned and dark-haired.
"Pretty much. I was dressed like an employee, and I... well, I didn't get many second glances back then. I was a dude, you know?"
Vivian pulled at the fabric of Vera's dress near her sword wound. "Hard to believe but.. hey, we're vampires. After learning about vampires and demons, you've got to lower your bar for what's possible and what isn't. But I wouldn't bet on there being a repeat of your theft… not at our facility, anyway. With how they've beefed up security, it would take a SWAT team and a truck full of holy symbols."
"Well the one time was enough for me - I make my own venom now, so no need for Juvechrome. Vivian... if you don't mind my asking, how did you get your skin that color? You and one or two of the others have regular, not pale-as-shit looking skin. Is that, like, your vampire power?"
Vivian laughed. "In a way! One of my familiars is a tattoo artist. I have a standing appointment twice a month to get a patch of skin done... every square inch of my body tattooed every eighteen months. The ink fades after a few years – way faster than with mortals, so it's a continuous process. But a little concealer will cover up whatever's fading faster until my next session. And, in the meanwhile, I get to look like I'm not a perpetual shut-in." She reached into her clutch and picked out a business card. "Call her for a consult, and say you're a friend of mine for a discount. Very affordable."
Vera suspected that Vivian's notion of very affordable – and, indeed, the overall vampire notion of affordability – was very different from her own. She and Lisa had spent close to twenty thousand dollars at Vidi, and they hadn't touched whatever limit was on the card that Erasmus had given them. And there had been absolutely zero consideration over skewering her through her $1000 dress. Vera would have gladly stripped to her bra so Arnold could skewer her without poking bloody holes in the dress. But a thousand dollars was nothing to these people... was people the right word? Vera thought so – after all, she was still people. Right?
Whether or not they'd promised their souls to Abbadon, most of the vampires seemed like people. They talked business, complained about their days, and some were even discussing news and politics. Vera wandered over to Lisa, who had been pulled into the orbit of Erasmus Moody and was sending Vera subtly desperate glances to help her escape. So Vera made her way across the chapel, wondering whether either of them had escaped their blood-oath to the coven's dark lord.
"Vera, dear, Miss Lisa's just told us that the two of you knew our Lady Clandest as children! That's got to be quite a head-scratcher!"
"No, I wasn't expecting that," Vera allowed. She looked about, but Sophia Clandest was nowhere to be seen. "I assume she's the same lady who founded the CPVDI... I wonder what for."
"I wonder what for, indeed," Moody said. "Another head-scratcher!" He put a possessive arm around Vera as Lisa looked on. "I think you and your..." he cleared his throat... "paramour, Miss Lisa, will be lovely additions to our fold... figuratively and literally, of course. I couldn't help but notice that bit of mercy you gave the old boy at the altar."
Vera stiffened slightly, and Erasmus noticed, raising an eyebrow. "I... I thought that would be okay," she said. Was Moody so astute that he could pick out one stopping heartbeat among the dozen mortals in the room? She'd taken a huge risk in assuming only she was close enough and honed-in enough to notice...
Moody shrugged. "There are some among our kind who see these small kindnesses as weak – not me, though. No, madam! Phinneas here will tell you as much – I'm very indulgent with folks on my good side, and that good side is easy enough to stay on."
"Just as long you do what ol' Erasmus wants," Phinneas said – a brooding man with dark skin but pale eyes ringed with red, just a shade lighter than Vera's red-rimmed hazel. He held out his wrist, revealing the faded remnant of a familiar's tattoo. "Name's Phinneas Cole, Miss Vera. I did what Master Erasmus wanted for fifty years, and I've been on his good side ever since."
Vera could only imagine fifty years under the master vampire's thumb like that. And Phinneas still looked to be a young man, not past his mid-thirties, as mortals went. That meant he'd started his indenture under Erasmus from an early age, indeed.
"I'll do my best to stay on everyone's good side," Vera said. "But I won't be callous or cruel."
Erasmus laughed, and Phinneas did likewise a moment later. "Perish the thought, Miss Vera! I wouldn't want to disturb your delicate women's sensibilities like that. No, we'll come up with a suitable position for you to cast your first days of immortality in."
"I can think of a few," Phinneas said.
Erasmus tutted. "Now Phinneas, don't be crass..."
"Positions within the organization, of course," he grinned – and it was a winning grin if Vera ever saw one. Vera suspected the two vampires were peas in a pod, and perhaps a bit more.
"I already have a job," Vera stated.
Erasmus tutted again, this time at Vera. "Vampires do not have jobs, my dear. We occupy positions. You'll learn soon enough that the mortal world isn't for you anymore... but I won't be the one to dispense that harsh tutelage. Our Lord shall make his will known to you soon enough... he always does... and when he calls, you will answer."
"I should be going soon," Lisa said from somewhere behind Vera. She pulled Vera away from Erasmus and whispered to her: "We should leave... I'm getting seriously weird vibes here..."
Vera could see why. Some of the vampires were getting ready to leave while others had gathered into very close groups... most of them in mixed groups with familiars. She watched as one of them nibbled a little cut into a familiar's wrist and licked at the blood. Another pair were making out on one of plush chairs, little streaks of blood across both of their faces. The room had the look of a sexual depression about two minutes away from becoming a Category 3 vampire orgy, and Vera didn't want anything to do with it.
"Care to nibble, dear?" Vivian said, brushing by between her and Lisa. It wasn't clear which of them she was talking to – presumably, both.
"Um... we should be going," Vera said.
Vivian pouted. "Your loss."
Vera pulled out her phone and requested a ride, mashing her finger over the 'request' button several times in rapid succession. Salvador will arrive at the pickup location in 3 minutes, the app said, indicating a spot out in the middle of the pine marshes. Hopefully, he'd know to pick them up at the right spot along rural route 37. They left the vampire chapel just as the hissing and moaning really got started, rushing out into the humid press of night, and nobody moved to stop them. And, if one of them had, Vera had no idea what she'd have done about it.
From a legal perspective, no amount of duress justifies murder. However, this is effectively saying that you should let yourself or someone you love die because you're on the bad side of the trolley problem. What people don't tend to realize is that the state's monopoly of force isn't actually nonconsensual. With a simple paradigm shift, you can realize that you are actively refraining from exercising your right to justified violence in order to live in society. However, if society fails you, or your goals conflict, this also means you can at any time sacrifice the protections given to you by society to also rebuke the corresponding responsibilities you owe society. If that means a vigilante crime spree in order to protect you and yours, it's your prerogative, just don't expect to go unopposed, and since you're an individual against an entire civilization, you'll probably fail against overwhelming odds. Still better than complacently taking it up the ass though.
Yes, I agree. My basic stance is that violence is never justified unless it's to defend yourself or those you're obligated to protect. However, the interpretation of 'defense' is pretty broad. Obviously, it's self-defense if somebody is literally trying to shoot me in the head. But what if somebody is trying to take stuff that I need to survive and they have the legal backing to do so? In that case, I'd say that violence is justified (since I need this particular property to survive) but it it also illegal. In this instance, it might be better to just engage in violence and accept whatever legal repercussions arise. Or, depending on how corrupt the law is, attempt to avoid those repercussions, too.
That sabbath was hella scary.
The sacrifice part even more than all the vowing, and burning, and stabbing. 
You don't get very far in vampire society by being a fluffy peacenik.
Of course not ^.^;
Still enjoying this story. It's so captivating! If not to say ... enthralling. :3
Thanks for the chapter !
Thanks for reading!
A thought occurred to me. Are all vampires stereotypically beautiful? Do they all go through some sort of transformation, even if it’s not generally as dramatic as Vera and Lisa?
Some degree of transformation is typical, though it's usually pretty subtle. For the most part, vampires are stereotypically beautiful because vampires are vain and select beautiful people to become vampires - it's a selection bias. But they generally become slightly more beautiful on top of that, just not dramatically so. It also varies, based on the reason why the person isn't "beautiful". A horribly scarred person will have most of their scars healed, for instance. But, conversely, somebody with beautifying plastic surgery might well have some of that surgery undone, if there are implants or scar tissue that the vampire body could absorb or heal.